chill out

Summary: Derek and a friend make some pot brownies to help chill Hotch out. (Post Route-66)

Pairing: Hotch/Morgan

Words: 3.6k

Warnings: a lot of talk about marijuana, grief, pain, doctors

Notes: Is this a crack-fic? I dunno. Maybe. The idea started with the @yearoftheotpevent February prompts "established relationship" and "different"...and kind of spiraled from there with a lot of help from Harry Styles. If you haven't read prior stories involving my delightful (slightly evil) OC Coleen, here is a bit of history: the high price of shame

The house, modest from the outside, was nothing like Derek expected as he approached. Its bones screamed mid-century rancher, single level, low ceilings. But from the moment he was in the entryway, he realized how wrong he was. The hallway, beset with a hanging lamp in shades of deep brown and gold, opened up into a sunken great room with a vaulted ceiling and a wall of windows overlooking the city, at least once you got past the sizable estate that stretched out emerald green for ages. David Rossi might even be impressed with this.

"You live in a house..." he mused, stepping down into the main area and peering around at all of the impeccable mid-century details that would have made Carol Brady's knees buckle from sheer joy. He grew up fantasizing about houses like this as he wandered through his modest inner-city Chicago home with neighbors close enough to hear your dinner prayers unless you whispered. This was the stuff of sitcom families, well-to-do but parading as somehow being middle class. His socked feet sunk deep in the burnt orange shag carpet that didn't look a day past being straight from the showroom and yet he couldn't think of a single place you'd get something like this nowadays. And he'd looked, too, for one of his properties that had bones like this. No, this was original. "Where do you want these?" He gestured to the grocery bags in his arms full of all sorts of baking supplies and a bottle of wine for good measure. With a sneer she gestured toward the kitchen.

The kitchen. He'd always loved to picture his mom in a kitchen like this, a kitchen like she deserved. Throwing together a pot of chili or a peach cobbler with counters stretching as far as the eye could see. More cupboards than you could ever fill. Hell, he would have settled for a dishwasher or a sink that didn't back up once a week though. Probably Coleen wasn't as well-acquainted with a plunger as Fran Morgan had been.

"Not what I pictured..." he said, finally, setting the bags down and emptying them on the counters. Coleen snorted at his candor.

"What did you expect?”