from my story both hands

hotchgan + thanksgiving (usa)

as inspired by my story no better place (in which hotch breaks his foot and they are currently taking in a teenager in trouble)

a yearning that you can't ignore

Summary: The BAU end up with a case in Chicago - missing college students - that takes them right to Derek & Aaron's doorstep. At first they're a little excited to be back in the action, but quickly the two of them find themselves mixed up and in too deep.

Words: 13.4k

Pairing: Hotch/Morgan (background Reid/Alvez but it's not much here - they are a couple in this universe though)

Warnings: canon-typical violence, stalking/obsession, gunshot, hospital, swearing, vomit (quick, due to head injury)...it's a Criminal Minds story surrounding a stalker case.

Notes: I started this fic back when CME started airing as I thought about how Hotch and Morgan probably don't mind their quiet lives, but when the opportunity arises for a little action...can they say no? (No, they cannot. As you're about to find out.) Anyway, case fics are fucking HARD TO WRITE...and it took me half a damn year to figure this out. In fact, there are 2 other versions of this fic that have nearly 10k words too because I couldn't decide what to do for the case...so maybe you'll get more case fic when I figure out what to do with all of...that. Also, this is clearly setting up a sort of second part. But it's in the Chicago Times universe, so they're all interconnected anyway. So...here.

OH! And, one more thing?! THIS IS MY 300TH FIC ON AO3! Yeah baby. 293 CM fics, 300 total.

Look at me being SO multi-fandom. lol Okay, on with the show!

(1)

It started with a coffee.

Just a cup of coffee, an Americano piping hot and placed on his desk with a little smiley face and an “A” where the name should be. He could tell it had come from the student coffee stand not too far away, the one he stopped at in the mornings on his way to his classroom.

He always ordered an Americano.

“Did one of you leave this here?” he asked once class had started. Silence. Students glanced around the room eagerly. He'd worked in the BAU long enough not to trust food that was just left sitting around, or really even food offered by well-meaning individuals. Probably a student, or maybe another teacher, had decided he needed a pick-me-up. That wasn't untrue, he was dead on his feet. His insomnia was creeping back in at the edges, slowly eating away precious hours of sleep. Eroding his delicate grip on his life.

He ignored the coffee and moved forward with his lecture. Teaching was starting to feel like a trap, an endless cycle of bad days. The students only half listened to him, and he thought maybe he could handle that if the games the staff played weren’t so tedious. He wasn’t cut out for the behind the scenes drama of this any more than he had been at the FBI. As with anything, there had been a honeymoon phase but that had passed and now this job was grating on him. Each morning he dragged himself out of bed and wondered why he did it. He had no inflated sense of self, no certainty that these young adults were the future...they would make their way into the world with or without him. Most of them looked at him like he was the barrier that stood firm between them and what they wanted.

The coffee ended up in the trash after all of his students had gone.

la casita del perro

Summary: Hotch is spending his birthday on a case in Mexico and Derek shows up to help him celebrate the last of it. (Set during the first night they're in Mexico during Season 1 ep 19 - Machismo)

Pairing: Hotch/Morgan & Hotch/Haley...

Warnings: alcohol, sex, cheating

Words: 2.8k

Notes: I've been sitting on this story for a year. It fits right into this universe I haven't done anything with where Hotch & Morgan actually meet at SWAT training before they're with the BAU. I have a whole SWAT universe dreamed up and maybe this will make me actually write that because I'm obsessed with the idea and I've just been sitting on it. Anyway, my biggest cheerleader for this idea was @hogwartstoalexandria so I finally got off my ass and did something about it...happy (very late) birthday my friend! I love you to the moon and back times infinity.

Read on AO3: la casita del perro

***************

The microwave beeped at him in the same tone all of them did. It was comforting, no matter where he went, appliances in general were the same. Close enough anyway. The microwave was intuitive and simple, an older model, a little worse for the wear and definitely not as clean as he would prefer but it would heat his water all the same. Just hot water. Not for tea, not for anything other than plain old water.

His stomach hurt. Hot water always helped. There was something so simple and comforting about it.

This wasn't anything serious, just...well damn. It was his birthday for about another hour, Haley wasn't returning his calls and neither was Jessica. Haley was one thing. A wife did that sometimes. But Jess wasn't subject to the same playing field, so his mind raced. Did Haley tell her not to answer him too? Were they playing games with him? The way he got himself all worked up had, simply, made his stomach ache, twisting itself in all sorts of intricate knots. Hotch, call from the car. He heard Gideon's voice and he knew damn well he should have said something, stuck up for himself, anyone else would have...but no. He took it. He just nodded and did exactly that. Called his wife from the car and insisted he was sorry...but was he? Maybe not. He didn't know. There was that birthday banner and the cake and Jessica came all that way...but he'd never asked to celebrate his birthday. He explicitly told Haley he just wanted to sit home and do nothing.

“But it's your birthday,” she'd said softly, pleadingly, sweetly. And he was swayed very little for her efforts. “I'm exhausted. I just want to relax with my family and have a quiet day.”

And now, he was running on fumes. Jet-lagged, achy, sad. Deep inside, there was this small voice that told him there was a time difference to consider, and Jack was teething and probably troublesome, it wasn't likely they were actually ignoring him but this case was gruesome and the LEOs weren't exactly all playing nice, so maybe he was a little more sensitive than warranted. The young man in the holding cell had gotten to him, his sister sitting so protectively outside waiting, watching. Machismo, family. He felt sick. The water in his mug didn't even look appealing.

A soft knock at his door startled him. He glanced at the clock while he set the mug of steaming water on the dresser, right beside the wood paneled television.

snow day

Summary: The first snow of the year in Chicago falls on Hotch's birthday, and he's tired of being lonely so he goes out and enjoys it.

Pairings: none (future hotchgan)

Words: 3.1k

Warnings: nothing really, it's soft. some mentions of chronic pain and loneliness.

Notes: Comfortember Day 2: Sweater Weather & HOTCH'S BIRTHDAY! Epic combination baby. A few months in to WITSEC and he's tired of being sad and lonely. This might be the nicest fic I have ever written for his birthday guys. WHO AM I? I have another birthday fic planned for posting later this month that is even NICER...I think I'm broken. LOL

Two months. It was the longest Hotch had gone without work in his adult life. To say he was losing his mind was an understatement. He spent a lot of time on the balcony fiddling with his plants, the first of them having been a small potted boxwood from his handler, Tim. They weren’t exactly friends, but Tim knew a thing or two about how this went and how idle hands lead to breaking rules, so a plant it was. Keeping Hotch busy would make Tim’s life easier. Giving him something to care for, something he could look at and watch grow. It had been unseasonably warm in September and October, but now that November was turning the page things had begun to frost and his plants needed to be moved inside. He’d started with the one, and now he had what amounted to a small army of green things with leaves and flowers and dirt to play in. He’d never figured himself for a gardener, but then, he’d never figured himself for a man who would have to be on the run either.

His chair, though, he kept that outside even once most of his plants were inside. It was just him and his arborvitae that he planned to decorate for Christmas. There was a little basket he kept beside the back sliding glass door full of big, warm blankets so he could still sit out on the balcony and read with his morning coffee or his afternoon tea. It was the little things, Tim said that to him too. Tim was proving to be a good ally at the very least, he’d seen enough of this to know how it went and how it would destroy a person if they didn’t find ways to adapt and maybe, given enough time, even thrive.

high & dry

Summary: Hotch & Jack's arrival in Chicago and the beginning of their WITSEC journey.

Pairings: none (future hotchgan)

Words: 1.6k

Warnings: none

AO3: high & dry

Notes: For Comfortember Day One: Safe. I am going to do as many of the prompts for this month as I can and I plan to set them all within the Chicago Times universe. A whole month of retired softies! I can't promise all fluff, some will be sad (like this one), but it's going to be as much comfort as I can possibly bestow on them. I am going to try and keep each story short and simple, divulging little bits and details in each instead of a huge word dump. Pray for me. LOL

Chicago. He’d been plenty of times, mostly for cases but a few times for pleasure. The city looked different looming on the horizon from the backseat of a vehicle with dark tinted windows. He was nodding off in a Dramamine fog, Jack had been asleep for hours. It was a ten hour drive without stops, and the US Marshals in charge of their trip were making it a point to stop as few times as possible. Once to fuel up at a station that they deemed safe enough to let their appointees out for bathroom breaks and snacks and once at a designated time check in. Hotch didn’t handle riding in the backseat well and they’d drugged him up nicely after the fueling stop, enough that he didn’t feel awake enough to be sick but not tired enough to sleep either.

His mind was racing, even with the drugs dulling his responses. Did he make the right call? (Did he even have a choice?) Were they really safe? He had so little faith in this system anymore. At one point it was all he believed in, and now it had been so eroded that it was barely recognizable.

adding it all up

Summary: Hotch follows Reid and Jack into a haunted house. Inside he meets a ghost and stumbles right into some unexpected arms.

Pairing: Hotch/Will

Words: 3.2k

Warnings: nightmares, ptsd, minor injuries, panic attack

Notes: I formally submit to you my entry for @imagining-in-the-margins Meet Cute/Ugly Challenge with the prompt: Character accidentally gets hurt in a spooky attraction and a scare actor breaks character to help. To the surprise of no one at this point, I took some creative liberties with the prompt. There isn't much to the plot, it's pretty simple and we mostly just have an excuse for kissing. As with everything I've written so far about this pairing, we live in a universe where Will is a DC Metro Detective but he is not nor has he ever been with JJ because we don't have time for that kind of backstory in these little one-shots. Thanks for reading yo! Let's show this incredibly rare pairing some love. (And now I return to writing about hotchgan...I can only stray for so long.)

“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease dad!”

“I’d rather not,” Hotch said, as if it was going to change the mind of his six year old son. And maybe he didn’t really want to because his argument was pretty flimsy. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go in, or that he didn’t like Halloween. “I don’t like to be scared.” That was a lie and Reid saw the opening, poking a huge hole in it immediately.

“You get scared for a living,” Reid pointed out from behind him and Hotch groaned. He’d been hoping Reid would take his side. “Come on Jack. If your dad is too chicken I’ll take you in. I’m kind of an expert.”

“You are?!”

Reid crouched beside Jack as best he could, favoring his still sore (always sore) knee and leaned as close as he could to the child. His whisper smelled like kettle corn and candied apples and cotton candy, that’s what Jack thought anyway. Reid smelled like a carnival. “I’ve already been through it three times. I bet you could find some people in there you know. Like playing a really big game of Where’s Waldo…”

“Who’s in there?!”

“You’ll have to come in with me and see.”

“Can I dad?!”

Hotch sighed and nodded reluctantly. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“What's that dog gonna do when he's better?” Morgan asked softly, watching the way Clooney pressed his cold wet nose into Hotch's hand every time he ceased petting him.

“Go back to chasing squirrels.”

— More Than I Hoped For, a fic by masterwords

out of these shadows comes the light

Summary: Hotch is particular about getting his hair cut. (autistic!Hotch)

Pairing: Hotch/Haley -> Hotch/Morgan

Words: ~5k

Warnings: implied/referenced past child abuse, violence, self-harm/suicide attempt, internalized ableism, ableism, scars, pain, sex (brief at the end, not explicit), food, divorce...if I missed any please let me know.

Notes: Written because of this ask, and I took it to some pretty intense depths but I love squeezing every single drop out of a backstory every time. I probably could have turned this into a 50k word multi-chapter event, all of the simple ending of getting Derek to cut Hotch's hair. Nothing is ever easy with me. In other news, you can expect updates to each of my on-going big stories this week as I should have a few hours each day to devote to writing for once!

Read under the cut or on AO3 here!

Grace Underwood was a young mother. Maybe too young. Twenty-three, fresh out of college, pregnant by the first man who took her to bed. She’d been a good girl, everyone said. All girls private school led her to an all-women’s university. She should have been saved from all of the worldly temptations.

But then there was Edward Hotchner and his roguish charm. His wild blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes told her lies from the moment they met. Lies and temptation that hid all the regret that would come later.

One night. It started out as one wild night, a frat party at Georgetown that she and her friends were invited to. It was a two and a half hour drive so they got a hotel room and decided to stay the weekend in the city. She never saw the hotel room, only Edward’s dorm. After that it became weekends book-ended with long drives for her (he wasn't allowed at her university and she liked the city), and then they were hot and heavy and she was lost in love. He had plans for his future, big plans. She loved him for them.

But those plans didn’t involve a screaming, crying newborn baby while he was studying for the bar. That had been a surprise, and Edward Hotchner hated surprises. Those plans didn’t involve having a toddler digging through his briefcase with high profile case files and sticky peanut butter fingers. And they certainly didn’t involve late nights with a young boy who couldn’t seem to do anything without it being a production.

Best of Intentions

The bright Los Angeles sun beat down on them angrily.  Aaron could feel sweat trickling down his spine, settling in at the small of his back, and he was thankful he’d chosen a white shirt, one he could conceal his discomfort in.  Derek stood a few paces away, on the phone with Billy Flynn, and Aaron knew what happened next.  He glared into the sunlight, prayed that he was wrong, but when Derek handed the phone back he understood plainly where things were headed.  He still tried to stop the other man, gave him an out, an opportunity to ask for help, but the look in his eye told Aaron all he needed to know and when Derek argued with him, sucker punched him with Foyet before he’d even said a word, it was settled. He was always going to consent to it, he was never going to fight it, but that didn’t mean he wanted it.  Watching Derek walk away from him, stalking toward the house to exact his revenge, Aaron tried to forget the sting of Derek’s words, the way he’d looked at him with such cold, calculating anger.  He knew where it came from, Heaven knew he’d been there not so long ago himself and he could only hope and pray that it ended differently for Derek.  He stood silent, hands braced at his sides ready to jump into action but knowing, somehow, that he wouldn’t need to.  Instead he just lost himself in the way the sweat gathered at the base of his spine, dripped down beneath the collar of his shirt, made him feel like a snake desperate to shed its skin.  Dave stood beside him, poised and ready to defend what was theirs right beside him.  The seconds drug into minutes and the silence was deafening.  Aaron shifted his weight, inched forward, wiped the droplets from his brow.  

“He’s going to be okay,” Dave said in a hushed tone and Aaron turned his eyes to meet his friend’s, nodded in agreement, but he had nothing to say, no words to acknowledge what he understood.  But it was more complicated than that, because Derek was angry with him, or maybe with the entire world but he would bear the brunt of the rage soon enough.  That was his job as the Unit Chief, and he took it personally, too.  As a human punching bag, he excelled, and more often than not he deserved it, he knew that much.  He made the hard decisions, the ones that easily ruined lives or saved them, the ones that made it hard to look at him sometimes.  Even when he didn’t deserve it, he could think of a time he had deserved it but got away without so much as a scratch so in the end, it evened itself out.  Minutes stretched out, and the space between his body and the house seemed to grow exponentially, his fingertips tingled, itched to pull out his gun and rush in there.  

Keep reading

keeping the faith

keeping the faith (2856 words) by masterwords Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/Derek Morgan Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Religion, Christian Holidays, Easter, Family Feels, Family Bonding, Domestic Fluff, Family Fluff, Christian Themes, Baking

Series: Part 7 of The Chicago Times

“You don't have to come,” Hotch says, adjusting his tie in the mirror. It's a new tie, a pale minty green offset by all sorts of gaudy little pastel eggs and bunnies. A gift from Hank for the occasion, though Hotch has his doubts. He suspects it was Derek's idea the moment he saw it and was using his adorable son as a ruse to get him to wear it. Either that, or it was Fran behind the tie. Jessica thought it was delightful and showed him a picture of an Easter scarf she had that was more or less its twin except in bubblegum pink. The only times he managed to match Jessica for fashion was when someone decided he lacked any real flair. They called him boring.

Didn't matter, he dressed it up with a nice warm black suit and a cream-colored shirt. Fetching, he thought. Not bad for a guy who rarely had occasion to dress up anymore. (His unruly hair, on the other hand, would simply remain so. He could only win so many battles.)

“My mom threatened me,” Derek replies, pulling his sweater over his head. “I'm scared of her.”

“Me too,” Hotch admits quietly with a smirk. Fran is small but she is a little scary. “But be that as it may, I know how you feel about church. I am more than capable of taking the boys to the Easter service on my own.”

Read the rest on AO3!

A Temporary Thing

Summary: Derek is in charge now, and Hotch isn't making it easy on him. (Coda to 05x06 The Eyes Have It)

Warnings: none (mind the episode and timeframe, it's all pretty tame but it is Foyet-centric of course)

Pairings: Hotch/Morgan

Words: 2.1k

Notes: First of all, this is for @whump-town because you can't just drop something like this in my brain, I'm weak. Although I think you should write something for it because you could do it a lot more justice. Anyway, from the seed being planted to whatever this became was less than 12 hours so don't expect poetry. Prompt 43 (One person tracing the other’s lips with a fingertip until they can’t resist any longer, tilting their chin towards them for a kiss.) of 50 Types of Kisses ... because it felt like a kissy story.

Read on AO3:

Derek is in charge now, and he kind of loves it. Most of it. He loves bossing Aaron around, for starters...he's always been more than happy to take orders from the man but getting to send him to a muddy crime scene or the ME's office is a particular joy. He only wished they could stumble on a case that involved sewers, he'd love to send him down a ladder or two, just for fun. A little payback. He's adjusting to his temporary role as Unit Chief. The way it happened, he doesn't love that part, but he understands that sometimes shitty things happen, and they can roll with the punches.

It's what they do. The torch was passed, Hotch was all in, and to him, it can't get much better than this.

In Oklahoma City, he dreams he's blind. Not really blind, he can see the mist, he can see his own hands and his feet in the mist, but he knows the mist isn't real. There are voices, disembodied sounds, familiar but wrong. Spencer recites droll facts about enucleation into the void, the strangeness in his voice almost makes Derek laugh. He holds his own eyes in his hands, perfect viscous orbs, mahogany irises and blown pupils suspended just above his palm...

the shape you take

Summary: Hotch is sad. Jack is just about to turn 18, Hank is spending the summer with his mom and he's dwelling on the empty nest. Morgan has just the ticket: sea, sand, food and naps. Fun in the sun and the sack. While exploring a nude beach one night they find a little more than they bargained for. (Part of The Chicago Times series)

Pairing: Hotch/Morgan

Words: 8.8k

Warnings: sex (not explicit details, just "hey they're having sex" type thing), food & alcohol, mentions of Foyet’s knife, scars (both of them), murder/corpse/blood, an inappropriate boner situation...

Read on AO3: the shape you take

Notes: This is my first entry for @imagining-in-the-margins CM Summer Sunshine Fic Challenge. I used one of the NSFW prompts but this is basically PG-13 because I don’t really write smut, just some sexy vibes. The prompts I chose were: Character A finally convinces B to go to the beach with them. Turns out it's a nude beach mixed with The sun makes Characters sleepy, so they take a nap. (They take a lot of naps. They're old.) There are a couple more from the list that I hope to write for before the challenge is finished, but we’ll see where the summer takes me! The end here is purposely left open for a special surprise...another collab with @domestikhighway58! Because writing with hwy58 is a dream and I want to do it all the time. To be unveiled soon-ish. (How's that for noncommittal?) (I'm posting the whole thing here, I haven't done that in a while...do you want me to go back to that or keep just linking AO3?)

Win by persuasion, not by force.

All spring Derek had been dropping hints. Little ones at first. He would add feta cheese to salad one night at dinner, or watch Hercules with Hank when he knew Aaron was going to be coming home from work or a run. Nothing big, but he knew Aaron would pick up on it eventually.

As they approached summer, the tactics became a little less subtle. There was a brochure stuck to the freezer, and a bottle of Greek red wine opened after dinner on Derek’s last day of work for the summer. Aaron had been done a week earlier. They waited to celebrate until everyone was finished and on summer break.

Fortune Cookie

Summary:  John visits Hotch in the hospital after Foyet.

Warnings: hospital, stab wounds, bandage changes, depression

Pairings: Hotch/John Blackwolf

Words: 1.6k

Notes: There is no point in this, it was just a silly image I had and then some pretty things I surrounded it with. Some hurt/comfort with a side of very dry humor. I was going to save this for Febuwhump and create a whole story around it but honestly...it's just meant to be an image, nothing more. This is also the last Hotchwolf story I had in my folder so unless anyone has specific requests...we're probably wandering right back into Hotchgan land.

Read on AO3: Fortune Cookie

It was day. At least...he was pretty sure it was.

After two days in the ICU, he hadn't had much occasion to be bothered by time or date. The sun rose and set, and he never saw it, just the insides of his eyelids or his barren wasteland of unconscious. In his dreams he wandered aimless through fields of dust, hot thick fog and the scent of sulfur. When the drugs were strong enough, when they pushed him deeper than the endless desert, he saw Foyet, he felt his weight, he smelled his breath; and then he woke to the same stagnant hell he'd been living for two days.

“How are you feeling?” JJ asked, creeping into his room on the tails of another long shadow. He didn't answer, not because he was angry but because he simply didn't know. The pain was surreal, detached, wrong. The thoughts swept through like wildfire, blazing all in sight and left him alone among the char...so how was he feeling? That depended on whether he was in the flames or burnt to a crisp...it really, to JJ, made no discernible difference so he made a low humming noise that she thought she understood, and he knew she didn't...but it didn't matter. None of it did.

JJ busied herself with whatever she did while he avoided her. Sometimes she would change out his water cup, fill it to the brim with crushed ice from the machine at the nurse's station and offer him a bit, but the nurse had just come and done the changing. It was full of ice, and he turned away when she offered him a bit on the end of a spoon as if he was Henry. “Have you had any today?” she asked, setting the spoon aside and regarding him with those pitying eyes.