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mariasont · 8 days ago

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Older, Wiser, Off-Limits - A.H

summary: sweetheart!reader is the newest member of the team, bright eyed and full of question she doesnt realize she shouldnt be asking. hotch is twice her age, has known her father longer than she's been alive, and when a case discussion turns into a conversation about age gaps, hotch is the one to explain exactly why they're so dangerous

masterlist

pairings: aaron hotchner x sweetheart!reader

warnings: dbf aaron hotchner (he never met the reader before she came to the BAU), reader has major daddy issues, age gap, suggestive discussion about the power imbalance of age gap relationships, pre-relationship pining but hotch has far too much restraint

wc: 1.2k

Hotch's sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and for the first time, the cabin lighting caught on a scar of his left hand—a thin, pale line etched across his knuckles. You hadn't noticed it before. Not in all the weeks since you joined the team—when he passed you case files, when he handed you a cup of coffee, somehow, the imperfection had eluded you. Some profiler you are. It wasn't fresh—not jagged or angry. How hadn't you noticed it before? You wondered how he got it. An old case? An accident in his childhood?

You blinked, ripping your gaze away and staring down at the case file as if sheer willpower could force the words to make sense. But they didn't. They blurred together, unreadable, because your thoughts had strayed elsewhere. Across from you, your boss sat reclined against the leather seat, one arm draped loosely on the armrest. His tie hung unevenly, just a little off-center, his shirt slightly untucked from a long day of work, the kind of disheveled that came only after a successful case. You should look away, really, but the longer your stared, the harder it became.

It wasn't like you hadn't noticed Hotch before—he was hard not to notice. But this pull, this godforsaken gravitational force that seized you every time he was near, that stole the air from your lungs and replaced it with static—It was all-consuming. Debilitating, one might say. You weren't like this, not with anyone. Not with either of the boyfriends you'd had, not even during those early, naive moments when you were first discovering what it meant to be in love.

Now you were thinking maybe you’d never actually been in love. Maybe every so-called relationship before this had been nothing more than placeholders, distractions. The idea gnawed at you, and you shoved it down, locked it away before it could fester.

Because this was absurd. Illogical. He was nearly twice your age. Your father's college roommate. A man who should be off-limits in every conceivable way and yet—

"Let's go over the case file again."

His voice startled you. You snapped your eyes back to him, pulse kicking up a notch when you realized he was watching you. How long had he been watching? How long had you been staring?

"Uh, right," you said, fumbling for the paper. "The case."

Your fingers brushed over the wrong paper first, and you muttered a half-formed apology as you shuffled through the file. When you finally found the right one, you risked a glance up to find him still looking at you. It wasn't the stern, I'm in charge look you recognized at briefings to your immediate relief, but it softer, a little more patient.

He did this after every case and at this point, you were starting to think he enjoyed this—making you go over every case in excruciating detail, combing through victim statements and behavioral patterns like it was a final exam. If it were anyone else, you might have teased him for it, might have joked about him being a tough grader or something equally harmless. But this was Hotch, and he wasn't exactly being critical, but he was definitely measuring you, gauging just how quickly you were learning.

You cleared your throat.

"Um, okay. The whole case kind of revolved around their relationship, right? The age difference?"

Hotch nodded, flipping to another page in his report. "It was a contributing factor, yes."

You hesitated, pressing your teeth into your lip before speaking again. "I guess I just don't really get it."

Hotch glanced up at you, brow raised. "What don't you get?"

"The way everyone kept saying it like it was inevitable—like, just because there was an age gap, the relationship had to be unhealthy." You frowned, tapping your pen against the margin of the paper. "I get that it's a pattern in a lot of cases, but that doesn't mean every older guy dating a younger woman is some kind of predator, right?"

Hotch didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he set his report aside, lacing his fingers together in front of him.

"It's not always malicious," he said slowly, like he was choosing each word with care. “But even when there’s no bad intent, those relationships can slip into something unbalanced—sometimes without either person realizing it’s happening.”

"Because one person has more experience?" You tilted your head to the side.

"That, and because experience changes what you want."

You hesitated, his certainty catching you off guard. He didn’t say it like an opinion—he said it like a fact. Like something he knew firsthand.

"What do you mean?"

Hotch leaned back, fingers drumming on the table—like he was turning the thought over in his mind before speaking it aloud.

“When you’re younger, your idea of love—of what a relationship should be—is still evolving. You’re figuring out who you are, what you need, what you’re willing to give.” His eyes flicked to yours. "Someone older already knows these things. Which means they know how to steer the relationship in a direction that benefits them.”

You absorbed that for a second, shifting in your seat. "So you think that people in relationships like that are...what? Being manipulated?"

"Not always." His tone was even. "But the dynamic can be hard to navigate. If one person holds more control—whether that's financial, emotional, or just in life experience—it's easy for the other to fall into place around them without realizing it."

That sat uncomfortably in your chest. You didn't think you disagreed with him. But something about it felt... personal.

You weren't naive—you knew how people saw these kinds of relationships. You'd seen it in cases before, in books, in the way people whispered about couples like that. And sure, you understood the bad versions of it. But Hotch was making it sound like an inherent flaw.

"I don't know," you admitted, shaking your head. "I just...I guess I don't see the problem if both people want to be there."

The words felt uncertain, even as you said them. You weren’t sure what you were defending anymore. You’d never been in a relationship with that kind of imbalance—both of your boyfriends had been your age, on equal footing. You’d never had to think about who held more control.

But then there was Hotch. And now, you were thinking about it all the time.

"That's the thing, they might think they do."

Your brows knit together. "And you don't think they actually do?"

He hesitated. Just for a second. But it was the first time in the entire conversation that he did.

"Sometimes," he said, “when you don’t have enough life behind you, it’s easy to mistake infatuation for certainty. To want something before you understand what wanting really means.”

Infatuation.

The word lodged itself in your mind, demanding to be examined. Was that what this was? A temporary fascination wrapped in the illusion of something deeper? Or maybe it was something darker—something tied to the way he made you feel untouchable, safe.

Or maybe it had nothing to do with him it all. Maybe it was about absence. About the gaps in your life, he seemed to fill. The things your father never gave you. And maybe that was the real problem.

"You talk about it like it's a foregone conclusion."

Hotch tilted his head slightly, studying you. "Wouldn't you say most patterns are?"

You didn’t know how to answer that. There was something too final in the way he said it, something that made your throat feel tight. You felt a little warm again.

"So, what do you think happens when the younger person does know what they want."

Hotch’s fingers flexed against the armrest, a barely-there movement, but you caught it. His jaw tightened. "Then it's up to the older one to know better."

You were overthinking this. Reading into nothing. He was just explaining the case, same as always. Same as he would with anyone. Just answering a question—one that you asked. There was no weight to his words beyond the conversation itself. This wasn’t something you needed to think about later. This wasn’t something that meant anything.

Still, you shifted in your seat, stretching your legs out, crossing them at the ankle, uncrossing them again—suddenly restless in a way you couldn’t quite name.

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taglist is closed for now until i can figure out the best way to include more than 50 mentions :(

#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotchner one shot #aaron hotchner x sweetheart!reader #dbf!aaron hotchner #dbf aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fluff #hotchner #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner x fem!reader

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