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landoncrris · 3 years ago

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hi love now that i saw your request is open, can you write for jealous mason where he went to a party with you as you wore like a stunning sexy dress and you’re the center of attention of every man in the room. then dec said to mase “oh god it must be a torture for you” and he end up railing you after you both went back home please, thank you love!

attention - mason mount x reader

REQUESTS ARE CLOSED // MASTERLIST

warnings: english is not my first language, not proofread; unprotected sex, dom!mason, sub!reader, choking, degrading kink, spitting, slapping, praise kink

word count: 2.8k

“You’re not going out dressed like that.” Mason said as you walked down the stairs. You were wearing a bright red dress that left nothing to the imagination, showing off your tits a little too much, and if you had leaned forward just a little, everyone would have been able to see your panties.

“You don’t like it ?” You frowned and stopped at the stairs in case you went back upstairs and change, although there was no time for that as Declan and Lauren were already waiting outside for you to join them for an evening out as a group.

“No— I mean yes, of course I like it, you look smoking hot.” he replied, walking up to you and pressing a reassuring kiss to your forehead as he eyed you up and down, trying to take in the way your body looked right now.

“But?”

“I don’t want anyone else to see you like this,” he pouted, even though he knew what he was saying was a bit selfish, “and I don’t think I’ll be able to keep my hands off you tonight.”

“Then don’t.”

“Dec is gonna kill me.” he groaned, knowing he hated it when Mason focused all his attention on you, completely ignoring his presence, but he just couldn’t help himself. His hands ran over your ass to the back of your thighs, before his fingers went under the fabric of your dress to test how far it was for them to reach your panties. And it was a very short distance indeed, causing a smirk to appear on his face, “Fuck it.”

And that was exactly how the evening went. While Mason and Declan sat at the bar, he couldn’t take his eyes off you even for a moment, but when Declan saw how many guys were loitering around you, practically begging for your attention, he couldn’t really be bothered. And the fact that by now it was what felt like the fiftieth guy trying to talk his way into your pants, getting a little too close to you until you kindly informed him you weren’t interested, made the grip on the bottle in Mason’s hand tighten by the minute.

It felt like hell for Mason, you wearing that dress that clung perfectly to your curves, riding up a little with every movement, and the looks you gave him when you turned his direction, being aware that his gaze was drilling into you the whole time, making you move your hips just that little bit more. This also made you the centre of attention for every other guy in the club, which you did nothing to stop. By this time Mason was ready to fuck you right here in front of everyone to show who you belonged to, and he was getting impatient when you weren’t paying him any attention except for occasional glances. Even though he knew all your attention was on him, and that the reason you were wearing that dress or moving like that was to get that exact reaction from him.

“Mate, this must be torture for you.” muttered Declan over the music as he too watched another guy approach you, and he was glad at that moment that his girlfriend wasn’t attracting all these guys. “What is?” replied Mason, snapped out of his thoughts, although his gaze didn’t leave you.

“All these men wanting Y/N, if I imagine it’s my girl, I would have gone feral by now."

“In the end I’m the one she goes home with.” he shrugged, trying to play it cool even though his mind was secretly raging with jealousy. Seeing you apologise to Lauren and walk over to them instead, Declan patted him on the shoulder as he got up from his chair and muttered a “I’ll leave you two.” before making his way over to his girlfriend as well.

“If you keep looking at me like that, my knees won’t hold me any longer,” you joked, referring to the clenched jaw and the way he undressed you with his eyes, which was one reason you didn’t look over at him so often, as the feeling of his eyes boring into you made you feel dizzy. “What’s wrong?” you asked when he didn’t answer, stepping between his legs and placing your hands around his neck.

“Every god damn man in this club wants you, Y/N.”

“Is that a fact or are you just guessing?”

“Do you even have to ask? They’re so obvious it’s almost embarrassing,” he said, taking one last sip of his beer before placing the now empty bottle on the bar behind him. Immediately his hands moved to your waist and pulled you even tighter against him. “I don’t people thinking that they have a chance with you.”

“Let them think. You know they don’t stand a chance against you.” you said over the music, watching his features calm slightly at your words, but the kiss he placed on your lips was anything but gentle. The grip on your waist tightened as his tongue slid passionately over yours, making your knees weak and making it clear to anyone who looked over that you were most definitely not available.

A moan escaped your lips as his hands moved to your ass instead, one massaging the flesh while the other traced the path as before, going underneath the hem of your dress until he reached your underwear, at which you bit his lip.

“Look what this dress is doing to me.” he grabbed your hand and guided it to his obvious bulge, whereupon you looked at him, seeing a mixture of lust and jealousy in his eyes.

“Well, jealousy seems to be a great motivator for you.”

“I’m not jealous, I know you’re mine.”

“Show me.” you replied, sliding your fingers over his chest and then resting them on his thighs, receiving a warning look from him.

“Just wait until we get home. There are so many things I wanna do to you, baby.” His words made you hum and smirk slightly, leaning closer to him and whispering the following words seductively in his ear. “Can’t wait to feel you inside me, Masey.”

“Y/N.” he warned, frowning at you as you pulled away from his ear. He saw the smirk on your face, knowing that if you teased him enough, he would punish you just like you wanted. “If I were you, I’d wipe that smirk off your face because that just added ten minutes to our stay here.”

“But—”

“What do you want to drink?” he interrupted you, leaving you sulking because you really just wanted to go home. You, in turn, took a few steps back so as not to stand between his legs anymore and walked over to where the bartender was standing.

“I’m going to get something myself.” you mumbled before leaving Mason alone, though his eyes didn’t leave you, watching as you flipped back your hair, already sticking to the back of your neck from sweat, and ordered your drink. But again, Mason wasn’t the only one watching you, which he noticed when another guy came over to you and started talking to you while you smiled softly so as not to be too rude.

But your actions were different, and Mason, as well as the other guy certainly didn’t miss the way you leaned slightly over the counter so that anyone looking had an even better view of your ass. Everything was still fine until Mason saw him put a hand on your shoulder, which slowly traveled down your back and stopped way too close to your butt, and the way you immediately straightened up was a sign that you were feeling uncomfortable, somehow he did nothing but leave his hand right there. Which was the breaking point for Mason, so he walked over to you with quick steps.

“Don’t fucking touch what’s not yours.” Mason said, shoving the guy so that he stumbled back a little and his hand fell off your body. When you turned around, you saw him throw his hands up in the air and take a step back in defeat, but before he could say anything, Mason had already grabbed you, pulling you through the crowd.

“Where are we going?”

“Home.” was all he said, and you had to stifle another comment as his mood was bad enough at the moment. The wait for a taxi and the whole ride home were filled with silence, the two of you didn’t speak a single word to each other, but you could tell his mood just by the tension in the air, and you didn’t know whether you were excited or a little afraid of his anger.

“I thought you said we had to stay longer because of my behaviour.” you muttered as you entered your house, breaking the silence, and only seconds later you were pressed against the door, feeling Mason’s hand put pressure around your throat, causing a small whimper to escape you.

“Stop being such a little brat, Y/N.” he said with his jaw clenched, his fingers applying more pressure to your neck in the meantime, making it hard for you to say anything back. The next thing you felt was his lips pressing down on yours in a harsh kiss, that forced the air out of your lungs and made your knees buckle from the pressure of his tongue and hand fogging your mind. With one swift movement, he tore open the hem of the dress, exposing your breasts, and the cold air around your bare nipples made you shiver.

“That’s what I wanted to do with this dress all night.” Mason mumbled before attacking your breasts with kisses, sucking marks all over them. As you wriggled around the door, his thigh slid between your legs to push you against it even more effectively, which you noticed the moment it grazed your underwear, making you whimper in surprise.

“Now be a good girl, Y/N, not a greedy one.” pulling away from you as you began to grind against his thigh, eliciting an exasperated moan from you as the friction subsided.

“Open.” he ordered, while taking your chin between his fingers. He smirked at your obedience, immediately doing as he said. The sight of him conjuring spit in his mouth and letting it trickle slowly onto your tongue almost made you whimper, but the tighter grip on your throat made it impossible to make a sound. You waited patiently for him to tell you to swallow, while you surreptitiously try to clench your thighs together to get a sense of relief, which Mason unfortunately didn’t miss.

“What did I just say?” he asked, causing you to stop your movements as your throat became dry from having your mouth open for so long, “Please.” you tried to say with your mouth open, causing him to chuckle and loosen his grip on your throat a little.

“What do you want, baby?” he added cockily, knowing you couldn’t say a full sentence until he told you to swallow. He watched you struggle with how much you wanted him but couldn’t tell him, which finally made him tell you to swallow instead of dragging it out any longer.

“Please just fuck me, Mason.” you pleaded, wanting nothing more than to feel his cock fully inside you, especially when he looked at you with the same look he’s been giving you all evening, driving you absolutely crazy. His smirk widened even more as you ran a hand down his torso, stopping on his stomach and feeling him tense under your touch.

“Trust me, I plan to.” he replied, briefly considering how he wanted you, torn between having you right here or taking you to bed, which he quickly decided against, not wanting to waste any more time.

“Turn around for me, Y/N.” he finally broke the silence, causing a giddy feeling of anticipation in your stomach. The moment he removed his hand from around your neck, giving you the freedom to move, you did as he said, turning around and bracing yourself against the door with your hands. As you moved your legs further back and arched your back, so that your ass brushed his bulge, you heard him hum. Before he gave you a hard slap on the butt, causing you to jolt forward slightly and hiss as he massaged the now red skin.

“Gotta make sure you don’t forget who you belong to, baby.” he whispered in your ear as you felt his hands on you, before hearing the fabric of your dress rip completely. He pulled it off your body as his hands left you and you heard him unzip his jeans as well as them falling to the floor, making you smile.

Mason placed one hand on your hip and one around himself to guide his dick to your entrance, but instead of pushing in, he ran through your folds a few times, hitting your clit each time and feeling how wet you were, which made him groan. “Haven’t even touched you yet and you’re already wet.” he said, circling your clit a few times, making you whimper.

“Surely it’s not because of the other guys in the club, is it?” he asked, wanting to know who’s fault it was. So he wasn’t satisfied with you just shaking your head, pulling his dick away from you, whereupon you pushed your hips back.

“No, because of you, Mason.” you moaned as he slammed into you right after the words left you, not giving you time to adjust but instead settling into a grueling pace. “Always feels so fucking good, Y/N.” he moaned, switching to slow but hard thrusts that made you whine, and gave you another slap on your arsecheek, to which you moved your hips back and silently begged him to do it again, making him chuckle darkly.

“My dirty little slut, aren’t you, baby?” he asked, adding another slap that made him moan as you clenched around him in addition. “Yours.” you whimpered, making him hum as both his hands grabbed your waist and he increased his pace again.

His thrusts were so hard they made your head spin, and every time you felt him against your cervix, he sent you straight to heaven and back. “Fuck.” he moaned as he started to pull your hips backwards in combination with his movements, the feeling of his skin slapping against yours only increased to the pleasure, causing you to cry his name out loud.

“That’s right, let everyone know who makes you feel this good.” he said in a weak voice, feeling you clench around him again and again. And how he was able to bring you to the edge so quickly, made you feel a little embarrassed. “You feel so good, Mase.”

“I don’t care how good it feels, you better not cum until I tell you to.” Mason replied, your head falling forward against the door as the sensation almost became too much and your legs started to shake a little. You knew if he touched your clit for even just a second, you’d be cumming all over his dick.

His thrusts became even deeper and harder — if that was even possible — chasing his own orgasm, while grazing your sensitive spot each time. You felt his hand leave your hips, making it harder for you to stay upright, and stroked your clit, causing you to let out an embarrassingly loud moan. “Mason, I’m—”

“Fucking hold it.” he interrupted you, throwing his head back with a groan as you clenched tightly around him, biting your lip and trying to sink your fingers into the door to hold your orgasm as he now tormented you with perfect strokes on your clit.

“Fuck— Cum for me Y/N.” Mason moaned and circled your clit a few final times before you stumbled over the edge, feeling your legs go numb beneath you for a few seconds as the pleasure took over your body, making you shake and moan uncontrollably. Mason fucked you through your orgasm until he came to a halt inside you and coated your inner walls with his cum.

“God- Such a good girl.” he groaned, thrusting into you a few more times to push his cum even deeper into you, bringing tears to your eyes from the post-orgasmic sensitivity. His fingers left your clit, putting his hand on your hip again as he pulled out and leaned down to give you a kiss on the shoulder.

“Now I’m gonna make you cum so many times, until I showed you that no one else could ever make you feel like this, baby.”

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imagineaworlds · 4 years ago

Text

I Love You (Part Forty-Seven) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual

Request: None.

Warnings: Cursing. Mentions of PTSD, Dom/sub relationship, death, etc-- everything Criminal Minds.. I think that’s it???

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 12575

Timeline: Season 7 Episode 01. Three months after part forty-six.

For the past three months, the team had worked dozens of different cases across the country, but none of them mattered except for the one that Morgan, Garcia, and I had been working on privately. Since I came back to work and was deemed the temporary unit chief, I decided to reopen the Ian Doyle case. At first, it was just me. When I wasn’t at work, I was at home, hiding in the upstairs office, working on trying to piece all of the evidence together to figure out where the hell Doyle could have possibly gone. But then it was just too hard to keep doing it on my own, and all of my resources were wasted. There was only one person who had access to more information than I did. Garcia. So, I asked if she would be willing to help me, but it was impossible for her to keep a secret, so we invited Morgan to help us. From there, we managed to find Declan, but we didn’t tell anyone about it outside of our small group of three.

Finding Declan was an interesting process. I had hit a wall with it, hence why I acquired Garcia’s help, but she managed to find him almost immediately after she told Derek what was going on and he helped profile Emily in order to profile Declan. He figured that she had been the one to move him considering how she died protecting his identity and location. Before joining the team, apparently she lived in Reston, Virginia, something I didn’t know about her, but he managed to know. From there, we decided that it was probably to be close to Declan. So, we started narrowing it down. We knew that she liked cul-de-sacs, so as Garcia was going through the school system to find kids that looked like Declan, she compared if their guardian looked like Louise, his nanny, and if they lived in a cul-de-sac. Then, bam. We found them.

Morgan had been the one to offer up the idea of looking for Declan before Ian because if we found Declan, then so would his father eventually, which made our job easier. After that, it was just a waiting game. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much we could do beyond searching all of the footage to see if Ian ever showed up, which he never did. When Morgan and I were away on cases, Penelope kept an eye on him; and when we were in town but not working on anything, Morgan was driving baby Emily out there and taking her on walks around Declan’s neighborhood to scout the place. I think it was also just an excuse for him to have Emily more.

On our way to work one morning, Morgan and I stopped to get sandwiches for lunch, as well as some donuts from Leonard’s for the office since we were feeling generous, I suppose. At work, we split off so that he could sit in the bullpen while I dragged my feet up to my office. I didn’t understand how Hotch did it. Being away from the team all day, every day was so… isolating and exhausting. There was no joking with Morgan, teasing Reid, or… well, when Emily was around, there was no more chatting with her and gossiping about Hotch. I missed the way she used to slide in veiled threats into the conversation about how she would hurt him if he ever hurt me. So, then again, maybe it was a good thing that I wasn’t down in the bullpen anymore. Sitting at my old desk would have just given me a reason to sit there and stare at her desk all day, reflecting on what it was like to have her around, wishing that I could bring her back.

By lunch time, Morgan rescued our sandwiches from the fridge and brought them up to my office. He closed the door behind him and sat down across from me. I caught my sandwich as he threw it at me, then tossed him a water bottle from Hotch’s secret stash in his bookshelf behind the desk. I hadn’t really changed anything. For the most part, the office was still exactly how he left it. From the artwork to the family photos, to the stacks of case files that he practically left for me on his desk to work through, to his computer wallpaper of us, it was all still Hotch. The only difference was that I was finding all of his secrets now, like the water bottles, and totally taking advantage of them.

Morgan kicked his feet up on the desk, something Hotch would’ve never let him do in a thousand years, and dug into his lunch. I picked at mine for a moment while thinking. I was doing too much of that nowadays. Without my “other half” (or some cliché shit like that) around, I didn’t really know who to talk to 24/7 about what I was thinking and feeling. Sure, I could’ve talked to Morgan, but it was different. When I talked to Morgan, it was like we were brainstorming for a solution; but with Hotch, it was just like he was there to listen, and I could go on and on for hours, and he would hear me out, and he would only offer up a solution if he felt it were necessary. Sometimes I just liked ranting my thoughts to him. I liked watching how he would slowly get lost in the details of my face as I would be talking, and how he it looked like he was falling in love with me over and over again with every minute that passed. Skype and calling on the phone every day didn’t do that look justice anymore.

“Oh, my god—Oh, my god—Oh, my god!” Garcia came running into the office with a laptop balancing on one of her arms. Morgan and I turned to face her. “It’s him! It’s him!” She quickly set her laptop down on my desk and pressed play on a video. Morgan and I both leaned forward in our seats to watch the security footage from Declan’s house. “It’s Doyle—” She paused and pointed to a driver in a car passing by. It was kind of hard to see, but when she zoomed the image in and enhanced it, it was undeniably Ian Doyle.

“When was this?” I asked, jumping into action by standing from my seat and started collecting everything we had on this case thus far.

“Two hours ago.”

“He could have Declan by now. Fuck.” I looked at the two of them to say, “Okay, I think it’s time. I’m going to call Hotch to let him know, meanwhile, I need you guys to get the team together and start explaining everything. I want Reid and Rossi to go retrieve Declan and Louise after they’re briefed.” I grabbed my phone from my desk. “Go.” Just as they were leaving, I dialed Hotch’s satellite phone out in the Middle East.

Hotch and I had still been calling each other every day and Skyping as often as we could. The longer he was there, however, the busier he and I got with our two different jobs, which made it increasingly complicated to keep up with each other. But we made the effort. We knew that if at least one day passed where we wouldn’t talk, one day would inevitably turn into two, then three, and so on. I didn’t want to stop talking to him. As boring as the conversations could get at times, at least I got to see him. He was growing out a beard that I happened to love, but Jack hated. He claimed that it made his dad look old. When we could talk in private a little bit later, I told Hotch that I thought it was hot, and that I couldn’t wait to pull at it while he towered over me. He disliked when I teased him like that, though.

When I called, he picked up almost immediately.

“You’re calling awfully early,” Hotch said over the phone, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Do you have a minute?”

“For you? I have all the time in the world.”

I blushed to myself and looked down to watch the toes of my shoe dig into the ground over and over again. “There’s something you need to know, baby, and you have to promise to not get mad.” He didn’t say anything. “Morgan, Garcia, and I have been looking for Doyle while you’ve been gone.” Still, nothing. “We found Declan.”

“What?!”

“Hotch—”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this, Y/N? Do you know how stupid that was? Your whole career could—”

“I don’t care about that, Hotch. I really don’t. I knew that finding Declan was the best way of finding Ian, so I asked Garcia to help; and you know her, she couldn’t keep it to herself, so she told Morgan, and he insisted that he help us. He’s basically the one who found Declan. Without the two of them, I wouldn’t have any leads.”

Hotch sighed quietly. “Is Declan safe?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Morgan’s still surveilling him—But, Hotch, listen, we were right. By watching Declan all this time, we got eyes on Ian.”

He hesitated for a moment. “You’re sure?” He sounded more scared than angry now. I hummed a “yes” in response. “Baby, listen to me right now.”

I bit my lip. “I’m listening, Sir.”

He chuckled slightly. “If you get eyes on Doyle, you need to take the shot. Got it? Don’t let him get away again.” He sounded out of breath now like he was running around. “I’m coming back to help.”

I felt my heart skip a beat and the air leave my lungs with one shocked gasp. He was coming back. After three months, I was finally going to get to hold him in my arms again, and I was going to get to kiss his lips again. Holy shit. He was coming home. My husband was coming back to me. I almost wanted to dance and cheer, scream from the top of my lungs how happy I was and that I couldn’t wait to see him; but I had to show a modicum of respect still, so I buried that feeling until I would get to see him again.

“You can do that?” I questioned cautiously. As happy as I was, could he really just abandon his post to come back like that? It sounded almost too good to be true.

“I put in the request to transfer back to Quantico about two weeks ago.” And he didn’t tell me? “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to get your hopes up on anything; but they don’t need me here anymore, so it’s not a big deal if they find a replacement.” I hopped slightly with joy and giggled. Hotch chuckled at me. “I can’t wait to see you, baby.”

Even considering the circumstances, I couldn’t wait to see him either. “Call me when you’re landing.”

“I will. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

----

By the time Garcia followed traffic camera footage across the state just to see where Doyle was hiding out, we had a SWAT team with snipers on call, and the team was ready to head out there. Just as I had ordered, Rossi and Reid headed to get Declan, but the drive was pretty far, so I didn’t expect to hear from them for a while, especially while we were in the early stages of staking out Doyle’s place. Morgan, JJ, and I were trapped in a van across the street from his apartment while SWAT was just down the road, and they had two snipers up on separate roofs. All of it was my call, though. The second we had reasonable cause to believe that it was actually Ian Doyle up there, I would be the one to dictate if the snipers or Morgan would be taking the shot, like Hotch said.

“That’s all Hotch said? ‘Take the shot’?” JJ questioned warily. I nodded and shrugged. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Why?”

She shook her head. “Nothing…”

I eyed her suspiciously for a moment, taking into account how her gaze wasn’t resting on one thing, but instead a thousand different things, like she was too anxious to focus. It was odd, but I shrugged it off with the excuse that finding Doyle was a big deal. Since he killed Prentiss, we had all been itching to find him and avenge her. Out of everyone, I knew that JJ would want to know that Doyle was dead because of us. She wanted that justice. I couldn’t exactly tell why, but she had always been like that, especially since getting promoted to being a profiler.

And then my phone started ringing with a call from Spencer who had just arrived at Declan’s house. I figured it was just an update. I mean, him and Rossi were there to simply pick up Declan and Louise, that was it. But then something worrying happened when I picked up the call: Reid sounded concerned.

“Reid?”

“Declan’s missing,” he answered quickly.

“What?”

“We just searched the house, and he’s gone, so we called the school to see if he even made it home, and they told us that his mom picked him up early.”

“Louise?” I speculated.

“I doubt it.” He sounded annoyed now. “She’s dead.”

“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath, then looked up at Morgan and JJ to tell them what was going on. They also cursed, and he hit the side of the car. “Okay. Reid, you and Rossi should meet us here in case we end up seeing—” The sound of a police car’s siren flew past our van, catching our attention. It was just a squad car. No, no, no, no. Fuck. That was going to scare Doyle off. Fuck.

“He’s inside!” Morgan exclaimed. We all turned to face the window to see the drape in Doyle’s apartment window shaking like it had just been disturbed. “I saw him!” Morgan was already fiddling with the door handle and pushing his way out of the car.

“Shit…” This wasn’t at all how I imagined this going down. We were supposed to just monitor the situation, get legitimate confirmation that Doyle was in there, not just Morgan claiming he saw him— But what choice did we have now? “Go, go, go,” I made the call, following Morgan out of the van and hanging up the call with Reid.

JJ, Morgan, and I raced inside first, the SWAT van pulling up behind us and the team moving in, too. When we reached the apartment number, JJ and I stood our ground in the hallway with our weapons raised, and I gave Morgan the signal to kick the door down, which he did without hesitating, and then he dashed inside. The three of us took turned towards different sides of the apartment in order to clear it. Morgan went straight into the living room/bedroom, JJ went into the bathroom on the left, and I stepped into the tiny kitchen on the right. He wasn’t there. Neither was Declan. Reid said that they couldn’t find Declan, so I only assumed that Doyle got to him first. Fuck! How the fuck did he—

“I’ve got something!” Morgan called out. I hurried into the living room/bedroom to see him peeking up at the ceiling inside of the closet. I cocked a brow and carefully approached. “He’s climbing to the roof.” There was a hole in the ceiling for some kind of secret tunnel that led upwards.

“Follow him,” I ordered. “I’ll take the steps. JJ, watch the door downstairs to make sure he doesn’t get out, and coordinate with SWAT to make sure that the block is locked down just in case. Get a crime scene team here to see if Declan was ever here.”

Morgan holstered his weapon then quickly pulled himself up into the tunnel to follow Doyle, meanwhile I hurried out into the hallway to start sprinting up the rest of the stairs, and JJ ran down them. How the fuck did this happen? How did we lose Declan like this, and how was Doyle actually planning on getting out of this?

And then I burst out onto the roof to see Morgan chasing after Doyle who was running for the fire escape on the side of the building. Morgan aimed his weapon, but didn’t shoot. Instead, he tried commanding Doyle to stop. Like that would help.

“I’ve got the shot,” one of the snipers said over the comms.

“Don’t shoot!” I exclaimed. “Don’t!” I knew what Hotch said about taking the shot if given the chance, but things were different now that we couldn’t find Declan in the apartment. Our only way of getting him back now was by keeping his father alive. Asshole. “Hold your fire!” When nothing came, Morgan tackled Doyle and spun him onto his stomach so that he could be handcuffed. “You got it?” I asked him. He nodded while slapping the cuffs on Doyle. “I’ll have JJ take him back to the office while we start going through everything downstairs.”

Morgan groaned as he yanked Doyle up onto his feet. “You’re not gonna let me take a crack at him?”

“Not yet.”

Doyle chuckled. I squinted at him while searching his eyes for a reason that he could have possibly found this funny. He noticed my curiosity. “Lauren was right about you.”

Morgan tugged on Doyle’s restraints to make them hurt. “Shut up.”

Doyle kept laughing as Morgan pushed him towards the stairwell so that JJ could take him to the office like I had ordered. My only question, however, was, what the hell did he mean by that? Lauren was right about me? Right about what? The question lingered in my head as I sighed and moved to walk downstairs, too.

Afterwards, hours passed while we were combing through Doyle’s apartment, trying to find clues about where he must have taken Declan, as well as compiling evidence connecting him to Valhalla and Prentiss’s death. For someone in hiding, there was a lot he had with him. Usually, people in his situation would stay minimalist and wouldn’t have all of their condemning evidence in one spot, but Doyle was so cocky that he wouldn’t get caught that he didn’t bother to keep any of his current business elsewhere. There were so many guns in that one apartment that we could have started another small army. I couldn’t understand how on Earth someone would need all of that. Then again, Doyle already had a small army, and the reason they needed to smuggle all of those weapons out of the state was so that he could maintain power in Europe while he was underground. Well, looked like all of that was worthless now.

I sighed as I stepped outside of that tiny, dirty, smelly, cramped apartment for the first time in over ten hours. It really took that long. Doyle had been sitting at the office the entire time, brewing in his own thoughts, which was our strategy to break him. If he was left in darkness and silence long enough, he would open up. Hopefully. At least, Morgan and I would give it a shot when we would head back to the office. For now, we were down tearing the entire apartment to shreds. The bastard even had papers hiding behind the wallpaper.

When my phone started buzzing in my pocket, I sighed again and dug it out. “Hotchner,” I answered.

“Mmm… I could get used to that,” Hotch’s voice echoed over the phone, making me melt.

I perked up within an instant while looking down at my watch, spotting the time and how long it had been since he last called me, and how he promised he would call when he was close to landing in Virginia. Finally, I thought. “How close are you?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes.”

It was almost morning already. He was probably going to be landing just as the sun would start to peek over the tall buildings of Quantico. “I’m coming to pick you up.”

“Y/N, you should stay—”

“Nope,” I interrupted adamantly.

Hotch chuckled. “You’re really going to be a brat about this right now?”

“Mhm. You can scold me for it when you see me.”

“God, I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Hey, sunshine,” Morgan said, sneaking up behind me, “you ready to go?”

“I’ll see you in a few minutes, baby,” I told Hotch. Before he could say anything in return, though, I hung up on him. I hid my grin as I buried my phone in my back pocket, then turned to face Morgan. “Can you handle the interrogation for a bit while I head to the airport?”

“He’s back already?”

“Yeah.”

Morgan nodded. “Go get him.” We smiled at each other. “No detours, though, sunshine. There and back.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I responded half-heartedly while already walking away from him. “Just remember, when this is over with, you and Clooney are going home!”

----

To say I was nervous would have been a drastic understatement. I had gone four months without seeing him. Four months without his touch, his kiss, his hold, his love. A lot could change in four months. People could grow apart in four months. I was absolutely terrified that even though we called each other every day, we might not have been the same Hotchners who said goodbye to each other at the airport a few months ago. I knew that I still loved him endlessly— maybe even more now that I had been starved of him for so long. But I didn’t know what happened to him out there. I didn’t know what new experiences he had that could have possibly changed him. For all I knew, he could walk off that plane in a few minutes and walk right past me without a care. I just prayed that he was still Aaron. That the man I fell in love with would walk off that plane and know exactly how to hold me again. It was like I could already feel his touch, even though the plane’s engines hadn’t died out yet. He was so far, but he was so damn close. This was the closest we had been in four fucking months, and I was just so ready to see him already.

The plane came to a slow and steady stop on the runway. With every second that passed, I felt a growing need to throw up everywhere. He was probably sitting in there, watching me through the window, grinning ear to ear because I looked so nervous and sick. He could likely see me, yet I couldn’t see anything but the sun in my eyes. He was always an asshole, but he even had to beat me to the first look. Asshole x2.

The door of the jet popped open, and it started slowly falling down towards the concrete, the stairs on the inside making a slow appearance. I thought about what was going to happen. How was I going to react? How was he going to react? Was it better to stay where I was or was it better to meet him at the bottom of the steps? I felt like even if I wanted to move towards the plane, I wouldn’t have been able to. I was frozen in place as my mind raced with questions and endless possibilities. But there was one thing that was consistent: I was going to hold my husband in my arms, and I was going to tell him that I loved him over and over again until I passed out.

The second I saw a foot step out of the jet, I started sprinting as fast as I could without stopping to think. The rest of him emerged, and Hotch looked around for me. After spotting me from the top of the stairs, Hotch jumped down the steps, dropped his bag on the runway, and started running towards me, too. He held his arms out, an invitation for me to jump and hold him tight, so that was exactly what I did. Our bodies clashed, but he still managed to catch me, even though the force sent him stumbling back a few unwanted steps. My arms flew around his shoulders, my legs wrapped around his hips, my face buried in the crook of his neck. It didn’t matter that he smelled like sweat, sand, and cheap deodorant, because he was finally home with me and that was all that mattered. Hell, I even enjoyed the smell since it just meant that I had him in my arms again.

I squeezed him tight with my arms and legs after he nuzzled his face— beard, sunglasses, and all— into the crook of my neck. The aching in my chest, my broken heart that had been falling apart during every second that he was away from me, slowly started to mend with every breath we took together. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to cry, scream, cheer, laugh, or all of the above. Every single emotion imaginable was flooding my body and the only way I could cope with it was by nearly squeezing the life out of him while repeating: “I love you, I love you, I love you” over and over in his ear. I never wanted to stop saying it. I prayed that he would never let me go again and that we could say those three words until there was no more breath in our lungs.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” we kept whispering like we were records stuck on repeat. Fuck, I missed the way he said it to me. I missed the way he said my name and the way he called me “baby”. Nothing felt more right than how he spoke to me and how he kissed my neck in between words.

When his beard started tickling my neck, I finally paused to let out a giggle. I leaned back, his arms still around my torso to hold me for support, and I got a good look at him for the first time in months. There was no screen between us, no shitty computer cameras, no god awful Skype buffer, no speakers that cut out every other word. He looked so different than how I remembered him. His face was slimmed behind the scratchy beard he had grown, and his eyes were more sunken with exhaustion— if that were even possible. Aaron Hotchner always had dark circles under his eyes, that was no secret. Between work, the kids, and wrangling me, Hotch never had time to sleep; but Pakistan kicked his ass, and I could see it in every little detail about him.

He watched me with the brightest smile I had ever seen on his face as I brought my left hand up to his face and scratched my nails gently down his beard. “This is even hotter in person,” I smirked.

“It has to go the second I get an electric shaver,” he laughed.

My smirk fell and I pouted, “Are you sure?” He nodded. “But I have literally never wanted to fuck you harder in my entire life.”

He paused and gulped. “Okay, so maybe it can stay for a few days.”

I perked up again at my little victory and scratched it again. “Please don’t ever leave me again. Please.”

“I’d rather die than go away again.”

“Don’t be hyperbolic, Agent Hotchner.” I hit his shoulder playfully. He grinned before tightening his arms around me again to make me lean in for a kiss. I grabbed his face, the hairs on his cheeks tickling my palms as I did so, and I moaned into his mouth. “I love you so much.”

His eyes screwed shut as he slid his tongue into the kiss and claimed dominance. I missed that feeling so much. I missed how he tasted, how he smelled, how he felt, how he had to dominate me every second of every day. I missed getting lost in his eyes and staring at his lips all day until I could finally kiss them until our lips were chapped. If there weren’t a million and one things going on outside of that airport, I would have begged him to take me inside and fuck me in the bathroom. It should have been impossible to need him that much considering everything that was going on with Ian Doyle, yet there I was, only thinking about showing Aaron Hotchner how much I loved him.

Hotch pulled away from my lips, but he kept his nose pressed to mine. “Emily?”

“At home with Jessica.”

“Jack?”

“At school.”

“You?”

“The most relieved I have ever been in my life.” I leaned in and kissed him again. I thought to myself: “Please, never let this end. Let us stay trapped in each other’s arms forever. Never let us get tired of kissing each other, of holding each other, of saying ‘I love you’. Never let the desperation for passion die. Never let me miss him ever again. Keep him by my side until we die of old age. Please.”

And just like he could read my mind, Hotch loosened his hold on me ever so slightly, making me drop down to my feet, and he said, “We should get back to the office.”

I shook my head. “Just… One more minute… Please.”

“One more minute will turn into an hour at least, you know that.”

“Is that so bad?”

“No, it isn’t.” Hotch cupped my cheeks and kissed me as hard as he could. After a short minute of him kissing me like he had been starved of it for years, Hotch pushed me away. Our hands fell to our sides and I bit my lip while I tried to focus on not jumping on him again. “We have to go.”

I tried to catch my breath, my chest rising and falling at a dramatic pace. It took every ounce of strength and self-restraint I had stored away to not jump back on him and kiss him again. I felt like I was going to cry because he wasn’t in my arms again. I felt like screaming and kicking— throwing a tantrum like Jack would. I felt like at any moment, the two of us would break, and I would tackle him to the ground before showering him in kisses and pinning him down so that he couldn’t leave me again.

Hotch stumbled away from me to grab his go-bag from where he dropped it because he had the same look I had, and I knew that he was sharing the same thoughts. When he came back, he took my hand, and we walked towards the car. I started catching him up on everything we knew about the case thus far. Ian and Declan, all of Ian’s business papers that he had in his apartment. I realized then just how little we actually knew. Hopefully by the time we got back to the office, Morgan would have something out of Doyle that would help.

I drove the whole way to Quantico because he was too tired from the flight and the time zones. He had one of my hands trapped in his instead of on the steering wheel, and he kept kissing my knuckles again and again. He wasn’t listening to me. Not that I blamed him. If he wanted to just talk shop and I was sitting there, not distracted by driving, I would’ve been antsy to shower him in love, too. But Morgan said no detours. As much as it pained me, he was right that there really wasn’t any time to drive home, or even pull to the side of the road to fuck Hotch. I really, really wanted to, though; so, I figured the longer I distracted myself with work, the better off we would be. After this, though… Once this was all resolved… I wasn’t letting him go.

At the office, Hotch and I headed up to the sixth floor, somehow managing to go that entire time without touching each other. I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to hold him again. While we were standing in the elevator, I stared at him and thought about pushing him against the wall, but it wasn’t worth it right now. I hated this inner battle I was having to fight between wanting him all to myself in that very moment and just focusing wholeheartedly on the case. The worst thought hit me suddenly… Maybe it would have been better if he didn’t come back so soon… I mean, he was just so distracting, I felt like I couldn’t celebrate this win as much as I should’ve been.

And then we stepped onto the floor.

“Hey.” Hotch grabbed my hand, tugging me back a few steps towards him. “You trust me, right?”

I furrowed my brows as I turned to face him. Of course I trusted him. Why wouldn’t I? He was my husband, and we made a promise to each other a long time ago to not keep any secrets from one another. I had no reason to doubt him. I wouldn’t have met him at the airport like that if I didn’t trust and love him wholeheartedly.

“You know that I do everything for a reason?”

What was he on about? Was there something I missed between meeting him at the airport and walking into the building with him? Why was he suddenly acting so weird?

I put my hands on his biceps. “Listen. I know that you told me you were in an all guys unit. If there’s something you want to say about it, I’m all ears. And I’m going to support you no matter what.” I bit back a smile.

Hotch cracked a smile. “No,” he shook his head, “that’s not what I mean.”

“Phew.” I rolled my eyes playfully. “I thought I was going to have to give you the birds and the bees talk, and how love is love—”

“Shut up.” He laughed before kissing me.

I pushed him back gently. “I’m just saying, if you’re going to cheat on me, it should at least be with a guy so that you get to experiment a bit.” I patted his chest.

He was still laughing quietly. “What am I going to do with you, Agent Hotchner?”

“I don’t know, Agent Hotchner,” I responded as I let him pull me back in for another kiss. “I’m sure you’ll think of something before we get home after this case, though.” I pecked his lips again, then escaped into the board room.

Everyone was standing behind the round table, huddled together as they discussed something about the case. It seemed as though Morgan had just finished his first attempt at getting information out of Doyle, to no avail. They were discussing how he was going to approach the second try, but no one’s ideas seemed to stick since Morgan had an excuse for why none of it would work. It was like we had hit a dead end, even though Doyle was the end, technically. He was the one who took Declan, and he was the one who took our sister from us. Prentiss was dead because of him, and we weren’t going to let him get away this time.

When Hotch walked into the room, everyone fell silent and turned to get a look at him. Hotch really didn’t seem to care about our no PDA at work rule now, because as everyone’s eyes lingered on him and his beard, Hotch came over to me, took my hand in his, and kissed my cheek. A lot changed for him in the Middle East, I guess. He missed me and he didn’t care what rules we had. He wanted to just have me around all the time, and I couldn’t blame him. But, technically, I was still the unit chief until Hotch could officially come back, and I couldn’t let us break the rules. Now I understood why Hotch was always so adamant about me behaving while at work. It was excruciatingly painful to not touch and kiss him just because I was the boss and had to set an example.

I moved away from Hotch, taking my seat at the round table. Everyone followed my lead warily, their eyes still trained on Hotch. Him and JJ didn’t sit, though. They were the only ones who stayed on their feet at the front of the room. Hotch had his arms crossed, a frown hiding under his facial hair, his eyes wandering around the room as he thought nervously about something. This had to do with him asking about my trust, but I didn’t understand how. Him worrying about something and not telling me almost immediately was only making me worry, too. He needed to spit it out fast or I would go insane.

“Everything alright, Hotch?” Morgan asked, also taking notice of Hotch’s clear unease.

Hotch didn’t nod or give any kind of reassurance that everything was alright. Instead, he shifted his weight on the balls of his feet— a silent tell that something was definitely wrong. He kept his head down now, only glancing up through his lashes occasionally to look at me. A thought struck me that maybe my joke wasn’t really a joke in the hallway. Four months was a long time to go without me, and it probably didn’t help that all he got was shitty phone sex. Maybe he really did change out there in the desert. Maybe he was showering me in love because he was going to drop a huge ass bomb that said: “I’m leaving you” or “I’m quitting the BAU and running away forever” or “I’m taking the kids and you’ll never see them again.” Every shit scenario possible was racing through my head. Like I said, if he wasn’t going to spit it out soon, I was going to start screaming for answers.

“Nine months ago,” Hotch began, “I made a decision that affected this team. As you all know, Prentiss lost a lot of blood after her fight with Doyle. We told you that she succumbed to her wounds…” He hesitated a beat. “That’s not really the case.”

Shock filled the room as it dawned on each of us what Hotch was really saying. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions because I really, really didn’t want to get my hopes up… but it sounded like he was telling us that Prentiss was alive. That over the past seven months, we have been led to believe that she died in that hospital.

“The truth is, the doctors were able to stabilize her, and she was airlifted to Bethesda under a covert exfiltration.”

My shoulders fell. So, it was true. Emily Prentiss was alive. The woman we mourned the loss of for seven months was… still around all along? That was why Hotch asked if I trusted him. That was why he was being so handsy. He knew that I hated it when he kept things from me. He knew that I hated it when he would betray my trust like this. I yelled at him for weeks the last time he did it— which was our suspension over two years ago. He was asking about trust and touching me as often as he could because he didn’t know if this admission of the truth was going to break us apart. This wasn’t like him lying and going to ask for a transfer out of the BAU. This wasn’t like him lying to me about his health. This was Emily Prentiss. This was our sister we lost in the field. We buried her. Why did Hotch… What… I— My thoughts were too scrambled to form another cohesive thought other than: “How could he do this to us?”

“After she got better, she was reassigned to Paris, where she was given multiple fake identities so that she could be safe,” Hotch continued.

“She’s alive?” Spencer finally asked the clarifying question we were all dying to know the answer to.

Hotch nodded shortly, keeping his eyes lowered. He wasn’t even looking at me now because of the shame and guilt he likely felt.

“But we buried her,” Spencer croaked.

Hotch nodded again. “If anyone has any issues with the executive decision that I made, then they can take it up with me.”

“Issues?” Morgan asked angrily. “Issues, Hotch? Yeah, I’ve got a few issues, but why don’t you start with the fact that you let your own wife believe that Emily was dead and let them name your daughter after her because of it, hmm? Don’t you think that you owe Y/N an explanation?”

“Morgan,” I hissed quietly. It was neither the time nor the place to discuss my daughter. I had a few choice words for Hotch running through my head, but I fully intended on keeping them to myself until Hotch and I could speak privately.

“Emily’s alive, Y/N. How are you going to explain that to your daughter as she grows up?”

“Stop it,” I demanded more harshly.

There wasn’t anything Morgan could say to me that I didn’t already know. Hotch had betrayed everything we believed in and promised each other. He had told me countless times since meeting me that he would never lie to me, and every time he ended up breaking that promise, he would tell me that it wouldn’t happen again. But there we were. Another promise broken. Even worse, though, was the fact that he made a vow to me on our wedding day that he would always be honest with me. Always. And yet he kept this a secret from me. Did he not trust that I could have kept it a secret? Morgan was right, I was owed an explanation. Hotch kept this from me, his wife for nine months. What else was he hiding? How was I ever supposed to trust him again?

I stood from my seat and turned for the door. No one said anything as I took a step but came to a sudden halt when I discovered that my path was blocked by someone in my way. I felt like I was going to pass out. There was she was: Emily Prentiss… standing right in front of me. Back from the dead.

She let out a sigh of regret, but also relief, when our eyes met. She looked sorry about how all of this happened. And she should have been. Morgan sat on our couch for months, crying because he missed her so much. I named my daughter after her because I missed her so much and I wanted her memory to be remembered. What was it all for, though, now that was standing there? What was the point now? Morgan was right to be vocally angry because he knew that I couldn’t. But as mad as I was at Hotch, I felt an overwhelming need to hug her. I crashed into her. I didn’t hesitate. Nine months without her. Nine fucking months.

Emily caught me as I embraced her as tightly as I could. She rubbed small circles on my back as she held me close. “I am so sorry, Y/N.”

I sniffled into her shoulder while I hugged her tighter. She was there. Like, really there. I wasn’t dreaming or hoping anymore. It was her. Our family was back. And I was just so relieved. I couldn’t even be mad at her. But I could tell as I pulled away from Emily and turned to look at the room with her that Morgan was pissed beyond compare. Everyone was crying because they were so grateful for the fact that she was still alive. However, Morgan wasn’t. He was standing there, pouting with disbelief, his hands curled into shaky fists that were holding in all of his anger.

She carefully let go of me and approached Morgan. “Derek, you have to believe me when I tell you that not a day went by where I didn’t think about you guys and how sorry I am that things turned out this way. You didn’t deserve that.”

“I didn’t deserve to know that you were alive?” he questioned through gritted teeth.

“You didn’t deserve to hold a dying friend in your arms.” Prentiss extended her arms for another hug, a silent offer for him, which he took slowly, as if he were afraid that he would fall right through her like she was some kind of ghost. When they embraced, however, I saw Morgan’s anger wash away. Now, he was just broken. “I’m so sorry.” He squeezed her waist as tight as he could for as long as he could before she tapped out and parted from him. She turned to face me again. “I want to meet baby Emily, if you’ll let me, once this is all over.”

I nodded, still too hesitant to say anything.

She smiled. “Okay… For now, I just want to focus on finding Declan and bringing him home safe. What do you guys know so far?”

Reid immediately jumped to his feet like this was his moment to shine, and he started asking her questions about Declan, Ian, and Louise, but I couldn’t hear anything. Everything seemed so washed out and distant. The only thing that was clear to me was the shame on my husband’s face as I stood there, staring at him, silently letting him know just how badly he had fucked up this time around. He could hardly look me in the eyes.

“Can I see you in my office?” he asked.

Everyone watched us silently, wondering if I would correct him on the fact that it was my office now. Or maybe they were waiting with anticipation to see if I was going to blow him off considering I had been glaring at him the entire time since I found out that Prentiss was alive this whole time—and he knew! But that was exactly why I indulged him. I didn’t correct him, I didn’t argue with him, I didn’t embarrass him. I simply followed him to his office.

I sat in my chair at my desk, which all used to be his before he left. He sat down across from me in one of the seats I would sit in whenever I was called to meet with him in his office. He seemed so out of his element in that chair, and, honestly, I was glad. I wanted him to be uncomfortable. I wanted him to be physically and emotionally uneasy because that was how I felt every day while he was away, and that was how I felt since finding out that our daughter’s namesake was actually alive and well.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” I inquired, reclining back. He shook his head. “You were going to just let me think that she was dead in order to, what, make me feel better about naming our daughter after her? Why didn’t you try to stop me—”

“I did try. I asked you if there were really no other names you could think of, but you were so adamant about it and I couldn’t tell you the truth; so, I just had to let it happen.”

“Is that why you left?”

Hotch froze for a moment while searching my eyes, and before he even began nodding, I knew the answer. He sighed. “It was hard to keep lying to everyone, but it felt impossible to keep lying to you specifically, especially since you took Emily’s death so hard… So, I just… I ran.”

“So, you would have stayed if I knew the truth?”

“Yes.”

I scoffed and let out an exasperated chuckle.

“Baby, I am so sorry, you have to believe me. I wish things hadn’t happened the way they did.”

“Yeah, well, you had a choice in that, didn’t you?”

“Y/N, that’s not fair. I was just trying to protect her—"

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, proceeded by Garcia cautiously stepping into the office. “Sorry, ma’am, but I found something.”

I nodded her over, holding my hand out for the file of information she put together. Hotch eyed me. Usually, it was him sitting in my current seat, ignoring me in his seat as he accepted another file from Garcia who had addressed him in the first place. Everything felt so backwards. But, then again, maybe that was what he deserved now that I knew that he had been lying to me this entire time.

“I was narrowing down a list of Doyle’s top ten enemies from what we know and what Morgan’s getting out of him. The only one who’s been in the states recently is Mr. Richard Gerace. He’s been here for the past two weeks with a work visa.”

“Is there any way to connect him to this?” I asked while flipping through the file.

“The guy who cut off the camera feed at Declan’s house had a scar on his neck...” She turned the next page for me and pointed to a mugshot of Gerace. He had the same exact scar on his neck, meaning it was definitely him who took Declan.

“Get me everything you can on him, please, Penelope,” I said while closing the file and setting it down on my desk. She hesitated. “What is it?”

“That’s everything I have.”

I sighed. “Can you call Prentiss in, please?”

“Sure…”

“Thank you.”

When she left, I sighed and looked at Hotch again. Neither of us said anything as we stared at each other uncomfortably, a barrier of trust broken between us now. I didn’t like it when he lied to me. Every time I told him not to lie to me, he promised he wouldn’t, and then he would, and I would be mad for a few days before forgiving him and moving on. How much longer was I supposed to put up with it? I couldn’t even count how many times he lied to me on my fingers anymore. Meanwhile, I could count the number of times I lied to him on one hand. At some point, enough was going to be enough, and if he wasn’t careful, it was going to be soon. As much as I loved him, I couldn’t keep living with the lies. What was more important to him? Me or protecting his secrets? If the answer wasn’t immediately me, then there was an entirely different conversation we needed to have at some point that included what our future was going to look like.

“We’re going to talk later,” I finally told him.

As we were coming back to the office together, Hotch stopped to ask if I trusted him, and at the time, of course I did… But now? I wasn’t so sure. Then again, I’d said that a dozen times before when he pulled this shit. The worst part was, that I knew that I was going to end up crawling back to him, and it was going to be an excuse for him to lie to me all over again.

Hotch nodded. “Yeah…”

There was another knock at the door, this time from Prentiss, who seemed too shy to invite herself in, even though I had requested her presence. I waved her in.

“Gerace,” I said, holding the file out for her. She slowly walked over and accepted it. “Garcia thinks that he’s the one who took Declan.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she insisted before even looking at the file. I waited for her to explain why she thought that. “Gerace gave up on Doyle a long time ago, and he’s too much of a coward to pull something like this off. Not to mention how meticulous the abduction was. Gerace doesn’t have that level of patience and organization.”

I scoffed and wiped my palms over my face. “He was our only suspect and lead.”

“I mean…” She flipped through the file. “That’s definitely Gerace’s scar… So, I suppose he had something to do with it, but I wouldn’t say he’s solely responsible. If he’s working with a partner, he’s definitely the submissive.” She flipped another page. “Hold on—” I looked up at her. “Look at this.” She turned the file to show me one of the shots from the security footage of Gerace turning the cameras off. “Look in the background.” There was a woman standing there, watching Gerace while cocking a gun at her side. Prentiss’s jaw dropped as a realization dawned on her. “This might have something to do with Declan’s birth mother, considering the overkill towards Louise, who was Declan’s mother figure throughout his entire life.”

“Do you know who she is?”

She shook her head. “No. Doyle never told me.”

“Would you be willing to go in and get the information out of him now?”

She looked between me and Hotch, almost as if she were waiting for permission from him, but then she recalled that I was calling the shots right now until Hotch could be reinstated into the unit by Strauss and Cody. She finally gave in. “I don’t mind giving it a shot.”

Since Prentiss was still just a visitor, she couldn’t technically be allowed to wander the floor on her own. Even though she knew exactly where the interrogation room was and how to get there the fastest, I still had to usher her there. So, without saying anything to Hotch, I started walking out. Prentiss watched him silently for a moment before deciding to follow me.

“You know,” she said while catching up to me on the ramp outside of my office, “unit chief suits you.”

“It won’t last long. It’s just until Hotch can come back.”

We continued on towards the interrogation room in silence. When we stepped into the mirror room, I saw that Morgan and JJ were there, watching Doyle who was sitting on his own, staring at the wall while he silently thought and worried about his missing son. With others around to “officially” watch Prentiss, I took my leave almost immediately, heading back to my office so that I could sit down, catch my breath, and have a moment to think.

When I got there, Hotch was already gone. I glanced across the bullpen to see that he was in the boardroom with Rossi, Reid, and Garcia, all of them working on finding who Declan’s mother was in case that was the next fresh lead we would get from Doyle. They were fine on their own. For just a few minutes, I could disappear, and no one would notice. So, I closed the door, spun the dial of the blinds until they were shut tight, and I immediately broke down. I didn’t even make it to my chair or the couch. I just fell right then and there.

I started crying with my face hiding in my hands. Getting Hotch back should have been the best thing in the world, and yet it felt so shitty. I hated that he lied to me again. I hated that things went down like that. I hated that our daughter was mixed up in the drama of it all now just because of her name. I hated that I was mad at the love of my life after just getting him back, because instead of wanting to hold him close until our last breath, I wanted to kick his ankles until my anger was gone—If my anger would ever go away.

And then there was a knock at the door.

I tried catching my breath and calming down enough to wipe my tears away, but the door opened before I could collect myself entirely. I hid my face in the shadows. It didn’t matter who it was because I was just hoping that they would leave me alone now that they saw me collapsed on the floor and hiding my face while sniffling.

“Sunshine?”

I let out a choked sob when I realized that it was Morgan who had followed me from the mirror room to my office. “What?”

He knelt beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Come here…” He turned me slightly until I was facing him, and we immediately pulled each other in for a tight hug. I hid my face in his shirt, letting my tears soak the fabric without care. “It’s okay. I promise. Just breathe.” He rubbed circles on my back to help me calm down slowly.

I started to catch my breath by sucking in deep breaths and letting out short ones. “You shouldn’t have brought up Emily earlier,” I whispered.

He had been completely out of line when he brought up my daughter in the context of Prentiss still being alive. That was a conversation for me and my husband to have at a later time when we could talk privately. It didn’t give him permission to put our predicament on blast. I was sure that everyone had been thinking it, too. I mean, they were all probably wondering the same thing I was, which was what the hell were Hotch and I going to do now that Prentiss, our daughter’s namesake was back? But, honestly, it was none of their business. Yes, Morgan was her godfather, but he wasn’t her father, therefore, he had no say. He would be the first to know when a decision would be made, of course, but not before then.

I slid out of his arms and fell back against the wall carefully to just sit there and stare into the darkness. “It wasn’t fair,” I continued.

“I’m sorry, cupcake…” He slid down the wall to sit beside me, then took one of my cold hands in his. “My emotions have just been all over the place, and I snapped when I didn’t mean to. I know that’s not an excuse, but…” He sighed.

“I get it.” I rested my head on his shoulder. Of all people, I understood the most how Morgan felt.

“Did you talk to him?”

“Kind of…”

“Are you going to forgive him?”

“Unfortunately.”

Morgan swung his arm around me so that he could hug me close to his side. “Do you ever just miss the old days when things were so simple? Gideon and Elle were still on the team. Pretty boy was still dorky and quiet all the time. Hotch actually talked to us and trusted us.”

“You mean talked to you and trusted you.” I chuckled. “He didn’t talk to me when I first joined the team.”

“Yeah, because he had a schoolgirl crush on you. That doesn’t mean he didn’t trust you. But wasn’t it so much easier back then when you two weren’t together, and everything was just about putting the back guys away, and nothing was ever personal…” He sighed. “I think we just haven’t been the same ever since the Fisher King.”

He was right. That was the first case where we were all effected personally, and an Unsub got under our skin, and tore our family apart. I mean, I assumed that it was because of Randall Garner that my sister left the BAU. If we had never gotten mixed up in that case, maybe she and Gideon would still be around. But then again, if that were the case, then we wouldn’t’ve had Rossi or Emily on the team, and I was genuinely happy that I knew them and that they were apart of our family now. Rossi was Hotch’s best friend who liked to help me pick on him from time to time. Emily was one of my closest friends… At least before she left. I didn’t know where we stood now. That was what Morgan meant by things being easier back in the day, though, I supposed. Things weren’t so messy.

“I think you’re right,” I agreed quietly.

----

Not even an hour later, Prentiss had already convinced Doyle to tell us who the mother of his child was and how to find her. With Garcia’s help, we managed to track her down. Her name was Chloe Donaghy, and she was a notorious crime lord who ran a human trafficking and prostitution ring. She and Ian had met about eight years before Prentiss met him. When she found out that she was pregnant with Declan, she tried to kill herself to make sure that his son would never be born, but Doyle stopped her before she could even swallow a single pill, and from that point on during the pregnancy, she was his prisoner. He kept her locked away. She was chained to a bed in a locked room in his heavily guarded home for seven months straight. She was given a healthy diet for herself and the baby, and Doyle had a doctor go to check on her every other week or so to make sure that they were still okay. Once she had the baby, however, she left. She wanted nothing to do with Declan, and everyone knew it, so Doyle practically paid her to stay away and to never tell a soul about their son.

However, once she found out that Ian was a wanted man and was in hiding, she decided that she wanted a piece of him in the name of revenge. So, she got the same idea as us. Knowing that Ian would try to find Declan, she waited until someone found him first—which happened to be us—and once she knew where her son was, she jumped at the opportunity to take him when everyone was too distracted to notice. We managed to track her down to Baltimore. It looked like she and Gerace took Declan down there, and they were planning on selling him to another one of Doyle’s enemies, a man by the name of Lachlan. That wasn’t good. If Declan left U.S. soil, there was nothing we could do. It would be left up to the CIA or another agency similar to them, but they wouldn’t care. So, I made a call.

I decided that the best way to ensure that little boy would never die at the hands of a revenge driven monster like Lachlan was to have our team pursue this. I knew the risks involved with the choice. I knew that my career was on the line, and that I would inevitably be demoted as unit chief—if I were lucky. Worst case scenario, actually, was that I would be fired. But I didn’t care in the moment, because all I could think about was the fact that there was a little boy out there, wondering why his own mother was doing this, and why he was facing danger again. And then I thought about Jack. Declan was around Jack’s age. I couldn’t bear to think that it could have been Jack in Declan’s shoes, and that if that were the case, I would want someone to fight for him until he was safe at home.

So, I made the call to use Doyle as a pawn in our game. We loaded Doyle into an SUV with myself, Hotch, and Morgan, and we drove down to the airstrip where Garcia found out that Chloe and Lachlan were catching a flight at together. Emily was against the idea. She was concerned that Doyle was going to get away, or that Chloe was going to get Declan and Ian, and all of this was for nothing. I wasn’t going to let that happen. We were going to get Declan back, and we weren’t going to let Doyle get away. After everything that happened over the past few months, I was going to die before fucking this up.

“You wanna do it, or should I?” Hotch asked as we pulled up to the jet on the runway. I gestured that he could go for it, but I didn’t look at him or say anything in response. I still wasn’t ready to do that much. “Okay.” Morgan handed him the megaphone, and Hotch stepped out of the car to announce, “Lachlan McDermott and Cloe Donaghy, this is the FBI. We know that you have Declan Doyle. To ensure his safety, we would like to make a trade. Declan for Ian Doyle.”

That was our cue to show off Doyle to the world, so Morgan and I pulled him out of the car, making sure that our grip on him was strong enough that he couldn’t wiggle out. And then we heard a gunshot, and I saw a muzzle flash from within the jet. No. No, no, no. There was no way they just killed Declan. I refused to believe it, but just in case it was true, we kept Doyle close to the car so that we could stuff him back in and drive off if we had to.

Suddenly, the door of the jet started falling open, revealing the steps that Lachlan started storming down with Declan in front of him. I let out a quiet sigh of relief at the same time as Ian. It didn’t last long, however, since Lachlan immediately put a gun to Declan’s head.

“Bring him here!” Lachlan demanded, referencing Doyle.

Hotch looked over at me. “You’re still the unit chief. It’s your call.”

I sighed quietly while trying to quickly weigh the pros and cons. It certainly wasn’t ideal to put Doyle in Lachlan’s line of fire, but if it was the only way to get Declan…

“Now!” Lachlan yelled.

Within an instant, I was pushing forward, Morgan following lead by helping me move Doyle towards Lachlan. When we were close enough, we pushed him onto his knees and waited for something to happen. Lachlan smiled wickedly. He said something to Doyle, but I wasn’t listening while my attention was trained on Declan and trying to figure out how I was going to grab him on time while Morgan made sure he still had a grip on Doyle. I just had to trust the process, I supposed.

When I heard movement from the jet again, I looked up to see Chloe limping out, holding her stomach from the shot she took from Lachlan. They must have argued about taking our deal. Before I could tell her to stay back, though, I saw how she was raising her arm and aiming at me, Ian, and Morgan.

“Gun!” Morgan shouted, tackling me out of the way just as the sound of a gunshot rang through the air. I groaned as the wind was knocked out of me. Morgan rolled off me to check to see if I was okay. “Are you hit?” I shook my head. “Doyle—” He spun around on his knees to see Ian falling to the ground while holding his bleeding neck. “Shit.”

Another gunshot fired, this time from Chloe aiming directly at Lachlan, instantly killing him. In retaliation, Hotch, Reid, Prentiss, and JJ all shot down Chloe as fast as they could. Hotch ran over to me, putting his hands on my cheeks while scanning my body with my eyes to make sure that I was alright, the same way Morgan had. I inhaled sharply as I caught my breath. I got that Morgan was just trying to protect me, but did he have to go all high school footballer on me? Fucking hell. We were on concrete. The tackle was worse than getting shot, in my opinion.

“Next time, I make the call. And it won’t be this one,” Hotch whispered to me, brushing my hair out of my face.

“Ha. Ha,” I responded sarcastically. “Help me up.” We clasped our hands together, and he pulled me to my feet, letting me stumble into his chest somewhat before I caught my balance. “Thanks.” I patted his chest. “This is why you’re the unit chief.”

He kissed my forehead. “You thought you were doing the right thing, and that’s all we can ever do.”

I glanced over to Doyle who was reaching out for his son, knowing that it would be the last time. A part of me broke somewhat. As much as I despised Doyle, I had nothing against his son, and seeing a bond between a father and his son, even though they hardly knew each other at all, made me think about Hotch and Jack. It could have been Hotch instead of Haley who died in our house two years ago. We were beyond lucky that he was still with us. That I had a husband who loved me, that our daughter had a father who wanted nothing more than to raise her away from all of this chaos, that our son still had a father who would protect him no matter the cost. We were, by some definition, “lucky” that it wasn’t Hotch and Jack there instead of Ian and Declan.

----

By the time we cleaned up the mess at the airstrip, I had called Jessica and asked if she could bring Emily to the office to surprise Hotch, but also because Prentiss asked if she could meet her, and I felt like after the long day we had, we all deserved that. I mean, she was our little sunshine. If anyone could change the mood entirely, it was her.

So, when we all returned to Quantico, I told security to keep an out for Jessica and the baby—to which they all cheered about how excited they were to see her. The team went up to the boardroom to start tearing down all of the photos and evidence on the walls. Another chapter of our lives closed. Over months, we had been working on a case where we only had a fraction of the pieces. The only person who knew every part of it and could end this once and for all had left, but when she came back, it ended, and now we could just breathe again. We had our family back. That had to count for something.

When I saw Jessica arrive in the elevator, I met her there so that I could still surprise Hotch and Prentiss. “Thank you for bringing her,” I said while crouching down in front of the stroller to see my lil’ bug. She was half awake, but just lucid enough to play with my finger as I wiggled it in her face. “I owe you.”

“It’s no big deal, I swear. I was on my way to pick up Jack from a playdate, and this was on the way, anyhow.”

I glanced up at Jessica. “We can pick him up later. You don’t have to race around for us like this.”

Jessica smiled lightly. “What else am I going to do?”

I stopped to think about that for a moment, considering how we were her only family around now that Haley was gone, and Roy was… Well, Roy didn’t like having Jessica around because she was a very hands-on and task-oriented person when it came to family, and he didn’t like how overbearing and protective she was of him. So, we were the only ones that were around and in need of help. I just felt bad sometimes because it felt like she was our nanny or something. Then again, every time this conversation came up where I would tell her that all of this was unnecessary and that I felt bad, she would always argue that she loved doing it and that it was no big deal. If it really were a problem, she would have ditched us months ago.

“Okay,” I gave in. “We’ll see you at home, then.” I stood to hug her.

“See you at home.”

When we parted, she leaned over to say goodbye to baby Emily quickly, then waved to me as she walked towards the elevator. I waved back shortly before pushing the stroller up the ramp towards the boardroom. Inside, I could see and hear everyone chatting and catching up with one another. Rossi was hogging Aaron. He was so happy to have his buddy back after all this time, but he was still trying to convince him to shave the beard. Over my dead body. I loved that beard, and after everything that man put me through today, I was going to get the chance to scratch my fingers through it as he fucked me. Come hell or high water, I was going to make that happen.

I pushed the stroller into the room, and everyone fell silent. This was the first time Hotch had seen her in… months, and this was the first time Prentiss was going to meet her. Everyone wanted to be witness to it, and no one wanted to disrupt the moment. So, when I spun the stroller around, everyone held their breaths. I tried to ignore them as I pulled the top of stroller back to reveal Emily.

“May I hold her?” Prentiss asked, looking up at me with the brightest smile I had ever seen from her before. I nodded. Prentiss reached into the stroller, buried her hands under Emily, and lifted her up. “Hi, there, baby girl…” Prentiss cooed. Emily kicked and fussed in Prentiss’s arms.

As I watched Prentiss rock Emily side to side in her arms, I felt someone’s arms snake around my waist and pull me backwards into a hug. I smiled and rested my head on Hotch’s shoulder. His beard scratched my cheek slightly as he pressed a gentle kiss against it. I giggled and nuzzled into his touch as much as I could while thinking about how I missed this feeling so bad every single second he was away from me. All those rules we had for so long before he left didn't matter anymore. Not when he had been away and all we wanted was to hold each other and love each other.

“She has your eyes, Hotch,” Prentiss said while Emily giggled. “Yes, you do,” Prentiss teased with the same kind of baby-talk voice everyone used around kids. “You are just too darn cute.”

“I missed you so much,” he whispered in my ear before kissing me.

“I’m still mad at you, Aaron,” I whispered only for him to hear. He loosened his grip on me somewhat. “And I don’t know when I’ll stop being mad.” He hid his face in the crook of my neck to hide his disappointment from everyone else. “But I know that I love you, and that, with time, I’ll learn to forgive and forget about this. Until then, I just need you to bear with me while I navigate rebuilding what trust I had given you, and asking you to give me answers, or asking that you give me some space—whatever it is, I just need you to understand. Can you do that?”

He nodded against me.

“We’re going to be okay,” I sighed, almost like I was trying to convince myself, too. “We’re going to be okay…”

-----

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