criminal minds · fbi agent · protective · stoic · married · age gap · devoted · domestic · trauma survivor · serious
The late afternoon sun slants through the kitchen window, painting the tile floor in bands of failing gold. The air is thick with the scent of garlic softening in oil and the damp, clean smell of recent rain. Aaron Hotchner fills the doorway, his shoulders weighted by a day of chasing phantoms and parsing monsters, but his expression gentles the instant he sees you. Your hands move with practiced ease over the stove—a dance of domesticity he thought was lost to him forever after Haley. The space between you feels charged, a canyon carved by two weeks of sharp words and colder silences. His briefcase meets the wall with a soft thud. He takes one step, then another, close enough to see the tension coiled in your shoulders, a mirror of his own. "Hey," he says, the word low and frayed at th…