Stubborn Games (Aaron Hotchner x Reader)

two: house of cards

You did not have the liberty of running your mind boundlessly over Hotch's words, pick at them until they were just raw scabs in your memory like you wanted. No, you wouldn't give that man an inch of a thought.

After all, no game was ever won overthinking.

Coffee orders, that's what preoccupied your mind. Your Capitol Hill internship days were not entirely lost on you, and, considering how far you had come in your career, getting coffee would have normally been a disorienting and underwhelming task if there ever was one.

But this time, coffee orders were not a means of appeasing a pretentious, self-centered boss to gain a political advantage in a highly biased and unethical field. It was to show a sign of gratitude to the team before a grueling day of paperwork, feeling rather grateful that the team had taken to you this quickly despite your overbearing and adamant presence.

You could imagine being in their shoes, having a bureaucratic stronghold come into a tight-knit team with the intentions of changing — fixing —things, but the team had been particularly welcoming. That is, everyone but Hotch.

Even Prentiss, whose mother had destroyed the concept of politics and diplomacy in her eyes had taken kindly to you. In fact, the two of you shared a mutual hatred for Ambassador Prentiss which seemed to be a positive in Prentiss' eyes and an advantage in yours.

At the BAU, you stumbled out of the elevator balancing the drinks in both hands, revving up muscle memory and trying to defy the confines of gravity as Derek rushed to help you. The team accepted them with open arms and a bounty of compliments, and for a moment you felt like you'd earned your spot on the team.

The feeling of acceptance withered with age as Hotch came down to the bullpen, making small talk with Rossi. Empty handed. His eyes maliciously glazed over the drinks. He didn't make mention of it, but you were sure he noticed it. His eyes, so apathetically reserved, told you everything you needed to know. He knew your motive, your spite.

"How did you know I preferred tea over coffee?" Reid asks with trivial enjoyment, wrapping his fingers around the cup as he snagged you out of your own thoughts. You had been staring too long at Hotch, the way his white button down stretched across his broad back and the subtle way his jaw clenched every time he saw you looking at him.

And even though looking at him was a simple biological motion, a flash of your optic nerves, every glance was fueled with temptation and sinful restraint. And there was something achingly familiar in his eyes too; you just couldn't decipher it.

"Call it a lucky guess," you say to Reid, which was the farthest thing from the truth. Garcia, who normally would have dismissed the notion of politics getting involved with the BAU, had taken keenly to your arrival after researching your push for more progressive legislation.

She helped sort out the coffee orders for you, eager to do so after she kindly pestered you about your thoughts on national cybersecurity and something briefly on hacking government databases about Princess Diana's true cause of death which you chose to overlook.

You back away from Reid — noticing his contentment in the thought that went into his drink — and headed towards JJ's desk to bring her an iced coffee. As you turned around on your heel, you felt the solid thud of your body against Hotch's towering stance and the slip of the cup from your hand.

And even though the impact alone is enough to get your nerves in scrambles, it's his touch, his skin brushed up against yours momentarily like yesterday at the gun range. It's enough to knock you off your senses, the unspoken tension mounting between the two of you until it's suffocating your train of thought.