Oxytocin [aaron hotchner]

five

If it wasn't your blaring alarm that woke you up, the throbbing headache would have eventually. You open your eyes slowly and blink rapidly, as if that will get rid of the feeling your head got bashed in what a hammer. Your hands finds your forehead and you rub your eyes slowly, adjusting to the ray of sunshine peeping through the curtains.

With your eyes still closed you snatched your phone from the nightstand and turned off the alarm. Sadly, the jet was taking off at 9AM so you all had to wake up early again, no matter the hangover. It was 7:30 in the morning right now.

After contemplating life for a couple of minutes trying to wake yourself up, you slipped out of bed and sat up right. You didn't even remember drinking as much? Maybe that's why you didn't remember.

You slowly stumble across the room and head into the bathroom, you look at yourself in the mirror and find yourself looking a hot mess. You simply cannot allow yourself to look like this with your colleagues nearby and decide to take a quick shower. Once you're out again you wrap yourself in a big fluffy towel and make your way back to the bedroom. There's a knock on your hotel door. You narrow your eyes as you look at the door but decide to take a look. It was Emily, leaning against the doorframe with closed eyes. Objectively she looks fine but you can tell by the bags under her eyes and her kind of messy hair that she didn't get much sleep either.

"Kill me now, make it short and quick." She mumbles as she stumbles into your room, collapsing on your bed. You laugh to yourself at the sight of her. "Here," you say as you walk over to your go-bag. You grab your little pouch with medicine and a bottle of water from the mini fridge. "Take this" you hand her an aspirin and the water. You take one for yourself too.

"Y/N, why do you look like you've just stepped out of a hot photoshoot? You look amazing." She sighs at the sight of you and after drinking some water, she lays back down on your bed. You can't help but laugh and thank her for the compliment. Yet you don't feel like how Emily is describing you right now. You grab some clothes from your go-bag and head back into the bathroom to get changed. You've chosen a pair of black jeans, kind of flaring out at the bottom with a black long sleeved turtleneck and your black leather coat on top. Your white sneakers being the only pop of colour in the whole outfit. Emily groans at the sight of you "oh my god, you look so hot." You laugh at her and start packing your things. It's about 8:15 when you're all done and you tell Emily to go get her stuff.

You're left alone to walk down to the lobby and once you're there the only team member to be sitting there all ready to go is your chief. He's on his phone. "Good morning, Y/N" he says with a smile. You cannot believe he looks this put together right now. You know he didn't drink last night but he still only had a couple hours of sleep? But then again, this man was used to not sleeping much so I guess that's just part of the charm at this point. "You look..." he says, subtly eyeing you up and down
"- well rested". You give him a tight lipped smile and sit in one of the remaining chairs in the lobby.

It takes a while for everyone to get their asses to the lobby and Derek was constantly yapping that we were gonna miss the plane. "It's our own jet, Morgan " Emily snickered as the strolled out the hotel with her bag slinging behind her. You couldn't help but laugh, seeing Derek's face. "The lack of sleep messed with your head pretty boy." You giggle.

You finally all make it onto the plane, everyone sinking into their seats immediately. Somehow you've ended up in a double seat with Hotchner. You weren't paying enough attention because you were arguing with Reid about whether or not Halloween is the best holiday. It's taking everything in you not the look at Hotchner and pretend to be reading the magazine you snatched from the hotel lobby. It was about gardening too, which didn't even appeal to you in the slightest.

"Agent Y/N, I wanted to talk to you about something." He begins, talking in a low voice. You quickly scan the plane and notice that everyone is either sleeping of have headphones on. You focus your attention on your boss sitting across you, "yes sir?" You suddenly start to feel a bit warm and your hands are beginning to feel clammy. You wonder if this is about last night. If that was the case, you were already feeling mortified because it happened, let alone that he would confront you about it the next day. You thought you were both just gonna pretend it didn't happen? Not that anything notable actually happened but still- you always choose to just ignore stuff like this until it goes away. When things like this happen, you're not the confrontational kind of girl. "Hotch, please." he smiles.

"Right, Hotch."

"I was thinking of setting your evaluation back a bit. You did great work on this case and I'm certain that in a couple of weeks you'll be noticing more changes. Let's work on it a bit more before doing anything official." He explains, his eyes never leaving your face.

You nod as you're taking it all in. You're trying to hold back from sighing in relief that he didn't bring up what happened last night. "Of course, that sounds good. Thank you for wanting to help me with this." You smile at him, "it means a lot."

He lightly shrugs, still not taking his eyes off of you. "But don't worry about the evaluation anyway. You're going great, it'll be more of a formality if anything."

"Okay."

He returns his attention to his phone and that leaves you with your eyes still on him. His brows draw together as he's reading something on his screen. "Oh and by the way," he says while still holding his attention to his phone. "It took everything in me not to buy a pack of cigarettes earlier this morning. Last night created a sort of... hunger within me. Apparently." He says

You don't say anything back because it feels like your lips are stitched shut. All you get out is a nervous chuckle. All you could think about right now was the way you were so close together and how it felt intimidating to be near him like that but also... exhilarating. Familiar, somehow.
You both remain silent for the rest of the flight, ready to go home for a couple of days after this case. Usually when we've been gone for at least a week, we get a couple of days off. That doesn't always work because cases are always just around the corner - if not waiting for us.

You get home to your one bedroom apartment, which is only a 20 minute drive from Quantico. One thing you always did was, or at least tried to, was immediately putting the contents of your go-bag in the washer before doing anything else. You never knew when you would have to leave again.

Once you were done with that, your cat walked around the corner meowing loudly as a form of greeting. "Oh hi Elio" you smile as you scoop him up from the floor and hug him.

You don't do much the rest of the day, despite it being only 2PM once you arrived back home. It felt like you barely got any sleep during the week the team was in Idaho.

Suddenly your phone buzzed in the pocket of your sweatpants.

Penelope Garcia
"I'm so sorry my sweet, but Hotch wants us back in here tomorrow morning at 9AM.
Love, P."

You sigh loudly but quickly type a reply:
"I was gonna be bored anyway. See you tomorrow :)"