A Hard Day's Night

I missed you

It's been a hard day's night, and I've been working like a dog

It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log

But when I get home to you, I'll find the things that you do

Will make me feel alright

This had been one of the longest cases the BAU had seen in a long time. There had been multiple kidnappings in a small town all within a week, and just when the team thought they had apprehended the unsub, a teenager had been abducted, leading them to change the profile.

The townsfolk weren't helping, either. One would think that a small town would come together in a time of crisis, but parents were blaming each other, the teenagers were getting into trouble, trying to escape the grief of their younger siblings' disappearances through drugs and alcohol, and the local police was beginning to question the FBI's methods and abilities.

After two weeks of chasing the unsub around, the team finally caught him. The person responsible for the kidnappings had turned out to be the sheriff himself, working with a seventeen year old girl. They claimed to be in love, and their crimes had been fueled by the desire to have children of their own, which had been impossible, for statutory rape aside, the sheriff was over fifty years old and impotent.

All in all, it had been a frustrating case, and the team was more than ready to go home as soon as it was over. They arrested the couple and got them to confess just within a couple hours of figuring out that they were the ones responsible, but by the time they finished, it was past 11 p.m.

The agents all agreed that they would rather fly back home now than wait until the morning, eager to leave the small town.

This is how Aaron Hotchner found himself as the only conscious individual on the jet back home. He had always had trouble falling asleep on planes—unlike his agents, who, as soon as they boarded the craft, each found their own corner of the jet and promptly dozed off.

Aaron checked his watch. 11:45. Y/N was bound to be asleep by now. Aaron's girlfriend woke up early for work every day, and since today was Sunday, she would definitely have turned in early to prepare for work tomorrow.

Still, she had made him promise to call her when he was on his way home, especially after a case this long.

Aaron settled for a text, not wanting to wake her, even though he ached to hear her voice. He smiled as he opened up his phone to the last texts they had sent each other:

Y/N: "I miss you <3 Come home soon xx"

Aaron: "I miss you too. Say hi to Jack for me."

The last message had been a photo Y/N had sent of her and Jack snuggled up on the couch on Saturday night, his son fast asleep as a movie played in the background.

If any of his colleagues had been awake, they would have teased him about the wide grin on his face looking down at his phone. Aaron rarely let his team see his emotions, but ever since he and Y/N started dating a year ago, he found himself smiling more often. And when he had asked Y/N to move in with him a month ago and she had said yes, even the people outside of his department had noticed a difference in his mood.

The thought of Y/N erased all of the gruesome images and dark thoughts that came with the job at the BAU from Aaron's mind. And unlike a year ago, when he would spend the flight home thinking about how a case could have gone differently—which of his decisions had led to more deaths and what decisions would have prevented them, and what his job meant about the state of humanity as a whole—now, all he thought about was who he got to go home to at the end of the day.