wanna be yours [aaron hotchner x reader]

II.III

But when you turned to look at him and asked how he was so okay, that little voice in his head was urging him to spill it all to you. To tell you everything. Tell you how much he cared for you. How much he still cares for you. He wants the best for you. He always has.

You had the potential to be his great love. The feelings were there, but back then he didn't know how to love. He didn't know what it meant to give your everything to someone. To bare your soul to someone. He did know, however, that you would've given him all of you. No matter the cost to you, you were willing to give him all of yourself. He didn't know much, but he knew that was unfair to you. He knew he had to put a stop to it because you gave him everything and he gave you nothing.

He wanted the best for you. He was incapable of being the best for you. You deserved better than him, and he was not able to be better. That's on him. He knows that. That's no one's fault but his own. You deserve an explanation better than what he gave you.

He doesn't want you back, but he has been finding new levels of beauty within you. Within this new you, that he's just meeting for the first time. You're not a completely different person. The things he once found himself falling for, your wit, your intelligence, your smile, your humor, they're all still there. Yet there's so much new to discover, that he can't help but find himself being drawn into you all over again.

You're much more confident. You stand your ground. He knows that he is to blame for that. He showed you what it was like to have someone walk all over you. You have this air of wisdom that has clearly come about with age and experience.

There's something deeply tragic within your eyes. They were once so bright and full of hope in the world. He can tell that spark has died. Maybe it's something he resonates with, a loss of belief in the good in people, that has him gravitating towards you all over again. He knows you've been through a fair share of tragedies. So has he.

Whoever said opposites attract applies to relationships was dead wrong. There's nothing more appealing to Hotch than someone who completely understands him. Someone who completely understands his motivations, his mind, his feelings. Yet he believes he will never be able to open himself up to love again.

But you seem to give him hope. You might be just what he needs. He has this intuition that if he opened up to you, you would understand him. You would simply listen to him. You've always been good at listening. Maybe you've always been the right person for him. Maybe this is the second chance for the two of you.

Hotch visibly shakes his head, as if attempting to shake the thoughts from his head in the way a swimmer shakes their head to free the water from their ears. Every thought of you feels like a betrayal of his love for Haley. A betrayal of what he had with her. One look at the clock convinces Hotch he should be getting home. It's long past Jack's bedtime but that doesn't mean he can't be there when the kid wakes up. They'll spend the weekend together, doing something Jack loves.

Hotch looks down at the stack of unfinished case files. He still has to check over the team's work from the past week and he's very quickly falling behind the more his mind seems to want to focus on you. He's going to have to do a lot of paperwork this weekend. That's not new for him.

He digs around his pockets for his personal cell, getting ready to text Jessica that he's on his way home. She's probably already asleep, but a text can't hurt. The sound of his work cell ringing fills his body with a deep sense of grief and guilt. Guilty for not seeing his son more often, guilty for tearing JJ away from time with her family, guilty for forcing Garcia to see more of the worst of humanity, guilty of depriving Morgan, Reid, and Prentiss of sleep, guilty of depriving Rossi of his weekends, guilty of forcing you to spend any more time with him.