It was a Sunday morning and Aaron Hotchner was struggling to open his eyes to locate his ringing phone. He moved his hand across the unfamiliar bed side table frantically trying to find it, to avoid waking up the person sleeping beside him. Upon answering the call, expecting it to be JJ loading another case upon his shoulders, he was surprised to hear his ex sister-in-law's voice, Jessica.
"Aaron? Did I wake you?" She said in an apologetic manner. Hotch knew that she wouldn't call him so early in the morning if it wasn't about his son Jack, who was staying with her for the week while he was in Louisiana working to find a serial killer, who was targeting teenage girls and raping them after killing them, it was a tough case and he was happy to be back in Washington.
"No, no, go ahead, what is it?" He tried to put on a voice that would make it seem like he wasn't exhausted from the events that occurred the night before, in a bed that wasn't his own.
"It's Jack. He had a nightmare and just wanted to talk to his daddy. I tried telling him that it was early and that you'd probably still be asleep, but he was really shaken up about it." She replied.
"It's fine, I'd love to talk to him, put him on." He listened to the phone being removed from Jessica's ear and being given to Jack. In a way, Hotch was glad about this phone call, even though he was still half asleep and completely worn out, hearing his son's voice was something he looked forward to, no matter what time of day it was. He waited.
"Daddy? Is that you?" Jack asked. You could tell he'd been crying from the quiver in his voice.
"Yeah Jack, it's daddy. Aunt Jessica told me you had a bad dream, are you okay?" He worried about his son every minute of every day when he wasn't with him. Without his son, he couldn't have gone on when Hayley was murdered, something he always blamed himself for. Jack was his reason to live, the reason he carried on putting psychopaths behind bars, he wanted to protect him and would do whatever he had to, to make sure that happened, even if he wasn't always there with him.
"Yeah daddy, I'm okay, I miss you, when are you coming home?" He tried to ask as many questions as he could fit into one sentence.
"Jack, I'll be home later today, I've only just got off the plane, I miss you too." He just lied to his son. He felt awful for doing so, but he couldn't risk telling anybody where he was the night before. Who he was sleeping with. Who he was sleeping naked against. He couldn't tell anybody, he was confused and this relationship was going to be kept secret. They had both agreed.
"Okay daddy, I love you." The excitement of seeing his father later on in the day was apparent in his voice, this made Hotch happy.
"I love you too Jack, tell your aunt Jessica that I'll be home in a few hours." He replied.
"I will." The phone cut dead. The phone call was very short and Hotch was wondering why Jack avoided telling him what the dream was about. Although he tried not to let it play on his mind as he was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. He flung himself back onto the bed and examined the body of his sleeping partner with his index finger. A yawn broke from the mouth of Spencer Reid.
"Go back to sleep, it's early." Hotch told him.
"I've been drifting in and out of consiousness for about a half hour now. When I first woke you were completely out of it, so I figured I'd go back to sleep, and I managed to, until your phone rang. How is Jack?" Reid asked.
"He's fine. He had a nightmare and wanted to hear my voice." Hotch explained.
"Well why wouldn't he. You have a soothing voice." Hotch felt slightly embarrassed by this, all he could do was give him a slight grin. He was sat up by this point, and leant down to Reid's face and gave him a gentle kiss on the lips and could feel Reid smiling while he was doing so.
"What are you smiling for?" He wondered.
"I'm not sure. I guess it's because I'd always fantasized about this and never actually thought it would happen. I'm happy."