A/N: One day, on Twitter, Ikidyounot, I asked my followers to guess how many donuts I had eaten that day. FFN user tayababy guessed correctly (5, yeah, I know, oink, but donuts and ice cream are my kryptonite). Her prompt was "HP + Jack + a cross country car ride!" so here you go!
Thanks to my beta SussiRay who assured me that this wasn't total crap :)
Jack was out cold in his booster seat in the back of the car. He, along with Aaron and Emily, a miniature family in the making, one could say, were en route to see Aaron's ex-sister-in-law, Jessica. A year or so after Haley's death, Aaron and Emily had established a relationship and while Jack still needed a nanny of some sort, having Jessica in the picture had gotten kind of awkward. Emily and Aaron had decided not to disclose their relationship to anyone but Jack, who thought it was quite a fun game to keep their big secret.
Jessica had gotten a job offer in Los Angeles and had decided to take it upon Aaron's insistence. She still hadn't found out why Aaron was so eager to get her out of the picture. He hadn't had ill intentions, of course, but he simply needed to move on. Jessica was one more thing that reminded him of Haley's traumatic end. Emily was moving him forward. Not to mention the fact that he didn't want to be judged for getting into a relationship after Haley's death. He felt like he had waited plenty long enough, but foresaw Jessica being offended.
Jessica now hadn't seen Jack in over a year, and after several failed attempts at setting and keeping a date for a trek out west, Emily, Aaron, and Jack were finally about halfway there, whizzing over the dusty rural highway in Nowheresville, Oklahoma. While Emily took a catnap against her hot window, Hotch squinted his eyes against the setting sun that occupied the exposed bit of windshield between the hood and the bottom of the sun visor. Not even his hundred-dollar pair of sunglasses provided complete alleviation.
Aaron loved Emily, and of course loved Jack. But ninety-nine percent of his waking hours were spent either working with Emily or at home with both of them. So this moment where he was somewhere new (albeit kind of boring) with no one asking him questions or wanting him to do something for them was rather glorious. He delighted in the time alone to think.
He smiled to himself and wondered how long it had taken for the team to realize that his and Emily's "upcoming" vacations started on the same day. They would all put two and two together. JJ and Garcia would probably doubt it, because the two of them were best friends with Emily and would certainly have expected to hear from her that she was dating their former unit chief (his voluntary demotion was mostly to do with Emily, although the team just assumed it was just because he wanted to be a better father), especially as they had been together for over a year now. Rossi would have no trouble doubting it. Reid probably wouldn't care much. Morgan would probably be happy that someone on the team was getting some. Resting his hand weightlessly on Emily's, Hotch remembered that by taking this vacation together, he and Emily had decided it no longer mattered where the team, their friends, stood on the matter. They would get back from their perfectly overlapping vacations to a lot of questions, which they would probably answer, and they would suffer any career-related consequences together.
Aaron glanced into the rear-view mirror to see if Jack was still sleeping. He was. And so was Emily. Aaron's stomach rumbled suddenly and painfully. He reached for the giant plastic zipper bag full of little bags of cookies and crackers. Empty. Perfect. A billboard for a truck stop with a homestyle diner appeared just in time. In 3 miles, he parked the car. Emily, a light sleeper, woke up the second Aaron's foot touched the brakes. Jack's head just lolled to the side.
Emily yawned, irresistible to Hotch right at that moment. She moaned. "Dinner time?"
"Sorry, I'm starving," Hotch said. He felt guilty for not sucking it up and waiting a little longer, but it was nearing seven o'clock and they hadn't eaten any real food since breakfast. Emily craned her neck to see whether Jack was still asleep, and upon seeing that he was, she knew what to do. While Aaron got out of the car and pocketed his wallet, Emily noiselessly opened Jack's door and with her gentle hands lifted the fiftyish pounds of dead weight from the booster seat. As always, he didn't wake up at Emily's touch like he did his father's, which had earned her the title of Designated Picker Upper when Jack was sleeping. Hotch grinned and lay a hand across Emily's lower back, letting her pass before him inside.
"No," she chided Aaron after they were seated by a hostess with one foot in the grave. He had taken out his cell phone. "You said..."
"I know what I said. I'm not going to answer any messages, I just want to check them." Aaron looked up to smile innocently, but upon seeing the impatient look on Emily's face, made a show of putting the phone back in his pocket.
"Thank you," she said. She perused her menu for a few minutes and decided on a club sandwich. "Any interesting messages?" she asked.
Aaron laughed. "I thought you didn't care."
"Yeah, yeah. Come on."
"Nothing urgent."
"Which is why you were willing to put the phone away, right?"
Aaron cocked an eyebrow. "Perhaps."
"We're both pathetic." Emily smiled across the table at Aaron.
"What'll it be, dears?" a waitress, not much younger than the hostess, asked upon approaching.
"I'll have the club sandwich," Emily said. Looking toward Aaron, she added, "He'll have the house salad with dressing on the side, and can we both get some water?"
The waitress smirked at Hotch. "Got the wife orderin' for ya, honey?"
"Not my wife, but sometimes it feels like it," Hotch replied with as much spunk, though not smiling.
"And what about the little guy?"
"A cheeseburger would be great," Hotch said.
"For you or the boy?" the waitress quipped. She smiled and walked off.
"I had my eye on the chicken fried steak. Salad?" Hotch said, uncharacteristically whiny.
"Hey, you know what the doctor said. Your blood pressure's too high."
Aaron rolled his eyes. "Every guy my age with my amount of stress and my personality has high blood pressure. Besides, it's vacation."
Emily raised two challenging eyebrows. "You promised me. Plus, you ate a ton of crackers and other crap in the car."
"Okay, now you're nagging."
Aaron looked genuinely bothered. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's only because I love you and I want to grow old with you, not without you."
He lost his sour attitude when she took his hand in hers. "Can I at least get some fries or something? No salt? I just need some sort of real food in me besides that yard work."
"That sounds fine." Emily didn't mean to sound so bossy, but Aaron didn't listen well to polite suggestions, so she found herself having to kick it up a notch most times. "I do love you. I mean it."
He rubbed the back of her hand with his other one. "I know." He wasn't big on public displays of affection beyond hand holding, but he leaned across the table to kiss Emily on the lips, just to let her know he wasn't upset.
"Hey," Emily said in a hushed tone after a few moments, "Did you realize J-A-C-K hasn't said 'are we there yet?' even once?"
"Yes, and I'm planning to keep it that way," Hotch said. "So please don't give him any ideas."
"Speaking of that, where are we stopping tonight?"
"How about Oklahoma City?" Aaron suggested.
"I thought we agreed to keep it kind of rustic, out of the city"
"I thought you were scared of roadside motels," Aaron said.
"Not when I'm with you and we have three guns," she said, her eye twinkling.
Jack rubbed his eyes and leaned away from Emily. "Morning, sunshine," she said, sitting him down in his own chair.
"I want a milkshake," was his response.
"You've got a cheeseburger on the way. How about you finish that and see if you're still hungry."
Jack frowned and scratched his head. "Are we there yet, Daddy?"
Emily stifled a giant laugh as Aaron mouthed a "Thanks a lot" to her. "No, buddy, we're only halfway there. So please don't ask that, otherwise the trip will feel a lot longer. We still have another day in the car."
"Why are we driving?" Jack asked. "I wanna take a plane."
"Because I wanted some vacation time with just the three of us," Aaron said.
"Why?"
"Because I love you both and I love vacation, so I thought it all might go together nicely."
"Why?"
Emily tucked her lips in, still holding on to giggles. She loved watching Aaron suffer Jack's sometimes incessant questioning.
"Because. And if you ask 'why' one more time, we're gonna have to go home."
"Oh come on," Emily said. "Don't be so mean."
Jack looked at her thankfully. "Where are we gonna sleep tonight, Daddy? Can we stay at a place with a pool like last night?"
"Sorry, buddy. Emily wants to stay somewhere a little more old-fashioned."
"Nice. Make me the bad guy." She rolled her eyes. "Your daddy wants to, too. It was his idea, but I can read his mind, so he didn't even have to say it. I just know what he's thinking."
Jack's eyes widened. "Really?"
Emily nodded, delighting in Aaron's irritated stare. "Ooh, look, there's your cheeseburger. And your daddy's salad, and my sandwich."
"Excuse me, can I please get an order of fries, too?" Aaron asked the waitress as she set their food down.
"No," Emily said.
The old woman chuckled. "He's not that fat, honey," she said to Emily.
Hotch's jaw dropped. "No, not at all. He's just been bad," Emily said authoritatively.
"Oh, I see." The waitress took off again, laughing to herself.
"I was bad?" Aaron asked.
"You tried to turn me into the bad guy."
"And then you covered for that by making up your own super power," Aaron said incredulously.
Jack sat on his own side of the table with the perfect view of both of them, his head bobbing back and forth like he was watching a tennis match. His burger didn't interest him too much.
"Your daddy is so easy to bother," Emily said to Jack. "Say, 'Daddy, you're bad.'"
"Daddy, you're bad!" Jack gleefully echoed.
Aaron hid his face behind his hands and dragged them down, stretching the skin. "I am going to eat my salad now. And then we are going to go find a hotel with lots of bugs."
Emily cringed. "Okay, don't get him started on bugs," she said.
"Bugs? Cool!"