Summary: Follow-up to All This Time: It's Not Loaded. READ THAT FIRST! This takes place approximately a week after that story ends.
A/N: Again, these are not in chronological order. I will fill in the gaps in the earlier years as I write more of these. Enjoy!
Age Guide: Hotch: 61, Emily: 56, Sean: 46, Jack: 21, Henry: 18, Charlotte: 16; Ryan and Benjamin: 14
May 2027
"Excuse me?" Emily said into the phone, looking just as appalled as she sounded. Hotch raised a questioning eyebrow as he loosened his tie after a long day at work. Emily gave him a one-minute finger and wandered away. "I appreciate your thorough investigation that is simply accusing my children…Talk to them? Sure, I'll talk to them. Just to humor you. I'll let you know if I find out anything interesting."
"What was that all about?" Hotch asked.
"That was Joe's mother," Emily said with a strangely angry smile. "All four tires on Joe's car were slashed last night. She thinks it was the work of one of our kids."
"Ah, well, isn't that nice?"
Emily didn't give Hotch any warning whatsoever before hollering, "Jack! Henry! Ryan! Benjamin! Living room, right now!"
"So…you think they did it?" Hotch mumbled.
Emily laughed shortly. "You don't? Come on. I heard all four of the boys scheming about something once Ben and Ryan heard the rumors from the younger brother of some kid at Charlotte's school and told Jack and Henry. They even told Sean."
"They all know?"
Emily nodded, waiting for the stampede that never happened. "I know you can hear me!"
"Does Charlie know they know?" Hotch asked somewhat frantically.
"Not that I'm aware of. Where are they?" she asked, hands on her hips. "Will you call them, please?"
"No need, here they come." They heard a few sets of footsteps coming up the basement steps. "Where's Charlie?"
"At a friend's," Emily answered. "One of us needs to go pick her up in twenty minutes."
"About that driver's license," Hotch started.
"If you want to teach her, go ahead. Jack and Henry insist I was an evil driver's ed instructor. You're a lot calmer."
"What?" Jack asked, reaching the top of the basement stairs first. A trail of brothers followed behind him.
"Anyone home?" Sean called from the front door. No one had even heard it open.
"Living room," Hotch called back.
"Sit," Emily spat, pointing to the couch. "No talking, no looking at each other."
Terrified into submission, all four boys sat down, Jack on the far left, then Henry, Ben, and Ryan. "What—" Henry started.
"Shh!" Emily hissed, pointing at Henry and giving him her most menacing glare.
Sean chuckled. "Oh no, what'd they do now?" he asked Hotch as he came up behind him.
"Did their best to ensure justice was served," Hotch said under his breath, right into Sean's ear. Jack heard, though, and smiled.
"No smiling," Emily demanded.
"Em, come on. You don't have anything on them," Hotch said, rolling his eyes lightly and crossing his arms.
"Come on, Aaron. Who has more of a motive than these four?" Emily asked incredulously.
"You're not even going to ask for their alibis?" Hotch asked.
"Fine. Jack, where were you last night?"
"Uhh..." Jack's eyes rolled into the back of his head. "What time?"
"Between the hours of nine and twelve."
"The bar."
"On a Tuesday night? Really? Come on, Jack," Emily said.
Hotch cleared his throat nervously, apparently not keen on disciplinary interrogations but feeling like he couldn't leave now. "Congrats on the burgeoning alcoholic," he said to ease the tension. "You must be proud." Hotch rolled his eyes.
"Which bar?" Emily asked.
"O'Mally's."
"What did you have?"
"Jack, don't listen to her, you're fine," Hotch interjected. "Come on, Emily, he's got a story. Move on."
"Henry," she said, making the second oldest jump in his seat. "Where were you last night?"
"Here."
"Prove it," Emily said.
"Em…just…give me a minute with them, will you?" Hotch requested.
Emily stared coldly at Hotch, who maintained a pleading look until she backed down.
"Fine," she said, holding her hands up. "But nobody goes anywhere."
"We're all staying right here," Hotch reassured her. He waited until Emily had retreated toward the front of the house before he sat down on the coffee table in front of the boys. "Okay, guys, if you fess up to me, I can make sure Mom stays cool about it, okay? I'll explain that you had Charlie's best interests at heart and all you'll have to do is promise you won't do it again. Just…tell me who did it and we can work from there."
All four of the boys looked back and forth at one another and shrugged. "We have no clue what you're talking about," Ben said.
"Hey, uh…" Sean whispered from a few feet away, glancing toward the kitchen and seeing that the coast was clear. "Exactly how pissed do you think she is?"
Hotch's eyebrows formed a deep v. "Very. Why?"
"I uh…have a confession to make, but you've gotta promise not to let her kill me."
The jaws of all of the boys dropped and Hotch's eyes grew large. "You did it?"
"Did what?" Ryan asked.
"Someone slashed Joe's tires," Hotch explained. "That was you?" he whispered to Sean, knowing the boys could hear him, but grateful that Emily couldn't.
"The kid was an assho—jerk, sorry. It was a dumb move. I didn't think the boys'd be blamed for it."
"How did you even know where he lived?" Hotch asked.
"Internet. It happened like thirty-five years ago, man. Get with it."
Hotch's eyes glinted. "Did you really have to do all four tires?" he asked, not cracking a grin, but his voice amused enough to make up for it.
Sean shrugged innocently as the boys started to chuckle. "Like I said, he deserved it. And more."
"As much as I wanna see Mom tear Uncle Sean a new one, we were all kinda busy," Henry said. "We were in the middle of a game. Can we go now?"
"Yeah," Hotch said, "just…keep quiet about it and steer clear of your mom."
The boys left the room, giving Sean quiet high fives on their way out. "You have to tell her," Hotch said. "Otherwise she'll never believe them. Or me."
Sean scratched his stubbly chin. "Do you think we can somehow convince Emily that she woke up in the middle of the night and did it?"
"Sean, you're forty-six, come on" Hotch said in disbelief. "And…slashing someone's tires? I never even did that as a kid."
Sean ignored Hotch's remark. "How about I call you, and you answer, and pretend it's Joe's folks calling and apologizing, saying they found out a neighbor did it?"
"Sean, she was a supervisory special agent in the FBI and she could probably still have you on the ground and in cuffs if you didn't know what was coming. And where do you think we perfected our 'good cop, bad cop' routine?"
"Shit," Sean sighed. "Fine, I'll tell her. What do you think she'll do to me?"
Hotch laughed, wrapping his arm around his brother's shoulders. "Something tells me there's another woman you need to worry about a little more. And she has no idea that you or any of the boys know what happened last weekend."
"So what am I supposed to do?"
"Kiss Emily's ass and then pay off Joe so he doesn't say anything at school. Buy him whatever new tires he wants, wash his car, clean it out, give him a backrub, do his homework for him, I don't care. Listen…I appreciate where you're coming from. I get it. I would love to stick bamboo shoots under the kid's fingernails. But I can't. And you can't do things like this, either. And Charlie absolutely cannot find out. She'd be mortified if she knew everyone was talking about it."
Sean's eyes drifted shut. "Fine…I'll make it right."
"Thank you. And I mean that. For everything," Hotch said with still twinkling eyes.
"May I go back in now?" Emily asked when Hotch and Sean found her waiting on the front porch.
"I've released our suspects," Hotch announced. He looked at Sean, gesturing for him to tell Emily before she went off on Hotch for letting the boys go.
"They lawyered up," Sean said with a smirk.
"Very funny," Emily said. "Seriously, what's going on?"
Sean coughed, filled his lungs with air, and crossed his arms bravely. "It was me."
Emily laughed. "Oh, come on. Can't you come up with something a little more creative than that?"
"He did it, Em. You saw the boys. None of them even knew what you were talking about," Hotch said.
"You…slashed a teenager's car tires?" Emily asked.
"I didn't think the boys would get blamed, I swear. Otherwise I wouldn't have done it. Or I would've waited a while till he thought he was safe."
"That's not helping your case," Hotch said under his breath.
"Sean, what if she finds out about all of this?" Emily asked. "How are you going to fix this? It's far worse than one of her brothers doing it. They would almost be seen as heroes, especially if it'd been Henry and Jack, since they're alum. Joe probably wouldn't have said anything if he suspected one of them. But you? You've…really earned the title of 'crazy uncle' here, you know."
Sean smiled softly. "I know."
"Can you please talk to the boys yourself and make sure they understand that you regret doing it? I don't want them getting any ideas," Emily said.
"Of course."
Hotch dug a beeping phone from his pocket. "That's Charlie. She's ready for a pickup. I really don't feel like driving."
"Me neither," Emily said, massaging her forehead. "Sean, can you go grab her? It's not far."
Hotch looked at Sean and made a smooching noise, then nodded toward Emily, who looked at him strangely.
"Right, yeah, sure. Happy to. Send me the address." Sean trotted over to his car.
"God, I need a drink," Emily said dramatically when she and Hotch walked back inside, Hotch sending directions to his brother on his phone.
He laughed. "You've got to admit…you wished you could've done something. You're kind of glad he did, right?"
Emily's lips slanted. "Maybe. As long as he finds a way to keep Charlotte from getting embarrassed." She opened up the fridge to take out a dish of chicken that had been marinating all day and set it on the counter.
"You've got to admit something else, too," Hotch murmured as he wrapped his arms around Emily's waist from behind.
"What's that?"
"We've still got it, after all this time. You were a spectacular bad cop considering how you were almost always the good cop."
Emily giggled and turned in Hotch's arms. "And you were a very good good cop. In a very bad, naughty way…"
"I love when we have…" Hotch paused to brushed his lips against Emily's. "…a room to ourselves for fifteen seconds…"
"You know, it's a shame we never got into handcuffs, or that baton of yours," Emily said, running a hand down the length of Hotch's back and smoothing it over his rear.
"God, that's disgusting," Henry groaned, covering his eyes and wandering to the fridge with an arm out in front of him.
"Hey, watch your mouth," Emily scolded, letting go of her husband. "And get out of the fridge. Dinner's in a half hour."
"Did you get your hair cut today?" Henry asked her.
"Yeah, I did at lunch, actually. Do you like it?" Emily asked, playing with the ends.
"It looks nice," Henry said with a smile.
"Did you see that?" Emily asked Hotch. "Your son noticed I got my hair cut. You didn't," she ranted while Henry sneaked into the fridge and grabbed something.
"You know that was a random guess. I use the same strategy," Hotch said with a wink.
—
"Hey, Charlie Brown," Sean said when Charlotte opened up the passenger door of his car, tossing her backpack into the back seat.
"Hi. So…?"
"Worked," Sean said with a self-satisfied smile.
Charlotte gasped and covered her mouth. "Really? They bought it? They really bought it?"
Sean shrugged. "It was an easy sell. I haven't always set the best example for you guys. I've got some stories for when you're older. Anyway, they never once suspected you."
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Charlotte cried. "And thanks for the ride last night. And the knife. And the idea."
"Yeahhhh…let's make sure they never find out about this one, okay? You guys have a really nice big screen TV and free beer whenever I want it. I'd hate to lose my privileges."
"I swear, I'll never tell a soul. It can be our secret."
"Think you need to get back at the twins for yapping in the first place?" Sean offered. "I pulled a few good pranks in my day and I've obviously still got the touch."
Charlotte shook her head. "I heard them all talking about all the stuff they wished they could get away with. That's enough for me. How're you gonna get out of this, though?"
"I won't. I'll replace his tires and keep him quiet. But this is your Christmas present for this year. And maybe your birthday present next year. Or for two years, depending on the tires."
A/N: Reviews are love!
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