The team were relaxing on the BAU jet, on their way back to Quantico after a hard case in Florida. They had had to practically drag Penelope onto the jet as she had wanted to stay to visit the Harry Potter World while they were in the state. When they had been called in for this case, Reid had appeared with a new haircut, shorter and wavier and just plain cuter than what he had before. However, due to the case they hadn't said anything...yet. They took their usual seats on the jet, all of them subconsciously pairing up; Hotch and Emily sat opposite each other, Pen and Derek cosied up next to each other so they could share his ipod, JJ and Spencer sitting together and Dave sat at the back on his own, he liked his space and also to observe his fellow team members.
"Well, now the case is over, we can get around to the really important issue at hand. Reid, would you like to explain to the group?" Emily announced to the team.
"Explain what?" Reid looked confused at the others staring at him.
"Your hair, Spence." JJ told him.
"What about it? I cut it." Reid was still confused as to why his hair was conversation worthy.
"It's a little different."
"Reid man, you look like a girl."
"I know it's a little fluffy. It wasn't quite what I asked for but I didn't have the heart to tell the girl that I didn't like it." Reid explained, patting his hair, trying to flatten it even a little.
"It hardly shouts federal agent Reid." Hotch commented without looking away from the file he was looking over.
"I think he gets the point guys. He has a tragic haircut, we've all been there." Rossi said trying to save Reid from further insult.
"Hmm, I'm intrigued. What was the famous David Rossi's tragic hairstyle?"
"It wasn't too bad, well I went for the whole stereotypical gelled back Italian look back in the day." The girls snickered but Reid didn't seem surprised at his choice.
"It had a ponytail on the end." Hotch added, he was nothing if not honest.
"Yes but I wasn't going to mention that, thanks Aaron." Dave hissed at him.
"And you thought my hair was girly." Reid joked while the rest of the team laughed at Dave and his hair shame.
"Come on, someone else tell their worst hair story, I feel targeted here." Dave really wanted them to leave him alone, he had liked that ponytail after all.
"You all know mine already, courtesy of a Miss Garcia." Emily volunteered to the group. Pen smiled proudly in response.
"Actually, I didn't see it, the only ones who saw the picture were Pen and Spence." JJ pouted.
"Ooh! I have it on my phone." Seeing Emily's jaw drop she explained that she was using it as Emily's caller ID, and also as future blackmail material.
"I hate yearbooks." Emily grumbled miserably while Pen flicked through her phone to find the incriminating hairstyle of a teenage Emily Prentiss. She quickly found what she was looking for and sent it to the ipad of everyone in the room. The image of Emily dressed as a Goth with hair bigger than the White House was a disappointment to no one, as they had all burst out laughing. JJ had to hold her sides as she was getting a stitch.
"Very hot Princess." Morgan taunted her.
"Not a surprise, it fits your personality to have dressed like this." Dave said, looking at the image critically.
If she wasn't mistaken, Emily could have sworn she saw Hotch's lips twitch like he was holding back a grin. 'So I just have to make an ass out of myself to get him to smile, great' Emily thought. "Okay, enough. JJ, how about you?" Deflection, always works.
JJ thought hard but there really hadn't been any embarrassing hair incidents that she could think of. "Nope, my hair has always been similar to this, nothing drastic, nothing embarrassing."
"Ever?" Pen was shocked, everyone had at least one bad hair day.
"I crimped my hair once for a school dance and that was a bad choice, but other than that, nothing. Sorry to disappoint you." She said, relieved at not having anything to be embarrassed about for once.
"So unfair." Emily whined, her high school photo still staring up at her from her ipad in her lap. "Derek, please tell me you have something shameful?" She pleaded with him.
"Sure I do, before I joined the force and started shaving my head; I had the hugest afro possible. I couldn't even do anything with it, it just was there. My sisters all tried to fix it, or at least calm it down but nothing. I couldn't even cornrow it like other guys because it just wouldn't stay flat enough to braid it." He laughed at himself, remembering the things he used to try to flatten it, those things he would definitely never be mentioning to anyone.
"Aww, Derek let his sisters play hairdresser on him! How cute." JJ teased him.
"Under that rock hard delicious body of his is a centre of pure marshmallow." Pen gushed over him, squeezing his bicep in the process. Dave shook his head; he could say for sure he had never met anyone like Penelope Garcia.
"Thank you my sherbet mama." Derek returned, kissing her forehead like he had done a million times before.
"Penelope, do you have a hair story to share with us or have all your hairstyles come under the radar as Garcia-approved?"Reid asked her.
"There was one, which I really regretted. There had been a film out about the ocean or something and I really got into the whole sea theme. Well, I had my hair cut into a bob, so just past my ears and then for some unholy reason which I don't recall, I dyed half of my hair blue and the other half green. Biggest mistake of my life." The whole team laughed hard at the thought of Pen looking like a mermaid.
"That just leaves you Boss-man. Tell us your tale." Pen had thoroughly enjoyed this plane ride and when she got back to her office, planned to find evidence of all of these hairstyle, perhaps make them into new ID badges, or maybe t-shirts.
Before Hotch could deny anything, Dave interrupted. "Oh, back when I was still his boss, he cut his hair really short, I'm talking marine buzzcut here. Made his head look huge." Dave enjoyed making his protégé suffer humiliation, it wasn't often that he found something to use on him.
"As much as I would have loved to see that, and laugh at you, that's neither surprising nor good enough to top what we have heard from our previous contestants." JJ told him. They were disappointed that there really wasn't too much dirt on Aaron Hotchner that they could use on him at a later date.
"You are so not escaping that easily Hotchner." Emily announced to him, smirking at him with an evil glint in her eye. "He has definitely had worse than a buzzcut." She sat back and smiled broadly as he tried to give her one of his copyrighted glares, which was obviously pointless right now.
"How do you know? More importantly, what was it?" Even Reid was getting excited at the revelation about his supervisor.
"Okay let me set the scene. This was about twenty years ago, and young Aaron Hotchner was not yet the FBI agent we see here before us today, he was a trainee lawyer hoping to get ahead in the legal world, and he ended up working for Ambassador Prentiss."
"He worked for your mother?" JJ was loving this new information, and slightly annoyed that no one had told her this, but from the look on her other teammates faces, they had no more knowledge of their previous meeting than she did. 'Why haven't they ever mentioned it?' She thought conspiratorially.
"Yeah, unfortunately for him. Anyway, this was before I went to college so I was still living with my mother which was lucky for me as I got to witness the masterpiece that was Hotch's hair."
"You knew each other before the BAU?"
"Really not the point here JJ." Emily waved her off.
"Prentiss." Hotch warned, getting more and more fearful. She just smiled at him, there was no way he would stop her telling them.
"Are you trying to keep secrets from your team Hotch?"
"Prentiss, please. Emily." He really did look desperate now, he was speaking through clenched teeth. When he called her by her first name, she lost the evil smile, but still looked mischievous.
"Sorry Hotch, I can't save you from the truth. Fellow teammates, Agent Hotchner here is guilty of sporting a mullet." The cabin was filled with nothing but loud laughter and agents bending over having to hold their sides, Pen actually had tears of laughter coming out her eyes.
"It was the eighties, a decade of bad hair decisions." As Hotch tried to justify his mullet the team just laughed harder at the fact that he was attempting to justify having it. When they wouldn't stop laughing at him, he just put his head in his hands and stared down at the table.
"I so wish I could have seen that." Dave chuckled.
"Oh, there are pictures." Emily said casually, ignoring the death glare being sent by the man sitting opposite her.
"It's like Christmas has come early." Pen actually looked like the epitome of joy at the mention of photographic evidence.
"Dear God." Hotch moaned at the thought of what they could do with those images. His phone buzzed in his pocket from a text.
'Do I tell them about the bandana?' – Emily
And he had thought the humiliation couldn't get worse. 'Why had he let her on his team?' he thought.
'No, please don't.' – Aaron
'It's going to cost you.' – Emily
'No paperwork for a week?' – Aaron
'The bandana was blue if I remember right. And the things Pen would do with those pictures...' – Emily
'This is blackmail' – Aaron
She didn't reply to that one, he looked at her and found her looking at the table looking guilty and a little sad if he was reading her correctly. His humour definitely did not translate in text.
'Tomorrow night. Dinner. With me.' – Aaron
He couldn't look up at her as he sent the message, fearing that he had made a huge mistake and gone too far, but still hopeful she'd say yes.
'What bandana?' – Emily
He looked up to see her smiling at him, a smile he happily returned.