Chapter One: Where We Are Now

Tagged for smut, drug use, and adult themes.

AN: For those who are unfamiliar with the His Dark Materials universe, this is basically all you need to know (taken from the wiki)

A dæmon /ˈdiːmən/ is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily, almost instantaneously, to become any creature, real or imaginary. During their adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons and their humans are almost always of different genders.

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"Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together?
Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences."

Emery Allen

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Aaron Hotchner never really put much stock in the idea of fate. It seemed a flippant, obscure concept, and one that was contradictory to the way he lived his life.

When he pointed this out to Spencer Reid, Reid said nothing but looked to their daemons.

The wolfdog and the hare, laying together. The wolfdog that wasn't everything she seemed, and the hare that was so much more.

"I'm open to the concept," Reid replied simply, and thought privately that only fate could result in the perfection of this moment.

After all, he'd never put much stock in the idea of love, and look how that had turned out.

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When Aaron Hotchner was thirty-two and Spencer Reid barely past twenty, they walked into each other lives with hardly a thought for how this would shape them. Over the next ten years, this singular choice by both of them resulted in them being built up, broken, rebuilt again. Their daemons were their constant.

Aureilo was Reid's voice until he couldn't be any longer. The hare vanished one day in a flurry of gold Dust that slipped between Hotch's fingers, and what emerged from that was a Reid that was broken by the experience but far stronger for the recovery from it.

Halaimon never wanted anything until the day the hare was lost. Solitary, reserved, and coolly aware that she was an aspect of her human he'd rather remained hidden, she never let any part of him show that he didn't allow. When the hare returned, this changed. They had what they wanted, and she clung to it with a tenacity and dragged him with her.

Whether it was fate or a stubborn bullheadedness from the four of them, their future was sealed.

"What are we doing, Aur?" Reid asked his daemon quietly the morning of his wedding. The hare itched at the ragged scar that marked the ear he'd lost protecting their son—their son, because Jack had been theirs as well as Aaron's from the day he was two, and he always would be no matter how this ended—and shrugged awkwardly with shoulders not suited to the movement.

"Moving forward," Aureilo finally answered, and hopped slowly to the door. "Now hurry up. I'm tired of waiting."

Fate or choice, they could be glad of this.

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When Aaron Hotchner was forty-two, he vowed this:

"Spencer William Reid," he said, and paused because Rossi was looking oddly teary eyed and Spencer worryingly green. Then he continued, because he'd be damned if they'd stop now. "Traditionally, this is where I would state that I choose to be yours for the rest of our lives, but I don't believe that there's any choice involved. We look to our future and we see only one. In that Halaimon and I are by your side. We sleep in your arms and we're a family. In this moment, in front of everyone we love and who loves us in return, we vow to be faithful to that future because for us there is absolutely no other option.

Since the day I met you, you've constantly surprised me. First by being you, in every way, a force of life and vitality that I hadn't expected but one I quickly grew to rely on.

Second by being the kind of person who I could, and did, fall irrevocably in love with. I was never very good at knowing what I wanted but I knew from the moment you first smiled at me that I wanted you.

Third, you loved me back. I never expected that but I am endlessly grateful. I believe as we begin the next stage of our lives that you'll continue to surprise me, and I look forward to you doing so.

We promise to respect you as a partner, as a friend, as an equal and as a father to our son. And we will love you without pause, for everything that you are and that we promise to be. In this moment I become your husband and Halaimon a part of your soul, if you'll have us."

The room was painfully silent. Jack sneezed, covering his mouth and looking guilty. Hotch tried not to smile as Prentiss curled her hand soothingly over the boy's shoulder, her own mouth twitching and eyes locked on Spencer.

He never once regretted this moment.

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When Spencer Reid was thirty-two, he returned those vows.

But first, he forgot those vows, because there was always a time to start forgetting things apparently, and it was always, always, the worst possible time.

"Ah," he said, and looked plaintively to Emily.

"Aaron," Aureilo prompted, flicking his tail with a roll of his eyes that meant that Reid was in trouble later when they weren't standing by an altar in front of their entire collective social network. "We aren't very good at being loved."

Reid shuddered, his mind whirring into gear, and repeated his hare's words. "We aren't very good at being loved but you've shown us how we could be," he said. He'd never meant anything more and he needed everyone in the room to know this. "I don't know if we can be the partners you wish us to be, but I do know we promise to try.

You walked into our lives and opened up endless possibilities and countless roads for us to travel. Somehow, we managed to choose the one that led us here, to this place, surrounded by these people and vowing our souls to be one. In my heart and in everything that I am, I see the future as becoming simple, the possibilities becoming singular and timeless. The wolfdog and the hare and they stand together, for now and forever.

Our life together has had thirty-five hundred days within it so far, and each one of those days holds memories that we will always cherish. In this moment, I promise to cherish the future days and memories that we face together, the good and the bad. I promise to grow old beside you, to come home to you always, and I promise that every day that I open my eyes, I'll fall in love with you all over again because I still remember how that felt and I always will.

Most of all, until the end, I promise to love you without pause. Aureilo and I, as one singular being, in this moment vow to take you and Halaimon as our partners and our soul, throughout this life and into the next, for longer than we may live."

"I pronounce you both married," Rossi said carefully, his mouth uncharacteristically soft, and that was it. It was done.

It was both the start of something, and the continuation of what had begun ten years prior.

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When Jack Hotchner was almost eight, his family grew by one. It was pretty great. Spencer always had candy hidden on him somewhere, and his dad smiled a lot more when Spencer was around too. Jack could be down with the idea of marriage if it meant his dad smiling a lot more.

Even if the wedding itself was stupid.

But what wasn't stupid was finally getting a chance to stand up and tell his dads, both of them, how he felt.

"I love my dad," he began, and looked solely at his dad as he said so. "He's always been there to help me and I know he loves me no matter what. I didn't really understand what he meant when he told me that he was marrying Spencer because I thought being married was living with someone and loving them more than anything and maybe kissing sometimes.

I thought that Dad and Spencer do all those things anyway so why do they need to get married again? And then I asked Uncle Dave, and he said that it wasn't just doing all those things – he said that getting married meant making a family. It meant that everyone would know that Dad and Spencer are in love and that they're both my parents and no one would be able to say otherwise.

I still think it's silly. Because we've always been a family, always, and I don't need my dads to get married to prove that to me. But I'm happy that they are, because I want everyone to know and to know how much I love both of them and how proud I am of them."

Emily wrote most of the speech and Jack thought privately the whole thing was a bit sappy and a lot silly. All true, but that didn't change how sappy it was.

The last line on his cue card was smudged, so he made it up. "Thanks for letting me be your son," he says to Spencer. "I hope you're proud of me too."

"How could I not be?" Spencer replied, just loud enough that they could hear him, and now a whole bunch of people were crying. Including Spencer.

Jack was right, really. Weddings were stupid.

But he was always glad of this particular one.

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Finally, finally, barely six months after that day, Hotch had the idea of Charlie.

It was an idea that started off very simply.

It didn't stay that way.

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Charlie was an idea that became a possibility that became a reality.

She was whispered fights at night when Jack was asleep, as Spencer and Aureilo argued that their genes couldn't give him what he wanted.

Blatantly untrue, and Hotch sought to prove this.

She was JJ looking thoughtful and then determined and then delighted. She was a quiet proclamation of everything their friendship meant to JJ, and everything she would sacrifice and gift them.

Charlie, at some point, became JJ quietly offering them something neither of them would never have thought to ask for.

Charlie became an unnamed idea, endless tense hours waiting at a brightly painted clinic festooned with almost inappropriate pictures of smiling newborns, the slightest of swell to JJ's stomach, a wary smile on Spencer's face, and a strange fascination for Jack for the possibility of someone to protect.

And eventually, eventually, during a nightmare for Hotch that had almost become the kind of reality he'd never survive, Charlie became their daughter.

His clothes still stunk of sage and Hal was still twitching and frozen with the horror of what Peter Lewis had made him see, but Hotch had never let an unsub beat him before—not even Foyet—so he got up from the hospital bed they'd tried to shove him into and walked from that room with his great wolfdog daemon at his side, and he didn't let anyone see how close he'd come to being broken. Aureilo was there, just as solidly determined, because Spencer had always used his daemon as an extension of himself, and part of that meant absolute protection over the people he cared about.

He walked in and found JJ curled up asleep in her own hospital bed, and Spencer in the seat next to her, his eyes closed.

Hotch must have made some noise, or maybe his husband just knew, but his eyes opened and he looked up. Fear, worry, and something gentle and devoted were written across his face, and Hotch wasn't entirely sure they were all emotions aimed at him.

But he couldn't take the time to work that out because there was a surge of knowing from Hal, a wild thrill, and he couldn't look away from his daughter. His daughter, or her daemon.

The daemon was a tiny blur of chocolate brown fur against the baby blue of the blanket, small paws threaded through the material as he clung to the infant that was the other half of his being. Spencer looked down, widened his eyes, made a soft noise that was the exact kind of noise you made when you fell completely and irrevocably in love with something. A hare. A tiny Aureilo, filled with endless possibilities.

Their daughter.

And their family grew again.

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Out of all the things Reid and Aureilo had considering being, parents had never really been one of them.

They took the parental leave offered by the Bureau despite Aaron probably needing it more, because Aaron was coolly resolute that Lewis wouldn't leave a mark on him. So they ignored the nightmares or Hal flinching whenever they walked past the sage garden Mrs. Junip up the street carefully tended, ignoring the lingering traces of Mr. Scratch.

As it turned out, despite their unsaid fears of ineptness or somehow messing this up, it wasn't parenting that challenged them. They worked by correspondence, conferencing in on cases at night when Jack and Charlie slept, and during the day they did everything a dad with very little else to focus on did. The mundane things. Homework with Jack who was almost giddy with the novelty of having a parent at home for once, something that Reid knew he'd feel guilty about later when he went back to work again. They did everything the endless succession of developmental research they'd devoured told them to do with Charlie to help with her early cognitive growth.

They found that, despite never really relishing the mundane things, there was something endlessly comforting about them.

No, it wasn't parenting that was challenging.

It was giving that up again.

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Three days before Spencer was due to return to the Bureau, Hotch came home to a silent house.

This was unusual.

It was barely seven-thirty. The house should have been thick with either the scent of Spencer's failed attempt to cook something or the almost guilt-laden scent of whatever he'd either bought pre-cooked or acquired from one of the many team members they had who both could cook and worried endlessly about Spencer's ability to discern 'nutritious' from 'delicious'.

It should have been loud. Spencer preferred to exist in quiet seclusion, but Jack didn't know the meaning of the word. There should have been the cheerful rambling of an animated show on the silent TV, or the sound of paws and feet clattering on the hardboard flooring as Jack and his daemon raced each other through the halls. There should have been the sound of Spencer determinedly issuing a monologue to the captive audience of Charlie in her high-chair, trying to get an early start on explaining the magic of physics.

Failing that, as had happened three times now and each had been equally as alarming as the last, there should have been screeching from a furious five-month-old and her equally furious daemon; angry complaints from her brother who thought that the baby was taking up all the attention; and Spencer bolting out from the kitchen looking harried and panicked and covered in the thrown remains of baby food with Aureilo racing in miserable figure-eights around his ankles.

But there was silence.

Hotch took a deep, low breath and, because he was an agent first and foremost, unclipped his holster and climbed the stairs carefully with his hand at his hip. Hal followed, paws soundless and head lowered, ears twitching and nostrils flaring red.

Then she lifted her head and her tail went tock once against the railing of the staircase as she waved it. "Bedroom, Aaron," she said, and padded happily past him.

He followed her, pushing open the partially closed door with some trepidation. Despite her calm, he was knowledgeable enough about his family and Spencer's influence to know that anything could be waiting for him. For Spencer, there was no 'too early' for kids to learn about the ignition points of common household solvents, and they disagreed regularly on when Jack should be instructed in the finer aspects of chemistry.

The room was dim, lit only by the narrow beam of light from the hallway that grew as the door opened. It illuminated the carpet first, then Hal sitting by the bed with her chin resting on the edge, and then finally, finally, it caught his family.

Spencer on his back, head tilted backwards over the pillow and mouth slack. Fast asleep. One of his arms was thrown to the side, Jack's head pillowed on it. All dead to the world, still dressed for the day, as though they'd taken a quiet minute to be a family and been soothed to sleep by it.

Charlie was on the other side, surrounded by soft brown forms. The daemons arranged roughly around her as they slept, ensuring she didn't roll from the bed. Unlike her father and brother, her eyes were open, and she blinked and looked about vacantly as Hotch walked closer to the bed. Tait was awake too, a fuzzy wolf pup with rounded ears and partially closed eyes, stubby wolf tail tapping at the sheets as he scented Hotch's presence and whined longingly.

When Hotch crouched at the side of the bed, Hal pressing against him, and reached a hand over his sleeping husband and son to tickle at his daughter's chin, she smiled.

It was a strange, hushed moment, and one Aaron Hotchner never forgot.

Even after all of this time, Spencer Reid still surprised him.