A/N This is my entry for kdzl's March Madness Angst Challenge - I'm not so great at the angst stuff, but I hope you enjoy it anyway! :] Spoilers for Season 5.
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds, but it is my birthday next week!
Hailey left him. Hailey took Jack away.
He runs his fingers through her golden hair, his lips marking the smooth skin of her throat. His hips crash into hers and Hotch feels her perfect body arch into him.
Hailey was dead and he shattered like broken glass.
JJ caught him as he fell to pieces, so it should be her name, he thinks, that he's whispering as he moves inside her.
It's not.
He doesn't understand it. He doesn't even know how it happened.
JJ is pushing him off her and sliding out from underneath him faster than he thinks is possible. It takes him a moment to realize what's happening, but then he's moving too and scrambling for the underwear he left at the foot of the bed.
"Wait, I'm sorry..."
She spins around, blue eyes glistening in the dim lighting of his bedroom.
"You're sorry?"
"I didn't mean to..." His voice trails off because there's nothing he can say to take it back.
JJ pulls on her underwear and dresses in silence, then turns, and the look on her face tears through him.
"My name is JJ," she says in a barely controlled voice, "not Hailey."
He sits on the edge of the bed, watches her battered heart fall to pieces. "I know," he whispers.
"Do you?"
Hotch winces, rests his elbows on his knees and lets out a sigh. He doesn't know what to say.
JJ speaks again and her voice is choked.
"Did this mean anything to you?"
Hotch wants to stand up, to go to her and tell her that yes, this had meant something. He wants to tell her that she meant something.
But he is silent, which is more than enough to give JJ her answer.
She's lashing out because he doesn't have an answer, and he knows it, but can't or won't do anything to stop her.
"Find somebody else to be your whore, Hotch."
He shifts position, his rapidly diminishing hardness an embarrassment. She throws him a glance as he opens his mouth to speak.
"Don't waste your breath," she says and Hotch wants to know where her anger has gone, "We can just pretend nothing ever happened."
He sits there while JJ ponders over leaving.
Time and time again he's opened up his book of metaphorical rules for handling unbearable grief. Followed it word for word until he is tired of hearing those same lines.
It's all lies anyway, he thinks.
Hotch hears another thread of her control snap. Thinks of what she gave up for him; Will, her home, a man who loved her.
And then he finally finds his voice. Her grasp on the door-handle falters.
"Will you give me another chance?"
JJ takes a deep breath. "Are you ready to move on?"
Once again his voice fails him. The words to reassure her are stuck. JJ is not surprised, more resigned to being second best.
"Come find me when you have an answer."