A shadow loomed over in my doorway and fell onto my desk where I was finishing the paperwork for the case we had closed that same day. It had been a relatively boring case with some teenage girl who decided to go on a killing spree but was easy to catch due to the fact she posted all she did on social media. After a few murders, we managed to establish a pattern and ambushed her as she was stalking her latest victim.

"What the hell do you want?" I demanded without looking up. I expected the silky voice of Morgan or the nervous chatter of Garcia, calling me sir and extending her deepest apologies for the interruption. I even considered it might be Rossi, with a bottle of scotch and two glasses, to celebrate us putting another lowlife behind bars. Instead, I received no answer and only then did I look up.

I had to blink twice to ensure my eyes were deceving me. In the doorway stood a familiar figure with hypnotizing brown eyes I had gazed into several times before. I noted quickly with the detective skills I had acquired as a profiler that he had gained some weight, seemed to have more muscle. Gone were the corduroys and Converse shoes. Instead he wore an acutal black tailored suit, with a white shirt and red tie. He looked handsome with his brown hair cut short and combed back.

Without further parley, I ran up to him and enveloped him into my embrace. He didn´t return the gesture, his hands stayed stiff by his sides, but he didn´t push me away either. For a long time, I refused to let him go, thinking he was merely an illusion of my own imagination and he would soon evaporate into thin air right in front of my very eyes.

I finally pulled away and gestured for him to come into my office before shutting the door. He did as requested and stood awkwardly on the middle of my floor. He looked stangely foreign and out of place where he had once belonged.

"How are you, Aaron?"

I sat down on my desk and invited him to sit in one of the chairs in front of me but he remained standing. "You never called me Aaron before."

"Things change," Reid supplied quickly.

"You´ve changed," I replied, knowing that had been his actual meaning.

"I have been gone for ten years, Hotch. You hardly expected me to remain the same for a decade?"

An image flew through my head of the awkward boy I had once known. When my answer arrived, it was prompt and short.

"Yes, I did."