Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is owned by CBS. I own nothing but my imagination.
Sisters and Other Annoyances
~My prompt was Hotch/Emily and the TV show 'The Golden Girls.'
As he stepped through the back door of his house, Aaron Hotchner could feel the tension in the air. He paused in the doorway to the kitchen and watched as his wife of five years tiredly made dinner.
"Hey," he said softly.
Emily turned and looked at him, "Hey," she said and he could hear exhaustion in her voice.
"Rough day?" He asked as he slid his arms around her.
"Rough week," she responded. "How about next time, I go and chase down a crazed serial killer and you can deal with our three kids?" Emily loved her children, but the last few days had driven her to the brink of insanity.
"Deal," Hotch said with a smile. While both of them were still in the BAU, when Emily told him she was pregnant, he stepped down as unit chief so he could spend more time with his family. Now when there was an out of town case, they took turns so that one would remain in DC while the other went out in the field. It meant they spent less time with each other, but their kids were able to have at least one parent in their lives at all times and that was the most important thing to them. "What happened that made you so nuts?"
"Oh, you know, three rainy days in a row will drive any child to insanity and they just happened to take me along for the ride," she responded as she added some dried pasta to the pot of boiling water. "Can you do me a favor though?" She asked. "Can you please go up and talk to Jack? I'm not his favorite person right now."
"Sure, but what happened?" He asked and Emily gave him a rundown on the afternoon. Once she was finished, he made his way up the stairs and heard total silence, which always made him nervous. He stopped in the master bedroom to change, and once he was in his jeans and a t-shirt, he walked down the hallway to his son's room and knocked on the door. Not getting a response, he knocked again.
"Jack, can I come in?" He asked.
"No, go away!" Came the response from the bedroom.
Hotch sighed, "We need to talk," he said. "Can I please come in?" Soon it wouldn't matter if he had his son's permission or not, he would enter uninvited if he had to.
"Fine," he heard his son respond sullenly. He opened the door and was surprised to see him packing his duffel bag.
"Going somewhere?" He asked as he entered the room and sat down in the small desk chair.
"Away from them!" Ten-year old Jack Hotchner exclaimed with a jerk of his thumb.
"By 'them,' I'm assuming you mean your sisters?" Hotch asked dryly. Jack's identical, four-year old twin sisters, Kate and Sara, shared the room next to his and it was in that direction that his thumb was pointing.
"Yup!" Jack confirmed as he stuffed his Captain America pajamas into the bag. "Me and Snickers are gonna go live with Uncle Dave and Aunt J." Snickers was the family's chocolate Labrador retriever. "They have Henry, so I'll have a brother instead of smelly, little sisters, and Snickers and Mudgie can be friends!"
"Why today? Your sisters have been around for four years; why are you running away today?" Hotch asked calmly, trying to defuse the situation.
"Because they gotted me in trouble today! They broke into my room and messed up all of my toys and books and they ripped Skippy!"
Hotch winced at the last accusation; Skippy was a teddy bear that Haley had given him and Jack guarded it with his life. "How bad is he? Can we fix him?"
"Mom already sewed him up, but they still shouldn't have come in here!" The boy exclaimed indignantly. "And then, when mom came in to see why I was so mad, she yelled at ME! Katie and Sara can do anything they want and not get into trouble, but all I gotta do is sneeze practically and I get grounded to my room!" With that, he took his slightly battered, prized teddy bear and slammed him into the duffel bag. "Uncle Dave once said that Katie and Sara are the Golden Girls of this family and now I know what he means, but I'm not going to stick around and watch them get their way all the time. I'm outta here!" With that, he zipped his bag, picked it up and tried to put it on his shoulder, but his father gently took it from him and set it down on the floor.
"Jack, your sisters don't always get their way and they can't do anything they want. Why do you suppose your mom made you stay in your room all afternoon?" Hotch asked him.
Jack shrugged, "Because I'm not her real son," he responded. "Katie and Sara are her real daughters so she loves them more."
Hotch pinched the bridge of his nose, as if trying to ward off an oncoming headache, and he was about to correct his son when a voice came from the doorway of Jack's bedroom.
"Jackson Hotchner," Emily said sternly. "You know that's not true."
Jack, who knew he had crossed a line with his mother, just gave another shrug. Emily knew she had to nip this train of thought in the bud, so without taking her eyes off of Jack, she said, "Aaron, can you go downstairs and finish making dinner? I need to talk to our son," she said.
Aaron looked between his wife and son and knew that any discussion needed to be between the two of them, so he nodded and left the room. Emily came in, sat down on the bed and stood her son in front of her. "How can you possibly think I don't love you as much as I do Sara and Kate?"
"Because you're always punishing me and not them! They got into my room today and messed up my stuff, and I'm the one who was grounded to my bedroom, not them!" He told her.
Emily sighed, "Jack, I made you stay in your room all afternoon because when you told me what happened, you yelled at your sisters, called them names and threw your toys at them. I know you were mad that they got into your things, but that is unacceptable behavior."
"But-" Jack tried to interrupt, but Emily held up her hand.
"It might interest you to know that I made your sisters stay in their room for an hour as well. Plus, they are going to clean up the mess they made in your room and they are missing the trip to the zoo with Aunt Penelope and Gracie on Saturday," she told him and nearly smiled when his eyes widened.
Jack was surprised that her sisters were in trouble; usually his parents just scolded them and let it go, but if they were missing the trip to the zoo with their Aunt Penelope and her daughter, well…it meant that maybe they didn't always get away with everything. "Wow, they must have been mad at that."
Emily nodded, "They were, but you were too busy packing your bag to hear them argue with me."
"Oh," he said, looking at the floor. Emily let him think about that for a minute before she spoke again.
"Jack, I didn't carry you in my tummy and you were six years old when I adopted you, but that doesn't make you 'not real' to me. I love you just as much as if you had grown inside of me."
"Really?" He whispered, still looking at the floor.
Emily nodded, "Really. I fell in love with you the moment I met you. I remember that your first mom had brought you into the office to visit your dad and when I saw you, I nearly got lost looking into your eyes. Once your dad and I started dating and then got married, I knew I officially wanted you as my son. Jack, it's because of you that I wanted to have another baby! I loved you so much and I wanted our family to share that with another child. As it turned out, we got two kids at the same time."
"Yeah, two girls." He said the word like it was a curse word and in spite of herself, Emily smiled.
"I know it's a pain sometimes having two younger sisters, but they need you, Jack. Besides, as the oldest, you get to do everything first," she told him.
"Yeah, I suppose I do," he conceded as he thought it over.
Emily nodded, "You get to go to bed later than they do, you went to school first, you'll get to drive first and you and your father will get to terrorize their boyfriends. Face it, Jack, it's pretty good to be the older brother."
"I guess you're right," he told her.
"I am," she said firmly. "And I don't ever want to hear you say that I love them more than I do you. You are my real son and I love you more than life itself, just like I do your sisters. Got it?"
Jack smiled and nodded, "Got it," he said.
"Good," Emily replied and then scooped him up into a hug. They stayed that way for a minute before she finally let him go. "Why don't you unpack and then bring Sara and Kate down for dinner?"
"'Kay," he agreed and began pulling items out of the duffel bag. Emily looked at him one more time before she left the room and made her way down to the kitchen.
"Did you get everything squared away with him?" Her husband asked as she re-entered the kitchen.
"Mmm hmmm," she said as she tasted the spaghetti sauce.
"Good," he said. "I knew this would come up eventually, but it still threw me for a loop."
"This whole day has thrown me for a loop," she told him as she rested her head on his shoulder and he slid his arm around her waist.
"After today, you'll probably want to be the one to go into the field on the next five cases, won't you?" He asked. They were supposed to take turns, but after her day today, he would let her take the next three cases, but she would have to make it worth his while after all of the kids went to sleep that night.
"Actually, I think I'll let you work the field cases for awhile," she told him. "Maybe for the next nine months or so."
"Why would you…" Hotch trailed off as the light bulb went on inside his head. "Oh my God, do you mean?" He let his question hang in the air as he pulled away from her to look at her.
Emily smiled and nodded, "I've got a whole other person growing in me. Maybe two other people, since a woman is more likely to have twins if she's had them before."
Hotch's look of excitement changed to one of horror, "Seriously? We could get two boys this time?" He asked, imagining two more identical children running around the house. While he loved his daughters to death, they could be overwhelming at times…like any time they were conscious.
"Or we could get two more girls," Emily said, laughing as the look of horror deepened on her husband's face.
"You need to stop talking before you give me a heart attack," he said, looking pale.
"Seriously Aaron, are you okay with this? I know we didn't plan on having anymore children after the girls, but-"
"Of course I'm okay with this, Em. It's a baby, our baby and it's going to be loved, whether it's a single baby or quadruplets."
"God forbid," Emily said with a shudder.
"Should we tell the kids?" Hotch asked.
Emily thought for a minute, "Well, I'm two months along so…yeah, let's tell them! But Aaron? Would you please hide Jack's duffel bag beforehand?"