Note: Haley for this universe is a lot more selfish and spiteful. I'm not a very big fan of her mostly, though I will do my best to keep from outright bashing her in this fic. Hotch has primary custody of Jack, mainly because Haley doesn't really want much to do with them both. She loves her son to a certain extent, but she also feels that Hotch should be responsible for him after basically making her raised their son as a single parent.
~.~.~.~.~.~.~
They found a comfortable spot by a large and shady tree, Jack and Chloe were more than content to sit by their respective parent and enjoy their rather drippy ice-cream cones. Hotch and Emily had both insisted on getting them cups, but with both kids knowing full well, the strength of the Pout-n-Wiggle...it was very hard for Hotch to deny them.
Especially when the little girl pouting at him with such wide dark eyes looked exactly like her mother.
So with a sigh, he'd asked the kindly old gentleman behind the ice-cream cart for four of his best cones of strawberry and vanilla swirl ice-cream. As he fished his wallet out to pay, the old man held out the tray of ice-cream cones to Hotch, chuckling quietly and giving the younger man a wink as he slid a wad of serviettes into his hand as well.
"For when the sticky hands get into places they needn't be," he whispered conspiringly, glancing at where Jack - still in his place on Emily's hip - had his free hand still stuck into the v-neck of Emily's shirt.
Hotch worked his jaw a moment, but took the serviettes with a curt nod. "Thank you."
Presently they sat together, Emily with Jack tucked between her knees and Chloe sat rather comfortably by Hotch's side; the girl resting her cast against his thigh as they worked through their cones. Both little kids were covered in the confectionery, from fingers to cheeks to chins, and were oblivious to their parents scrubbing at their limbs before any of the sticky ice-cream dripped onto their clothes. Chloe wrinkled her nose as Hotch scrubbed at it with a piece of serviette, flapping the man away with her elbow.
Her hand was too busy holding onto her ice-cream cone.
"It's not drippy!" she whined, and the man rolled his eyes at her internally, glancing off at the girl's mother to share a quiet, indulgent smile.
"I see she takes after you," he drawled, mouth curved into a wry smile as Emily's cheeks flushed with embarrassment as she cleaned Jack's little fingers before they were grabby at her shirt again.
Emily huffed indignantly, tossing a sticky serviette at him. "Hey, I don't whine!" she defended, tossing the last piece of Jack's ice-cream cone into her mouth, after he'd shoved it in her face and announced to them that his tummy was full and now he wanted to go play 'rollies down the hill!' Crunching the cone in her mouth, Emily's tongue darted out to lick the corner of her mouth where the strawberry and vanilla cream had lingered on her mouth.
She was so distracted by Jack's wriggling that she missed the dark flash of something highly inappropriate in Hotch's eyes as he watched her finish the cone. The man cleared his throat, releasing Chloe as well as she fussed to join Jack - moving off the tumble around with the three year old.
"Just stay where we can see you -."
"Don't wander off too far -."
They glanced at each other awkwardly, Emily shifting nervously at their tripping over their words, and offered him a meek smile as she tucked her hair behind her ear. She wasn't entirely used to seeing Hotch off-duty, let alone Daddy!Hotch in action. Sure, she'd spent a weekend or two over helping him settle into his new apartment; child-proofing the apartment and then settling Jack's bedroom - but that didn't mean she didn't still get warm fuzzy feelings in her stomach whenever she saw him with his son.
Or apparently calling out to their kids to be safe.
But she was pretty certain that was the embarrassment burning in her stomach and not lusty feelings for her boss.
Mostly.
When Chloe openly rolled her eyes at them both, Hotch smothered a chuckle in his chest and turned to Emily with an eyebrow raised in amusement. "So," he began casually; Emily was already resembling an embarrassed and terrified doe, he didn't think he'd want to do anything else to scare her off. "You never mentioned you were a mother."
Emily glanced at Hotch, staring at the man's face as he watched their kids tumbling across the grass, their giggles carrying in the breeze as they fall over each other from spinning so much. There was a small, wistful looking smile as he watched them, and when his hazel eyes turned back to her, she was surprised at how breathless she had become.
There was no reproach in his face, no anger or disbelief or any form of disapproval at her secret; the man's face was more open than she'd ever seen it. He was curious, mostly - Emily was an intensely private person, a trait they shared, and he felt somewhat...honored to be allowed into her personal life as he had. Granted, it was a coincidence, yes, but...nothing is accidental.
"It never came up," Emily said honestly, and a part of her was grateful for it. She slid her knees in closer to her chest, tucking her feet under her as she leaned over to face the Unit Chief. He was leaned back against the tree's bark, his long legs stretched out and crossed neatly in front of him as he peered at her face with interest. "I was in Europe when I had her; by the time I came back stateside, she was about the same age Jack is now." She smiled as she watched Jack fall flat on his cute little behind, only to be helped back to his feet by the giggling five year old.
Hotch nodded quietly at this, glancing once more at Emily's face. "And her father?" he asked tentatively, feigning an indifferent mask when she glanced at him sharply. He wasn't supposed to - obviously he wasn't supposed to, the woman had no obligation to him outside of the office -, but Hotch couldn't help a little burning ball of jealousy curling in his chest.
Knowing that there had been a man that had conceived that pretty little girl with her.
Emily sighed, and the man's interest was piqued. "Somewhere in Europe, I'm guessing," she uttered wryly, waving her hand in the air between them distractedly as Chloe and Jack began to cloud-gaze instead; perhaps growing tired from all the spinning. "He's usually on assignment all over the place - he's an old...partner from when I was with Interpol."
She waved the thought aside. "Water under the bridge, really."
"So...you're not...married then," he said slowly, eyeing the woman carefully.
"Dear God, no!" Emily shook her head, glancing at Hotch with a mildly appalled look on her face. So much so that the man couldn't help but flash her a dimple in amusement. She snorted, shaking her head indulgently as she gave her Unit Chief a look. "I can barely survive Clyde when he visits, let alone for the rest of my life!"
Perish the thought!
She loved Clyde as the father of her child, but little else. He was a wonderful friend and partner, but Emily preferred her life without a ring on her finger and a man dictating her life. Though she was fairly certain Clyde was hardly the man to 'dictate' her; she was sure there would be a sandwich joke every so often.
Hotch smiled, an amused, indulgent thing on his mouth; his dimples peeking through his cheeks that delighted the woman. "Wow, that's like the fourth smile in an hour - I feel like I need to document this," she teased, laughing openly when the man blushed a pretty shade of pink. To see the grim-faced Unit Chief smiling was one thing - blushing was another.
"I've smiled around the office before," he muttered, and Emily could hear the quiet petulance in his voice. It amused her to hear him murmur so; she wondered briefly what he must've been like as a child. A young boy quite like Jack, with an ever curious mind and an almost shy disposition.
Emily smiled, and it was a wistful thing. "You don't smile enough." Their eyes met, a lingering moment that seemed to happen as often as they were within the same breathing space together. It was hard to explain; the tangible pull that they felt to one another - the amount of energy they spent actively combating their natural urges.
The sadness in his eyes and mouth made it very hard indeed for Emily to resist the urges. Desperately she wanted just to reach over and kiss the sadness and the burden away, he'd endure so much already. She wanted to hold his face in her face, caress the weathered pull of his forehead and mark the lines of his high cheekbones with the lightest whispering kisses, and then press her mouth to his in the sweetest touch she could muster.
But instead the woman merely blinked, breaking their gazes from each other and smiling in sympathetic understanding instead.
Hotch stared at her, a sad smile lingering on his lips, but his words were quiet and layered. "I suppose I'll have to remedy that, won't I?"
"Yes," Emily said, nodding slowly; the smile on her pretty mouth was speaking. She shrugged a slender shoulder, turning her eyes back to the children. She leaned back onto her elbows, watching languidly as Jack and Chloe squealed and chased each other. Darting a glance at the man watching her, Emily smiled around the corner of her mouth. "Who knows - maybe you'll find more reasons to smile now."
The man felt his mouth twitch, and the roll of his dark eyes was indulgent as they sparkled at the woman. "Perhaps." He leaned back on his elbows as well, reveling in the peace and contentment of the moment; he was in the company of the beautiful woman whom he'd admired for many years, and their children seemed to be having a better time than they had in a long time.
Hotch hoped that it would be the beginning of a beautiful thing. Between them, their hands brushed, and when Emily spared him a shy smile, Aaron Hotchner knew that he would do anything it took to make these park encounters a constant in his life.
By the end of their tumbling excursions, Chloe and Jack were draped in their respective parent's arms, both teetering on the very edge of their mid-afternoon naps. With his face pressed into his father's shoulder, Jack regarded Emily with drooping eyes and fluttering lashes. "Can Emmy and Chloe come home with us, Daddy?"
Although it took the man a moment to really decipher his son's mumbling - to Hotch it sounded more like "c'n 'mmy 'nd Chloe nd c'm 'ome wi' us, D'ddy?"
Hotch chuckled quietly, jostling the half-conscious boy in his arms gently. "You're falling asleep already, buddy - what'll Emmy and Chloe do while you nap?" The man leaned back to look at his little boy, stroking his hand over Jack's sandy hair that was darkening by the day. The selfish part of Hotch was pleased - his son was so much more like him than his mother.
It was clear enough that Haley wanted very little to do with their son.
Jack shrugged; Emily watched with wry amusement as she too held Chloe in her arms, although the girl was already well into her nap and drooling on Emily's shoulder. "Nap too," the boy said simply, as if it was preposterous for his father to think of them to do anything else.
Before Emily or Hotch could tell the boy otherwise, there was a growling rumble from between them, and Emily burned a deep shade of pink when she realized where it came from. "Sorry," she murmured, as Hotch raised an eyebrow. "I didn't eat much this morning."
"Evidently," Hotch drawled, smirking in amusement when Emily cast a blushing glare his way. The man chuckled in his chest, watching as Emily began to pat Chloe gently on her behind, in the wistful way he sometimes found himself doing with Jack at night. It was clear that Emily was uncomfortable with the thought of coming home with them - though the man wasn't nearly as against the idea as he should be.
He tilted his head at her. "Would you like to have lunch with us?" he asked impulsively, and watched as Emily's eyes grew adorably wide. "If you'd like, you could come over; the little kids can nap while the big kids have some much needed coffee and make lunch."
Emily bit her lip, her mind chiding her against it but her stomach roiling eagerly at the thought of food...and spending time with Hotch. She shifted Chloe in her hold, tucking her head into her neck better. Regarding the man carefully, she thought for once to listen to her gut and not her head.
"I expect good coffee from you, Aaron Hotchner. You consume enough to bleed coffee."
The man smirked, and Emily wasn't sure if she was afraid and intrigued by the suggestive gleam in his hazel eyes. "Come home with me and see."
I'm actually not very happy with how out of character Hotch seems like, but if I kept him entirely in character, it would take at least ten chapters for us to get him to even crack a smile at Emily. So we're fast-forwarding, and as I said - they've already forged a bond when Emily helped him settle things when he first divorced. I'd say with continuous exposure to someone as amazing as Emily would coax even someone as hermit-y as Hotch out of his shell. It's like Wonder Woman; there's a saying that goes that everyone who meets Wonder Woman can't help but like/fall in love (platonically and otherwise) with her because she's just...her)
