Chapter 5: Your Secrets I Will Keep

He knew things were going to be different between the two men once the weekend was over, but this was not the direction he'd assumed it would have gone.

Aaron had seen Morgan clench his jaw, he could practically feel Reid's dejected look in his bones, and he caught glimpses of shock and subsequent denial on Morgan's face in response to Reid's reaction. He'd watched while they'd worked the case rather professionally given how they were feeling, though he did observe that Reid's personal "bubble" had grown considerably and then he'd sulked once on the plane. Aaron almost laughed when he saw Morgan hand over his keys – he seemed to have no clue as to how much power that "kid" had over him. He was positive they were going to spend the entire weekend fucking each other's brains out, though he wasn't sure he was entirely thrilled by the idea. More rule breaking with the possibility of shitty consequences he'd have to deal with later.

Then Monday came around and well, if he wasn't a damn good profiler, he could have missed it. Things were certainly different and not in a good way. Reid came in uncharacteristically late, so much so that Aaron had started to wonder if he needed to start calling hospitals or sending out SWAT teams to find him. Morgan looked like someone had beat the shit out of him, multiple times. Neither of them looked like they'd slept. He could swear there was a hint of cover up near Reid's left ear, which made the fact that Spencer had cut his hair even stranger.

"What? Did you join a boy band?" he quipped, trying to assess the situation further.

"...no?" Reid responded, clearly confused and distracted.

He observed Reid uncomfortably shift his chair towards him and away from Morgan. Morgan's chuckle sounded forced and his smile lasted too long, like he was trying too hard to get it right.

For fuck's sake, he was already dealing with Prentiss and Dave's shitty ass tiffs for going on 2 years now. And oh, sure, Garcia and Kevin were out in the open AND they weren't even on the same team, but that hadn't stopped their drama from making its way to his desk. Seriously, what did Garcia think would happen when she called dibs on Morgan while in Alaska? Because, as he knew he would, Kevin called him multiple times, looking to a profiler to tell him what he should already know - Garcia only had eyes for him, not Morgan.

He knew if this didn't resolve itself soon, it would up to him to set the problem straight while pretending there wasn't a problem in the first place. 'My fucking favorite,' he thought.

He sighed. He loved his team; they were his family and he would put his life on the line for any one of them. But holy mother of hell, if he could get his family to follow the goddamn fraternization rules, his life would be so much simpler. Simplicity was quite a luxury to wish for in his line of work, but there was no way in hell he was going to stop wishing for it. Besides, with all of them pairing up and attempting to keep it a secret from everyone else kinda made everything feel a little...incestuous. 'I mean, what normal family has this many members hooking up with one another?' he pondered.

"...and raped repeatedly."

'Fucking hell,' he realized. 'JJ's talking. Focus. Contribute.'

"He chose to keep her alive," he added.

Again, the boys were professional as ever while discussing the case, though he worried a fight might break out in the plane when Prentiss wouldn't give up her seat to Reid. She, of course, wanted to be seated next to Dave and Reid, of course, looked like he might have a breakdown if he had to sit next to Morgan again. 'I have to admit...if they can be this professional when they're obviously fighting, they might not be as much trouble once they make up.'

But without the case to discuss, it was obvious how trapped Reid felt in the jet. The stream of statistics pouring from his lips no longer had it's usual distinctive flow, a decent indicator that something was up. Reid even butted in on a conversation he was having with Dave about taking Jack to his first baseball game to ramble on about a paper he wrote on philosophy of Battlestar Galactica a few years back. 'Fucking Prentiss, shoving him off on us. I hope Dave at least gets some make-up sex for this one...one of us deserves to have something good come out of this.'

It was setting the entire team on edge, except for Morgan, who seemed entirely oblivious to everything around him and somehow managed to fall asleep. This was confusing to say the least. It's not that he doubted Reid's ability to cause trouble or fuck up, especially when it came to interpersonal relationships, but he'd always thought that Morgan would be the first to fuck up. Hell, there were far more ways for Morgan to fuck up than Reid and while he knew profiling wasn't an exact science, he felt strangely bothered by not getting this one right.

'Motherfucking shit ass day. Stupid sons of bitches fucking it up. Goddamnit, if those bastards don't man up soon, I just might fucking explode.'

He was grateful no one could hear his thoughts. As the plane landed, he took a couple of deep breaths and felt calm once again.

A/N – where'd this chapter come from, when is the next one coming out, and why is Hotch swearing so much?

1) So...I realize this chapter is a bit shorter than the rest and is kinda filler-ish. Interestingly, Hotch's POV was going to be rather short (I had a couple of sentences that I thought might turn into less than 300 words) and I was going to jump into Spencer's head, but then...Hotch just kept talking to me. XD I'm actually kind of thankful for that because along the way, I realized I wanted to watch "Our Darkest Hour" and "The Longest Night" a few more times before I go about diving into the next few sections (unless someone knows where I can get detailed episode summaries I can use to help me pinpoint what sections I really need to be looking at). Unfortunately for you guys, I work two 12 hour shifts (14 if you wanna count drive time) and thus, won't be able to watch them right away, so it might take me a bit (end of the week?) to get the next chapter out.

2) I feel like, for some, my version of Hotch might come off as somewhat OOC, so I apologize for that. I really want to stay true to the characters, but I've just always had it in my head that the only way Hotch is able to keep that stoic mask under control is by swearing (...or kinky sex, but that doesn't really work for this story, I think). A lot. Especially because he's got work where he always has to be on top of his game with appearing professional and playing the politics and he can't swear at home without teaching Jack "adult" words. Add to this that he seems to have gotten angrier and/or more resentful since Haley divorced him and subsequently died. Understandable. I also figured this extra resentment would seep into his views on the relationships happening between his team members since poor Hotch doesn't have anyone to go home to, at least in the romantic sense.

3) Originally, this was chapter 4. I mentioned the reason why I changed the order in the last A/N, so I won't go over it again. 3