Title: Five Things about Aaron Hotchner that Aren't in His Personnel File
Author: Kuria Dalmatia
Rating/Warnings: R (profanity, offensive language, physical and verbal abuse), spoilers for Season 5. Occurs after "Faceless, Nameless"
Characters/Pairing: Hotch (Hotch/Haley, Hotch/Reid)
Please see Chapter 1 for Disclaimers, Warnings and Comments
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Fact One: Hotch firmly believes that carbonite turned Han Solo into a pussy. Not into a wuss, but a limp-dick, apron-string holding, momma's boy pussy. However, saying that would be admitting that he had a geekier side to him, and that once, he actually won a debate on who was the most awesome Star Wars character.
When he was fourteen and stuck with the nickname "Crotchner", he annihilated Steve Flaherty's "Boba Fett rocks harder than Solo" argument with such gusto, he earned the respect of the bullies who tried to beat him up on a daily basis. Of course, the latter was probably because Hotch used the words "bad ass" in the classroom and cited a peer-reviewed source, so the debate teacher couldn't dock him points for inappropriate language.
What he now told Frost was, "I saw Star Wars in the movie theatre four times during its first run in 1977."
She nodded and chuckled a little. "How old were you?"
"Eleven."
"And it's not in your personal file because?"
Hotch blinked, caught off-guard by the question. He stared at her for a moment, assessing the tilt of her head, the set of her lips, the way she held her pencil (not pen) in her right hand, the angle of the notepad on her lap, and how she crossed her ankles instead of her knees. Frost was a tough read, but he figured out why she had asked.
Injecting a little humor in the session puts the patient at ease. It also gets him to reveal more about himself.
While Frost was at least making it interesting by being different, Hotch was still not up to playing games. "It's not in my personal file because it's irrelevant."
She didn't shrug or arch an eyebrow at him. She didn't even nod. Frost simple made note in her file—She wants you to worry about what she's writing about you—and then set her pencil down.
It was a curious way of establishing control, one that Hotch had used a few times himself in interrogations. It meant, of course, that he knew what she was expecting him to do. Perhaps she knew that he knew what she was expecting him to do.
Hotch stopped himself. It was that reason he hated mind-fuck games. Because it was too easy to get caught up in the she-knew-he-knew game and it would make him blurt out something more revealing than he normally would in a pathetic attempt to throw the counselor off his track.
"Good point," she conceded. "Who is your favorite character?"
He was tempted to say Jabba the Hut just to see her reaction, but knew that it would lean down a line of questioning he didn't want to travel. He also knew that no matter what he said, she was going to guide him down some kind of 'talking point' path. He didn't sigh or cross his arms. He said flatly, "Han Solo."
"Pre- or post-carbonite?"
That almost made him laugh. Almost. But he didn't. He wanted to appreciate how she got to her goal of him (potentially) talking Foyet's attack, using "pre-carbonite" to represent Hotch before and "post-carbonite" to represent afterward. It was clever. It made him wonder if he should have offered up Chewbacca as a character, because Chewie would be much more difficult to use as a comparison.
It made him answer with a shrug and a carefully crafted "confused" look on his face. "Han Solo is Han Solo."
Frost nodded a little, her confidence rattled just a bit. "Of course."
Hotch wanted to think, Score one for Hotchner, but he had a feeling that it wasn't quite the case. Frost wasn't done with him yet. He had four more sessions.
Four more headaches.
Great.
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