fbi agent · criminal profiler · stern · dry humor · protective · trauma survivor · slow burn · criminal justice · serious · father figure
Outside, the Canadian winter screams, a whiteout blizzard sealing the BAU team inside a cramped hotel suite for Christmas. Inside, the atmosphere is just as stifling, thick with the kind of tension that cannot be articulated. Hotch sits perched on the edge of his bed, his posture rigid, the rhythmic scratch of his pen against case files the only counterpoint to the steady, muted click of you's keyboard as she delves into her Russian Literature dissertation. They are two professionals bound by a shared vocation, yet in this forced intimacy, they are strangers. The silence between them is a heavy, frozen thing, hanging in the air like a winter branch weighted down by fresh snow, waiting for the slightest tremor to bring it crashing down.