Title: Five Things about Aaron Hotchner that Aren't in His Personnel File

Author: Kuria Dalmatia

Rating/Warnings: R (profanity, physical and verbal abuse), spoilers for Season 5. Occurs after "Faceless, Nameless"

Characters/Pairing: Hotch (Hotch/Haley, Hotch/Reid)

Summary: The exercise that the counselor suggested was nothing more than a way to establish trust. Hotch didn't want to be here, but mandatory counseling was mandatory counseling and it was needed to be cleared for duty.

Word Count: ~2,800

ARCHIVING: my LJ and FFNet account... anyone else? Please ask first.

COMMENTS: This is part of my "Fic Amnesty" collection, stories that I felt never quite made it for a variety of reasons. For this particular one, it was the Thing #5 that I stumbled and felt that it was a weak ending for a story.

No disrespect is meant to those in the counseling profession. However, let's face it. Having a member of the BAU as your patient would be a certain kind of hell, wouldn't it?

McRib sandwiches are apparently a "seasonal" product now, but for a long time, they weren't on the McDonald's menu. My memory of shooting games at festivals isn't so great so, yeah, it's probably inaccurate. Finally, I 'm basing the dates of Hotch's marriage based on his divorce papers shown in S3, which I believe listed it as 1999 or 2000. Yes, they were high school sweethearts, but they didn't immediately marry…

Feedback always welcome.

DISCLAIMER: The Mark Gordon Company, ABC Studios and CBS Paramount Network Television own Criminal Minds. Salut! I just took them out to play and I promise put them back when I'm done. I'm not making any profit just trying to get these images out of my head.

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Hotch didn't want to be here, but mandatory counseling was mandatory counseling and it was needed to be cleared for duty. To be fair, Doctor Madeline Frost skipped over the usual discussion points during their initial interview: his somewhat meteoric rise in the FBI that seemed to "fizzle out" once he made BAU unit chief, the numerous times he almost got killed in the line of duty, the four kills he had on his record outside of SWAT, the whole mess with Gideon and Greenaway, and (most surprising of all) his ordeal at the hands of George Foyet.

The six previous counselors that had been forced upon him over the past ten-plus years in the BAU all tackled his career with barely restrained gusto. They saw themselves as profilers like him, the only difference was that patients came to them instead of them hunting patients down. Hotch likened them to the guy who had moderate success as a high school quarterback and won a partial scholarship to a Division III school, but talked like he had a full ride to SoCal, Nebraska, Ohio State or another big name Division I university. This guy would have been "drafted by the NFL if it wasn't for some pesky knee injury" when in reality, the only time he was put into a game was when the team was either winning or losing by such a huge margin, his performance didn't matter.

So when Frost proposed that Hotch list five things about himself that weren't in his personnel file, he hitched an eyebrow and leaned back in his seat. Hotch waited, because there was always an elaborate explanation on why said counselor wanted him to do something.

Frost smiled sweetly and said, "Yes, it's a trust exercise." She then glanced at her watch, nodded her head, and told him, "We're done for the day."

Hotch narrowed his eyes, glancing at the clock as he did. Only fifteen minutes had passed. "We're done," he repeated neutrally.

Her smile didn't waver. "Yes, we are. This does count as a full session, one of your six that is required. I'm sure you have more important things to do than sit around in my office for another thirty-five minutes."

His anger flared, because he really wasn't in the mood to play mind-fuck games. However, years of practice meant he didn't betray his emotions on his face or in his body language. He simply nodded, got up, and left her office, stopping by her admin on the way out to set up the next appointment.

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