hotch's little sister x spencer perhaps?
—Hotch’s sister graduates college, and Spencer is immediately smitten. fem, 1.6k
“She’s pregnant.” Emily shakes her bag of chips around. “But it’s not his baby.”
Spencer frowns down at his sandwich. Rye bread is hard to cut, and the plastic knife isn’t putting up a good fight. “That’s awful,” he says. “He must be heartbroken.”
“He’s distraught. Now he can’t decide if he wants to stay and raise the new baby with their first, or leave her and have split custody.”
“What channel did you say it was on?”
“It’s on NightDrama. I’ll find out the number.”
Emily folds the empty packet of chips into a rectangle, then that rectangle into a triangle, folding the edges inside of a fold to create a parcel perfect for flicking at him. Spencer waits for it, tensing, but what he sees behind Emily steals his attention.
She whips her head to follow him.
You are, as Spencer watches you walk in, without a doubt one of the prettiest girls he’s ever seen. And it’s not like you’re a model, you don’t walk with any such confidence, but it strikes him immediately. You’re pretty. And he’s never seen you in the office before.
They get visitors occasionally but the majority of people so deep into this office would've been checked at security and cleared to come up here. You hold a visitors badge in your hand, which you promptly clip onto your shirt when you see people looking at you. Your frown makes you prettier. Something about the way you stand seems familiar, but Spencer can’t put his finger on what it is.
“Should we go help?” Emily asks.
“Who do you think she’s for?” Spencer asks back. He’s thinking you’re here to speak to JJ. They have people like this occasionally who JJ knows from past cases, drifting in on a hope that there’s more detail to be found.
Emily stands up from her chair. Spencer follows suit. When you see her facing toward you, some of your apprehension melts into relief.
“Hi,” you say breathily, summoning a smile that, again, seems familiar. Not in looks, but practise, maybe.
“Hi there, can we help? You look lost,” Emily says.
She sounds more friendly than Spencer could’ve hoped to achieve. He doesn’t even wanna think about it, from how pretty you are he would’ve stumbled over even the most basic hello.
“I’m here to see Aaron Hotchner. He told me his office is up the stairs, is that still one of these ones,” —you nod gently at the stairs that do, in fact, lead to his office— “or somewhere else?”
“That’s the right one, the very first door.”
“Okay,” you give a soft laugh. “Thank you. This place makes me nervous.”
You leave to travel up the steps. Emily and Spencer watch without any casualness as you approach Hotch’s office door, and give a little knock.
It’s more surprising to see it tugged open so quickly after. Hotch usually says, “Come in.”
“Oh, you’re here,” Hotch says. It’s to Spencer’s shock and Emily’s clear joy when he leans in for a hug. The bearhug kind, no politeness or manners about their intimidating boss as his arms cross behind your shoulders and he pulls you in. “You’re late.” He squeezes you.
You let it happen. “I hate your building.”
“What the hell?” Emily whispers.
“I’m so happy to see you. Come on, come in, I ordered lunch for us already.”
Emily is shameless. She takes Spencer by the wrist and encourages him to the wall below Hotch’s office as he ushers you inside. The door remains ajar, perfect for snooping, and Spencer doesn’t know what it is but he lets Emily drag him forward anyhow.
“If that’s his girlfriend, he should be ashamed,” Emily whispers.
Spencer raises his brows. “Did you think that was romantic?”
“I’ve never seen him show affection to anyone who wasn’t Haley, and when was the last time she was here?”
Spencer tosses it around in his mind. Sure, it was quite affectionate by Hotch’s standards, but the hug was so… uncareful. He’d grabbed you and hugged you like he was gonna shake you around for fun, like a dad hugs his daughter. “How old is Hotch?” Spencer asks.
“You don’t think that’s his secret kid.”
“No,” Spencer says, though he sort of does.
Emily gestures for him to hush as your laugh drifts down from the office. “You did?” you’re asking. “It’s so nice to be home.”
“Of course I did. It’s like I promised, okay? You finished college like I asked you too, you’ve done so well, and now I’m gonna make sure you’re happy. Like I tried to do for Sean.”
“Sean,” you sigh. “He didn’t even answer my grad card.”
“I don’t know what to say about him, I really don’t.”
A small pause. “Well, at least you answered.”
“You know I would’ve come to watch you walk–”
“But you couldn’t. It’s fine, Aaron, I wasn’t really expecting you to make it.”
“I’m sorry. Really. And I’m proud of you, after everything.”
“Thank you… The bag was better than you being there anyways. Coach?” You laugh breathily. “My friends keep asking me if you can be their big brother too.”
Emily and Spencer turn to each other, mouths agape, Emily slapping his arm as they struggle to make no noise. Since when does Aaron have a sister? A young sister freshly graduated?
Hotch laughs too. “Come and sit before your lunch gets cold.”
Emily gets out her phone to text Morgan, she and Spencer pressed to the wall with their heads ducked. Hotch is a total enigma, because what the hell sort of secret is that?
When Morgan appears, it’s with all the answers. He rolls his eyes at their clear position of eavesdropping but leans against Emily’s desk to give them the information they’re craving anyways. “She’s adopted. Hotch was already in college at the time, but they’re close. They get along a lot better than Hotch does with Sean, that’s for sure.”
“He sounds protective,” Emily says, side-eying the office.
“Look, it’s not my business, but I just know it was bad when she was a teenager. Hotch is a drill sergeant for a reason.” Ah, Spencer thinks. The Hotchner father.
Spencer picks at his hands. It explains the conversation he shouldn’t have been listening to, to a degree. He feels the guilt of knowing something he wasn’t meant to like a sodden weight, retreating swiftly to his desk and his forgotten sandwich.
It’s nice to hear Hotch laughing, but it’s your laugh that draws him in again while he tries so hard not to listen. It’s as attractive to Spencer as your frown had been when you walked in. He thinks about how you finished college, how you’re here, and he wonders if he’ll see more of you —how often will you come in for lunch? Spencer checks his hair in his sleeping monitor and feels like an idiot.
“I’m sorry,” Hotch says a little while later, elbowing open the door with his back to the office, “we’ll have dinner soon, honey, I promise.”
You reach up to give him another quick hug. “It’s fine. It’s just nice to be in the same city again.”
Hotch guides you down to the bullpen with the same pride with which he introduced Jack. It’s unmissable, the love he has for you in just one touch against your shoulder. “Y/N,” he says, pausing at the bullpen, “Derek Morgan you’ve met. This is Emily Prentiss and Spencer Reid.”
“Spencer Reid?” you ask suddenly, looking up into Hotch’s face like he’s lying, your brows pulled together in indignation, before you turn back to Spencer reverently. “You’re Dr. Spencer Reid?”
He gets caught on his own breath. “Uh, yes?”
“The Dr. Spencer Reid who wrote Methods of Continued Fraction Expansions?”
Spencer feels heat like a kiss to each cheek. “Yes.”
You turn to Hotch with a suspicious pout. “When I told you about the paper I was reading by a Dr. Reid a few months ago, you didn’t stop to think it could be your Dr. Reid? Or you just don’t like me?”
That’s a sister’s scorn if Spencer’s ever heard it.
“I thought you said Rain.”
“I don’t think you did.” You turn back to Spencer. “I can’t believe it, I emailed you about Jacobi elliptical functions, you were so helpful, I owe you my degree.” You put your hand out with a beaming, beautiful smile, Spencer’s stomach totally flips. “It’s amazing to meet you in person.”
He’s a germaphobe, he is, and that doesn’t just go away when you meet someone lovely, but he shakes your hand. You surprise him too quickly to think beyond taking your hand letting it happen. You’re, like, glowing.
Hotch gives him a funny look. Mostly impassive, but not quite.
Spencer abruptly lets you go. “I don’t think you would’ve needed my help to get there in the end. You clearly knew what you were doing.”
Hotch’s eyebrows silently rise.
You turn back to Hotch again, your smile catching. “I like your friends.”
He smiles. “Let me walk you down to the lobby, honey.”
You let him guide you away, giving the present members of the BAU a wave with just your fingers before you go.
Morgan and Emily look at him heavily. “Spencer,” Emily says. “What was that?”
He doesn’t want to say what he thinks it was, so he doesn’t. “She was nice.”
Morgan’s laughter is immediate. Spencer has to walk off to the kitchen for a cup of tea he doesn’t drink to escape him and the connotation of his laughing. Spencer hopes he’ll see you again soon, though if he’s half a good a profiler as he thinks he is, he might end up in trouble with your brother.
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TL;DR: Steam just made library sharing so much fucking easier and so much fucking better. Instead of login-trading, it's just a simple goddamn invite.
Read this. Really. It's a good read. Because it shows that, full-stop, Valve isn't just doubling down on their stance to make sure that people can and should be able to share their copies of digital goods as easily as they can physical ones, but they're making it better and easier than ever.
But you know how Steam allowed you to, with either friends or family, link accounts with another person to be able to establish an ability to share game libraries with one another? The general gist of Steam Family Sharing was that, with a limit of five people plus you (six in total) on a limit of ten computers total could share account access to willingly mix your libraries. You could play theirs. They could play yours.
This was a huge boon. It was meant to emulate sharing a physical copy of a game. A way to allow children to play games their parents or siblings had bought without having to fork over double the cash to buy it a second game. But it had some major limitations and drawbacks, and was archaic to use.
If a person did not share the same computer, you had to manually log into that computer to give it and the accounts on it access. This wouldn't be a problem if both accounts were used on the same computer, but many households (and astronomically more family and friend groups) had multiple computers, all used by different people.
If that computer, at any point, was hard reset to any point before the sharing occurred, you lost access. And had to do the whole process again. This was also an issue with computer transfers. The whole kit and kaboodle needed to be redone on upgrades. On top of that, the old computer is now just dead weight that you may not realize you have to manually revoke access to.
Putting your account information on another person's computer opens up security issues. They could, intentionally or accidentally, land themselves on your account if the login information was stored. Which could easily lead to purchases or bans you did not want to happen.
If anyone was, at any point, playing any game on their own library, you had no access to their games. Even if it was a totally different game, you had to wait your turn as if waiting for their computer to be freed up to sit at. (Admittedly this is kind of like the "mom said it's my turn on the xbox" meme, but hey, kinda archaic.)
You could not choose whose library you accessed a game from. Not at all. It always prioritized the first library it gained access from, DLC access and multiplayer be damned. If another friend you were accepting games from had more DLC? Too bad.
And yet here we are. Steam Families Beta fixes EVERYTHING about the above issues. By just going through Settings > Interface > client Beta Participation and clicking onto Steam Families Beta? You get:
No more login sharing.
No more computer links.
You can now choose which person's library you borrowed from.
And you can play any other game from someone's library, even while they're in-game. It just needs to be a different game than what they're playing.
Pick five people. Invite them to your family. And now everyone has access to everyone's library. My goddamn library went from 150-ish to almost a goddamn thousand in ten minutes of setup.
Account sharing and password sharing are dirty words that "lose" billions of dollars. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Max. They aren't game storefronts, but they still allow you to access massive libraries and scream like you murdered their firstborns for daring to share your password with your mother after you moved out.
Microsoft tried pushing to demonize and undercut used games sales and borrowed copies of physical games. Remember the first attempt to reveal the Xbox One? People forget, but these vultures tried to make an always online console that checked to see if you were the account that owned the game, even if you had a physical disc, and prevent access to the disc's contents if you weren't the original downloader.
Valve walked the fuck up.
Valve tapped the mic.
And Valve dropped the fucking thing right onto the ground with one feature's revamp.
About the only issues I can see with this are twofold:
If someone sharing your library gets banned from a game's servers... so do you. No one else in the family does, but the both of you do. This is... rather unpleasant, because banhammers can be dropped quite frequently by mistake. I'd urge Valve to rethink this one, but I see the logic: don't cheat and effectively bite the hand feeding you. Still making me side-eye that, though.
If you leave a family you've joined? You have to wait a YEAR to join a new one. It's to prevent people form jumping ship to another group and screwing over who's in the former one in the process, but a YEAR? OUCH.
Problems aside, though... it's probably the biggest fucking power move I have ever seen a media distributor make in the current economic climate. It's the kind of thing that would let so many new games be available in a way that's easier than ever. Just a few clicks to send or accept an invite, and bam. Permanent access to dozens or even hundreds of new games with so much more freedom than earlier drafts of the system.
It's the kind of thing that slaps you in the face with positivity after so many Ls from the games and media industries. And I'm all the fuck for a W like this.
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