JUST LIKE YOU

BONUS PROMPT: Dear Dad (MASH)

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"Hey Dad?"

Hotch looked up from the paperwork he was doing at the dining room table to find Jack in the doorway to the dining room. "Something wrong?"

Jack came in and sat down, ignoring the papers spread over the table. At sixteen, he knew that the folders were confidential FBI files and probably things he just didn't want to see yet. "I've been thinking."

Hotch closed the folder in front of him, sliding some of the pictures out of his son's line of sight. "Of?"

"Well, college is only a few years away and I have to start thinking about what kind of college I want to go to. So, I have to start picking my prerequisites now."

Hotch found himself nodding slowly. "Okay..."

"What do you think of me going into the FBI?"

Hotch was floored. Jack had always taken after him, sure, but this was the one area he thought Haley would have more influence. The FBI, to her, had been what had broken up their family. "Have you talked to your mother?"

"She'd prefer if I'm going to do something in law I go the lawyer route," Jack said rolling his eyes. "But I don't want to. Being a lawyer isn't the same as being in the field, isn't that what you always said?"

He had. He'd been bored as a lawyer, and then the Bureau had recruited him and he'd been assigned – or hand-picked as the case may have been – to be in the elite BAU. He thought about it for a moment. Jack was quick on his feet and whip smart, there was no doubt about that. "Where in the Bureau?"

Jack shrugged. "I haven't thought that far yet and I haven't done the research." He paused for a moment. "I was thinking maybe I'd go get a criminal justice degree first, then go into the Academy."

When his father didn't say anything, Jack pushed on. "You and Emily have always said it was one of the most rewarding things you've ever done and that there's nothing else you could have chosen to do that would be just as fulfilling."

Hotch took a deep breath. He could hear Jack when he was at the kitchen table at thirteen, working with Emily on some of his homework. It was one of those essays on what you were going to be when you grew up and Jack's answer had been swift in coming:

"I'm going to be just like Dad."

He looked Jack right in the eye, and said seriously, "If that's what you want to do, Jack, then I will stand behind you."