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Chapter Text

“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”- Euripides

A Soulmate Who Wasn't Meant to Be by Jess Benko

.....

Aaron grips the steering wheel tightly, staring ahead at the road, he’s probably driving over the speed limit, but he can’t seem to make himself care all that much. His mind is filled with one part of anger, the type of anger that clouds his mind and makes him want to go to the gun range at work so that he can shoot at a target until it’s obliterated.

The other part of his mind is filled with shame, shame at his anger, shame at how they wasted time visiting Chester Hardwick, and most of all, shame at how he’d placed his colleague in danger at the prison.

Dr. Spencer Reid sits next to him in the passenger’s seat staring out the window, her right hand tugging on the strap of her leather satchel. Aaron can tell by the way she's bouncing her leg up and down that she's uncomfortable with the tension in the car. .

Spencer Reid was not a particularly athletic woman, in the many years that he had known her, he’d seen his fair share of Reid tripping over roots, evidence boxes, and her own feet once or twice. Had she not succeeded in distracting Hardwick while Aaron brawled about like a teenage punk, she would never been able to hold out on her own against the serial killer. He had brought his vulnerable coworker into the belly of the beast.

“Reid, it was smart to make Hardwick focus on himself until the guards came back.” Aaron finally bridged the gap. He's never been good at apologizing or talking about feelings so he keeps on staring ahead at the road as he tries to find the right words to say.

The Doctor straightens up a bit in her seat before answering. “ I tend to do my best work when I’m under intense terror " smiling a little, clearly trying to ease the tension in the car.

Aaron’s shame intensified, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Spencer had seen every single image of Chester Hardwick’s victims. She probably had the case files burned into her brain thanks to her eidetic memory. It must have been terrifying to know that she could have become yet another one of his victims.

“I’m sorry Reid, I antagonized him unnecessarily. I put you in danger and- ”

Spencer turned to look at Aaron interrupting his apologies, “Hotch, it’s alright. You’d never do this intentionally to hurt anyone on the team. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate right now.”

It was like a dam had opened and Aaron spilled what had been bothering him all morning. “Haley wants me to sign the divorce papers uncontested, she doesn’t want us to waste money or time on the lawyers.”

“Isn’t that what you want?” Spencer asked quizzically.

“Well, what I want, I can’t have” Aaron turned to look back at the road, Spencer wasn’t the most sociable person in the room and he highly doubted that she’d be able to say anything that would make this situation better. He wanted Haley back, to stop receiving calls at all hours of the day where he was verbally dressed down by his soon-to-be ex-wife. He wanted to see Jack without Haley putting up a fight about it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Aaron saw Spencer messing with the collar of her shirt. She pulled out a chain and unclasped it like a precious relic. Turning his head to look at it, Aaron was surprised when Spencer held it up to his face. On it was a small golden ring with a diamond, it was simple and had some floral engravings on it. An engagement ring?

“20% of all engagements fail before the wedding” Spencer’s voice lapses into the lecture style she gives when she tells the team all the relevant statistics to the case they’re investigating. “The most common factors include financial stressors, religious differences and changing life priorities.”

“His name was Ethan; we’d met at MIT when I was working on my Doctorate. He was working on his Masters; he was 22 and I was 20 and I finally had someone as smart as I was. We got engaged 6 months before we started at the academy. He wanted to eventually work at the White-Collar Crime task force as an analyst and I was being trained by Gideon for the BAU.” Spencer is smiling faintly as if she’s remembering him fondly.

Aaron watched her in disbelief. Spencer came across as awkward and a little solitary. Getting her to attend drinks after a difficult case was like pulling teeth, her desk in the bullpen never had any personal items opting to keep her space neat and tidy. He had a hard time imagining her dating much less being engaged.

“Anyways, instead of staying in the barracks at the academy we found this apartment nearby and we were starting to get settled down when one day he left; I got back to our apartment and everything of his was gone. Clothes, food, furniture, our bed. It’s all gone. There weren’t any notes or anything left behind and his cellphone was disconnected. It was just empty.”

Spencer takes a deep breath.

“It wasn’t until I called his mother to figure out what was going on, that I found out what had happened. I was almost hysterical because I was terrified that he’d been caught up with something shady. His mother told me that he had called the engagement and wanted nothing to do with me.”

“We’d rented that apartment together and without him, I couldn’t afford the rent, so I had to live in my car for a month while I figured out where to live.”

Spencer who refused to shake hands with anyone due to germ transmission and who washed her hands every other minute? Aaron couldn’t imagine her surviving living inside of a car.

Spencer continued, “Before you ask, no, I didn’t ask any of my anyone for help because all of my friends in DC were Ethan’s friends first and I was too ashamed to tell Gideon what had happened.”

“At first, I was really angry, I felt out of control all the time. I punched a bunch of holes into the wall of my new studio apartment. I woke up a couple of times in an alleyway because I blacked out and went wandering around. I set a bunch of the photos we took together on fire” Spencer tells this part of the story with a clinical tone, it doesn’t take a profiler to see that she’s trying to emotionally separate herself from this part.

Aaron thought about his own apartment, the new one he was in so that Haley and Jack could stay in the house. It was empty and filled with boxes that he hadn’t bothered to unpack, not ready to confront the broken remnants of his family.

Spencer’s voice shook him out of his thoughts “But, eventually I realized something. I’d punched a wall hard enough that I had cut my hand, and I had to sit down and just think. It wasn’t anger that I was feeling, it was grief.”

Spencer looked right into his eyes at that moment, filled with empathy and compassion. “Hotch, when you’re ready to feel grief instead of anger, my door is always open.”

With that, Spencer tucked the necklace and the ring back under her shirt and went back to quietly staring out the window.

“Thanks, Reid” Aaron finally said and continued along down the road.

The car was silent, but it no longer had the overwhelming tension that had been there as they had left the prison.

The rest of the day was filled with the bustle of filing paperwork, sorting out and reading reports, and checking in the agents out on the field. Rossi, Prentiss, and Morgan are out in St. Louis investigating a cold crime. Reid gets started on some consults from another department. However, when the office quiets down and everyone has gone home, Aaron signs the divorce papers and pours himself another drink.

Chapter Text

"There is no shorter road to defeat than by entering a war with inadequate preparation."-Charles Lindbergh

I'll be good by Jaymes Young

....

Life goes on at the BAU, when Aaron isn’t trying to negotiate with Haley about his time with Jack, he’s busy throwing himself into his work. He tries to push down the voice at the back of his head that tells him that his increased working hours prove Haley right, that Aaron loved work more than he loved her or Jack. Since he’s signed the divorce papers, Haley isn’t calling him anymore to yell at him, but she makes it very clear that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with him either.

Spencer doesn’t bring up the Hardwick fiasco and she doesn’t mention her offer of support to Aaron again. But he can tell that she doesn’t forget about her offer either. In comparison to Dave’s loud invitations for drinks and commiseration, or Morgan’s invitation to spar in the gym on their rare lunch breaks, Spencer’s support is a lot more subtle. On the nights when they both work later than they should, she drops by with a fresh cup of coffee just before she leaves, just the way he likes it. She leaves pamphlets for the museum and other places where he can take Jack on his desk.

Even after the Owen Savage case, where Spencer identifies too much with the unsub and is overly combative with the local law enforcement, blocking the line of fire to prevent them from shooting the violent and erratic teen. Aaron harshly reprimands her after this, threatening suspension and even termination if she throws herself in danger’s way again. She doesn’t let her anger at being yelled at get in the way of checking in on Aaron quietly, dropping off a small pastry and coffee before she leaves the office for the night.

Kate Joyner’s death strikes a tender nerve, something that the team catches onto quickly. He lets them believe it’s because he had some type of school yard crush on her, but really it just reminds him that there’s one more person in his life that he’s let down. His hearing injury from the explosion is just salt in the wound, reminding him of his total inadequacy as a unit chief, husband, friend and father. He’s forced to stay grounded as his ears can’t handle the pressure or the noise of the airplane.

After a particularly painful week, Aaron arrives at Quantico early in the hope that he’ll be able to get some work done before the noise and the pain starts. The BAU bullpen is empty with the lights dimmed. Morgan’s desk is littered with notes of different cases he’s consulting on; Prentiss’s has files piled neatly into categories and Spencer’s desk is devoid of anything. She’s probably taken files home again. Aaron makes a note to himself that he should have a conversation with her about work-life balance but he’s sure that his own hypocrisy will weigh down any arguments he makes. As Aaron walks into his office he spots a box on his desk. Inside are a pair of ear defenders, the same type that Spencer used to wear on days where she’s on a sensory overload. He almost cries with how well the ear defenders cut down the sound.

Shit hits the fan and he’s attacked by George Foyet. Aaron is woken up by the smell of antiseptic and the beeping of the heart monitor next to his hospital bed. Foyet had dropped him off at the hospital using Morgan’s credentials but before that he had stolen pages from Aaron’s address book. He is forced to explain to his angry and scared ex-wife that she needs to go into witness protection. He holds his confused son who doesn’t understand why Dad can’t visit him.

Aaron remembers every single word that Foyet said, his words designed to inflict the most amount of torture as he stabbed him repeatedly. Aaron feels like his entire body and soul has been stripped bare for everyone to see, the vulnerability of being a victim hits Aaron hard. He lies to Emily about what happened, claiming that he passed out after the first stab wound. He rationalizes that it’s because he doesn’t want to traumatize his team any worse, but it’s really because Aaron wants to hide how much of his pride and dignity have been snatched away.

The team visits him almost daily while he’s in hospital. Garcia brings brightly colored balloons and flowers to “cheer up his room” while Emily and Derek bring updates on the Foyet case. Dave visits bringing Aaron his clothes, hides his work cellphone, and helps him file his medical leave paperwork. JJ just sits next to his bed quietly and provides wellbeing updates on the team when Aaron asks for them.

What surprises Aaron most is that Spencer doesn’t visit. While Spencer’s care isn’t as affectionate and overt as Garcia’s he knows that she cares and wouldn’t leave him alone if she could help it. Aaron keeps his confusion to himself for the first couple of days, worried that he may look insecure or weak if he asks where she is. Finally, swallowing down his pride he asks JJ about Spencer during one of her visits.

“Spencer’s on medical leave; she got shot in the knee by a suspect while out on a case. She says it was just a graze and she’s recovering at home.” JJ answers, rolling her eyes affectionately.

Aaron tries and fails to push the anger he’s feeling down, “When did this happen? Why didn’t anyone tell me that Reid had gotten injured?”

“It happened while you were in surgery, you were busy recovering from getting attacked and the team decided that didn’t want you to worry. You’ve already got enough in your plate Hotch.” JJ stands her ground against Aaron’s anger at not being included in the team’s decision-making.

“Her injury isn’t serious; she’ll be back to work like usual before you’re back from medical leave.”

Aaron senses that he’s only going to end up fighting with JJ and so he changes the subject and asks her about how Henry is doing instead.

He tries not to take it too personally when he’s discharged after 10 days, and Spencer hasn’t visited him once. He trusts her, she wouldn’t visit unless she had a very good reason to do so.

It isn’t until he gets his work phone back from Dave, that he sees all the texts. He ignores the 50 from Dave, JJ, Emily, and Morgan, all of them asking where he is with increasing worry. He opens Spencer’s unread texts, the first 10 or so are from the day he was attacked, asking him where he is and asking if he is okay. The next couple is Reid apologizing for not visiting as she’s not able to get around well. Finally, the last text sent this morning is simple.

If you need to talk or just need some company, don’t hesitate to give me a call- SR

Aaron is comforted by the fact that Spencer kept messaging him, but he doesn’t message back just yet, he’s not ready.

When Aaron comes home, he’s confronted by the absence of a struggle. He suspects that Emily, who has his spare key, and Derek have come in and helped erase all traces of his fight with Foyet. Even the bloodstain on the carpet, where he was tackled and stabbed is gone. He knows this should be comforting but all he feels is emptiness. His space is unchanged despite how much Aaron has changed. In the space of 11 days, he’s lost his son, his ex-wife, his dignity, and the space where he thought he was safe. He doesn’t feel rage; all he wants to do is collapse into bed and lie there until time ceases to exist. Aaron notes dimly that this is probably the grief that Spencer was talking about. Shaking away the thought he throws his bag onto the couch and locks his door, setting the burglar alarm. He grabs his gun and goes to lie down in bed.

Aaron doesn’t feel any more rested when he gets up the next morning. While he sleeps, he is plagued by nightmares of Foyet stabbing him repeatedly while Jack cries for help in the background. When he’s awake, every creak and cough from his next-door neighbor sets him off, making him scramble against his headboard as he aims his gun shakily at the shadows of the room. This aggravates his stitches, and he takes his pain medication religiously, trying to avoid the burning sensation he gets when the stitches pull.

He wanders around his apartment, checking and rechecking the locks on the windows and the doors. He makes a couple of calls to security companies, ordering a security camera and additional locks for his door. He tries to watch some television but finds that no matter how hard he tries he can’t focus on anything. Aaron texts Dave, asking if he can get the files that they currently have on the Foyet case, but he’s denied, Dave claiming that he needs more time to recover before he’s allowed to get involved.

The next night is no better, he wakes up in a cold sweat at 2:00 am following yet another nightmare with Foyet, except this time, Spencer is screaming along with Jack as Chester Hardwick beats her until her face is unrecognizable. He can hear the gurgling of her breathing, as blood fills her airway. Jack is begging for Aaron to save him, but his body feels like it’s weighed down by sand and he’s forced to watch as the rattling sound of her breathing stops and Spencer’s body stills. He curls up in a blanket on the couch as he stares at the wall, trying to erase the visceral images from his mind.

In a moment of weakness, he opens his phone and calls Spencer, hoping that she’s awake. Some part of him, the fragile part, needs to hear her voice so that he can feel okay again.

Spencer answers after the first ring “ Hotch, is everything okay?”. Her voice is clear which tells Aaron that she was probably awake before he called. Aaron leans back onto the couch in relief, Spencer is okay and she’s alive.

“Hotch?” Spencer asks again, a hint of worry evident in her voice.

Aaron loses control, he’s hyperventilating over the phone and he’s not sure what he’s saying but clearly, it's enough that Spencer orders him to stay put while she comes to get him. She stays on the phone speaking calmly to him as he gets changed from a ratty pair of basketball shorts into a cleaner pair of sweatpants.

Finally, Spencer lets him know that she’s outside of his building. He throws on a sweater and climbs into Spencer’s old rickety Volvo. She wears her glasses, her hair pulled into a ratty braid, curls escaping in every direction. She’s wearing an oversized FBI sweatshirt; Aaron thinks offhandedly that it might be one that she’s stolen from Morgan. Once he’s buckled in, Spencer pulls out of the parking lot and starts driving back to her apartment.

They drive in silence as Aaron tries to get control of his spiraling thoughts. Spencer lives on the edge of DC; he’s driven her home a couple of times when they’d gotten back too late for her to catch the metro. This is probably one of the first times that Aaron can recall seeing her drive, much less riding in her car. She drives smoothly and she seems at ease behind the wheel so Aaron can’t understand why she doesn’t drive more often. He supposes that it’s just another one of her eccentricities that he’s learned to ignore in all the years he worked with her.

It’s only when they arrive at Spencer’s apartment that Aaron sees the crutches in the back seat. Spencer hobbles slowly to grab them, her left leg swollen with white bandages and a brace immobilizing her knee. It’s clear that this isn’t the graze that JJ claimed it was, this was a severe injury, the type of injury that could force an agent to retire early if they didn’t recover properly.

Spencer looks at Aaron as if she can read his mind. “The bullet tore my ACL and fractured my patella and fibula but is expected to fully heal within a couple months, I’ll be back on desk duty in two weeks and hopefully cleared for field duty in a month or two”.

“Does it hurt?” Aaron asks before he can stop himself.

Spencer looks at him, her expression filled with fond exasperation, “Hotch, you just got stabbed. My knee is nothing. Take my keys and go upstairs, it’s Unit 23. I’m going to be a couple minutes.”

Aaron raises his eyebrow at Spencer, he may be an emotional wreck right now but he’s not about to leave his severely injured team member to hobble up the stairs alone. As they enter through the front door, he silently takes the crutches from Spencer as she scoots herself up the 2 flights of stairs. She’s surprisingly adept at it, it’s clear that she has had some practice taking care of herself in an apartment that doesn’t have an elevator. Aaron feels guilty for forcing her to crawl up and down the stairs at two in the morning because he couldn’t handle being alone.

Once they get to the top, Aaron passes the crutches back to Spencer who smiles before turning to unlock her front door. Opening the door, she limps through leaving Aaron to follow her inside. Spencer leads him towards a small kitchen, the corner of the counter is covered in take-out menus but also features a well-loved kettle and teapot. She starts the kettle, leaving it to carefully boil as she starts rooting through the cupboard for what Aaron assumes is teabags. Spencer makes the tea with practiced ease before passing the mugs for Aaron to hold as they walk.

She gently pushes him towards her living room, it’s cramped with a sofa facing a fireplace. An antique wooden desk with case files on it is pushed into the corner, clearly her working space at home. Her walls are covered in shelves laden heavy with books, Aaron isn’t surprised. Where there aren’t books, the walls are painted a light olive green. Picture frames clutter the mantelpiece of the fireplace, a younger Spencer Reid wears a graduation gown next to Diana Reid, a picture of a proud Spencer Reid holding a baby Henry in the hospital, another picture of Henry at his first birthday, an old school picture is of a little boy, there’s even one of the BAU team taken during happier times. These are the people she loves, in a place of honor in her home. The school picture of the boy even has a candle and rosary in front of it.

Aaron takes a seat on one side of the sofa bringing his legs to his chest while Spencer takes a seat on the other side, elevating her leg on a small, patterned stool. Close enough where she could touch him if he wanted but far enough to give him a little breathing space. Once she sits down, Aaron passes her a mug. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything stronger; I don’t keep any alcohol in the house”.

“We shouldn’t be drinking any anyways, I imagine both of us are on serious painkillers right now” Aaron finds himself responding wryly.

Spencer hums noncommittally before lapsing into silence. She looks at Aaron with eyes that manage to be both soft and calculating at the same time. It’s the eyes that tells Aaron that whatever he tells her, despite her lack of social cues and her awkwardness in the field, she will perfectly understand what he’s going through.

“How long did it take for you to feel like yourself after Hankel?” Aaron asks hesitantly

Spencer’s eyes take on a distant look, like she’s no longer in the room with him. Maybe she’s stuck inside of the old shed where she was beaten or worse, she’s in the graveyard where she was forced to dig her own shallow grave.

Spencer blinks rapidly, like she’s trying to bring herself back to the present. “Hotch, I will never be the same person that I was before Hankel. What happened while I was there and how I chose to cope changed me permanently. I’m never not going to experience cravings for dilaudid or hate when I’m in the dark. ”

Aaron tries to ignore the dread he gets with Spencer’s words. It’s been less than two weeks, and he already feels like he’s breaking. There’s no way that he can survive as the ghost of his former self.

Spencer continues, “I became stronger and capable of more empathy. Morgan told me once that I should use that to become a better profiler. It took a couple of months after I got sober before I started to feel human again, but I got there, and it got easier”

Spencer quirks her mouth as if she’s trying to fight off a smile. “Bright side, you’re not addicted to opioids so I’m sure the recovery time will be faster than mine was.”

Aaron snorts a little into his mug, of course Spencer would be the person who jokes about being an addict. He remembers that time vividly, Spencer showing up to work late with hollowed eyes and greasy hair that spoke to how exhausted she was. She’d snap at Prentiss and Morgan and barely keep ahead of the work she was assigned. Shortly after the case in New Orleans, Spencer took some time off to visit her mother and when she came back, she had been better, more patient and softer around the edges.

“Spencer, I’m sorry that we weren’t there for you when you got sober. Gideon and I were worried that if we acknowledged that anything was wrong that you’d lose your job at the Bureau.”

“Hotch, I didn’t want anyone’s help. It was good that no one called me out on it, I needed to get sober on my own and it would have killed me if I had lost my job.”

“What happened that made you decide to get clean?” Aaron asks, he’s always been unsure of what would have motivated the young doctor to get her life back on track when everyone around her refused to acknowledge that she was falling apart.

Spencer tightens her hand around the handle of her mug, looking over at the pictures on the mantlepiece instead of looking at Aaron. “I tried to overdose during that case in New Orleans, I met Ethan at a bar on accident, he told me that the reason why he’d broken up the engagement was because he always knew that I’d end up strung out or institutionalized. Obviously, I didn’t cope with that well and I spent the night that I was supposed to be on the plane with Morgan and Emily throwing up in my hotel room hallucinating Tobias Hankel in the corner of the room.”

“When I returned, I realized things wouldn’t get better. The drugs weren’t going to heal me no matter how much I took. Drug use doesn’t cause Schizophrenia, but it can serve as a trigger, especially for people who are genetically predisposed to developing the condition. I didn’t want to end up like my mother, scared of voices that no one else can hear and tin foiling the windows so that the government can’t see into my room.”

“I took some personal time off and told everyone that I was visiting my mother. Flushed the dilaudid I had in my house. Deleted the contacts of my dealer off my phone and checked into a private detox facility. Once I got out, I tried to find other hobbies to replace getting high and started attending an NA support group for law enforcement”

The room goes silent again as Spencer seemingly runs out of things to say. The tension is palpable, bolstering Aaron’s courage or maybe desperation to explain why he needed to call Spencer and get out of his apartment in the middle of the night.

“Every time I close my eyes, I can see and hear Foyet stabbing me as Jack begs me to save him in the background. I see Chester Hardwick caving in your face with his bare hands, like the crime scene photos and I can hear you trying to breathe as blood runs down your airway”

“I told everyone that I passed out after the first stab but that wasn’t true, he kept me awake for every single stab and made me watch. He told me about how knives are profiled as a surrogate for sexual release while he did it.”

Aaron’s voice seems to go into an involuntary whisper as he says the next bit, “Foyet asked me if this would change the way I profile, and I’m scared it will.” After baring his whole soul, Aaron feels drained and slightly dirty. Acknowledging what Foyet did to him makes it feel real, too real for him to handle.

Spencer reaches over and places a comforting hand on his knee, a rare gesture, and doesn’t move it. The sensation grounds Aaron and he relishes in the physical contact.

“Hotch, this may change how you profile. But if Hankel made me a better profiler, then surviving Foyet will make you a better profiler too. No matter what happens to you, We will never stop trusting you. I will always trust you as a profiler.”

The room lapses into silence again, the silence is almost comforting. Aaron busies himself with drinking the last of his tea before setting his mug on the coffee table. The warm light of the lamps in Spencer’s apartment makes the world seem so silent and secure. The smell of old wood mixing with the smell of paper fills Aaron with the type of nostalgia of his childhood trips to the library. He can understand why Spencer calls this place home. Just like Penelope’s office filled with bright knick-knacks, Spencer needs a safe place to retreat when she’s forced to witness the horrors of the world day after day. They all do really.

Aaron doesn’t realize that he’s falling asleep until he feels someone adjusting his legs on the sofa. He tries to fight himself awake but he can hear Spencer telling him to relax, that she’ll keep watch for him. She’s using that soothing tone that she uses when she’s rocking Henry or talking to her mother. He’s so tired that all he can really do is look blearily at her before closing his eyes again. He can feel himself being tucked under a warm blanket, like he does to Jack before he drifts off to sleep.

Aaron wakes up slowly the next morning, he can feel the warmth of the sun on his face and the light trickling in past his eyelids. The apartment is silent except for the clicking of Spencer’s crutches, it sounds like she’s moving around in the kitchen. He tries to savour the peace he feels right now, knowing that the feeling can’t possibly stay, before he rolls to his side and sits up on the couch. He’s covered in a quilt made up of greens, blue and purple patches. Aaron wonders absentmindedly who made it for Spencer or if she found it at a thrift store or flea market.

The clicking sound approaches the living room and Spencer pokes her head out of the kitchen. She’s still wearing her glasses, but she’s fully dressed in what she’d regularly wear at the office, a light blue button-up tucked into a pair of black dress pants with a gray cardigan thrown over the top. Her brace is over the top of her pants today, probably because there’s no way that it would fit underneath the fabric. Aaron feels very underdressed in comparison, he’s sure that his hair is sticking up in every possible direction and he probably has crease marks on his face from where he was laying against the pillow.

“Morning Hotch, how’d you sleep?” She says cheerfully like she didn’t have to pick him up at 2:00 in the morning because he was having a nervous breakdown.

If Aaron is honest, this is probably the best he’s slept in months that didn’t require some over-the-counter sleeping pills or more than a couple glasses of whisky. He doesn’t tell this to Spencer. Instead, he just nods, “I slept well, thanks for picking me up and letting me sleep on your couch Reid.”

“It’s no worries, I wasn’t about to let you try to get home at 4:00 in the morning. I was up anyways working on some files anyways.”

Spencer shrugs a bit before saying , “My cooking skills are not legendary, but they’re not as bad as JJ claims they are. I’ve got some oatmeal cooking on the stove and coffee brewing. When you’re ready, come on in for some breakfast.”

Lifting himself off the couch, he follows Spencer into her kitchen. He takes a seat at the wooden table in the corner and continues to watch as Spencer flits around her kitchen pouring two mugs of coffee, one of which she adds sugar until Aaron is sure that its more of a sugar sludge than coffee. She passes him the mug with the non-sugared coffee with a splash of milk, just the way he likes it. Shortly afterwards there’s a bowl of oatmeal in front of him and Spencer takes a seat opposite of him with her own cup of coffee and oatmeal, she’s got a notebook in front of her and she’s rapid-fire writing notes on something that Aaron can’t even pretend that he understands. Its some strange sort of comfortable domesticity which Aaron appreciates, Spencer has let him into her home and treats him like he’s always belonged there.

Spencer looks up from her paper, smiling lightly at Aaron. Her eyes are calculating as if she’s looking for injuries. It’s the same look that she gives the other agents on the plane ride home after a difficult case.

“I don’t know if Gideon ever told you about this but after Hankel I slept on his couch for a couple nights. It made me feel safer knowing that I wasn’t alone. Hotch, my couch and apartment is always open, it doesn’t matter how late it is, you can always call me.”

Aaron just nods: he can’t seem to form the words he wants to say. If he could, he’s not even sure which words he would use. Spencer seems to understand that and starts rambling about the statistics related to her current degree program. She’s working on a degree in Art History. Aaron remarks that it’s uncharacteristic of what she’d typically gravitate towards, but she argues that she likes how open ended it is.

They spend the late morning together before Aaron calls a cab to return to his apartment. He needs to take a shower and get into some clean clothes. As he climbs up the stairs, he silently curses the fact that he didn’t pick an apartment with an elevator. Reaching the top he gets into his apartment. It still feels empty, but he’s reminded of what Spencer told him last night, that what happened to him will only make him a better profiler and he gets to work.

Chapter Text

“Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything's possible when it comes to love.”- Haruki Murakami

All Through the Night- Sleeping At Last

....

The rest of Aaron’s medical leave is spent unpacking boxes and making his apartment more secure than Fort Knox. He refuses to allow Foyet to take his space away from him, so he sets down his roots. The spare room that will be Jack’s when he’s out of WITSEC gets slowly but surely set up for him. Bedtime stories that he wants to read to his son begin to pile up on a small dinosaur themed shelf and Jack’s room gets painted a light green. In the living room Aaron starts to hang up pictures, another throw blanket finds its home on the couch. He paints his bedroom a light airy blue and spends days agonizing over what colors the sheets should be. While he misses Haley more than anything, some part of him must admit that he’s enjoying having control over the decorating of his apartment. She would never let him choose out this many things for their home.

When the sun sets, and Aaron feels the creeping dread of being in his apartment alone he reminds himself that he deserves to feel at home in his apartment and that he’s stronger than Foyet.

Sometimes that anxiety is soothed by his reassurances, other times he spends hours on his couch holding his gun at the door. On those nights, he eventually cracks and phones Spencer to ask if he can come over and stay on her sofa for the night. Without fail, Spencer answers the phone and lets Aaron in, offering a cup of tea and sitting next to him on the couch until he falls asleep. She continues doing this even after her own medical leave is over and she’s back at the office. Spencer silently sneaks out early in the morning, leaving Aaron to sleep as long as he possibly can with a pot of coffee staying warm in the kitchen. He drinks it in the soft silence of her kitchen before washing his dishes and locking up her apartment for the day. Aaron has her spare key anyway as her emergency contact and medical proxy after Gideon left.

One night, close to when Aaron is supposed to return to work. He and Spencer are sitting on the couch together, this time listening to the rain pour down the windows. Spencer has transitioned to a more flexible brace and is curled up around her mug of tea.

“Who’s the boy in the picture on your mantlepiece” He asks, gesturing over to the old school picture with the candle and rosary next to it. It’s old enough that he’s likely one of Spencer’s peers from childhood but she never talks about friends from that period.

Spencer’s face briefly flashes with pain before she answers quietly “His name is Riley Jenkins, we played t-ball together when we were little. He was murdered by a local sex offender. Rossi, Morgan and, I solved the case last year.”

Aaron remembers the case file crossing his desk, but with everything that was happening with the divorce and JJ’s maternity leave the case had honestly slipped his mind. In fact, JJ had given birth to Henry while Morgan, Rossi and Spencer had been in Las Vegas finishing up the case. They’d trickled in to visit the next day looking more haggard than they had left. JJ saw this immediately and passed over Henry to Spencer, declaring that she and Garcia would be the Godparents. The devotion and pride on her face as unmistakable. It was a far cry from the awkward Reid who had accidentally called Jack ugly the first time she’d met him.

“I forgot about him; but the child abduction case that we were working on before, kept on triggering some repressed memories I had about what had happened. I kept on seeing Riley’s body behind a washing machine and my dad burning some bloody clothes. My parents told me that Riley was just an invisible friend that I had made up. It wasn’t until we kept pushing that they came clean about what had happened.”

Spencer looks up at the picture of Riley “I keep his picture so that I don’t forget about him. He doesn’t deserve to just be a name on a file. But to also remind me that I’m lucky that I’m here at all, it could have been me. Riley’s dad murdered Riley’s killer because he’d started grooming me and had been following me home from the park.”

“I remember him now, he was sweet and super trusting. I was awful at t-ball, and he was one of the only kids that didn’t make fun of me for it. Honestly, I see Riley whenever I see Jack and Henry. I hope they grow up to be just as amazing as Riley was. But I also hope that they never have to experience the pain and fear that Riley must have felt.”

Hotch looks at the rosary next to Riley’s picture “Why do you have a rosary next to Riley’s picture? I didn’t think you were religious Reid”

Spencer chuckles a little bit into her mug. “I’m not, I’m baptized Catholic, but I haven’t attended mass since my father left, but my mother is and so was Riley’s family. She gave it to me after we solved the case. I figured, If anyone needed a little divine intercession it would be Riley. I try to recite the rosary every once and a while for him.”

Spencer is someone who appears to be disconnected from everyday life. Aaron is pretty sure that she hasn’t seen a movie from the last two decades, she doesn’t even own a TV. She hardly ever goes to the bar with the team after a case. She’s not someone that actively seeks out the companionship of others. She doesn’t give grand shows of affection; she doesn’t always seem to get the others jokes. But Aaron knows one thing, Spencer loves to the point of insensibility. He can tell from the pile of cold case files that she religiously pours over any free time she can get. He can tell by the fact that she still opens her door to him at 2:00mam no matter how tired she must be. She’ll sacrifice everything that she thinks is rational to love someone they need to be loved. Even if it includes praying to a God that neither Spencer nor Aaron really believes in.

Chapter Text

"Love is space and time measured by the heart." – Marcel Proust

Let down (Choir Version)- Radiohead

....
Aaron’s return from medical leave is anything but quiet as they are forced to fly out to Kentucky for the manhunt of an unsub who had gone on a spree killing at his local pharmacy. He tries not to feel too angry at how the team treats him with kid gloves. Garcia is to be expected; she’s the type of person who needs to treat everyone as if they’re fine china. She brings him a tin of cookies to welcome him back. On the other hand, Emily surprises him, asking him if he’s ready to return to work in a way that makes his hackles rise. One month might have healed his stab wounds, and he might have let down part of his shell with Spencer, but returning to work has only made him want to make himself as invulnerable as possible.

The case itself ends with catching the unsub, but it’s not before he kills several more people and kidnaps a child from his former foster home. Aaron is relieved that they rescued the kid unharmed. But, it’s a poor consolation when it takes them so long and when they miss so many signs. When they get back to DC, Emily walks him back up to his apartment. She’s worried about him, which only makes him angrier.

The discovery of Spencer’s lie regarding her medical clearance to travel acts as another stressor on his plate. Not only did she put herself in danger by travelling before she’s ready, but it also means that the team is short one of their members. Something they can’t afford. It takes all of his energy not to verbally dress her down in front of the team. Aaron hates that he's started to profile himself like an unsub, but he's not sure how else to describe how he's feeling in a way that won't make him break down at work.

Spencer doesn’t seem to take his anger too personally as she spends the next couple of cases grounded back in Quantico while the rest of the team flies out to their cases. Spencer and Garcia are often featured on their video calls inside Garcia’s lair, lightheartedly squabbling as they fight to share the most relevant information on the case. Aaron is reminded that Garcia is a lot smarter than he gives her credit for. In some ways, she and Spencer bounce off each other very well. Garcia’s exuberance meets Spencer’s more reserved personality, it seems like they can read each other’s minds far faster than anyone else on the team. Aaron makes a note to himself that he needs to keep himself on Garcia and Spencer’s good side lest he end up the victim of two super-geniuses.

Aaron decides to step down from the unit chief role to avoid restructuring from the Bureau, he tries not to think of this as one more thing that Foyet has stolen from him. Morgan takes over the role for him but refuses to take over Aaron’s office, emphasizing that this is only a temporary measure. That doesn’t mean that Aaron spends any less time in the office. When he isn’t helping Morgan with the absurd amount of paperwork involved with being unit chief, he’s investigating Foyet, trying to track him down. He also watches videos of Haley and Jack that are sent to him by the liaison officer from WITSEC. Those videos are the hardest part of the Foyet affair, he reminds himself of how much he’s missing out on. He worries about Jack and Haley constantly.

Spencer keeps on bringing late-night coffee to his office; however, she’s also transitioned into bringing small gifts for Jack. She always smiles and tells him that it’s for when Jack comes home and so that he’ll have some toys to play with when he’s visiting the BAU. Aaron is touched by Spencer’s desire to give him some semblance of optimism, but his walls are up, and often the only thing he can muster is a curt nod. Spencer texts him later that month to let him know that he's always welcome to stay at her apartment when he needs company. He never responds.

Spencer slowly but surely recovers, and soon she starts using a delicate wooden cane rather than her crutches. She still walks with a limp, but she moves quickly and with purpose. Morgan of course, teases her and calls it her pimp cane, but she just pokes him good naturedly and then lectures the bullpen on the history of the pimp cane. Her hands gesticulating wildly as she dumps fact after fact, while the team rolls their eyes fondly at her antics.

Then, when JJ is at the pharmacy, she has an epiphany, and Aaron’s fragile life is turned over again as they try to catch Foyet and bring Haley and Jack home. Before they can do that, Foyet manages to find Haley, tricking her into coming back to Aaron and Haley’s former marital home. Aaron listens powerless on the phone as Haley begs him to do a good job with raising Jack before Foyet kills her. Once they get to the house, Aaron doesn’t give Foyet a chance to fight back or escape. Foyet is begging for his life, but he keeps beating the man until Morgan forces him away from the corpse, all while Aaron is covered in blood and sobbing.

Once he snaps out of the bloodlust, Aaron goes searching for Jack, whom he told to hide. Jack is hiding in the blanket trunk in Aaron’s old office, “working the case” like they used to play before Haley and Aaron divorced. As he holds his little boy in his arms, he can’t help the overwhelming relief that he’s managed to save Jack. He squeezes Jack a little too tightly as the world collapses around them.

For the first couple of days, Jack and Aaron just stayed in the apartment. Aaron refuses to bring Jack back to the home where his parents' marriage fell apart, and his mother was murdered. Aaron can’t seem to make himself eat or sleep, but he manages to keep Jack on a consistent schedule of naps, early bedtime, and meals with vegetables. They spend a lot of time cuddling on the couch, watching children’s movies, reading books, and playing with Jack’s stuffed dinosaur. Single parenting is hard, and it only makes it harder knowing that it’s because Haley isn’t there to be a mom. Jack keeps asking when his mom is coming home. Aaron tries to explain that Mom is an angel now and that she can’t come back, but she’s always watching over him. But that just makes Jack more confused and angrier. They spend a lot of time crying; rather, Aaron spends a lot of time cradling a sobbing Jack, and then he waits until Jack is in bed and he’s in the shower to cry.

Haley’s sister Jessica is a godsend. She’s staying with her parents to provide support, but she drops off groceries and helps Jack find a suit for the funeral while he sits with Haley’s parents to plan the service. He’s not sure why he’s been invited to help plan the funeral; he knows that they hold him responsible for Haley’s death. But, as staunch Catholics, they never really accepted Aaron and Haley’s divorce, so as the “husband” and the father of her son, he has a say in what happens.

They select the hymns that will be played at the funeral mass, the priest who will bless the grave is from Haley’s childhood. Tiger lilies, Haley’s favorite flower is what is chosen to go on the casket. They figure out the death announcement that will be put into the newspaper. Aaron is surprised and horrified that he is selected to give the eulogy.

By the day before the funeral, Aaron feels like he’s one wrong move from falling apart. He hasn’t slept in days. He sits at the kitchen table while Jack plays with his toys in the living room. There’s a blank piece of paper in front of him; Haley’s eulogy still isn’t written. Whenever he puts his pen to the paper, it's like his brain freezes, and all he can see is her bloody body collapsed on the floor of their old living room.

His phone buzzes- a text message- Aaron mentally prepares himself for what will be another “my condolences message”. He’s probably received over a hundred in the last four days. He’s surprised to see that it’s Spencer.

I have Henry for the afternoon, we’re going to be staying at my apartment. I was wondering if Jack wanted to come over to visit- SR.

Aaron hesitates; he doesn’t want to let Jack out of his sight. He knows that the boys would be safe with her. Jack would probably have fun spending time with Spencer and Henry. But there’s a niggling part of his brain that tells him that he’s separated from Jack that the world will fall apart. It fills him with the type of adrenaline that makes him want to take Jack and start running away until his body collapses. It’s like Spencer can understand Aaron’s discomfort because she sends a follow-up text.

You need a chance to prepare yourself for tomorrow, and Jack needs a little time to forget that the world isn’t falling apart around his shoulders. Let me help- SR.

With the decision made, Aaron calls over to Jack. “Hey buddy, do you remember Henry and Spencer from my work?”

Jack runs over to the table screwing up his face in concentration. “Baby Henry?”

“Yeah, Jack, he’s not so little anymore. Do you want to see him today?”

Jack’s enthusiastic nodding is what puts Aaron at ease. So, he gets Jack’s go bag- old habits die hard- and buckles a wriggling Jack into his car seat. As they head over to Spencer’s apartment, Jack chatters about the last time he saw Henry, how he cried a lot, and didn’t have hair. Jack asks if Henry is big enough to play with his trucks yet. Aaron wonders what it would have been like if Jack had a little sibling, he would have been a good big brother.

Arriving at Spencer’s apartment complex, they climb up the stairs. Outside of her door, Aaron can hear the chattering of voices inside. Spencer’s voice alongside the babbling of a one-year-old Henry. Just then, Spencer opens the door and pops her head out, looking right at Jack and Aaron.

“Hi Jack, it’s good to see you again. My name is Spencer, I’m not sure if you remember me?” Spencer has that soft voice on, the one that she uses to talk down volatile unsubs and her mother when she’s talking on the phone in the bullpen at night.

Jack looks closely at her, “Spencer, who does magic tricks?”

Spencer laughs a bit. “ That’s right, Jack, you’ve got a great memory!” She bends down to Jack’s level before whispering conspiratorially, “I haven’t told Henry you’re coming over, do you want to go over and surprise him?”

Jack nods vigorously before racing into the apartment. Aaron can hear him shout “Henry” and some slight crashing sounds. Spencer laughs again before reassuring Aaron, “Don’t worry, Hotch, I keep everything heavy bolted down and I’ve hidden everything breakable. Take as much time as you need.”

“Thanks, Reid” Aaron chokes out before turning and heading back down the stairs. If he’s being honest, he can’t remember the drive back to his apartment, but before he knows it, he’s back to sitting at his wooden kitchen table. Now that Jack’s voice doesn’t fill the empty spaces of his apartment, he can hear Haley’s voice so clearly. “Jack needs to know that love is real and that it’s the most important thing in the world. He needs to know you love him, Aaron.”

Aaron thinks back to Haley’s smile when they first met and his disastrous performance in the Pirates of Penzance. The day they were married and the moment that Jack entered their lives. He thinks about Dave’s offers for whiskey and commiseration, Gideon’s shoulder pats, Morgan’s faith in him even when he doubts Aaron’s choices, Emily’s candor and undying loyalty, JJ’s tenderness, Garcia’s unabashed affection, and Spencer’s willingness to become a refuge.

Aaron doesn’t know how to be Haley, but he knows that he’s got the right people in his life who will make sure that he teaches Jack how to love and be loved. So, he picks up the pen and begins to write.

Chapter Text

Adapt. Adjust
It ends or it doesn't
It ends or it doesn't.
We do not perish- Caitlyn Siehl

"Burden" by Foy Vance
....

The next couple of hours are filled with Aaron writing and rewriting Haley’s obituary. Finally, when he’s halfway satisfied with what he’s written, he looks back at the clock and realizes with a start that it’s now 7:00 pm. Aaron never intended for Jack to stay this long with Spencer, it is way past the little boy’s bedtime, and he needs to get Jack home so that he’s ready for the funeral in the morning. He shoots Spencer a text saying that he’s on his way before jumping into his car and heading over again.

As he climbs up the stairs of Spencer’s apartment for the second time that day his phone buzzes, another text from Spencer.

Jack fell asleep on me on the sofa, my door is locked, let yourself in using your key- SR

Aaron mentally congratulates himself for keeping all his keys in the same key ring, no matter how cumbersome it gets. He pulls it out and quietly lets himself into Spencer’s apartment. The lights are dimmed, which makes Spencer’s apartment look cozy, and quiet music plays in the background from a record player. It’s this quiet classical music, haunting and wistful, but soothing all the same. The music is quintessentially Spencer.

Spencer waves at him from the couch, her text is correct. Jack is curled up on her lap, wrapped in the quilt that she leaves on the back of her couch. His little hands grip onto Spencer’s sweater. She smiles at Aaron before shifting a little to hold Jack more securely.

“JJ and Will picked Henry up around 5:30. Jack had a great time spending time with Henry. He was very well behaved. We did some coloring and read some books. He fell asleep at 6:45, He had some tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.” Spencer quietly reports trying to avoid waking up Jack, “Hotch, when was the last time you slept?”

Aaron is sure that he must look like a mess. He hasn’t shaved in a week and while he’s washed, he’s not wearing a suit, and his hair hasn’t been brushed at all.

Spencer doesn’t let him answer, probably because she knows that Aaron would lie anyway. “Statistically, young children have disrupted sleep patterns when woken up from deep sleep. This leads to overstimulation and behavioral issues in the morning. Tomorrow is the worst day for Jack to be overstimulated and tired.”

Spencer looks up at Aaron over the frame of her glasses, which uncomfortably reminds him of his elementary school principal —the type of look that tells him he needs to follow her instructions. The bedroom is located down the hall, it’s the brown door on the right. The sheets on the bed were washed and changed this morning. You need to get some sleep, even if it’s just for a few hours. I’ll stay here with Jack.” Jack shuffles around in Spencer’s arms, tightening his grip on her sweater before he relaxes again, clearly in deep sleep.

Jack is resilient, but he’s been struggling with his mother’s death. This is probably one of the first times that he’s looked 100% at peace. Aaron wants to take Jack and get away from Spencer’s apartment, he tries to rationalize it as a desire for routine and consistency. But really, it’s his own selfishness. His grief seems to permeate through his entire being and he doesn’t want to have to share it with anyone else.

But Aaron is reminded of Haley’s last words, “You need to teach Jack that love exists, that it’s real”. Jack looks completely at peace, and he needs to know that the world around him is kinder than Aaron thinks. If that can be achieved by having Spencer cuddle Jack while he sleeps, he’s hard pressed to stop it. Aaron kneels and strokes Jack’s hair, pushing it away from his forehead.

“Goodnight, buddy,” Aaron says, kissing Jack’s forehead before standing up and nodding towards Spencer.

“Can you turn off the record player? It only has two minutes before the album is done anyway. I’ve got an alarm set for 7:00 am.”

Aaron lifts the pin off the record player and walks down the hall to Spencer’s room.

Spencer’s room is so unabashedly hers that Aaron finds it impossible not to profile. The walls are a darker green than her living room, and she has more wooden bookshelves that cover the wall. She’s got an antique four-poster bed with the curtains pulled aside. Her nightstand is cluttered with notebooks and textbooks. There’s a more recent picture of Spencer and her mother smiling at the camera outside. A wicker basket under the night table contains what Aaron can only describe as sleep hygiene items. A sleeping mask, lavender oil, and other items. There’s a ball of yarn and a pair of knitting needles, probably a gift from Garcia, based on the vibrant pink speckles on the yarn.

Single woman who cares about her space, likes small, warm, comforting spaces. This isn’t a room that she uses to work on old cases or for any other activity other than relaxing and sleeping. The amount of Tylenol on the bedside table tells Aaron that she’s probably in more pain than she’s letting on, but at least she’s not relying on Dilaudid to quell the pain. He could probably continue building a profile about Spencer from her room, but really, he’s exhausted, and he collapses on Spencer’s surprisingly comfortable bed and passes out within minutes.

Aaron wakes up heart racing at 4:00 am, he’s had another dream about Foyet’s smashed-in face, except when he looks down, it's Jack underneath his fists. He carefully pads out of Spencer’s bedroom, looking for Spencer and Jack.

Spencer has shuffled over a little bit in the night; she’s lying down on the couch with Jack curled up on her chest. Jack is still sleeping soundly, his hands are wrapped around her neck rather than holding onto her sweater. Spencer looks peaceful as well, her glasses discarded onto the end table next to the couch, her face smoothed by sleep. She looks younger, less analytical.

Spencer has always been a light sleeper, startling awake when people pass her on the jet or when the car makes a sudden turn. Aaron accidentally steps on a creaky floorboard, and Spencer’s eyes shoot open, instinctively tightening her arms around Jack as he sleeps. She squints her eyes, as if she’s trying to make out who’s in front of her, before relaxing when she realizes it's Aaron.

“What time is it?” Spencer questions as she lightly tries to readjust Jack on her lap, “My alarm hasn’t gone off yet, has it?”

“It’s just after 4:00,” Aaron answers, keeping his voice low to avoid waking up Jack. He reaches out his hand, lightly stroking his son’s slightly sweaty hair. “I’m sorry for waking you up, Reid”.

“I just needed to make sure that Jack was okay.”
The way that Spencer smiles tells Aaron that she understands his need to check on Jack. She carefully shifts over on the couch, gesturing with her head for him to sit down. Carefully, she passes over Jack, who latches onto Aaron, snuggling deeper into his arms. There they sit, side by side on the couch, standing watch and protecting the one light in Aaron’s life.

Jack wakes up around 7:00, he’s so excited that he gets to cuddle with his Daddy. Spencer leaves them be, he can hear the tap of her cane as she rustles around her kitchen making breakfast. Aaron is reminded of the first time he stayed at Spencer’s apartment, as he hears the hum of the coffee machine.

Breakfast is quiet, Jack quietly eating his Lucky Charms with some milk while Spencer silently passes a large cup of coffee to Aaron. He doesn’t eat, and Aaron doesn’t think he could consume anything right now without throwing it back up. Spencer, in another act of understanding, rambles about different dinosaurs she knows, filling the silence for the two Hotchner men as they prepare for the day.

Aaron isn’t quite sure what happens for the next couple of hours; everything seems to blur as the hours pass by in a second. He wrestles a compliant Jack into his car seat before driving quietly back to his apartment. The drive is quiet, Jack is still a little sleepy. Jessica comes to the apartment and takes care of Jack while Aaron gets ready. He shaves for the first time in the last week, trying to wash away the look of absolute devastation and exhaustion that lines his face. He pulls on his suit, tying his tie carefully. The muscle memory of decades of suits is ingrained in his hands as he loops the knots, the juxtaposition of the comforting similarity of preparing for work contrasting with the harsh knowledge that he’s preparing for the funeral of his brutally murdered ex-wife.

The people attending Haley’s funeral service fill the pews of Haley’s childhood parish—former college classmates, Haley’s cousins and their children, and Haley's parents' friends. Aaron is privately relieved that the funeral isn’t taking place in the church where he and Haley got married. Not sure he could handle coming to terms with the end of his and Haley’s journey, where it officially began. Jack is sandwiched between him and Jessica; he’s fidgeting with his suit while kicking his legs. He’s only three and shouldn’t be attending his mother’s funeral. He should be at the park or doing something else today.

The gravesite portion of the service is no less devastating. Morgan, Kevin Lynch, Rossi, and Grant Anderson carry the casket from the hearse. The men walk carefully through the graves as if they hold a precious item; they do. Despite being Aaron’s colleagues and friends, they all knew and loved Haley, and it’s only fitting that they bring her to her final resting place.

Aaron tries to block out the sound of Haley’s mother sobbing as the congregants place the lilies on top of the closed casket. His voice doesn’t waver as he gives the eulogy. He reminds himself that he owes Haley this much, to do her memory the best he good. He owes this to Jack as well. In some ways, his eulogy is as much a goodbye to Haley as it is a promise to Jack.

Aaron can see the team standing close to the back of the crowd, paying their respects and conveying their support for Aaron. They all wear black, and Penelope wears a conservative sheath dress. Aaron notes offhandedly to himself that this is the quietest that he’s ever seen Penelope dress. She’s not wearing makeup, probably because she’s too busy crying, and the makeup would only run. After the service, she runs towards Aaron, wrapping his arms around him. Jennifer and Emily both offer quick hugs while Morgan grips his shoulder tightly. Spencer limps over and pats his shoulder quietly before she bends down to show Jack a magic trick.

Dave pulls him to the side, “Aaron, you’re going to be off work for the next three months. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t reach out to the team. We are your family, and we will be here for you every step of the way, but you need to let us in.”

“Thanks, Dave, I’ll keep that in mind. But Jack and I need some time to figure out how to be a family again.”

Dave nods before shepherding the team away from Aaron and Jack at Haley’s grave. Aaron lifts the little boy who’s still holding his lily. He helps Jack place the lily on the casket before Jack blows a kiss to “say goodbye to Mommy”.

They stand alone, watching as the world continues to turn, leaving them behind in its rotation.

Chapter Text

“Find a place inside where there is joy, and the joy will burn out the pain”- Joseph Campbell
Almost Idyllic by Sleeping at Last
….
Aaron’s bereavement leave is one of the most challenging yet beautiful moments in his life. Jack’s grief is complex; he desperately misses his mom, and everyone else is just a pale imitation for him. He wakes up with nightmares frequently and begs for his mother to comfort him. Jack watches all the video recordings of Haley on repeat, begging Aaron to be allowed to watch them again before bedtime. Jack gets frustrated easily, Aaron can’t seem to make grilled cheese sandwiches properly, and he can’t read bedtime stories with the funny voices like Haley could.

But Jack also has good days. On those days, Aaron relishes the chance that he gets to take his son to the park and visit the museum. One day, he takes Jack out to the local pool to swim, and he realizes as soon as they arrive that he’s never actually taken him swimming before. Some part of the hole left behind by Haley in Aaron’s soul is filled by the sight and sound of Jack gleefully paddling in the water.

Erin Strauss is unexpectedly compassionate about the whole situation. When she calls him in for a meeting shortly after the funeral, she arranges to see Aaron at his apartment so that he doesn’t need to worry about finding someone to watch Jack. She offers an opportunity for Aaron to retire early with his full pension and benefits. Aaron is surprised by how internally receptive he feels to the offer. With Haley gone, Jack needs him more than ever, and the long hours and unexpected nature of his job don’t lend well to raising a child on his own.

There’s some part of himself that hesitates to accept the offer, something that Strauss doesn’t expect, and so she reluctantly gives him some time to consider his options. Aaron has worked for the BAU for over 10 years at this point. He’s devoted most of his life to his work, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if he weren’t SSA Aaron Hotchner. He’d give up his job in a heartbeat for Jack, but privately he wonders how long it would be before the sedentary aspect of a desk job or stay-at-home parent sucked him dry or filled him with guilt about the team he’d be leaving behind.

Aaron tells Jessica about it the next time she spends the afternoon visiting with Jack. He’s expecting her to tell him that it’s about time that he settled down or that he needs to take the offer as soon as possible. Aaron doesn’t expect her to tell him that he should go back to work, offering to watch Jack when he’s on cases. Aaron is simultaneously touched and worried about her offer, he wonders how long they could feasibly do that before Jack or Jessica suffered because of his choices.

Sensing his hesitancy, Jessica just stares Aaron down, declaring that his team still needs him and that Jack needs to see his father beating the bad guys before she turns back to what she’s doing at the stove.

It isn’t until Aaron goes to visit Haley’s grave that he knows that his decision is finalized. He’s sitting on a bench, staring at the mound of dirt left by the burial. The only indication that it’s Haley’s final resting place is a temporary placard with her name on it. He doesn’t hear the footsteps until Dave comes up next to him.

Dave is matter-of-fact, “I knew that I’d find you here.” he moves to sit down next to Aaron on the bench, looking ahead to Haley’s grave.

Aaron shrugs slightly, a habit that he thought he’d long since broken. He can’t tell if he’s annoyed that he’s that transparent or if he’s touched that people care about him enough to know what he’s thinking.

“Have you told her you’re coming back?” Dave gestures towards the mound of dirt.

“What makes you think that I’m coming back?” Aaron turns his head slowly to face Dave, arching his brow.

Dave smiles, like he’s sharing some sort of private joke. “Aaron, your calling has always been to be the man who catches and stops the bad guys. You do this so that Jack won’t have to.”

“Besides, the team needs you, you’ve always been a slave to duty.”

Aaron feels a bit stung about this characterization. Maybe if he weren’t such a slave to duty, Haley would still be alive. Maybe they wouldn’t have gotten divorced in the first place.

Dave leans back on the bench, and they sit in silence for a while. When the silence begins to become suffocating rather than comforting, Dave pulls out something from his jacket pocket. Its rectangular and wrapped in brown paper.

“Reid wanted me to give this to you, she knew I was dropping by and didn’t want you to be overwhelmed with people.”
Passing the package over, Dave stands up, “I’ll see you when your leave is over”. Aaron gets a pat on the shoulder before Dave walks away, slipping back and forth between the headstones.

The brown package isn’t very heavy, but it feels solid. Sliding his fingers along the sides of the package looking for the tape, he begins to unwrap it. It’s a well-worn book, the corners of the cover soft and slightly bent by frequent handling. The worn appearance tells Aaron that it’s a book from Spencer’s collection. The title of the book is “When Grief Comes Home”; the pages are littered with sticky notes and annotations in Spencer’s precise yet urgent scrawl. While flipping through the pages, Aaron feels a note flutter to the ground. He reaches down to grab it, it's more of Spencer's handwriting.

Hotch,
Here’s a book that you may find helpful for Jack. This isn’t a step-by-step instruction book; unfortunately is no real roadmap or mathematical equation that you can use to know exactly what to do. I know that it probably is overwhelming and all encompassing now, but I know that you are more capable of helping Jack than you think you can. My couch is always open, and you have the keys to my door. Don’t hesitate to use them.
Sincerely,
SR

Aaron couldn’t help to laugh a little. It’s a little barky exhale; he can’t remember the last time he laughed, probably long before Jack and Haley went into WITSEC. Garcia might send flowers and gift baskets with chocolates to his door, but Spencer will always have just the book with the answers to the questions you’re asking.

Aaron tucks the note carefully back into the book, placing it on the bench next to him, and watches as the sun begins to set over the horizon. The scene is almost idyllic. Sitting in the in-between place of the living and the dead, he knows with a certainty that he will be returning to the BAU. Some part of his soul tells him that even though the world has fallen apart, he’s taken one step closer to rebuilding.

Chapter Text

"Whenever you don't talk about something, shame fills that space"- Aubrey Chaves

The Cave by Mumford and Sons

....

Aaron’s return to work after his leave is quiet. Regularly, whenever a team member was away for an extended period, Penelope would throw a brief celebration to welcome them back. This didn’t happen this time. He receives a warm but quiet greeting, and they return to work. His team understands what he’s sacrificed to be there.

They’re almost immediately pushed into another case up in New York, a man who killed a woman and then kidnapped his daughter from his ex-wife. They catch him, and he’s in FBI custody with Emily and local law enforcement when the car they’re driving is run off the road, and the police officer is murdered. Emily is relatively unharmed, escaping the crash with some scrapes and a concussion.

Aaron is ashamed of how relieved he is that Emily wasn’t the one killed. He doesn’t think that anyone, least of all him, could handle another loss this year.

This is a cold comfort, he’s sure, for Emily. Her demeanor is quieter, and it’s clear that she feels guilty that she couldn’t save the other officer. They’re able to recapture the unsub and rescue the family he’s been holding hostage. As Aaron sits across from her in the jet on the way home, he hopes that time and the knowledge that they made a difference will eventually lessen the vacant look in her eyes.

He sends her home and has her take a week of medical leave once they return to Quantico. Morgan, ever the stalwart partner, offers to bring her home and keep an eye on her. So, the bullpen is quieter than it usually is. Garcia, Rossi, and JJ are all in their offices finishing up their paperwork. Only Spencer is left in the bullpen, he can see her hair poking up from out of the cubicle as she leans down to finish the paperwork from the case. If Aaron listens hard enough, he’s sure that he’ll hear the careful scratching of Spencer’s pen as she creates the rough draft for her report.

He still hasn’t talked to Spencer since he stayed the night at her apartment before the funeral, except to give instructions for work. He needs to thank her for giving him the book. She’s right, there isn’t a clear roadmap on how to deal with grief, but the book makes him feel like he has some of the tools he needs to help Jack cope with losing his mother. At this point, that’s all he can ask for.

He should talk to her now, but Jessica has Jack over for the night, and Aaron wants to get as much paperwork done as possible so that he doesn’t need to stay late or do overtime from home. So, he stretches his fingers and gets back to working on his report.

It’s a little after nine before Aaron looks up again from his work. The pile of reports and paperwork has finally diminished to the point where he feels okay to go home. Jessica’s dropping Jack off at daycare, but he’ll get to see him tomorrow afternoon. The lights are dimmed outside of his office, and JJ and Rossi’s office lights are powered off. They’ve probably left hours ago JJ to reunite with Henry and spend time with Will, and Rossi heading to do whatever a rich, thrice-divorced bachelor does in his free time.

Aaron almost relaxes into his chair, thinking that he’s alone, when he hears a shuffling noise. He startles a little, head turning towards the sound, when he sees Spencer’s hair poking out over the top of her cubicle. He can’t hear her keyboard clacking or the scratching of her pen, so Aaron has no idea what she’s doing at the office so late.

He wonders if she’s fallen asleep at her desk; it wouldn’t be the first time she’s done it. Spencer tends to run full steam ahead for days at a time before she just drops wherever she happens to be. It never really warrants any disciplinary action because she never falls asleep in the middle of an important case, and her reports are always completed well in advance of those of the other team members. Aaron never discusses it with the team, but there’s an unspoken rule that if Spencer is sitting on the couch in the jet to leave her alone, she will inevitably fall asleep there before the flight is over.

Aaron decides that if Spencer is sleeping at her desk, it’s time to make her go home and get some sleep. He pushes back his chair, grabs his briefcase, and turns off the lights in his office. He makes his way carefully over to Spencer, but she doesn’t turn to respond to the noise.

“Reid, are you awake?” Aaron calls out tentatively, stepping closer to Spencer’s desk.

Spencer jumped a little before putting the file she was reading down. The rest of the paperwork is in a neat pile on her desk. It looks like she’s started digging into the cold case files again and got lost in her thoughts.

“Sorry, Hotch.” Spencer is running her hands through her curls. They’ve frizzed since the beginning of the day. It’s like she has a cloud surrounding her head.“ It’s late, do you need anything?”

“Reid, do you need a ride home?”

“Thanks, but I just need to finish reading up on this case.” She goes to pick up her pen again, writing some notes frantically into a notebook she has beside her.

Aaron peeks over her shoulder at the file, which is from the 1970s. Of all people, Spencer should know that the likelihood of the case being solved is little to none. The urgency she’s displaying isn’t about the case she’s looking over.

Aaron questions whether today the day is the day he should push further. Forcing Spencer to talk about what’s bothering her, or if he should take what she’s saying at face value. Looking at Spencer’s face, he chooses the second option. Looking at a case file can’t possibly hurt her too seriously.

Aaron nods, “Goodnight, Reid, don’t stay too much later”. He heads towards the elevator, as Aaron turns to see the bullpen again, he can see that Spencer already has her head buried in the case file again.

...

It isn’t until a couple of weeks later that Aaron notices that the stretches of Spencer staying in the office are becoming longer and longer. Perhaps he’s gotten used to the coffee in the evening before she leaves. Most days, he leaves around 9 pm, and she’s still deeply engrossed in her work. She’s drinking a lot more coffee at work as well, and one day, he sees her refill her mug eight times in the space of four hours.

She also withdraws from the rest of the team; she’s quieter, and when Morgan tries to call her out on it, she snaps at him. She works on her paperwork with the intensity of a man dying of thirst in the desert and ignores Prentiss and Garcia’s lunch invitations. Aaron is pretty sure that she’s re-wearing some of her clothes. This indicates to him that she’s probably stayed a couple of nights in the office, needing to dip into her go-bag to change her outfit. If the rest of the team is noticing the fact that she’s wearing the same clothes, they aren’t saying anything to Aaron.

When Friday hits and Aaron sees Spencer still at her desk at 10 pm, he knows that he needs to do something about it. She’s going to continue staying late to avoid what’s bothering her until she burns herself out.

He strides over to her desk, announcing, “Reid, grab your bag, I’m taking you home”.

Spencer looks up at Aaron, behind her glasses, he can see her eyes are rimmed with red like she hasn’t been sleeping. She opens her mouth to try to argue with him, but Aaron is already piling up the paperwork on her desk and switching off the lamp she’s got on. He’s about to reach for her bag when Spencer grabs it.

“I can get myself home fine, thanks.” She stands up quickly and makes a grab for her cane before she starts limping over to the elevators. Trying to get a head start on Aaron. A futile attempt, honestly.

Aaron just walks alongside her to the elevators before pressing the button to the parking garage. Once they get down, he gently steers her towards his SUV. It’s probably a lucky thing on Aaron’s part that Spencer is so tired that she doesn’t really fight him too much. Quietly slipping into the passenger seat as Aaron puts his briefcase in the back.

Once he gets the car started and they start moving, he turns to face Spencer, “Reid, something is bothering you. What’s going on?” Aaron tries to keep his voice neutral. He’s never been perfect at the reassurance or soft skills of bonding with his team, relying on Rossi’s role as team father to fill the spaces that Hotch has a hard time filling.

Spencer shifts down in her seat, She’s quiet for a couple of minutes before finally saying, “I’m working a lot on regaining more mobility in physical therapy. I’m in a lot of pain, and with everything else that’s happened in the last couple of months, it’s making me crave.” Her voice is small, like she’s worried that Aaron will get angry at her.
“I’m not ashamed that I’m a recovered addict. But I’m angry and ashamed that something like this has so much power over me, even when I haven’t used dilaudid in a long time.”

“It's hard to know that I am going to feel like this for the rest of my life.”

Aaron scrapes his mind for any sort of reassurance he can give her, but he’s coming up empty. He can’t think of a single thing that he can say that will make Spencer feel better. Perhaps it’s because he’s never had a substance addiction, or maybe it’s because he’s so broken himself that anything kind he could say would be lies.

“Spencer, I’m sorry you’re going through this. You don’t need to do this alone. How can we help you?” Aaron finally settles on.

“I think I need to go to a meeting, could you drop me off at one?” Spencer looks him right in the eye, begging him not to hold this against her. Regardless of her pitying expression, Aaron is hard pressed to say no, and so they go in search of a meeting close by.

In true Spencer fashion, she has all the meetings in any given area memorized down to the times they start. She navigates them through the streets until they arrive at a small community center, with a couple of people milling about the front.

Spencer reaches down to grab her messenger bag before turning back to Aaron. “Thanks, Hotch, I can make the rest of the way home from here.”

Aaron pushes down a twinge of frustration; sometimes helping Spencer is like pulling teeth as she desperately tries to avoid being an inconvenience. “Spencer, I’ll wait in the car. Jack’s visiting with his cousins tonight. I’ll drive you home when you’re done.”

Aaron watches as Spencer gives a jerky nod before she climbs out of the car, cane in hand, she walks to the entrance.

Aaron wonders for a second if he should recruit JJ or Garcia for help with Spencer. JJ has been there for Spencer since the beginning. United by the fact that they were both young women in a team full of men decades older than they were. Garcia is someone who knows how to care for Spencer like the mother that Spencer’s never had the chance to experience.

But Spencer never pawned him off to Rossi or even Morgan when he showed up at her house in the middle of the night. No matter how unsure she probably felt about dealing with Aaron’s grief. She willingly rocked his son to sleep so that Aaron could get some sleep before Haley’s funeral. No matter how well-intentioned he’s trying to be, he can’t just leave her to be dealt with by someone else.

It’s about 45 minutes later when Spencer’s figure emerges from the community center. She’s a bit slower and leans more heavily on her cane as she makes her way back to Aaron’s car. Her shirt is rumpled, a surefire sign that she’s been tugging on it, and she’s wiping the last remnants of tears from her face. Her eyes look a little brighter, like a weight has been removed from her shoulders.

Once she’s climbed into the car, Aaron pulls the car out of park, and they start again towards Spencer’s apartment.

“Thank you for bringing me to a meeting, I’ve been putting it off, hoping that the cravings would go away, but I needed the help”. She whispers

After that, the car goes quiet as Aaron keeps his eyes on the road.

When he’s five minutes away from Spencer’s apartment, he glances towards Spencer to see how she’s doing. She’s slumped over in the passenger seat, fast asleep. It reminds Aaron strongly of late nights with an infant Jack when he wouldn’t settle, and he would drive around in circles to soothe him. Spencer looks the calmest she’s been in the past couple of weeks, and he knows that if he wakes her up now and walks her to her cozy but empty apartment, she’s probably going to wake up and stay up for the rest of the night. Decision made, he turns on his signal and keeps driving.

After about an hour of driving, Spencer still hasn’t stirred. Aaron estimates that if he’s quiet, he could probably transfer her to a bed or couch. However, he doesn’t want to leave her to wake up in an apartment alone, especially if she’s struggling with her sobriety. Jack is getting dropped off around 9:00 by Jessica after his sleepover with the Brooks cousins, so he needs to be home to meet him. Decision made; Aaron starts making his way back to his apartment. Spencer can sleep on his couch.

When they finally arrive at Aaron’s place, it’s just past midnight, and Spencer is still deeply asleep. Aaron first grabs his briefcase and puts Spencer’s messenger bag over his shoulder. He then goes to grab Spencer. She’s almost as tall as he is, but she’s always been slight. He’s sure that he’ll be able to lift her with relatively no problems. His suspicions are proven correct when he lifts her, and her weight is easily handled. He makes a mental note to himself that he needs to make sure that she’s eating more when they’re working.

He's reminded again of Jack as he carries her to the apartment, thanking himself that he chose an apartment with an elevator. He manages, through some miracle, to unlock his door without waking Spencer up, but once the security alarm goes off, she starts to stir. He quickly moves to place her on the couch before turning the alarm off. He turns back to Spencer, who’s looking at him with bleary eyes; she’s still half asleep, and it looks like she doesn’t recognize him.

Aaron tries to soothe her like he would Jack, so she goes back to sleep. “Hey Spence, it’s okay, lie back down and go back to sleep.” He tries to wrestle off her shoes, revealing her bright mismatched socks, and grabs a blanket that he leaves on the couch for Jack to use when they cuddle.

She’s tired enough that she doesn’t fight him on it. Allowing herself to be wrapped up and put back to sleep. Her eyes roll back into her head before her eyes close, and her breathing evens out.

His work complete, Aaron locks up everything else before changing into some sleepwear and makes himself comfortable in the armchair next to the couch. He’s reminded of how Spencer did the same for him all those months ago. She’s right, sometimes you just need someone to keep watch when you’re struggling. He’s lulled to sleep by the soft breathing and relishes in the quiet comfort it offers.

...

Aaron is woken up by a loud thump at around 8:45 in the morning. It’s Spencer, she’s fallen off the couch and is trying to frantically paw around for her glasses. He realizes with a start that she probably has no idea where she is. If it were him, he’d probably do the same thing.

“Reid, relax, it’s me.” Aaron tries unwinding himself from the blanket that he’s wrapped in. He’s not sure if she’s going to need help getting up off the floor.

At the sound of his voice, Spencer whirls around, confused. She squints her eyes, trying to make him out. “Hotch? What’s going on, where are we?”

“You fell asleep in the car last night, so I brought you to my apartment and you slept on the couch.” Aaron passes over the glasses he left on the side table.

Spencer sags a little in relief once she’s able to put on her glasses, Aaron wants to give her some privacy, so instead of reminding her of everything that happened the night before he just tells her “your go-bag is next to the couch, why don’t you take a shower and get a change of clothes. The bathroom is at the end of the hall to the left.”

Spencer just nods, climbing to her feet, grabbing her bag and cane before limping down the hall.

Aaron makes his way over to his bedroom; he gets dressed in his usual weekend wear before heading over to the kitchen and starting the coffee maker. He needs a caffeine boost to be on task with Jack for the weekend. Spencer is going to want coffee when she’s done getting ready as well. Jack is going to be home shortly, and he probably hasn’t eaten breakfast yet, so he also gets started on making some pancakes for the three of them, he’s going to make Spencer eat breakfast before he takes her home, he can’t remember the last time he saw her eat and he’s sure that if he asked her, she wouldn’t remember either. Jack and he are supposed to visit the museum anyway, so they’ll just drop her off on her way home.

Before long, he has pancake batter bubbling in a frying pan, and he’s cutting bananas to put inside Jack’s pancakes. A rustling behind him tells Aaron that Spencer’s out and dressed, he turns around to greet her and grabs a mug to get her some coffee.

She looks slightly less bedraggled, her hair is wet and dripping, but her dress shirt is tucked in, and she’s tugging on the strap of her satchel again.

“I’m so sorry that I fell asleep in your car. I’ll let myself out so that you can enjoy the rest of your weekend.” She’s almost halfway down the hallway before Aaron can call after her.

“Reid, relax, I’ll drive you home, but first, Jack, you and I are going to eat some breakfast.

Spencer is still standing awkwardly halfway through the hallway, so he gently starts pushing her towards the kitchen table. Once she’s seated, he pushes a prepared mug of coffee towards her. She accepts it with a quiet thanks and dives in.

She’s only about halfway through her coffee when the doorbell buzzer goes off, Aaron goes to let Jack in. Jack is already bouncing off the walls, cheeks red from the excitement of spending time with his cousins.

“Daddy!” Jack cries, jumping into Aaron’s arms for a hug.

“Hey Buddy,” Aaron smooths away Jack’s hair from his face. It’s getting long and he needs to get a haircut soon, Aaron notes mentally, he’ll have to schedule one for next weekend. He nods to a slightly harried Jessica, probably exhausted from dealing with a bunch of energetic children overnight. “Thanks for letting him stay the night. Do you want coffee or anything?”

Jessica shakes her head, smiling wearily. “Thanks, Aaron, I’ve already drunk two cups. I’m going to head back home and get some sleep. Have a good weekend,” She turns and walks back down the hall towards the elevator.

Closing the door, Aaron looks down at Jack in his arms. “I’m making pancakes, and I have a surprise friend in the kitchen. You want to go see who it is?” Jack’s nodding frantically, so he sets the little boy down and lets him run into the kitchen. Half a second later, Aaron can hear the excited cry of “Spencer!” from Jack, and he walks back to the kitchen.

Jack is sitting next to Spencer, who’s nursing her cup of coffee, and he’s excitedly chatting about all the things he did while he spent time with his cousins. Spencer’s smiling and nodding attentively, when Jack stops to take a breath, she asks him a follow-up question, which starts him off again. Aaron is reminded that the “Reid Effect” no longer applies to Jack, and he’s soaking up all the positive attention that Spencer gives him.

Once Aaron brings the pancakes to the table, they settle into an easy conversation with Jack asking them questions and telling Spencer all about their plans for the day. That’s why both Aaron and Spencer are surprised when Jack announces that Spencer should join them to visit the museum today. Spencer almost chokes on her coffee and turns to look towards Aaron to see what he says.

Aaron treads carefully; he doesn’t want Spencer to think she’s obligated to participate, but he also doesn’t want her to feel like she isn’t welcome. His research, made on his phone while waiting for Spencer to come out of her meeting last night, tells him that supporting someone with addiction includes spending time with them so that they aren’t left alone while they’re craving.

“Jack, buddy, Spencer is more than welcome to join us, but she might be busy today.”

He looks towards Spencer, hoping that this is the right answer to give Spencer the room to answer without pressure or obligation. She pushes up her glasses nervously, nodding towards Aaron before turning to Jack.

“Jack, I’d love to go to the museum with you and your dad, which museum are you going to?”

Aaron isn’t sure why he’s so happy that Spencer said yes, but the way that Jack smiles tells him that he’s happy that Spencer said yes, too. Jack launches into another explanation about which museum they’re visiting and his favorite parts.

Jack doesn’t stop talking until they get to the museum; Spencer takes it all in stride. Aaron tries to focus on the road, but he can hear Spencer telling Jack a story about her favourite museums in Las Vegas when she was a child. Spencer is the type of person who will share statistics or information without prompting, but as soon as it’s personal information, she doesn’t often share it unless anyone bothers to ask. This makes Aaron listen closer, tucking the information into the mental file he keeps on his team.

They spend a carefree morning at the museum, Jack grabs Spencer and Aaron’s hands and drags them along as they go from exhibit to exhibit. Every once and a while, he looks to Spencer to answer his questions about the information on the display panels. Spencer dutifully answers, breaking down the information in an easily accessible way for an overexcited three-year-old. Something that Aaron didn’t think she could do, in another world, he thinks, Spencer would be an excellent teacher.

It isn’t until later that evening, long after Aaron and Jack drop off Spencer at her apartment, that he gets a text from Spencer.

Thanks for letting me join you at the museum today. It felt good not to be alone.- SR

When Monday rolls around, Spencer looks a lot better, she looks like she’s gotten enough sleep and she greets the team cheerfully. When she leaves at 6:00 pm, she drops by Aaron’s office and brings him a mug of coffee. It tastes twice as good as it usually does.

Chapter Text

"Grief is the price we pay for love." - Queen Elizabeth II

The Funeral by Band of Horses
…
Spencer and Aaron’s trip to the museum seems to have loosened some type of dam in their relationship. Aaron realizes that in some way, they’ve become friends. They don’t only spend time around each other when they need support, but also because they genuinely like spending time with each other. Aaron looks forward to seeing her both inside and outside of work. Spencer becomes a fixture at Saturday outings with Jack. Trips to the museum and zoo become brighter with Spencer’s affection and attention towards Jack. As she gets off her cane and begins to walk on her own, Spencer helps Jack with his soccer skills, carefully passing the ball between each other. Aaron notes with no small amount of amusement that she can’t score a goal to save herself, but she can keep up relatively well with the exuberant boy.

When Spencer and Aaron share a room during a case in Alaska, the nights aren’t awkward. They sit in their respective beds, going over their files, Spencer occasionally sharing insights with him, using Aaron like a sounding board. When Aaron calls Jack to say goodnight, Spencer hops in for a second to say hi before leaving the room to give them some space. Whenever she comes back, she always brings two mugs of tea. Some sort of soothing nightcap for the two of them. Tradition at this point.

While the rest of the team leaves the office for lunch, Spencer and Aaron eat in his office. Chatting about how Jack is doing and Spencer’s progress on her degree. Her hands are emphatic as she discusses the brutalist architecture all around DC. She hates it, of course, preferring the organic curves of Art Nouveau or the dramaticism of Victorian Gothic. He has no idea what most of the words she’s saying mean, but her enthusiasm and warmth are addictive, and he’s glad to just bask in it while she talks.

Aaron doesn’t think much about what his and Spencer’s friendship must look like to the rest of the team until Dave comes into his office late one afternoon. Aaron doesn’t even look up from the budget reports he’s working on until he hears Dave close the door and stretch himself out on the couch.

“So, Aaron, what’s going on between you and our resident genius?” Dave looks remarkably smug, and Aaron is reminded that while Dave is charismatic and emotionally tuned in with the team, he’s also the worst gossip known to man.

Aaron sighs inwardly before he pushes back his paperwork, “Reid and I are friends, nothing else is going on”. He’s cataloging all his interactions with Spencer; they always ate with the door open, and when they spent time together outside of the office, it was almost always with Jack.

Dave raises his eyebrow at Aaron, like he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. “ You willingly room together when we’re on cases, and you spend a suspicious amount of time together in the office, and you expect me to believe that absolutely nothing is going on?”

“Dave, I’m the single father of a five-year-old boy. I am too tired to be getting involved romantically with anyone, least of all with Reid.” That’s why it’s so easy for him and Spencer to get along; there is no pretext of societal expectations, just the warm friendship that they both have to offer each other.

Sensing that he’s not going to be privy to any juicy gossip today, Dave stands up and leaves Aaron’s office. But before he crosses the threshold, he calls back to Aaron, “Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do!” his voice is teasing.

Aaron scoffs lightheartedly at the advice, “That’s not a reassuring endorsement, Dave”. He doesn’t think that he’ll ever be able to forget that one time that he walked into a supply closet to find Dave and another field agent using it for non-departmental activities. Aaron can hear Dave’s barking laugh before he pulls his paperwork back to himself and gets back to work.
…
The first anniversary of Haley’s murder hits hard for Aaron and Jack. The boy had gotten a lot better at sleeping on his own, but he started to regress again, needing to sleep with Aaron to keep the nightmares at bay. He takes time off to stay with Jack, and he tries to keep them both as distracted as possible so that they don’t feel the hole that is missing in their little family, an absence that only becomes more apparent as time goes on.

One particularly difficult night, it’s close to midnight before Jack’s fallen asleep, and Aaron is seated on the couch with a drink when he hears a knock at the door. Treading carefully to the door, he draws his gun. He’d gotten better at not being so hypervigilant in his home, but with the anniversary, the stress is getting to him. He isn’t expecting anyone, especially at this time of night. Peering through the peephole, he sees Spencer shifting nervously, tugging on the strap of her satchel. Confused, he unlocks the door, peering out at her.

“What are you doing here? Reid, it’s late. Is everything okay?”

“I know that things have been difficult for you and Jack with Haley’s anniversary. I knew you’d still be awake, so I brought some tea.” She gestures towards her bag. Aaron doesn’t want tea right now, but it beats sitting alone, so he opens the door a little further and lets her in.

Once they’re seated on the couch with their tea, Spencer stays quiet, sipping her tea, she’s offering him the control of making the first move.

“I never thanked you for giving me that book for Jack after the funeral,” Aaron finally offers. Because Jack’s been struggling so much, he’s reread it, trying to figure out what to do to help his son.

“Don’t worry about it, I have it all memorized anyway, so I didn’t mind parting ways with it.” She smiles, tucking her legs underneath her body. “It’s not perfect, I’d argue that it’s not all based on rigorous scientific studies, but it’s a good starting point”.

“It helped.” It had, they do the grieving exercises, they write letters to Haley and find ways to share different memories of her over the kitchen table. The self care that the book advocates for parents is a little harder for him to achieve. Aaron has always been responsible for everyone and so the idea of carving out time for himself is largely unsuccessful.

“You’ve worked so hard to give Jack the support he needs, Hotch. I’m glad the book helped.” Spencer looks over the living room, looking at the drawings that dot the coffee table and the toy box in the corner filled with Legos and trucks. It’s a far cry from the way it looked when Aaron first moved in.

Spencer and Aaron are interrupted by the sound of Jack calling out, he’s had another nightmare. His eyes are reddened, and his hair is sweaty, like he’s been crying for a long time. Pulling the little boy into his arms he brings Jack back to the living room, tucking him in between himself and Spencer. When Jack has finally calmed down enough, he loosens his grip on Aaron and turns to peer a little at Spencer.

“Hey Jack,” Spencer whispers gently, “I heard you were having a hard night. if you want, I can tell you a story.” Jack sniffs a little before nodding. Spencer closes her eyes for a second, as if she’s searching through a library to find the right book to share. When she opens them, she starts to recite what Aaron is pretty sure is from The Little Prince.

Spencer’s inflections follow the story perfectly, and before he knows it, Jack is drifting off back to sleep again. Once he’s been tucked into the master bed, Spencer leaves, and Aaron is finally able to drift off next to the slumbering 5-year-old. He can still hear Spencer’s book in the back of his mind, “Once when I was six years old, I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest…”
…
After the case with Billy Flynn in Los Angeles, JJ is involuntarily transferred from the BAU. The team all draws closer together. The complete lack of control over the stability of their team makes them more desperate for each other’s comfort. The trips they make to a restaurant or bar after their cases become more frequent as they bond over the stressors related to their work.

Aaron’s workload gets increasingly busy as he maintains both his and JJ’s responsibilities. Penelope steps up to help with JJ’s work, but she struggles with the face-to-face elements of JJ’s old job. He can’t blame her; Garcia has always been deeply empathetic and in tune with the people who have experienced horrible things. But she’s someone who will drop everything to comfort someone, sometimes that comes at the expense of the work that only she can do. When she tells Aaron this, her demeanor tells him that she’s worried that she’s disappointed in him, but he can only feel deep pride in how much Penelope has grown to help the team.

Agent Ashley Seaver joins the team; she’s a little uncertain of herself. She’s still nursing the guilt and betrayal from discovering that her father was a violent serial killer while masquerading as a doting family man. Dave and Emily take her under their wings, and she slowly but surely becomes one of them.
…
The tentative bonds that have grown out of necessity after JJ’s departure are shattered when Emily “dies”. As Aaron watches her pale face, consumed with tubes and wires, he knows that her survival needs to be kept a secret to keep her safe from Doyle. But he knows that the cost of keeping the secret will be what destroys the team once in for all. The guilt settles into his stomach, a constant pain that seems to consume him no matter how hard he tries to push it to the back of his mind.

The funeral is no short of devastating. JJ, Penelope, Ashley, and Spencer all join the men of the BAU in carrying Emily’s casket. The team is all in various states of grief. Dave and Morgan appear stoic, but Aaron knows that it’s a façade. The shaking of Morgan’s hands tells Aaron that he’s either going to cry or he’s going to hit someone. Garcia is held up largely by JJ as she sobs. Spencer is just distant; her actions are robotic as she goes through the motions of the service, placing a rose on the casket and dropping a handful of dirt in the hole. When Aaron looks her in the eye, there is no spark of recognition. She’s spent the entire service completely dissociated.

Aaron doesn’t think that Spencer knows where she is or what’s going on; that’s how far she’s retreated into herself to cope with Emily’s loss. After the service, she just stands motionless by the gravesite. Spencer doesn’t respond when anyone calls her name or when Morgan goes to grab her shoulder, so Aaron takes her back to her apartment after the funeral, skipping the luncheon. He leaves the lights dimmed as he leads her through her apartment. Spencer stays still as Aaron helps take off her suit jacket and shoes. He walks her to her bedroom and guides her towards the bed, It isn’t until she’s tucked in that she falls apart. Her body shaking with the force of her tears. Aaron stays her bedroom floor that night.

When they get back to work after their bereavement leave, the team is fractured. None of them can stand to look at the empty desk in the corner of the bullpen. Morgan is angry, questioning every choice that Aaron makes for the team. When he isn’t working at his desk, he’s downstairs in the training gym demolishing a punching bag or shooting at the range.

Penelope is inconsolable, while she’s always been sensitive about crime scene images, her reactions get worse. There’s more than one time that Aaron is forced to send her home early because the images that cross her screen start to give her panic attacks, ones that can’t be held at bay by the décor she keeps in her office.

Rossi retreats into his lone wolf mentality, and the door to his office, which he usually keeps open, is shut. The father of the team is closing himself off from his children. Seaver feels Rossi’s absence the most out of the team. Dave had taken her under his wing and the death of Emily her trainer means that she’s lost two mentors at the BAU in one fell swoop.

Spencer throws herself back into her work, working on cold case after cold case while the rest of the team goes home at the end of the day. Often, Aaron has to force her to leave the office and drive her home to her apartment.

It's one of those nights where Aaron has had to drag her home, so they’re drinking some tea on Spencer’s couch. They’ve just finished a grueling case where Morgan was confronted with the possible perpetrator of his cousin’s murder, and Spencer spent most of it reconstructing the skeletal remains of young women left behind at the oceanic dumpsite. Spencer has her legs pulled up underneath her, staring towards the mantlepiece when she breaks the silence.

“I think about Elle a lot these days.” She takes another sip of her tea. “In the grand scheme of things, she wasn’t around for very long. Sometimes the team we had when she was there seems like it happened a hundred years ago rather than five.”

“When I was 24, I thought that I’d always be at the BAU, just like I couldn’t conceptualize that Elle would ever get hurt or that Gideon would ever burn out or that JJ would leave. Time and experience tell me now that agents here leave in one of three ways. They get promoted, they burn out and run, or they die.”

“I just never expected Emily to be the one who died,” Spencer whispers brokenly.

There isn’t anything that Aaron can say that won’t reveal the deception that JJ and he are desperately trying to maintain. Spencer’s apartment used to feel quiet and comforting, an escape from the horrors that they saw at work. Now, the silence feels like the scraping of nails against a chalkboard. Despite Aaron’s discomfort, he stays the night anyway, mostly because while neither he nor Spencer will say it, he knows that if he leaves, she’s going to go out looking for her dealer or worse. A new picture of Emily stares at him reproachfully from the mantle next to Riley Jenkins.
…
Spencer and Aaron come to the mutual agreement that she isn’t in the right state to be around Jack, and so her presence at their Saturday activities trickles to a stop. Her grief is still too raw, and although she doesn’t say it, Aaron suspects that she’s suffering from migraines and is likely spending much of her weekends trying her best to stave off the pain for the coming work week. Spencer always returns to work on Monday more drawn and exhausted than when she had left.

Part of him hopes that Jack won’t notice how everyone else around him is grieving. Aaron hadn’t fully appreciated how much Spencer’s presence had become commonplace in their weekend activities, not until there was a hole left behind by her absence. He hasn’t told Jack of Emily’s death because if she comes back, it will only confuse him as to why some people can come back from the dead, and his mother can’t.

Aaron’s hopes are dashed when he’s buckling Jack in his car seat after a trip to the museum. Jack is kicking his legs a little as he holds onto the craft that he made at an activity center. “Why doesn’t Spencer come with us anymore?” His face is screwed up like he’s thinking about something challenging. “ Does she still like me?” his son’s voice is timid, a sign that he’s worried.

“Hey, Buddy, don’t worry, Spencer still likes you.” Aaron pauses for a second, trying to find the right words to say. “Spencer’s just sad right now. do you remember my friend Emily?” Jack nods vigorously. “ Emily had to go away, and she’s going to be away for a long time, and Spencer misses her.”

Jack seems to accept this version of the story without much question, going back to talking about all the different things they saw at the museum as Aaron drives back home. Once they arrive at the apartment, Jack runs to work at the kitchen table, coloring while Aaron cooks dinner. When he’s done, he jumps from the chair and runs to give the artwork to him.

“Daddy, I drew this for Spencer. Maybe she won’t be sad anymore!” In his son’s childish scrawl is a picture of four people, one is smaller than all the other, clearly Jack. One has long dark hair, and another has shorter hair, the drawing with the biggest smile has curly brown hair. “It’s me, you, Emily and Spencer!”

Aaron’s heart melts a little, Jack was so innocent and compassionate. He holds the picture like it’s a precious artifact before carefully walking over to his briefcase, sliding the drawing in with the rest of his paperwork. Once the drawing is secured, he pulls Jack into a massive hug. “Good work, buddy, I think that will make Spencer feel a lot better.” Aaron strokes his son's hair, relishing in how Jack seems to melt in his arms.

He drops by to check on Spencer that evening, the lights are off and the apartment is silent, like it has been since Emily’s death. Aaron tries knocking, but after he receives no answer, he silently slides the picture underneath the door, hoping that Spencer will understand drawing and all the words that he can’t or won’t say.

Chapter Text

“For every reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth”- Bo Bennet

Holocene by Bon Iver
…
After 5 months of Emily’s death, Aaron isn’t sure if he can take the guilt anymore. So, when Strauss gives him the option to leave for 2 months on assignment with counterterrorism, he leaps at the opportunity. It's summertime, so Jack is in summer camps during the day, and Jessica offers to watch him the other times until he gets back. JJ was transferred back to the BAU, so he doesn’t feel like he’s leaving the team completely adrift.

That’s not a sentiment that the rest of the team shares; It doesn’t take a team of profilers to know that they think Aaron is running away from his problems. They go through the movements of wishing him well, but he can tell that they aren’t happy with him leaving while they are still in the throes of grief. But they don’t stop him from leaving.

The heat of Pakistan is overwhelming. Aaron always seems to wake up smelling of stale sweat, no matter how many showers he tries to take. But with distance away from Quantico, the guilt that seemed to consume him fades to a dull ache. They’re in the process of a communication mission, and Aaron’s responsibility is to profile potential allies and create contingency plans for interrogations. He grows a beard that Jack hates with a passion and reminds him of frequently on their daily video calls. He’s finally gotten into the rhythm of life when he gets the call from Morgan. There’s an update in the Doyle case and he needs to get back to Virginia immediately.

The team somehow looks completely different from when Aaron had left. More careworn and older than before. Maybe it’s his absence that makes their visual changes more apparent. Spencer looks the most changed; she’s lost weight, and her eyes are baggy from the lack of sleep. Gone is the youthful innocence that seemed to follow her into her mid-20s, the innocence that made Morgan and Rossi affectionately call her kid. Instead, the sharp angles of her face show the face of a bitter woman who’s seen too much before she’d even hit her 30s.

They had tried their best to rescue Declan Doyle from whoever had taken him, but it became increasingly apparent that they weren’t going to be able to break Ian Doyle without Emily, and so the decision was made to call her back.

Emily’s return signaled the end of the charade that they had been playing for the last seven months. As Unit Chief, it’s his responsibility to notify the team of his and JJ’s deception. As Aaron walks to the conference room, he watches the team from outside the door. They’re still grieving clearly, but the responsibility of bringing Doyle to justice seems to have given them some purpose, a purpose that’s been lacking since Emily left. He savors the moment before he walks in to implode the team’s lives once more.

He clears his throat to gather the team’s attention before beginning, “Seven months ago, I made a decision that affected the rest of the team.” JJ steps in behind him, leaning against the wall. Aaron can’t tell if it’s in an act of solidarity or because she’s so nervous that she can’t sit down.

“Emily had lost a lot of blood after her fight with Doyle, but she managed to pull through the surgery. JJ and I decided that we needed Emily to go into hiding in order to ensure her safety while we tracked down Doyle.” Aaron can hear Penelope gasping as she tries to put all the pieces together.

“When she was recovered enough to travel Emily was transferred to Paris and given several identities that we didn’t know, she’s been working there ever since.”

This is where the shoe drops, and the room erupts into chaos. Morgan is pulling himself to his full size, hands curled into fists, reverting to what he knows best, his anger. Dave is trying to calm Morgan down enough that there won’t be a brawl in the conference room. Penelope keeps looking at him, like Aaron can pull her from the ocean of grief and confusion that she’s drowning in.

“But we buried her” Spencer just sounds lost, frozen in her chair at the table.

“Once again, this was my decision, and I take full responsibility for it. If you have any problems, please take them to me.” Aaron tries to sound braver than he feels. This only serves to heighten the confusion and anger of the team while he tries desperately to regain control of the situation.

In the worst case of timing, Emily chooses to walk right in at that moment, sheepish, but alive and well. For a moment, the room falls silent before Spencer launches herself from the chair and throws her arms around Emily. The taller woman almost crumples into Emily’s arm as she hugs her, her arms cling to Emily so tightly that Aaron starts to worry that Spencer will hurt Emily.

But, as Emily slowly reaches around to reciprocate the hug, the tension that Aaron feels in his body starts the dissipate fully for the first time in seven months, and for a moment, he feels like everything is going to be okay.
…
Aaron was somewhat foolish to imagine that Emily’s return wouldn’t have lasting consequences on the team dynamic. When they were chasing down Declan Doyle’s kidnappers and then facing the resulting senate committee inquest, they had been too busy to take anything too personally. But now that they’ve all been reinstated and Emily is back on the team, tensions have started to rise again as they try to grapple with their grief and betrayal at his deception.

Aaron notes that most of the team compartmentalize what happened and can accept Emily with arms open as wide as they can muster. Morgan can shift away his anger and instead funnels it out at the gym during lunch. He suspects that Rossi is probably drinking more at home but doesn’t show any issues at work. Penelope is just overjoyed to have Emily back and refuses to let Emily leave her sight.

Spencer, on the other hand doesn’t bother to hide how angry she is at Emily, JJ and him. While Spencer didn’t attend social activities with the team frequently, she’s now actively avoiding seeing the team both in and out of work. Not even Penelope who’s the best at sweet talking Spencer into participating, can’t seem to convince her to attend.

Aaron tries to ignore it at first, sticking his head in the metaphorical sand, hoping that when he pulls up for air again, everything will be back to the way things were before. He’s been unit chief for almost ten years at this point and he can’t believe that he still struggles with confronting interpersonal issues inside of the team.

The tension in the office is pulled taut like an elastic band, and it finally snaps on one of Emily’s first cases back.

They’re in Durant, Oklahoma, investigating the murder of two young women. It’s horrific, the girls were abducted and sexually assaulted before having sulphuric acid poured over their eyes. Aaron pairs up JJ and Spencer, hoping that they’ll be able to put aside their feelings and focus on the investigation.

Spencer spends much of the time sniping away at JJ for keeping the secret about Emily’s death. She’s unrelenting, it gets to the point where she’s doing it in front of local law enforcement and at the crime scene.

It doesn’t take long for JJ to finally hit her limit. Aaron is by the white board when Spencer breezes past towards the conference room with JJ on her heels. Aaron can see Spencer’s hands shaking as she grabs a pile of folders and files, while JJ tries to coax an explanation out of her. When gentle words can’t seem to work, JJ switches tactics and goes on the offensive.

“You’re just angry that I managed to hide my microexpressions and that you couldn’t profile it.” JJ places her hands on her hips, blocking Spencer from leaving out of the door.

This is the wrong move, and all the anger and resentment that Aaron has seen Spencer bottle up explodes.

“Jennifer, do you honestly think that this is an ego thing for me? You were only able to trick me because I trusted you.” JJ recoils at the name, Spencer has only ever called her JJ and by calling her Jennifer the message is clear. JJ is no longer her friend, Spencer has burned the first bridge and now they're separated by an impassable chasm.

“I can’t remember Emily’s funeral because was in a dissociative state. I kept on showing up at your house, sobbing for months after it happened, and you didn’t have the decency to tell me the truth.” Spencer’s hands aren’t shaking anymore.

“I couldn’t tell you Spence, I wanted to.” JJ shoots back

“What would I have had to do for you to tell me- would you have told me if I had started using dilaudid again?”

“But you didn’t, did you?”

Spencer scoffs at JJ’s answer, “Yeah, but I would have given anything to start using again.”

Turning on her heel, she pushes past JJ with the stack of paperwork she was looking for. JJ looks to Aaron for direction, they’re supposed to be working together but there’s no way that they’re going to get anything done with how angry Spencer is at JJ. Aaron just shakes his head, hoping that JJ will understand that she needs to leave Spencer alone.

After giving Spencer five minutes to calm down, Aaron excuses himself from the board and goes looking for her. After checking the usual Spencer haunts: supply closets, break room, desk in the bullpen, he’s forced to widen his search perimeter. That’s when he finds her outside of the building at a picnic table on the green space next to the police department. She’s rubbing one hand against her pants, a desperate attempt at self soothing, her other hand flips through the files absorbed in her work.

He slides onto the bench across from her, pausing for a second so that she knows he’s there before he says anything. “Reid, it was my decision to keep this hidden from the team. You should be mad at me, not JJ.”

Spencer doesn’t look up from the files, “Sir, I am just as upset with you as I am JJ. Your slightly redeeming quality in this is that you’re not forcing me to be okay with it all.”

“She spent months watching me fall apart and when the truth came out, she’s expected me not to feel betrayed or violated about it.”

“These feelings aren’t going to go away by pushing it aside and forgetting about it.” Her voice is quieter now, the anger replaced with grief.

Aaron pinches the bridge of his nose, warding off the headache that’s been building since they arrived, “Reid, I’ll have a talk with Emily and JJ. All that I ask is that you focus on the case, I’m going to have you work on the geographic profile at the station and I’ll have JJ work with Rossi on the victimology.”

Spencer manages a quick nod and a “yes Sir”.

“Take five and then I’ll see you in the conference room”. Aaron walks back, a tentative peace established at the expense of what he’s sure is the fragmentary remains of his and Spencer’s friendship.

He’s never really thought too much about what the team calls him, knowing that the respect is implicit if it’s “Sir”, “Hotch” or in Rossi’s case “Aaron”. However, the “Sir” coming from Spencer’s lips sting. A reminder that all the progress he’s made with her since she joined the team is gone and it’s all his fault.

Somehow, by some miracle, they manage to get through the rest of the case. Arresting a man who managed to hide his sociopathic tendencies behind his cognitive disability. They’re on the jet back home while Dave tries to advertise a team bonding activity under the guise of a pasta making night at his home.

Aaron sits with the rest of the group for once while Spencer takes his usual seat at the back of the plane, a clear indication that she wants to be left alone. There’s a book open on her lap, but judging by the fact she hasn’t turned the page in a while he doubts that she’s actually reading it.

Before he can stop her, Emily stands up from the group and settles herself in the seat opposite from Spencer. She’s got that wheedling tone as she begs for Spencer’s forgiveness. She's trying to appeal to Spencer’s empathy, usually it works, she's always been someone who forgives easily. Emily is almost successful until Aaron hears her say “You lost one friend, I lost six.”

Spencer’s book shuts with a snap, “Emily, Morgan had your blood underneath his fingernails. We all sat in that waiting room praying that you were going to pull through and all I could smell was your blood.”

“You didn’t lose six friends; you were separated from them. We carried your casket and we buried you.”

“Look, I understand how traumatic this must have been for you. But I need time and space to make sense of all of this and you pushing me is not going to make me figure things out any faster.”

Spencer reopens the book and goes back to staring at the page while Emily slinks back to the rest of the group. Rossi pats her shoulder soothingly, “Better luck next time Emily”.

Spencer is a conspicuous absence at their pasta-making night.
…

The tension that seemed to permeate their office transitions to something smaller and sadder. Spencer’s back to speaking to Emily and JJ but it’s the affection that you’d give a coworker. Not someone who was for all intents and purposes a member of your family. Penelope never gives up on trying to get the team back to the way it used to be, inviting Spencer to girls nights and events out with the team. She always declines politely.

The only conversations she willingly has with Aaron are when she's reporting her findings on a case or handing over paperwork for approval.

Aaron tries not to think too hard about whether the cold distance will be permanent.

Spencer also starts driving herself to work. Her dusty old Volvo parked neatly in the staff parking lot greets him in the morning. He’s glad that she’s got a marginally safer way of getting home rather than using the subway. It also means that Aaron can’t drive her home anymore, another way she tries to push him and the rest of the team out of her personal life.

She doesn’t bother asking him for the spare key or removing him as her emergency contact, but Aaron thinks it’s because she’s forgotten about it, not because she’s holding out hope of reestablishing their friendship.

Three months after Emily’s return, he’s picking up Jack from Jessica’s after a case when she drops a question off-handedly. “How’s Spencer doing? She hasn’t been by to visit Jack since you came back.”

Aaron is floored; Spencer hasn’t talked to him about Jack since he left for Pakistan. “Spencer’s been visiting Jack?”

“She reached out shortly after you left and told me to call her if I ever needed anything. Honestly? I thought that you’d asked her to.” Jessica shrugs while she looks around for a pair of Jack’s socks that seem to have escaped his backpack

“Spencer was an absolute lifesaver, she came by every weekend she wasn’t on cases and took Jack out of the house so that I could get work done.”

“I know she was having a hard time with Emily, but she managed to put it away every single time she saw Jack.”

Aaron must look like he was hit by a shovel because Jessica looks a little concerned, “You didn’t know that she was visiting? Should I be blocking her number?”

Aaron shakes his head, clearing away the confusion, “No, it’s fine”. If Jessica disagrees with him, she keeps it to herself. They say their goodbyes, and Aaron and Jack head home.
...

Now that he knows that Spencer has been visiting, Jack's stories about museum trips and library books about volcanoes make a lot more sense. He can't believe that he hadn't seen it. He'd thought that when Jack was telling stories about things that he and Spencer had done, that he was talking about things they had done together before Emily died.

The next time, Jessica has Jack for a sleepover, Aaron makes his way over to Spencer’s apartment, he’s changed into a polo shirt and a pair of jeans hoping that it will hopefully put her at ease enough to talk to him. It’s late, but not too late that Spencer will be asleep. He can hear soft violins playing from outside of the door, she must have a record on. He wonders if she's curled up on the couch reading one of her many books or if she's poured over her desk, working on another cold case.

Lifting his hand to knock, he takes a deep breath before rapping his knuckles against the peeling wood.

He can hear tentative steps as Spencer walks through her apartment, pausing at the peephole. Aaron is preparing himself for her to pretend she isn’t home when the door slowly creaks open. Spencer’s contacts are out for the day, a sign that she's been relaxing but she’s still wearing the suit she wore to work.

“Sir, what are you doing here. Is everything alright?”

“Everything is fine, Reid, I just wanted to talk.” She shifts on her hips, leaning against the doorframe but she doesn’t open the door any wider. Her body language tells him that she doesn't really want him there; she's just humoring him because he's her boss. Aaron just tries to be grateful that she didn’t slam the door on his face.

“I just wanted to thank you for looking after Jack while I was gone. He’s missed you a lot, and I know you sacrificed a lot to be something stable for him.”

“ I’m sorry I put you so much pain with Emily”. Aaron has spent so much of the last couple years apologizing, and somehow it doesn’t get any easier. It’s not because he believes he’s right, it’s because every time he apologizes, he has to accept that he’s less than perfect and the pressure of that role threatens to crush him.

“If you ever want to spend time with Jack, send me a text or call me, and you can have time alone with him; you don’t have to stop because I’m around”.

For a second, Spencer just stares at him owlishly before the tension in her shoulders loosens slightly. “Thanks for apologizing, it means a lot.”

Aaron just nods, he’s about to turn and leave Spencer for the night before she speaks again. Her voice is slow and hesitant “Hotch, do you want to come in and have a cup of tea?” Slowly opening the door wider to allow him entry.

Smiling, Aaron follows Spencer inside, letting the door closing quietly behind him.

Chapter Text

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, to have the life that is waiting for us.”- Joseph Campbell

Ready Now by Dodie
…
Despite being a single parent for over two years and a father for six, Aaron still feels like he’s fumbling through parenthood. Haley had always had intrinsic instincts for what Jack needed, from translating the incomprehensible baby babble to kissing away bruised knees. Even when Jack was a newborn, he’d bounce him for hours as he cried from colic and the moment Haley pulled Jack into her arms, he’d quiet down and go to sleep. Even Jessica had some sort of special touch when it came to Jack, soothing him when no one else could.

They’ve got a routine, they eat breakfast together when they can and when even when Aaron is out of town, they read bedtime stories together. Aaron knows that he’s getting better at bonding with Jack and being the dad that Jack needs, but he still wakes up daily wishing that Haley was still there to be a mom. This only becomes more apparent when he goes in for a parent-teacher meeting at Jack’s school.

By all accounts, Jack is a well adjusted and intelligent young boy. He’s reading at a fourth-grade level. But he’s also getting bullied by another student. It’s nothing too severe, not anything like some of the cases involving bullying that he investigates. But it’s something that Jack has been hiding from him and somehow that manages to make Aaron feel like he’s been thrown out to sea again. Trying to wade through the “what ifs” and “How do I’s” that plague him as he tries to figure out how to be the best father for his son.

He’s still trying to figure out what to do when he gets called out to the next case, a series of bombings targeting the survivors of a school shooting. He sees the little brother of the shooter with Rossi, he’s angry and he’s struggling. There’s nowhere for him to go and his older brother’s choices have made him a social pariah in the community. Aaron knows rationally that Jack won’t grow up to be like the shooter, but he can’t help but worry that there will be warning signs that he can’t see. How long before Jack’s secrets get labeled as teenage angst rather than danger?

It’s after his goodnight call with Jack on the second night that Aaron decides to go get some advice. Aaron has been gently hinting that Jack can talk to him about anything, but he’s remained closed lipped despite Aaron’s best efforts. He’d go to Dave, but he’s honestly not sure what advice he’s going to get from him. Dave’s advice could range from something deeply intelligent and insightful, but it could also be teaching Jack how to shove the kid into a locker.

That’s how he ends up at Spencer’s door at 9:00 at night. When her hotel door swings open, he can tell that he hasn’t woken her up or interrupted her bedtime routine. She’s still wearing her dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, her contacts are out for the day looking at him through her glasses. When she lets him in, her hotel room is pristine except for the bed. She’s got about a million files spread around and Aaron can already tell that she’s probably not going to be sleeping tonight.

She gestures towards the chair in the corner of the room, inviting him to take a seat, “Tea?” she roots around her satchel before producing about half a dozen tea bags and sugar packets. She clicks on the rickety kettle on the desk in the room, leaning against the wooden surface as she waits for the water to boil.

He can’t stop himself “Do you just carry tea in your satchel all the time?”

“Tea has a remarkably long shelf life and is proven to lower blood pressure and reduce stress, it pays to be prepared.” She turns and starts to busy herself with steeping the teabags, before passing along one of the chipped hotel mugs to Aaron. Spencer hops up onto the desk, pulling her legs up underneath her to sit crisscrossed. She waits for Aaron to start talking.

“Did you ever tell your mom that you were being bullied Spencer?”

Spencer’s lips tighten into a grimace before she responds a little stiffly. “No, she wasn’t stable enough and I was worried that if she showed up at the school, I’d end up in foster care”

“Why are you asking me about that? Is this about the case?” Spencer looks at him questioningly, he can already see the gears turning in her head, trying to figure out this conversation meshes with the profile they are trying to construct of the unsub.

“No, it’s about Jack.” Spencer’s face quickly shifts from irritation at having her past psychoanalyzed to concern. “He’s getting bullied by a kid in his class, and he didn’t tell me about it”. Aaron throws his hands up in exasperation, glad that he put his mug on the desk, or his suit would have been covered in his over-sugared tea. “Why doesn’t he trust me enough to talk about it?”

Spencer has a fond look on her face as she watches him gesticulate. Like she has a private joke that she won’t share with anyone else. She places her mug down on the desk before leaning back against the wall. “Hotch, the first thing you know is that you’re a good Dad. It’s not because Jack doesn’t trust you.”

“Bullies are good at making the people they are bullying ashamed about what’s happening. Shame makes us quiet, makes us keep secrets, even from the people we know can help us”.

“I just wish that Haley were here; she’d know what to do and how to help him.” The words slip out before Aaron can stop them, and once they’re spoken, he can’t take them back. The words are too vulnerable, he’s slept on Spencer’s couch more than once, driven her to NA meetings, and spent weekends together with Jack. But somehow these words feel too personal, chipping at the boundaries of the friendship they’ve worked so hard to rebuild after Emily’s return.

Spencer seems to sense this too as she carefully tries to respond to Aaron’s outburst, “ Just because Haley’s no longer here doesn’t mean that she can’t help Jack. She’s always going to be his mom, and no one can ever change that.”

“All you can do is make sure that Jack knows that you love him, and that Haley loved him, and give him the space and time to be honest with you.”

“You’re good at this, Reid.”

“Well, I do know bullies very well, Hotch, you don’t graduate from a public high school at 12 without getting acquainted with some of them.” She’s smiling wryly at him, sipping on her tea again.

“No, I mean with Jack. You used to be uncomfortable around children, and somehow connecting with them has become second nature to you.”

Spencer snorts into her mug, “What did everyone used to call it? The “Reid Effect”?

“Do you ever think you’ll have your own?” Another sentence that slips out before Aaron can stop himself. Maybe the tea has some sort of truth serum in it, forcing him to say anything that comes to his mind.

“Children? No, the genetic risks alone of passing on Schizophrenia are enough to dissuade me from having biological children.”

“With our job, foster care or adoption would be irresponsible. I don’t have the family support to care for a child while I’m away, potentially for weeks on end.” Spencer's right, Aaron is lucky that he has Jessica to help with Jack. Will and JJ barely make it work with their schedules and the use of a nanny. Spencer would never be able to just leave a child with Diana Reid to babysit.

“Henry and Jack are enough for me.”

Spencer changes the subject, she’s had enough with him asking deeply personal questions for the day. They instead transition to discussing some of the variables in the case, how the unsub doesn’t seem to feel any pain when they’re beating their victims.

When the case is finished, and they go home, Aaron helps Jack talk to his mom. While Jack still won’t admit that he’s being bullied, Aaron hopes that he’ll remember how much he and Haley love him. Somehow, that will have to be enough while Jack figures things out.

If Aaron sees Spencer’s eyes soften wistfully the next time she helps Jack with a science project, he doesn’t say anything. He knows as well as she does what it’s like to want something that you can’t have.
…
Beth is a surprising addition to Aaron’s already complicated life. He’s training for the FBI Triathlon, something that he’s never really had the time to do before. They meet at the park while jogging, and somehow, she manages to guess that he’s an FBI agent within 5 minutes of talking to him. She’s open, inviting him to join him on a biking trip during the weekend to train for the biking part of the triathlon.

He can’t tell if it’s because he genuinely feels a connection to her or if it’s the pressure of meeting someone new. Rossi is desperate to get him active in the dating scene again, Garcia is desperate to get all the gossip about his prospects, and Spencer unhelpfully notes during a briefing that the average widower only waits 1.7 years before getting remarried. He’s past the 2-year mark at this point.

But there’s something about Beth that makes him feel unsteady, her smile makes his chest feels tight in a way he hasn’t felt since he first met Haley. He can’t help but feel both excited and scared for what might happen next. As she tells him, part of the fun is in the chase.
…
It’s shortly after a case in San Francisco where the unsub copied the Zodiac murders when Penelope bursts into Aaron’s office at half nine in the morning. Her heels clacking as she closes the door and throws herself onto one of the chairs. She’s always had a flair for the dramatics, so he just looks up, waiting for Penelope to start talking.

“Sir, Emily just told me the worst thing ever, and I double-checked the files, and she’s right! We’ve made a huge mistake that we need to fix-

“Garcia, what are you talking about?” Aaron interrupts, “ Is this about a case?”. When she’s stressed, she tends to ramble about, not quite getting to the point. While he would typically wait for her to explain the situation, her urgency tells him that he needs to get the conversation on track.

“It's Spencer,” Penelope wails. “Did you know we missed her 30th birthday?”

Aaron realizes with a jolt that she’s right, her birthday was right after Emily had come back from the dead, and in between the cases, and because Spencer hadn’t been talking to anyone, they had missed it.

While Spencer’s never been one to make a big deal out of her birthday, hitting 30 is a big deal. Ever since the team had discovered that her mother had schizophrenia, the concern that she would inherit the disease had been an unspoken undercurrent. When she lashed out due to stress or had a migraine, it always caused a spike in anxiety as the team watched for signs that Spencer would be taken by a disease that would attack the most important part of her body, her mind.

The likelihood of experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia drops off significantly after 30, and before Emily, they had watched with bated breath for Spencer to hit the milestone that meant she’d be safe.

He wonders if she had celebrated it alone, in her apartment. Blowing out a candle while listening to one of her records or, if she’d just woken up like it was any other day, and went to work.

Penelope’s urgent voice breaks through the haze of Aaron’s thoughts. “We can’t let her think that we don’t care about her. I need to take an early lunch and get some things. We’re throwing a birthday party in the conference room at noon.”

Aaron just nods. After working with Penelope for so long, he knows better than to prevent her from doing anything once she’s put her mind to it. In another world, she’d be the unit chief, and he’d obey her without question. Penelope would probably be the best damn unit chief the BAU ever had.

Besides, they don’t have any active cases. They’re just working on consults and paperwork until the next call comes in.

“Garcia, you can go and get some things done, but if a case comes in, the case takes priority.”

This is dismissal enough for Penelope, and she stands up before half-walking/half-running out of his office. All Aaron can do is chuckle a little and go back to his paperwork.

It was a bit naïve of Aaron to think that he wouldn’t get pulled into party planning with Garcia. But once she had gotten back from her errands, she’d grabbed him and put him to work hanging up streamers in the conference room while she made a happy birthday banner.

It was a glittery monstrosity with bubble letters that wrote out “HAPPY BIRTHDAY 187!”. It was so quintessentially Penelope, Aaron almost felt sorry for Spencer; she was going to be absolutely inundated with Penelope’s attention. He could just imagine her arriving home at her apartment tonight, absolutely covered in glitter. She’d be cleaning in up for months after.

It doesn’t take very long for the rest of the team to get recruited into party planning, and it becomes Emily and JJ's responsibility to keep Spencer distracted and busy. They keep the genius plied with coffee and offer Spencer more and more paperwork. When the agents run out of paperwork, they bring Spencer down to the cold case archives and let her run loose.

Dave ends up on present duty, passing around a hat for the team to contribute to buying something for Spencer. Aaron’s pretty sure that Dave is still going to contribute the lion’s share for the gift and buy something ridiculously expensive, but he lets him. Out of all the team members, Spencer deserves to get spoiled. When a delivery arrives for Dave, he pretends that it’s a delivery of office supplies before hiding it under his desk in his office. Aaron's pretty sure it's a new coffee machine.

Morgan relieves Aaron on streamer duty, much to his relief. He can’t seem to get them to hang just right, and they keep on falling. He goes back to working on paperwork in his office, but the energy that permeates the bullpen is contagious. Everyone is leaping at the opportunity to have a little fun, and a party for Spencer gives them that chance.

By noon, the team is all hiding in the conference room while Emily brings Spencer back.

The awkward glee on Spencer’s face when she opens the door makes her look a whole decade younger. The team gathers around her, Morgan pulling her into his arms to mess with her hair while she laughs. Rossi grabs her face, kissing each cheek. Penelope swarms to pull Spencer into a big hug.

It reminds Aaron of when Spencer turned 24. He and Gideon had stood watching the festivities as they wondered how she’d turn out when she was 50. She was simultaneously the smartest person in the room while also being the most innocent. Her head was dwarfed by that ugly birthday cake hat, blushing wildly while trying to blow out the trick candles on the cake.

Most agents don’t last long in the BAU, the average agent lasts about 3-5 years before transferring out—the pressure of chasing serial killers takes a toll. Aaron can see the ghosts of those who’ve left in the corners of his eyes every time he walks through the BAU office. Elle Greenway. Jason Gideon. Jordan Todd. Ashley Seaver.

Spencer has lasted eight. She’s outlasted her mentor and so many of her friends. She’s been shot, mourned the loss of her friends, drugged, dug her own grave, but somehow, she manages to keep rising and trying again.

Aaron still isn’t sure where she’ll end up when she’s 50. But he hopes that he’s around to see it.

Chapter Text

"Parting is such sweet sorrow." - William Shakespeare 

Stone by Jaymes Young

...

Emily’s return to the team was short-lived. While they had ultimately accepted her again with open arms, Aaron could tell that she was struggling with all the changes she had undergone in the last year. Emily had never really come back after what Doyle had done to her. She was trying to fit into skin that she had long since outgrown, and it was slowly killing her. After he’d received her evaluation back from the bureau psychologist, he’d asked her to tell him whenever she had a bad day. While she’d been honest the first few times, the bad days were getting more and more frequent, and she was hiding them from him and the rest of the team.

When she received the offer to run as the unit chief in the London Interpol office, Aaron knew it was only a matter of time before she left.  The way she danced with them one by one at JJ and Will’s wedding told him what he already knew: this was goodbye. As they swirl across the dance floor, he holds her a little tighter, hugging her. He hopes she understands that it means that they get it  and they’ll forgive her for leaving again.

Garcia and Derek accompany Emily to help her settle in London and assist with the security surrounding the London 2012 Olympics. That leaves JJ and Spencer working on consults in the bullpen. It’s quiet, they don’t socialize much, too busy trying to figure out how to fill the work and social gaps that Emily left behind. Aaron is so busy catching up on reports and trying to find another profiler to join the team that casual conversations seem to dwindle to nothing. Joining the BAU remains just as popular as it was when Aaron joined the team. The list of applicants is never-ending, some more qualified than others. Like chasing a needle in a needlestack mixed with a couple of pieces of hay, here and there.

There’s grief in the air, but it isn’t the same grief that threatened to suffocate them when Emily “died”. It’s sweeter, more wistful. It’s the same grief that reminds him of the car ride away from Chester Hardwick all those years ago, with the road speeding behind them. When Spencer had told him about her grief masquerading as anger. Except this time, it's kinder and reversed; it’s just love hiding under the guise of grief, something too big and too beautiful to be ignored. Aaron latches onto that love, even if the feeling makes him feel unsettled and vulnerable. Emily had never been an expected part of the team, but slowly and surely, she’d become one of their family. He’d never thought that Emily Prentiss would have become like a sister to him.

JJ manages to compartmentalize Emily’s absence a lot better than the rest of them.  It isn’t the first time Aaron has wondered what happened to her when she was working for the state department. She’s always been soft and compassionate with the families of victims, and she always manages to put a smile on her face when she sees her son. But some of the softer edges she had when she first started as a media liaison have been replaced with something a little harder. It’s what gives her an edge as a profiler, but it chips away at the person that JJ used to be. Aaron isn’t sure if that’s worth the sacrifice.

To her credit, Spencer takes Emily’s departure from the team very well. When JJ brings updates on how things are going overseas, he can see her smiling and including statistics on overseas moving or on the likelihood of the US bringing home any gold medals at the Olympics. She doesn’t stay overnight in the bullpen working on cold cases, and Aaron doesn’t need to stay at her apartment to make sure she’s safe.

She still has moments where she looks up to say something before flinching because Emily isn’t there. Emily had forgotten her coffee mug in the office kitchenette when she’d left. Aaron is sure that Spencer had found it first because the next time he’s making a cup for himself, he finds it pushed to the back of the dusty cabinet. She’s always been sentimental, even if her desk in the bullpen doesn’t reflect it. She’d never be able to bear throwing Emily’s mug away, but to see it every day would be rubbing salt in the wound she’s been trying so hard to heal.

Aaron has no idea how the dynamic will change when he finally finds a profiler to join the team. None of them has ever been particularly adept at change, and the cases only seem to grow more violent and heartbreaking as his years as the unit chief progress. As he watches the remnants of his team working in the bullpen, Aaron can only hope that the person who joins them will be able to weather the storm that is the BAU.

…

The first weekend that Aaron isn’t drowning in paperwork or applications is suspiciously quiet. Jack’s at a sleepover and he’s not quite sure what to do with himself. He still wakes up before dawn, while years of grieving and his new relationship with Beth have helped with the nightmares, he still wakes up with images of Foyet’s face smashed in behind his eyelids. Perhaps this is his penance; he took justice into his own hands, and now he’s haunted by the man he killed.

At first, he’d tried doing some laundry, but really, he’d washed most of his and Jack’s clothes a couple of days ago. Meal prep is just as unnecessary;  the freezer is still filled with the meals he made the last time he tried meal prepping. By 7:00 am, he’s sitting down trying to read a book, he realizes that he can’t stand to sit in his empty apartment. He’d call Beth and see if she wanted to spend time together, but he isn’t sure that he can be the doting boyfriend right now. With Jack out of the house, it’s almost a given that they would take the chance to be intimate, but he’s exhausted and frayed at the edges. Aaron considers calling Dave, but there’s no way that he’ll be much good company until it’s socially acceptable to start drinking.

Even if Penelope and Morgan weren’t in England, Aaron isn’t sure that they would ever spend time together during a weekend outside of work. Penelope is usually spending time with Kevin, and Morgan is probably working on another one of his houses. JJ is busy with Will and Henry. That leaves Spencer. The more that Aaron thinks about it, the more he realizes how little time they’ve spent together in the last couple of months. He’s been so busy with training for the triathlon and balancing time with Jack and Beth that he hasn’t had a real conversation outside of work with Spencer in longer than he’s proud to admit.

He hasn’t been a very good friend lately. Spencer had always shown up in a million different ways for him, from coffee at the end of the day to helping Jack with homework. Spencer’s missing Emily just as much as the rest of them, and he’s barely sent a text, much less checked up on her to make sure she’s alright.

Decision made, he climbs into the car, driving past the café that he knows Spencer likes to frequent. Purchasing fresh blueberry muffins and coffee for them both before he starts the drive towards Spencer’s apartment.

It isn’t until he’s knocking at Spencer’s door that he realizes two things: one, it’s 9:00 in the morning and he has no idea if she’s even awake, and two, he’d forgotten to send a text that he was headed over. He winces a little as he hears what sounds like a distant crash in Spencer’s apartment and padding feet rushing before the door swings open to reveal a harried Spencer. She’s got a brown ratty cardigan thrown over her pyjamas. She’s squinting tiredly through her glasses, confused.

“Hotch, what are you doing here? Do we have a case?” Spencer’s pulling her cardigan around her tighter, glancing behind her as if she’s trying to plan how to get dressed and ready to fly out in 30 minutes or less.  

“There isn’t a case. I just brought some breakfast and coffee.” Aaron lifts the coffee, hoping that it will serve as enough explanation

“Sorry, I should have sent a text.”

Spencer sags a little in relief before widening the door, “Oh, well, come in.” Aaron closes the door behind him as he follows Spencer inside.

Her apartment is a mess, while her place, as always, has a cozy, lived-in appearance. Spencer’s always kept it clean, everything in its proper place. Now, it looks like some kind of bomb’s gone off. The quilt she keeps on the back of her couch is rumpled on the floor, the coffee table is littered with mugs, some of them still half filled. Rather than being neatly organized, books cover the floor and are haphazardly shoved into shelves.

“Feel free to go into the kitchen and make yourself at home. Give me a minute to get dressed,” Spencer turns on her heel, shuffling down the hall to her bedroom. Aaron can hear a shower running a couple of seconds later.

He picks his way through the apartment, towards the kitchen. It’s just as a mess as the rest of the apartment. Spencer’s kitchen table is clean, but that’s only because she’s probably not been eating there. There’s a pile of dishes stewing in the sink. This is never something that she does; at work, she’s always harping on Morgan for leaving his dirty mug, citing health and safety. Things have gone off the rails for her to leave her dishes like this.

Opening the cupboards, he pulls out another mug, switching on the coffee maker, while he’d already brought a steaming cup, there’s no way that Spencer is only going to drink one. Aaron doesn’t bother unwrapping or putting the muffins on a plate, they’ll just eat them over the napkins anyway.

As the coffee starts dripping into the carafe, he hears Spencer shuffling behind him. She’s wearing a cleaner, ratty cardigan over a t-shirt and jeans.

“I’m sorry it’s a mess; things have just been piling on top of me the last little while.” Spencer tugs on her damp hair while she slides into her chair at the table.

“Don’t worry about it Reid”

Spencer picks quietly at the muffin, She doesn’t have anything to say, so Aaron fills the silence. He tells her stories about Jack’s soccer team and the game they just had that weekend, the ducks he saw at the park while he was on a run with Beth. He can see the tension slowly ease out of her as he continues to say anything and everything. When breakfast is done, Aaron quietly picks up the napkins, throwing them into the overflowing trash.

He starts on the dishes next; he’s seen Spencer wash them enough times that he’s pretty sure he knows how to do it without instructions. Aaron empties the sink of all the dishes before giving the sink itself a quick clean. Next, it gets filled with hot water, dish soap, and a small amount of bleach. The first time he’d seen Spencer put bleach in with her dishes, he’d panicked a little before she’d lectured him on the proper dilution of bleach in water. Now he barely raises his eyebrow when he sees her pull out the bottle of bleach from underneath her sink.

Aaron’s happy enough to wash the dishes while Spencer nurses her second coffee cup, but instead she sidles up next to him, grabbing the scrub brush and neon yellow dishwashing gloves from his hands.

Her quiet voice interrupts his thoughts, “I can wash, if you want to dry.” Spencer doesn’t wait for an answer before she dives into the pile of dishes. Scrubbing as if her life depended on it. Aaron figures that’s all the instruction she’s going to give and reaches for the bright yellow towel that Spencer uses to dry her dishes.

There’s something meditative about it, the sound of the scrub brush and the repetition of wiping the warm dishes dry. Slowly but surely, the pile of dishes starts to dwindle, and Aaron has to start putting the dry ones into the cupboard to avoid overflowing the dishrack. They’ve only got about two or three mugs left when Spencer suddenly stops, leaning against the sink.

“Reid, are you alright?” Aaron’s trying to keep his voice measured as he watches the younger woman. She’s looking frustratedly at a mug in her hands; it’s one of the ones that was gifted to her by Emily at her birthday.

“I know that she’s alive, and I’m glad that she got this new job, I really am. But it feels like we’re losing her all over again.” Spencer’s voice is frustrated, like she’s been burdened to find out the secrets of the universe but can’t quite figure out why the equations she’s using aren’t working.

“Things were rocky after she came back, but once things got better, I always knew that she’d spend a weekend with me watching a Russian film or just reading.”

“We’re both alone, and we could be alone together.”

“But now it’s just me again.” Spencer starts scrubbing the coffee mug furiously, not caring that the soapy dishwater is starting to splash onto her shirt and cardigan.

Aaron takes a second to just look at her, leaning over the sink and staring hard at the mug in her hands. He’s sure that if she weren’t so busy scrubbing the mug, her hand would probably be shaking. This isn’t just about Emily; this is years of rejection, of people who say that they’ll stay but leave anyway. Her father, Gideon and Ethan, a man who Aaron learns to hate more day by day when he sees Spencer twisting with the necklace underneath her shirt or when she looks wistfully at a group of children at the playground. 

Carefully, he reaches his arms around her, pulling her close while trying to avoid the soaking dishes in her hands. She stiffens for a second before she relaxes into his embrace, head leaning against his shoulder. 

“You’re never alone, Spencer, you’ve got me, and I’m not leaving.”

“You can’t promise that, Hotch.” Her voice is tired, like this is a promise that she’s heard before. She probably has.

Aaron just holds her a little tighter. Maybe he can’t make a verbal promise that Spencer will believe, but he hopes she’ll understand this. They stand quietly as the steam rises from the sink and the sound of traffic outside Spencer’s apartment starts to pick up for the day.  Finally, when they separate, Spencer smiles wetly at him, “Thanks, Hotch” before she turns to finish up the dishes.

He stays to help clean up the rest of her apartment, which isn’t necessarily the relaxing weekend plans he thought he’d have when he’d left the office on Friday. But when he leaves to go pick up Jack and sees Spencer curled up on her couch with a book, it’s all worth it.

…

After about a month of searching for a suitable applicant, SSA Alex Blake is the person who ultimately joins the team. She joined the FBI at 24 and had a relatively successful career until the Amerithrax case of 2001. After a rushed arrest, she and several other agents were demoted, and it had taken years for her to get back to where she’d come from.

She’s quiet, she doesn’t have the same exuberance as some of the younger agents on the team have. But despite her outward reserved appearance, she has the same core of determination that the rest of them share. While her years of experience, education, and skills are all desirable, it's this determination that makes Aaron select her for the job.

Blake and Spencer hit it off immediately. Spencer had guest lectured in Blake’s class before, and so they band together on cases, comparing the linguistics left behind at the crime scenes. On the jet home from one of their cases, he watches as they time each other finishing crosswords. Dave teases them good-naturedly about it, but like Aaron, he's  glad that Spencer’s been able to find another ally in the BAU. She seems to thrive off of Alex's comfort, it's almost motherly in some respects. 

While Morgan is hesitant about her, she’s able to earn his respect quickly with her tenacity and willingness to do whatever needs to be done during a case. JJ’s always been able to welcome a new member to the team with little to no wariness. Dave’s just happy to have another member on the team who is closer to his age.

It’s Penelope’s reaction that worries Aaron the most, she struggles with change more than most. She’s always been deeply protective of the team and the dynamic within it. New members of the team have always gone through a heavy lens by the technical analyst. If Blake doesn’t pass Garcia’s sniff test, there’s no way that things are going to work out in the long run.

He takes a sigh of relief as he watches Penelope and Blake from his office as he works on paperwork related to their most recent case in Texas. They’re walking together towards the elevator, chatting about the different teas Penelope is planning on stocking the office kitchenette with.

Everything is going to be just fine.

Chapter Text

“They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” – Confucius

"Changes" by Hayd

…

The first cracks in his and Beth’s relationship appear at the park during one of Jack’s soccer games. Aaron’s honestly surprised that they haven’t shown up earlier, he’s always put his work first and there’s only so many times he can cancel a date before the kind understanding fades to disappointment and resentment. 

He only wishes that Spencer wasn’t there to witness them fight. 

Since he’d spent that Saturday at Spencer’s apartment, Aaron had been trying to be more intentional about spending time with her outside of work. They’d tentatively resumed their habit of eating lunch together in his office on the quieter days at Quantico and in the last little while she’d started attending Jack’s soccer games. They’d drive to pick her up at her apartment, Spencer would protect the picnic blanket with the team’s snacks and water bottles and Aaron would coach the team through the game. 

Aaron wasn’t sure how much Spencer really knew about soccer, she stuck out like a sore thumb in her dress slacks and cardigan among the spectators in t-shirts and shorts. But, whenever Jack scored a goal she always managed to be one of the people who cheered the loudest. Even when it was in the wrong net. 

Jack was over the moon that every single time he saw Spencer at the sidelines, once his play was done he’d give her a running tackle. 

The first time it had happened, she’d turned to look at him with deer in headlight eyes, but now, she’d accept the hug with an easy laugh, swinging the boy slightly in the air before setting him down again. Jack wasn’t the quiet little boy at his mother’s funeral anymore, with gangly legs, talking a mile a minute and arms that were constantly in motion. It was only a matter of time that neither he nor Spencer would be able to lift him up and swing him around, this only made Aaron hold on more fiercely to the memories of it now. 

That’s where Beth found them that Saturday. Aaron at one end of the field coaching the game and Spencer sitting with the rest of the families at the other end. 

“Hey Aaron” 

Beth’s smiling in that easy way that she does when she has exciting news to share. Her blue eyes sparkling and showing her teeth. She’s wearing her jogging clothes, hair pulled into a loose pony tail, she probably ran along one of the trails from behind her home to the park. 

Aaron hadn’t expected to see her this week, she’d been at a conference in New York that was supposed to take the entire weekend and early into the next week. That change in plans doesn’t worry him too much, he’s too busy enjoying the rush of excitement he’s feeling of seeing her unexpectedly. She’s never been one to attend Jack’s soccer games so there was a second layer of excitement to having her there. 

“I didn’t expect to see you today” Aaron can feel his mouth pulling into an easy smile, one that he reserves for special moments in the team, for Jack and more recently, for Beth. 

“Work finished early and I had some good news to share with you and Jack” 

“I received a job offer to manage an art gallery in New York City”

Aaron wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting for Beth to share, part of him had been terrified that she’d say she was pregnant. A job offer in another state completely wasn’t even the top twenty-five guesses he’d had for her good news. 

“That’s amazing” He hopes that he has the right amount of enthusiasm infused in his voice, he doesn’t want to rain on her parade with all of his own fears and doubts of the situation. 

“Have you accepted it yet?” 

“No, I wanted to talk to you and Jack about it first and hear what you thought” 

“So, what do you think about it?” She’s looking expectantly at him. 

Before he can even muster up any sort of answer he can hear his cellphone ringing, It’s the notification sound he has saved for Garcia, windchimes. On a weekend, Garcia can only mean one thing, there’s a case. 

Aaron had never been so excited for Garcia to call him on  a weekend, a thought that immediately fills him with guilt. He shoots an apologetic smile to Beth as he takes a couple steps away so that he can hear Garcia properly while she presents the case information. 

It’s a bad one, they won’t be able to wait until Monday. They’ll need to get to Quantico immediately. 

Once he hangs up he walks back towards Beth, she’s sending a text on her phone, probably to her mother. When she looks up, she gives a soft disappointed look. She’s been looking forward to sharing this with him and he’s ruined it. 

“I’m so sorry Beth, I’ve got to go” 

“Yeah, I figured” 

“Let’s talk about this when I get back” Aaron pulls her into a hug and pecking her on the cheek. She’s not as reciprocal with the hug as she usually is but he’s just cut yet another meeting short because of work. 

It’s now time to notify Spencer. 

“Reid” Aaron calls across the field, Spencer’s head pops up looking for him, he just lifts up his cell in response. She’ll know what he means. After almost a decade of working with each other, some signals become second nature. They have to in order to keep the team running smoothly. 

She nods quickly before gathering her satchel and picnic blanket that she’d been sitting on. 

Message received, he turns back to Beth. The disappointment in her eyes is now tinged with irritation. 

“Why’s Spencer  here?” her voice is sharper now and Aaron isn’t quite sure what to do with it. She keeps on looking back and forth between him and Spencer, like she’ll get the answer she’s looking for if she looks hard enough. 

“Jack likes seeing her at his games and she has a really good bond with him” It’s hard not to respond defensively, the tone in Beth’s voice make it seem like Spencer shouldn’t be welcome here.  Like an unexpected plus one at a wedding. 

“Are you sure that’s all this is Aaron?” Beth’s looking suspiciously at Spencer who's absorbed in making sure that the picnic blanket is folded neatly. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“You don’t find it strange that your young female coworker spends so much of her free time with you and Jack? She holds a candle for you and I can’t believe that you don’t see it.” 

“Spencer and I are friends and she’s all alone out here”

Beth opens her mouth to shoot something else back but she’s thankfully interrupted when Spencer joins them. 

“Hey Beth, how’re you doing!” Spencer’s bright eyed , giving a quick wave with the hand that isn’t holding the picnic blanket. 

Spencer and Beth exchange pleasantries while Aaron says goodbye to Jack, he hates that he can’t put his full energy into hugging Jack because he’s too busy watching Beth and Spencer interact. Spencer’s trying her best to be friendly but Beth’s noticeably cold, pulling out her phone while Spencer’s talking to her. If it bothers Spencer, she hides it well but he can tell from the tension in her shoulders that she’s uncomfortable with Beth’s hostility. 

He’s not sure how he didn’t see it before, the slight irritation when he talks about what the team is up to in the office. Even looking back at the first time she’d met the team at the end of his Triathlon, there was that odd tension when she’d seen the other women at the BAU. At the time he’d chalked it up to nerves, meeting the others for the first time.

Now? It seems pretty clear that Beth has an issue with his female coworkers and he can’t for the life of him understand why. 

The tension in Spencer’s body seems to release once they get to Aaron’s car and drive away from the park. Her leg is still bouncing up and down on the passenger side and she’s tugging slightly on her satchel, but she no longer looks like she’s seconds from spinning out or running away.  

He should probably say something, anything, to reassure Spencer that Beth’s hostility isn’t her fault. But, he’s still reeling from Beth’s accusation himself and he’s not even sure that he can fix his relationship with Beth, much less fix this awkward silence in the car. 

So instead he slips into his unit chief persona “What do we know about this case so far?” 

If Spencer was hoping for an explanation she doesn’t show any disappointment at Aaron’s evasion. Slipping seamlessly into the case, she whips out her phone and starts to read the case file that Garcia sent her and rattling off the relevant information as he drives. 

The case is in Seattle, a staged murder-suicide with the father as the killer. Regularly this wouldn’t be their type of case but the youngest child was still missing and another family had just been reported missing with similar circumstances. There isn’t much information yet, a full briefing and file awaits them at Quantico once the entire team is together so they just drive in silence after Spencer is done.  

…

Dave’s the only one that seems to notice that he and Spencer travelled together to work, raising an eyebrow as she hurries to slide into her seat, accidentally whacking Morgan with her satchel on the way. 

Aaron tries his best to subtly shake his head, begging Dave not to start an interrogation now. Either, Dave lets him off easy this time or he decides that getting the briefing started is far more important than getting the story. 

He knows that it’s only a matter of time before he gets cornered by Dave and he’ll be forced to spill his guts then anyways. 

…

Aaron isn’t sure that he’s absorbed anything so far during the flight to Seattle, it reminds him uncomfortably of the months leading up to his and Haley's divorce. But this time, rather than the overwhelming anger that tethered him, all he feels is an undercurrent of anxiety. 

The profiler part of his brain is somewhat uselessly supplying that he’s transferring what happened to Haley after the dissolution of their marriage to his relationship with Beth. He’s catastrophizing even though there’s nothing to suggest that Beth is in any sort of danger. 

The scars he has from Foyet ache and he has to resist the urge to rub them. 

He’s in the middle of mentally repeating a mantra that Beth isn’t Haley when Spencer’s voice rouses him from his thoughts. 

“..language ability is intact in people with aspergers however they have problems reading social cues and feeling empathy for others. Apparently Albert Einstein had it and some Silicon Valley types” 

Oh, right. They’ve been talking about the similarities between the Yamada and Acklin sons. Braden Acklin had just been diagnosed with Aspergers and Scott Yamada had struggled with making friends.

“What about you?” Alex looks towards Spencer, eyebrow quirked jokingly. 

“What’s that?” Spencer looks confused, head tilted to the side as if she’s trying to hear something more clearly. 

Aaron winces, Alex clearly hadn’t been thinking before she’d spoken. Spencer’s autism was an unspoken secret at the BAU, something that not even she had really acknowledged. When she’d joined the team, Gideon had pulled Aaron aside and explained why he’d wanted it kept off of her file. He hadn't wanted Spencer to be limited by other people’s perceptions, but that had sometimes come at the cost of her comfort. 

They could all tell when she was struggling with the fluorescent lights in the bullpen or when the texture of the sheets in the hotels they stayed at during cases. 

If Alex had known how hard Spencer worked to be seen as a valuable member of the team, the effort she put into masking the things that she thought were undesirable, Alex would never have said something so thoughtless. 

Luckily, Morgan draws the focus away from Spencer by asking Garcia a question regarding the two boys' school transcripts and the conversation quickly flows away from Alex’s question. 

Spencer is unphased by Alex’s comment and continues rattling out statistics that might help them narrow down a suspect list. 

Aaron has to remind himself to loosen his grip on the armrest of his seat, this flight can’t end fast enough. 

…

It's Dave who finally pulls him into the break room of the precinct after he’d sent Alex and Spencer to check out the Yamada house. 

“Aaron, you’ve been distracted during this entire case, what’s going on?”  Dave’s frustrated, he can tell by the edge in the older man’s  voice. 

“Beth’s gotten a job offer in New York and she wanted me to tell her whether she should take the job or not.” 

“Did you? Tell her to take the job?” 

“No, Garcia called us about the case before I could give her an answer” 

Dave grimaces, it's understandable, out of any of Aaron’s coworkers he knows how much strain the job puts on romantic relationships. The long nights on the road, missing holidays and anniversaries. Even when they were present, the choices that they’d been forced to make and the horrors that they’d seen bled into their everyday interactions with their loved ones. 

Aaron’s lack of engagement while he was at work and his hypervigilance when he was actually at home had been a massive contributing factor in his and Haley’s divorce. 

“Do you know what your answer’s going to be?” Dave’s voice is curious, it’s not often that the older man can’t profile what Aaron’s thinking or how he’ll respond. 

“Not really, no”

“Beth is amazing but I’m not following her to New York” 

This is his home, his people, this is where they buried Haley. He can’t leave this behind no matter how much it might hurt. 

“I’m sorry Aaron”, he knows that Dave means it. The three ex Mrs. Rossi’s often give people the impression that Dave plays fast and loose with commitment but that’s anything but the truth. Dave has always felt the loss of his relationships deeply and he understands what Aaron is agonizing over. 

“Are you sure that’s the only thing going on? You’ve been avoiding Reid since we got here. She’s starting to look like a sad puppy.” 

“Reid and I are fine, nothing else is going on” Aaron responds a little too quickly, cursing himself for his lack of discretion. 

Dave snorts. He doesn’t believe him. 

Aaron isn’t sure why he just won’t own up to what Beth said about Spencer. He’s been jealously guarding it for reasons he can’t quite articulate. He tries to convince himself that he doesn’t want to draw allusions or embarrass Spencer, but really, he’s worried that Beth might be right. 

He’s not worried about Spencer harboring a secret crush. She’s young, it happens, especially when you spend most of your waking hours in close proximity. He’s worried about how flattered he feels about it.  

…

It's after the case that he finally gets to finish his conversation with Beth, they’re sitting at a small Italian restaurant close to Beth’s house. She’s stunning, wearing a blue dress that brings out the color in her eyes. It’s a shame that this feels more like a death sentence than a romantic date. There was a time that he would have looked forward to spending time with her, now all he feels is anxiety. 

Anxiety that he’s failing at yet another relationship and anxiety that he’s letting down Jack by being unable to showcase what a healthy romantic relationship is. 

It’s this anxiety that cements Aaron’s decision, he should really cut his losses and break this off before anyone gets hurt. But, Jack deserves a father who can keep a relationship and his ego demands that he doesn’t fail another woman.

As he encourages Beth to  follow her dreams and promises to visit on the weekends, all he can think is that this was some kind of test and he’s pretty sure he’s failed it.

Chapter Text

"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. We find it with another"- Thomas Merton.

Dancing With Your Ghost by Sasha Alex Sloan

…

If Aaron hadn’t been so busy focusing on balancing life with Beth and Jack and his life at the BAU, he would have noticed that something was different with Spencer. It isn’t until Spencer turns down a team dinner and later trips out of the bathroom into the bullpen wearing a dress that he figures out that something is going on. She’s got on heels that Aaron is sure she had to borrow from Garcia, judging by how unsteady she is on her feet.

Spencer’s never been the most stereotypically feminine person. Aaron can count on one hand the number of times he’d seen her wearing a dress, and even then, it was always the standard dress that the rest of the BAU women wear to funerals. This is a date night dress, purple with a high neckline and hem that falls just before her knees.

She stands frozen,  like a child caught sneaking into the cookie jar for a moment before the rest of the team swarms her. Alex reaches Spencer first. She just smiles, something soft and motherly as she starts to pull out pins from her pocket, styling Spencer’s hair into an updo that somehow manages to make her look like someone Aaron’s never seen before. Alex leans in closer, pulling Spencer down into a half crouch so that she can whisper something in her ear. Whatever she says, it has the intended effect as Spencer breaks out into a wide smile and stands up to her full height.

In the entire time Aaron had known Spencer, she’d always worn her hair down like a shield, tugging at the curls when she was deep in thought or pulling it over her face while she slept on the plane. She looks more confident and older like this; this isn’t the young agent that Gideon hired all those years ago.

Morgan pulls Spencer into a bear hug as he teases her about her new boyfriend, almost tripping her as she tries to regain her balance on the heels. JJ and Garcia keep helping Alex pin back her hair while gushing about the dress she’s wearing.  

Rossi, acting like the father of the team, threatens to have the mob come after her date if he treats her poorly while giving her pointers on how to incapacitate a pushy date. Knowing Dave’s history, the mob threat isn’t an empty one. Aaron doesn’t bother to step in to tell Dave that Spencer’s likely already read half a dozen self-defence books in preparation for this date.

Spencer is nervous, at least, more nervous than usual. She’s shifting from foot to foot as she clasps the strap of her messenger bag. Before she leaves the team, heading towards the elevator, she flashes a nervous smile and waves at the team. Her eyes are full of anticipation, and all Aaron can do is hope alongside her. He wonders what she looked like with Ethan, if her eyes ever held the same joy and nervousness that she’s displaying now.

He stands by the entrance to the bullpen watching the elevator long after she leaves. He’s not exactly sure why, but in some strange way, Spencer leaving for a date is bittersweet, like the end of an era. Maybe it’s because it just shows how much the team has changed in the last decade, and no matter how hard he tries, he’s not ready for things to be different again.

Aaron had been planning on visiting Beth in New York for the weekend, but now all he wanted to do was go home and hold Jack. As if holding the little boy will stop time for just a little while.

He’s out of luck, Jack’s at a sleepover with a friend from school, and if he goes home now, he’ll be forced to confront an empty apartment. Instead, he turns on his heel, heading back to his office to work on the newest pile of files on his desk. 

…

When Spencer comes in on Monday morning, the anticipation and nerves of Friday are gone. Her hair is back down, and she’s wearing her regular slacks and purple cardigan combo. She seems a little tense and exhausted as she lays her bag next to her desk and logs into her desktop. Aaron watches from his office as Morgan comes up next to her with two mugs of steaming coffee in his hands. Morgan usually isn’t in the bullpen early in the morning, instead tackling his inbox inside his office just down the hall. He’s trying to find out how her date went.

Aaron’s office door is open, but no matter how hard he tries to listen, he can’t quite catch what Morgan and Spencer are saying. But judging by the way she yanks her chair away from the desk and ignores Morgan’s olive branch in the form of coffee, it doesn’t look like the date went well.

They ease back into work, and Spencer pretends like the Friday night date never happened. Pulling the pile of files that had accumulated on her desk while they were gone on their last case.

…

It isn’t until after their daily briefing, where they go through all their active case consults, that Rossi, keyed into the office gossip, updates him on Spencer’s date. He walks into his office without knocking, taking a seat on the gray couch to the side of Aaron’s desk.

Aaron can’t help but feel irritated as he looks up from his budget reports and sees Dave’s boots resting on the coffee table. He’d just had it cleaned. It never boded well for Aaron when the older profiler made himself comfortable in his office.

But he’s worked with Dave long enough that he knows that fighting this encroachment of his space is only going to take more time than if he just weathers it out. So instead, he just caps his pen and waits for Dave to start talking.

“Spencer’s date fell through, something unavoidable came up.” his voice is veiled with a thick layer of sarcasm.

“How’d she take it?” Aaron has his observations, she seems irritated but not heartbroken or overly angry, but he’s anxious to hear what Dave thinks about the situation.

Dave frowns, “A little too well in my opinion, have you ever seen Spencer ever willingly cancel on someone?”

Aaron hadn’t. He’d had to send her home once when she was violently sick with the flu. There was no way that she would have cancelled on her date unless she’d been called onto a case, which was impossible, seeing as they’d just returned from one and would be grounded in to work on paperwork and consults for the next couple of days.

“He cancelled on her, not the other way around.”

“If she was mad about it, she would have at least told JJ or Alex about it.” Once again, Aaron mentally thanks himself for hiring Alex Blake. The relationship between her and Spencer had only grown; even he could see how Spencer looked to the older woman for advice and comfort. Alex was in her corner, and she’d watch out for the doctor.

“There’s something she’s hiding about this guy; something is going on, I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

“Alex might know; she’s the one who found out about Spencer first.” Aaron offers, he tries to push down the jealousy forming in the pit of his stomach that Alex knew before he did. He has no right.

They both look out to the bullpen, Spencer’s head is barely visible as she curls over her desk in deep concentration. Whatever happened on her date the night before isn’t slowing her down at work. Somehow, it’ll have to be enough for him and Dave until she opens up a little more about what happened.

He doubts she will.

…

Aaron would have thought that this would have been the end of Spencer’s clandestine date and potential boyfriend, but as the week goes on, she remains shockingly tight-lipped. A couple of times, when he walks past her desk in the bullpen, she’s looking at some upscale restaurants close to her apartment.

He asks her offhandedly about it at Jack’s soccer game Saturday morning, but she just pretends not to hear the question and launches a rant on the use of plastic as a material in soccer balls.

Aaron isn’t sure how he should feel about it. Spencer had always been relatively open for him to be her confidant, but now it’s like she’s hiding something from him for no discernible reason. He tries to push down the jealousy that she won’t share any information with him. He can’t help but feel hurt that she doesn’t trust him enough to share anything about who she’s seeing.

It isn’t until he gets a call at 9 am on Sunday that Aaron finds out exactly why Spencer was being so secretive.

“Hotch, it’s Spencer. I need your help.”

…

Her name is Maeve, a geneticist at Mendel University. They’d gotten into contact with each other when Spencer was getting tested for her migraines. Aaron tries hard not to think about how many HR violations dating your test subject must result in. They’d been talking tentatively for almost ten months. Their communication was over the phone and through letters. The distance and secretiveness had largely been because Maeve had been getting stalked, and the threats had become increasingly violent.

Aaron’s never seen Spencer acting so lost and wounded before. Not when Hankel happened or when they had lost Emily. There’s an edge of desperation to her, like an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Somehow, that seems to make her seem more dangerous and unpredictable, words that he doesn’t often use to describe Dr. Spencer Reid.

Even as she begs the rest of the team for their help, she looks like she’s coming apart at the seams. She’s wrapped up in a cardigan that swamps her body, clearly thrown on when she realized that something was wrong with Maeve and needed to get to Quantico right away. Her hair is sticking out in every direction from the number of times that she’s run her fingers through it. 

It's Derek who beats them to the question that they’ve all been thinking since they gathered in the bullpen.

“Reid, why did you let us believe that you were dating a guy?”

Aaron had never profiled her as being attracted to the same sex, but really, he’d also never actually seen her with a man or woman either, so perhaps his logic was a bit flawed.

Derek’s voice cuts through Aaron’s thoughts as he fights to restructure what he thought he knew about Spencer.

“Why didn’t you trust us enough to tell us you were gay?” Throughout the years Aaron had worked with him, he had come to understand one thing clearly. Derek’s inability to trust others also meant that he expected others to be as open and transparent as possible.

“Technically, I’m bisexual, but that isn’t relevant right now.” Spencer doesn’t look any of them in the eye, her voice quiet as she looks over her shoulder, almost as if she expects someone to burst through the bullpen doors and haul her away.

Derek doesn’t respond, just raising his eyebrows a little higher. It’s a quirk that he always does when he’s not satisfied with the answer that someone’s giving him. Despite being a seasoned profiler with experience working deep undercover and defusing bombs, there are times when he wears his heart on his sleeve so clearly.  

Spencer turns to face Derek, looking at him exasperatedly. “It wasn’t about trusting you, as a child, I already stuck out, I was significantly younger than all of my classmates, and I didn’t need another thing that people would beat me up over.”

“We also work for the federal government. Gideon advised me to keep some things to myself when I joined the academy, and it just became second nature to keep it hidden.”

The look of exasperation on her face fades to something a little quieter and vulnerable, eyes begging Derek to understand. As they look at each other, some sort of secret conversation unfolds between them that Aaron can’t possibly hope to understand. A look flashes through Derek’s eyes as if he’s reliving a painful memory before he finally settles on a quiet acceptance.  

Whatever they said to each other, it’s something that Derek knows intimately, and it sucks all the air out of his fight. Instead, he just nods, and they get back to work.

…

Spencer hadn’t spoken since they’d come back from Robert Putnum’s home, Maeve’s former fiancé. She’d recognized him from the restaurant where they’d been planning on meeting, and as a result, Aaron had been forced to bench her from the field for the rest of the investigation. Instead, they’d been trying to keep her busy by figuring out the identity of the stalker.

That’s how they’d ended up in the round table room surrounded by all the letters and emails that she and Maeve had sent each other over the last ten months in a desperate attempt to figure out the identity of Maeve’s stalker.

In any other case, having a witness who had an eidetic memory and could recite word for word large chunks of data would have been something that they looked forward to.  But this was Spencer, and whenever he thought about what information Spencer would have to share, Aaron felt sick to his stomach.

Maeve’s letters are flirty and filled with barely concealed innuendos. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Maeve had been interested in Spencer since the beginning and had been pursuing her. Judging by the red look on Spencer’s face, she was picking up what Maeve was putting down.

After JJ starts reading a particularly colorful letter, Aaron excuses himself to look at another angle of the case. It’s a bit of a cop-out; he doesn’t have any idea what he’s going to do, but he doesn’t think that Spencer wants her supervisor to see all her private communication.

Judging by the relieved look on her face, she doesn’t want him to see it either.

He’s rewatching the video from his interview with Maeve’s parents when Spencer bursts through the door, half walking-half running to his desk.

“Hotch, did you call me Doctor or Agent to Bobby and his girlfriend?” Spencer’s frantic, foot tapping against the ground, but her voice has a strength that she’s been missing all day.

“I didn’t identify you at all. What are you talking about?”

“I think I know who the unsub is”.
…

Diane Turner is out of control, and when she calls to lure Spencer to search for her and Maeve, it becomes increasingly clear that she refuses to negotiate with anyone but Spencer. So, when they approach the warehouse where Maeve’s being kept, it’s Spencer who approaches first.

The box on the doorstep of the warehouse makes Spencer freeze. As she carefully crouches down to open it, she pulls out a long, black piece of fabric. It’s a blindfold. Spencer’s been barely holding onto things as it is, but something about the blindfold shakes her. She swallows like she's just barely trying to prevent herself from throwing up then and there. 

Voice and hands shaking, she turns back to him and Morgan, “Morgan, you’re going to need to put this on me. I need to play into her delusions to get her to give up Maeve.” 

Looking back at Morgan, Aaron can see the same horrified look in his eyes. Whatever the blindfold signifies, he knows about it, and it looks like he’d rather charge into an exploding building than put it on her. 

“I’m so sorry, Spencer,” Morgan murmurs as he knots the blindfold, loose enough that Spencer should have a good field of vision but not too loose where it runs the risk of falling when she’s talking to Diane. 

“It’s okay, Morgan, this isn’t your fault.”

With that, Spencer squares her shoulders, walking slowly past the door frame and entering the warehouse. Unarmed, desperate, and alone. 

Aaron wants to yell after her, begging her to stop for a second, not to go in alone. For a moment, his body pushes forward without thinking. Morgan stops him first, placing a firm hand on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. 

“Hotch, you can’t go in there. If Spencer has any hope of getting Maeve out alive, she needs to go alone.” 

Aaron wants to fight Morgan keeps pushing through him, but he knows that the younger man is right. If he goes in now, he will ruin the de-escalation and he’ll be signing both women’s death warrants. 

Instead, he nods and turns up the volume in the coms system, waiting for Spencer to start talking to Diane. 

“Why is Spencer so scared of blindfolds?” He asks, he’s trying to be casual, like Morgan will be more honest if Aaron’s calm.

Derek stiffens next to him, “You need to ask Spencer, it isn’t my story to tell.” 

Aaron wants to keep pushing, to force the story out of him, but Spencer’s voice begins talking on the coms, and they both go silent as they wait for any indication that something is going wrong. 

Spencer’s voice is quietly calm as she layers praise upon praise. Maybe if Diane thinks that she and Spencer have a chance at happiness together, she’ll let Maeve go. At least, that had been the plan. 

The shot that rings out is loud enough that they don’t even need the earpieces to hear it. This time, Morgan doesn’t bother holding him back as they race into the building.

All Aaron can see in his mind is Spencer’s body crumpled to the floor,  with a widening puddle surrounding her head. This can’t be how this ends. He can’t go home and tell Jack that Spencer won’t be coming to any more of his soccer games, or helping him with his homework, or reading him a bedtime story. He can't go back to the bureau and explain to Penelope that Spencer's desk will lie empty. He can't call Emily, who's halfway across the world, and tell her that she didn't even have the chance to say goodbye. 

By the time they get into the room, Spencer’s crouched on the floor, hand on her arm, stemming the bleeding from a gunshot wound. She’s staring desperately at Diane, who’s holding a gun to Maeve’s head. Despite the chaos of the situation, the relief that floods Aaron's body is insurmountable. 

It’s like it happens in slow motion as Diane raises the gun to her temple and shoots. Neither she nor Maeve had a chance.

The scream that Spencer lets out is nothing short of animalistic. Something tells Aaron that the sound will be haunting his dreams for the rest of his life.