Essential Listening: Something Just Like This, by the Chainsmokers and Coldplay

0o0

Aaron stared at the strip lights on the ceiling, trying not to dwell on what Foyet might have done to his family. What he might one day do.

The pain meds were a big, fluffy and wholly inconvenient cloud, shrouding the parts of his brain that he needed to use, but he was wary of them fading. He was hazy on the details of his own injuries, but Foyet had promised to give him the same scars, and nine stab wounds sounded like they would hurt a hell of a lot. Mostly, though, he just felt weak. Helpless.

Which, of course, was exactly what Foyet wanted.

Emily had stayed behind when the others had headed to his old house, near enough to keep an eye on him; far enough not to smother. She was, he reflected, very good at this.

As soon as they'd secured Haley and Jack, JJ had called her and she had let him know that they were safe.

Shortly after that, his beleaguered brain had started working again, and he had wondered aloud where Reid was. Emily had ensured him that he would be fine, despite the gunshot wound, which had made him feel worse, somehow.

That was a third person – not quite family, but as good as – who he had been unable to protect, just today.

Aaron closed his eyes. That kind of thinking wasn't helpful.

PTSD, he thought.

He couldn't stop replaying the night before in his mind. Realising he was there behind him. The gunshot. The knife sliding into him, over and over. Foyet talking constantly about control.

It made his heart race, sometimes enough to make the doctor race in and check his breathing.

"Prentiss," he said, and she had obviously been listening hard at her post outside the door because she immediately detached from the wall. "Can you get a nurse to help me sit up?"

"Sure."

She was hiding it well, but he knew her tells. There was fear there, and anger, and the frustration of not being able to help.

Once the nurse had him propped up, and had topped up his pain medication – but at a lower dosage, at his request, Prentiss came back in and took the visitor's seat as if she knew he'd wanted to talk to her. If circumstances had been different, Aaron might have laughed. There he'd been, profiling his junior agent, while she had been profiling him right back.

As it was, he was too tired and too miserable to summon anything approaching amusement, and he knew that at some point in the near future he would need to be cheerful for Jack. It might be the last time he saw him in a while.

A while.

He pushed the feeling down.

"You were at my place, right?" he said aloud. Emily nodded. "Could you tell how he got in?"

"I'm not sure," she said, apologetically. He watched her bite her lip. "Do you want to talk about what happened?"

Aaron controlled his breathing, staunchly ignoring the swirl of panic that question elicited. "I don't know," he replied, unable to meet her eyes. "After he stabbed me the first time, it all goes blank."

It was a lie, but she didn't need to know that – and she didn't call him on it.

He looked up when he heard her feet retreat, catching sight of the woman on the far side of the door.

Haley…

Haley's face was a picture of concern and worry – and some of it was for him, he could tell. You couldn't be married to your high school sweetheart for nearly fifteen years without still caring about each other. She was channelling all her fear and anger into her hands, wringing them over and over. She put them on the rail at the end of his hospital bed, unable to keep them still.

Aaron felt a deep pang of sorrow. He kept it off his face, though. He owed her that much.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"I'm gonna be okay," he told her, quietly. "Did they explain to you what's happening?"

She nodded unhappily, swallowing. "They said the marshals service is taking us straight from here and putting us into protective custody."

"Haley, I'm sorry," he said, and he knew she understood.

She had always understood, until she hadn't. He'd always meant to keep her safe. To keep them both safe.

A smile flitted over her face, but it was quickly gone. A stark reminder of how badly he had failed her – failed them both.

She nodded, clearly fighting anger. "Do you know where they're gonna take us?"

"No, I don't," he told her. "And that's the point. I can't know where you're going." He could hear his voice beginning to shake, so he paused before continuing, "If you have contact with anyone, then he could track you."

He wished he could say something that would make the knot between her eyebrows dissolve.

"Jack has school," she reminded him. "He has friends. I have a job now."

"I know." His heart broke at the expression on her face. "And I'm sorry. We will catch him and you'll come back, and I promise that I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you."

Haley watched his expression carefully for a moment, assessing him. Aaron got the sense that everything rested on what she was about to say. "Are you sure that we're in danger?"

Aaron longed to reach out and hold her, and tell her that everything would be alright – that this was all a big mistake and that she and Jack were safe, and could go back home.

Recognising the pragmatism that he so greatly admired, he nodded. "Yes."

She nodded too, and he was glad that she still trusted him enough to take his word for it. "And what about you? Are you gonna be safe?"

He sighed. "He wants to see me suffer," he explained. "Knowing that my son is out there and that I can't see him is… better than killing me."

Haley stared at him for a moment. It was that look people got when they got a glimpse of the darkness he and his team regularly inhabited. It looked particularly out of place on her beautiful features. "What am I supposed to say to Jack?"

"Tell him it's a vacation and that it's not gonna be for very long," he suggested.

There was a moment where Haley struggled not to burst into tears. His hand rose from the bed, unbidden, reaching out to her, but he caught himself before she saw it, and he dropped it to the covers.

"How am I supposed to keep him safe if there is no one I know to help me?" she demanded, voice thick with emotion.

"Haley, you're strong," said Aaron. Stronger than me. "You lived with me in this job, and you've practically raised Jack all by yourself." He watched her brush tears away, wondering why he couldn't have said this to her while they were still married. "You're a great mother."

He found he couldn't hold her gaze. He looked down at the blanket he had tucked his hands into so he couldn't touch her.

"Can you catch this man?"

Aaron met her gaze so she would know this was a promise. "I will catch this man."

Haley nodded, wiping her face, accepting that. "Um. Jack wants to come in."

Trying to keep his emotions off his face (when had that become something he had to do in front of Haley, of all people?), he swallowed. "I want to see him, I just don't think it's a good idea."

Haley tutted. "Look, I know you're trying to protect him. But you both need this. Please."

"Okay," he said, at last.

She was always smarter than me, too.

He groaned, trying to sit up more steadily as Haley went to get Jack. Frightening his son was the last thing he wanted to do.

Jack was barely the height of the bottom half of the glass wall. He looked so small and wary and worried, wearing a fresh shirt that Aaron recognised from the 'smart-casual family event' part of their son's wardrobe.

You just gotta hold it together until they leave, he told himself.

"Hey, buddy. Come on in. Alright?"

"Here we go," said Haley, lifting the little boy so he could sit on the side of the bed.

She retreated to the end of the bed, giving them some space.

Jack looked sad and scared, which meant that he had understood that being in hospital was a bad thing.

God, you've grown so fast, he thought. And I missed most of that. And I'm going to miss even more, now.

"Hey, it's okay," he told him, gently. "The doctors made sure that I'm completely fine. Did Mommy tell you that you two are gonna take a trip?"

"Yeah," said Jack.

"So, I'm not gonna see you for a while," Aaron said, trying not to cry.

"Why?"

"Well, think about it like when Daddy goes away for work," he explained. "Only this time, you and Mommy get to go someplace. But what do I tell you every time I go away?"

"You love me," Jack replied.

"More than anything in the world."

Jack tilted his head to the side, assessing him. "Are you okay?"

Aaron tried to make the words come out, but he couldn't. He couldn't lie to him. "I'm very proud of you," he said instead. "Every single day."

His son gave him a long, sad look that told him that even though he wasn't quite four, he hadn't missed the lie of omission.

Carefully, so he didn't tear any of his stitches, Aaron leant forward and kissed Jack on the head. "I'll see you soon, okay?"

Another lie of omission. But what else could he say?

"Okay."

"You take care of Mom, okay?"

"Okay."

Haley must have recognised that he couldn't say much more without entirely losing it, because she came back around and put her hands on Jack's shoulder. She met his gaze, sad, but proud of their brave, lovely little boy, and he sent her a silent thanks that she acknowledged with a scrunch of her mouth.

0o0

US Marshal Sam Kassmeyer, who both JJ and Morgan had worked with before, was already keeping a weather eye on proceedings. Emily approved. He had the air of a man who could remain completely unobtrusive – and, more importantly, would do anything in his power to keep people safe.

"I know Aaron's worried," said Kassmeyer. "Tell him I'll protect them like they're my own."

They nodded.

Haley and Jack appeared, looking emotionally wrought, but coping. Everyone made an effort to look like nothing was worrying them at all, and said goodbye to both of them, for what could be a very long time.

Later, as she and Morgan watched Kassmeyer walk them to a waiting car, Emily wrung her hands. It was an unsatisfactory ending, and an unsatisfactory beginning, and all of them knew that.

"I wish we could fix this," she said quietly, and Morgan put a hand on her shoulder.

"We will. Maybe not for a while. But we will."

She felt oddly more stable as JJ joined them.

"I just talked to Spence," she said. "He's gonna be fine. I left him talking Grace's ear off about set theory."

Ordinarily they would have laughed at that, the three of them. Today, they did not.

"He's gonna be on crutches for a while," she added, following her friends' gaze to the little boy and his mother, heading to the dark, unmarked sedan. "But he said kicking down doors is Morgan's job, anyway."

That did raise a smile, from Emily at least.

Trust Spencer, she thought. And Trust JJ.

Morgan's expression, on the other hand, was still deeply troubled. She could guess what he was thinking.

"You know, Foyet having your credentials had nothing to do with any of this," she told him, and he arched an eyebrow in her direction, signalling his disbelief. "It was just his way of trying to torture you."

"Yeah, I know," he mused. "Foyet's about power and control. "He was hopin' to watch me fall apart, and… now he wants to destroy Hotch."

"Exactly, that's his plan," said Emily. "And now we fight it."

"Grace said something, over on the ward," JJ remarked, as the three of them turned to watch Haley get in the car.

"What?" Morgan murmured.

Below them, Haley looked back over her shoulder, perhaps feeling their eyes on her, maybe just thinking of her ex-husband. They acknowledged her silently, trying to convey that they would be steadfast in their pursuit of the monster intent on destroy her and her family.

She nodded, understanding, and the car door closed behind her.

"'We all make our own deal with the devil'."

0o0

David skulked outside the door to Aaron's hospital room, outwardly ignoring the pain his friend was in – and that he was pretending that he hadn't been crying, or that a non-descript car hadn't just driven away with two thirds of his heart. There was no rush now. They had done all they needed to do for the time being, setting in motion all the little moving parts that would one day coalesce into Foyet's capture and conviction. He could wait for his friend to notice him, so he did.

Aaron swallowed when he caught sight of him.

Rossi ignored that, too. He knew exactly the state of self-loathing Aaron was presently wallowing in, and that simply wouldn't do.

"Did you hear what happened this morning?" he asked, before Aaron could tell him to go away.

"No."

"We had a situation," said Dave. "Unsub had already killed two people. Said he was gonna keep killing unless a man used his son as bait."

Aaron watched him for a moment, clearly trying to guess what point Dave was trying to make.

You think you're so hard to read, he thought, with affection.

"What happened?"

"We kept the boy safe," Dave told him. "Worked the profile. It was a happy ending."

Aaron's eyes slid away from his.

"Do you know why I'm telling you this?" Dave asked.

"Yes," his friend said, with a certain amount of weary resignation mixed in with the horror of the day.

"No other group in the world could have pulled off what your team did in a matter of hours," he continued, though both men knew this was something of an exaggeration. The world was full of brilliant people – but the BAU had a knack for bringing them together, and with a leader like Aaron Hotchner at the tiller, they were well placed to pull off the seemingly impossible.

"I appreciate what you're trying to do, Dave," said Aaron, in an attempt to dislodge him.

Dave wasn't having any of it. "We'll get Foyet."

"I promised Haley that we would get him," the other man said, rather helplessly. "But the truth is, if he stops killing, we have no way of tracking him. He stopped killing for ten years, just for the pleasure of watching Shaunessy's life fall apart." His friend's face crumpled for a moment, but then he controlled it. "What's Jack gonna remember about me in ten years?"

"Hotch, look at me," Dave said, walking to his bedside so he couldn't avoid him. "I'm telling you, we'll get him."

Aaron looked away.

0o0

"Where did you get these?" he asked, gently running his fingers over the bruises on her arm.

Someone had held her – and held her very tightly. Hard enough to leave marks.

"Hotch," she said, with a small shrug.

Spencer frowned and asked 'really?' with his face alone.

"He wanted me to use magic to get Haley and Jack to safety, if I had to." She closed her hand over his and gave a sad little chuckle. "Like he even had to ask. He'd only just come around and then realised the danger they were in. I think he just wanted to stay conscious long enough to make me understand. I don't think he knew how hard he was gripping."

Spencer hummed his understanding. Lightly, he pressed his lips to the purple, finger-shaped stains on the inside of her wrist, raising a smile on Grace's face. It didn't quite reach her eyes, but then he supposed his hadn't either.

She had come to pick him up – in his car, because we was in no state to ride her motorbike. There had been some, minor discussion of picking up takeout, but really, neither of them had said much until she had pulled onto the 95 outside of DC when Spencer had given in to the nagging voice inside his head and asked her to drive them somewhere other than his apartment.

Presently, they were both sitting on the bonnet of his VW Beetle at Widewater, a tiny, unincorporated place that was only just big enough for the market where Grace had found them a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of soda. His knee ached horribly, and a large part of Spencer didn't want to think about getting back off the car again, but it was worth it to sit beside her for a while in a place their personal tragedies had never previously intruded. Night had fallen, though it wasn't cold, even with the stiff breeze from the river. Across the water, lights from the boats (yachts of the rich and powerful, fishing vessels, leisure vessels, party boats and other miscellaneous river traffic) bobbed lazily hither and thither.

It was not a time for rushing.

Grace was upright and oddly separate beside him, despite their proximity, not so much tense as watchful. Her hand still in his, he gazed out across the dark, enigmatic waters of the Potomac, wondering whether he was brave enough to have this conversation, or if he ought to leave well alone.

He chose the former, in the end, because that was who he was. And Grace wouldn't want him to behave otherwise. That was who she was.

"Grace…" he began, and felt her fingers lace with his. "We should talk."

"Oh dear," she said, in a tone he associated with her characteristic, deadpan humour. "No conversation that starts that way is going somewhere pleasant."

Spencer felt his mouth twist into an unhappy smile. She was trying to make this easier, God help him.

"No." He fell silent, putting it off for as long as he could.

Maybe if he never spoke, they could stay like this, snuggled together on the bonnet of his car, a small island of comfort and safety on the edge of the dark. Grace shifted closer, perhaps guessing his intent.

"Okay," she said, after a minute or so had passed. "Talk."

Sighing, he rubbed his thumb along the back of her hand, memorising the stories of her skin. "It's – uh – it's not going to be easy. Catching Foyet, I mean."

"No," she agreed soberly. "And that bad feeling – the one from Boston. It's… well, it's difficult to describe, but it's not over. Whatever it is."

"Yeah," he mused. He had had a similar sense of foreboding, on and off for months. It was still there now, just beneath the surface. "Foyet wants to watch Hotch fall apart. That takes time. He'll be well hidden."

"And we've no good way to track him."

"Mmm."

They fell silent again, watching the water, thinking of darker things than the great, inky stretch of liquid in front of them. He listened to the soft sounds of her breathing. It was like they were on a raft in the river, instead of just beside it. It felt safe, isolated. Cosy.

But it couldn't last.

"Hotch needs us," he said, eventually. It was difficult to make the words come out.

"Yes," said Grace, and lifted his fingers to her lips. She knew, he realised, exactly what he was trying to say. "Now, more than ever."

"We can't be distracted."

"No."

There was a hard lump in his throat. He swallowed, but it didn't move. "You're, um… Hah. You're really distracting," he said, fiddling with the collar of her shirt.

Grace sighed, offering a tired smile just visible in the glow of the solitary streetlight. "So are you." She met his gaze, sadly.

He wished he could just kiss her and ignore this new reality where nothing was safe or sacred.

"I don't want to do this," he complained quietly, and she gave his hand a squeeze, letting him know they were in agreement.

"Neither do I."

Spencer found he could no longer look at her. His chest ached. "Okay," he said softly. "Okay. "So, um…"

"I don't want to give this up," Grace interrupted, and he could tell from her voice that she wasn't angry, or even disagreeing.

"No, I don't want to give this up either," he said quickly. "But –"

"I know," she said. "We have to. But Foyet…" She pursed her lips. "We don't know how long that is going to take. And I am not willing to give this up – to give you up – indefinitely."

Spencer swallowed again. He didn't know what to say, so he cupped her face with his hand; she pressed her cheek to it.

"So, maybe we don't say this is it," she continued. "Maybe we say this is… a secondment."

A painful sort of chuckle escaped his throat. "A secondment?"

Grace nodded, pressing a kiss into his palm.

"And we, uh… what, set a date to revisit the conversation?"

"If you like," she allowed. He raised his eyebrows, inviting her to set the terms. "Six months, tops. That's… that's just about as long as I think I can stand."

"Six months," he echoed. "And if we haven't caught him by then –"

"Then our being distracted isn't the problem," she said simply. "And if we catch him before…" She shrugged.

"Okay," he said. "I think I can do that. I mean, I don't want to, but…"

"But when do we, two, get what we want?"

"Hmm," he agreed. Then, "We can still hang out, though, right?" he asked, and he realised he was as afraid that she wouldn't want to as he had been that this might have been an ending. Their ending.

"Absolutely. Can't get rid of me that easily," she assured him.

Spencer felt something loosen inside his chest. "Good. That's… good."

"Oh, I hate it when people do this in fiction," Grace complained. She gave a wet sort of giggle and he realised she was crying, too.

He brushed a tear away with his thumb. "Me too. It's a device used to create needless angst, in my opinion."

She laughed again and he gave her a rueful smile. "So, part of the deal has to be minimal angst."

"Agreed. Um… you know, we should probably talk about…" He waved his hand, trying to encompass everything that had passed between them since they had met on a hot New Orleans evening, three summers previously.

"Yeah, we're not so good at that, are we?"

"No," he chuckled.

"Well then, we have six months to practice."

Probably, he shouldn't run his thumb along her lips, but he did it anyway. "I meant what… um, what I tried to say," he told her softly. "In Doctor Nicholls' lab.*"

"So did I," Grace assured him.

Then she kissed him soundly, as if she was trying to put everything they couldn't say then and they wouldn't say now in the movement of her mouth against his. Spencer leaned into it, wrapping his arm around her waist and effectively pulling her on top of him. Her right knee grazed the bullet wound in his left and he winced hard at the jolt of pain, making him hiss – and bite Grace's lip, none too gently.

"Sorry," they said in unison, then laughed at themselves and at each other.

He rested his forehead against hers, a mutual acknowledgment that this was going to be horrible, but that they were in it together.

It made more of a difference than he had thought it would, knowing where both of them stood.

Grace wedged herself against his side, careful not to jostle Spencer's leg again, and tucked her head beneath his chin, resting it on his chest. She took his hand, too. He slid his down to her hip, holding her as close as he could, while he could.

I love you, he thought, and trusted her to know it.

0o0

*See Moments of Grace – Season Four, Act Six: The Song of the Sharks, chapter 26.

0o0

This is the end of this run! The next one, Nine Tenths should be up the week after next – I like to take a break at the end of a fic. Also it will give you all time to express your displeasure at my dangling happiness in front of you like that! Hit the Follow Author button if you haven't already, and it'll drop right into your inbox on the 11th of Spetember, universe willing.

Anyway, immeasurable thanks to all the readers and reviewers, you make the rockin' world go round, and you keep me going when I feel like I should throw away my pen and learn how to herd owls, or something. Particularly my regulars (you know who you are), and all you quiet folks who show up every so often and say hello. It means the world to me. Especially given the way the world is right now. Any interaction is bolstering in a world of plague and quarantine. I love you folks!

You can find more of my writing, if you're bored, on Amazon, or through my book of the face, insta ham and twitter accounts, all of which are under some variation of Lauren K. Nixon. I also have a Pat with a re and an on, which I don't entirely suck at updating, where you can get your hands on snippets, sneak previews, Q and As, flash fiction competitions and even the odd letter from a character. I also take pictures of stuff, including my cat, and they show up there, too.

Keep safe, people, and keep burning through the surface of this nasty little bastard with soap and disinfectant. Stay home, stay social on the web, and hold the line. See you on the flip side.

Parlanchina xx