Disclaimer: Borrowed from CBS et al.
Warnings: Slash. Rated T for...well, it's CM, what do you expect? Presupposes familiarity with episodes through mid S5.
Author's Note: First ficlet written on my phone. Like it? Hate it? Please review!
Note Two: Hard at work on A Time to Dance, an OC has crept in and I have been chasing her through pages and pages trying to pin her down and kill her.
of odes and elegies
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
-Benjamin Disraeli
There are many thrilling things in life. The rush of air as the bus passes, early, too close, too fast. The way the light flickers and breaks in the eyes meeting his during the height of their most intimate act. Ferris wheels and kisses.
Not that he has much experience with that last.
When he first meets Aaron Hotchner, the shock of want almost shudders through him. All spare clean lines and alabaster skin. He wonders what put the darkness in Aaron's eyes. Because he is an apt student of human behaviour, he thinks he knows. He is not sure whether he wants to erase that darkness, or illuminate it.
All he knows, is that he wants. Unreservedly. And when he goes after something that he wants-
That night, the night of the day he meets Aaron Hotchner, he sits in the quiet of his apartment and thinks about how all the past endevours of his life are abruptly pallid.
He bends his efforts to Aaron Hotchner. Getting to know Aaron Hotchner. And these are the things that matter: integrity; duty; faith; love. He is the quintescence of what an FBI agent should be. The quintesence of what a husband should be (Haley disagrees). He bends his efforts to gaining Aaron Hotchner's attention.
They are small things. Little things.
But Aaron notices.
Aaron sees.
Aaron's response is almost everything he hoped for. That hushed phone call, where they spilled their secrets out between them. He will be Aaron's first, he knows. Aaron does not have to say.
He will be tender. He can be gentle. They have commonalities he needs to show Aaron.
Aaron, Aaron, Aaron.
The name is a clarion call. Something vast and nameless wells in him. Is this love?
The problem, though, the problem, hides in the way Aaron profiles. Nuances, phrasing and interpretation that perhaps bother no one else. What these indicate makes the want surge up and roar.
While Aaron sees he does not understand.
Months pass until, finally, comes the night they share a hotel room. Aaron sleeps and his lips part as air slips in and out.
"Aaron," he says, and his hand hovers but he does not touch. Not yet. "I'm not going to leave you, Aaron. I'll always be here. No one said it was going to be easy."
The things that are important, between them, are words like fate and destiny and inevitability.
Aaron is so busy hiding from his darkness (he acknowledges that the motivation is noble) he does not know himself. How can he know anyone else?
Finally the want will be denied no longer. Another night, the third night between them, and he goes to Aaron and Aaron surrenders more easily than he had hoped. Wholly unafraid after that instant of hesitation. He unwraps Aaron like a gift. They are each the other's greatest weakness.
When Aaron is laid out beneath him, panting and writhing and face a beautiful mask, he feels an protective kind of joy. "Shh," he says, because he is not ready to say those three words. The taste on his lips is dark and wonderful.
Aaron answers with little nonsense sounds, bitten off curses-Aaron does everything but beg.
Obliterated between them lies Aaron's misunderstanding.
"Maybe," he says, and that same vast nameless feeling wells up in him and tenses his voice with a combination of laughter and frustration, "Maybe this will change the way you profile."
He slides in, metallic and clean, and he knows he gets the angle just right by the way Aaron's lips part, soundless, by the way his head turns sideways against the carpet.
In the end, he cannot illuminate Aaron's darkness. They say pain shared is pain halved. Maybe shadows divide the same way.
There are many thrilling things in life. The way Aaron's heart beats against his palm. The way crimson coils and clots around the silver edge in his hand. The way he wants Aaron to live.
Because what they have? This is something special.
This is something that transcends. This is something that endures.
This is something beautiful.
fin