That last chapter was as much as I already had written, so the following chapters will be slower as I'll be writing them as I go. I can't think of a last name for Lily at the moment, btw, so feel free to leave suggestions if you review.

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

The Lake House

Chapter 06

Aaron woke to find an empty chill along his back, knowing immediately that she was no longer in the bed with him. The front door was still locked from the inside so he wasn't too worried, and rose unhurriedly to look for her.

"Lily?" he called.

"Down here." Came her muffled reply from below him. Looking toward the kitchen he saw the trapdoor to the small basement open and made his way down the creaking steps. He found her sat on the floor looking through a bunch of old sheet music, dust smudges on her clothes, a decent sized cobweb on one ear, and a large grin on her face. His heart clenched at the way she looked at him.

"The generator was about to give out so I came down here to see if I could refill it. Can you check I closed the intake tight enough?"

"Sure. Thanks for refilling it." He gestured to the sheet music as he walked to the generator. "Do you play an instrument?"

"I can play most instruments. But I prefer stringed ones, especially violin and cello." Her look of concentration as she pored over the music was adorable. Her lower lip was caught tightly between her teeth and her hair was falling over her eyes. He wondered if he should tell her about the cobweb.

"Most? Most people have enough trouble just learning one. Are you some kind of prodigy?" The generator intake was fine, so he settled himself on the floor behind her, his legs either side of hers, wrapping his arms around her and dropping a sweet kiss on the bare side of her neck before sweeping a finger past her ear. He held up the dusty cobweb, which elicited a small laugh.

"Hey, I was saving that for later." She protested, leaning firmly into his embrace all the same. "I don't know about prodigy. I'm an artist of sorts by trade, but I have something called synaesthesia, which makes music very easy." She took one hand off the sheets of music and twined her fingers through his, holding their hands curled against her sternum just below her breasts. He could feel her heartbeat both in his hand and against his chest, slow and even.

"Synaesthesia, the condition of sensory information being processed by one sensory pathway is involuntarily processed by a second or more additional sensory pathways?" he asked, feeling her nod in reply.

"My form is chromesthesia, as well as hearing sound normally I also see it. In colour." She sounded a little nervous.

"You don't always get a good reaction from people when you tell them that, do you?" He asked softly, tightening his arms around her a little, wanting her to know that that wasn't the case with him.

"Not really, no. Some people just find it interesting. Others act like it means I'm mentally damaged or autistic. I don't get much of that in my professional life; I'm good at what I do and they know it. But new friends are few and far between."

"I'm sorry. That can't be easy." The thought of her feeling alone due to ignorance made him irrationally angry.

"If that's the worst life throws at me I consider myself lucky." She turned to look at him, the heat of her gaze more than enough to banish his irritable thoughts and draw his attention back to other things. The implied weight of her breasts as their soft undersides half brushed half rested against his wrist being the greatest of those things at present.

"I can see how that could be useful in learning music and musical instruments. How extreme is it? Is it all sounds or just some?" He was fascinated and was trying to imagine what it was like, or what she might see when he spoke.

"All, including sounds that most people don't even know that they hear. You could play me sounds that I couldn't consciously hear, but I would still see colours and know that the sound was there." She tensed a little. "There's a downside, though, and the one that causes the most problems socially, although professionally it's a godsend."

"Which is?" He prodded gently.

"Lies have their own colour. There's not a person on the planet who can lie to me and I not know it." She was almost cringing, waiting for what she assumed his response would be. He hated that she'd learnt that response from what must have been hundreds, even thousands of reactions from people over the course of her life.

"Lily, look at me." He touched a fingertip under her chin but applied no pressure, waiting patiently for her to raise her heart shaped face to look at him with worried eyes, stormy and darkened.

"That doesn't frighten me. I can't promise I will never lie to you, but I do promise that I will never lie to you for no good reason." She swallowed hard and her voice trembled a little.

"Somehow I think I already knew that." She rested her forehead again his cheek. "I would never expect anyone not to lie. It's an integral and deeply necessary part of being human, whether it's for someone else's good, survival or just privacy. But I'm glad it doesn't bother you. I'm lucky it's so useful for work, otherwise you'd be the only one it doesn't bother, I think."

"How is it useful? I thought you were an artist?" She chuckled.

"I am. But what started out as filling in occasionally for the police as a sketch artist turned into pretty steady work. Not all victims or witnesses can remember things correctly or express them clearly. I can tell when what they're saying doesn't tally up with what's in their mind's eye. And when they're deliberately misdirecting, of course. It seems to work around the usual problems with eyewitnesses and repressed memories, too."

Aaron was stunned. The scope of possibility for this kind of talent was almost unlimited. Beyond the obvious and shallow - casinos would not be kind to her if they found out what she could do - the possible applications for this within the BAU's line of work were astounding.

"I wish we had someone like you on my team. I don't think I can even wrap my head around the possibilities of something like that." He said, shaking his head minutely.

"I don't think there's much I'd ever refuse you, Aaron. If you ever want my help, just ask. We probably would need to get back to civilisation before I could do that, though." She chuckled.

"When we can get out of here, where will you go?" His chest felt tight and he had to choke the words out. She raised a reproachful eyebrow at him.

"Do you really think I'd be going somewhere other than wherever you are?" There was laughter and trust in her voice. "I told you I was travelling with no destination in mind."

"I didn't want to assume that that would change just over the course of four days. Maybe you'd want to continue on that way." He nuzzled her shoulder and sighed against her skin, feeling the tension quickly dissipate despite his offer of freedom. If she didn't take it now, he didn't think he could offer the same thing again later.

"I think you are my destination. I just didn't know where you were before or I'd have known exactly where I was going." She smiled softly and placed a tiny kiss on the corner of his mouth. "However fast this has grown, I at least want to be close enough to see where it goes, although I'm pretty certain we both have a good idea already."

"Yes. And yes." He chuckled. "I'd like that. Maybe you'd like to stay with one of my team for a while? Of course the invitation to stay with me is there as well but I would really like to take you on a proper date when we get out of here, and I kind of like the idea of driving to pick you up."

"I see your chivalry knows no bounds." She laughed. "I'd really like that. I'd miss this time with you, but I like the idea of butterflies in my stomach almost as much. We shouldn't miss out on the good stuff."

"It would be nice to take it slow and savour what we can." He nodded his agreement. "While we still can." His gaze burned her through and through and she forgot to breathe for a moment.

"This means I don't get to see you naked again any time soon doesn't it?" she asked with an unexpected smirk.

Aaron's whole body shook as he laughed. Other parts were paying more attention to one of the words she'd used, the one that starts with n and ends with aked. He groaned and let his head fall against the back of hers.

"I'm going to regret that, aren't ?" he joked.

"Maybe a little. But it'll be so worth it." She poked his ribs with one finger.

"Not to change the subject, but there are some instruments in here if you wanted to play any of them." He stooped to help her up as he pushed himself to a standing position.

"Oh what do you have?" Her eyes lit up in interest.

"Nothing too fancy but I know there's piano under those boxes at the back. And there's a violin somewhere. More a country fiddle, but it always had a sweet sound." He pushed some crates to one side to uncover a plain, worn looking violin case. The cracked, brown leather looked uninteresting, to him at least. But the way she bounced on the balls of her feet in excitement told him that to her it was anything but. He motioned for her to take it.

Lily picked the case up reverently, stroking the dust from its sides and blowing away the rest. She walked past him and tugged his hand to make him follow her back upstairs. Aaron shut and locked the trapdoor again.

"Will it take long to clean in order to play it?" he asked, curious. He'd never paid much attention when his sister had played it.

"Cleaning won't take long; all I'd need is a soft cloth. It's probably damp though, so I should set it on the opposite side of the room from the fire and let it dry out slowly. So I could play it in maybe two days' time at the earliest." She snapped the clips and prised the lid open. "It's in great condition. I think I could play some lovely music on this."

"I'll get you a cloth. Do you want some breakfast?" He passed her a soft chamois leather to clean the violin and took the bread out of the cupboard.

"Yes but not much. My insides are still unconvinced about the virtues of food even if the sniffles have stopped."

He watched as she plucked the violin from its case and laid it gently across her knees, stroking down the long neck with the soft cloth. His body had quite an intense and graphic response to watching her slim fingers gripping the long wooden shaft. Unlike before, he didn't feel quite such a desperate need to hide it from her.

"Best not get that too near to the frying pan." Her lips twitched and she giggled at the small, strangled sound he made before turning on his heel and focusing his attention on fixing them some breakfast.

Once his back was to her, he had to ask the question.

"What does my voice look like to you?" He heard her stop rubbing the instrument and almost felt her eyes on his back. There was quiet movement, then warm arms wrapped around his waist and he let himself lean back into her.

"Like the sea after a storm. Greens and greys that don't exist, as far as I can tell, in the realm of human sight. There's light, which I perceive as the gentleness of your soul, and darkness, which I think is all that you've forced yourself to see through your job. And when those two things clash…when you tell me you'll protect me no matter what, it's like the eye of a hurricane."

For the first time since his ex wife died, Aaron Hotchner allowed himself to cry. He felt Lily's hands splay across his chest as it vibrated with joy and grief.

"If I could see what you see, if I could see your voice" his voice was thick with emotion as he clasped his hands over hers, "I think I would see only light."