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calucinnamon · 1 year

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BESTIE I’M SO PROUD OF YOU! Contgrats to your 500 followers and thank you for all you do for us Hotchniss shippers💛💛

I’d like to request: Kisses #33: hushed conversation in-between kisses

(Go ahead and make me feel things, I’m here for it!)

THANK YOU <3

And to repay you for your kind words...I've written nearly 3k words of sadness.

You're welcome xoxo

(yes another one became a full blown fic. I am who I am)

-x-

Sanctuary

She didn't understand it. How could she miss something that she never knew she had this much?

Words: 2.9k

Warnings: Major themes of miscarriage/pregnancy loss

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

Emily wakes up quickly. Torn from sleep by something unknown, dazed and slightly confused as she shakes her head to rid herself of the last tendrils of sleep. She checks the alarm clock on her nightstand and sees it’s 2 am, rolling her eyes as she rubs at them. She sits up, hoping a quick trip to the bathroom will rest her brain and therefore allow her to sleep.

A sharp pain rolls through her abdomen, making her gasp as she presses her hand to her lower belly. It hurts, her body almost vibrating with it, it barely fades, the pain rolling through her in a way that felt distantly familiar.

“Em?”

She curses under her breath at the sound of Aaron’s sleepy voice, the light on his nightstand switching on not even a second later. He’d always been a light sleeper, a side effect of their job and what he’d been through, so he’d probably been awake ever since she had.

“I’m ok,” she says, not sure she believes herself, the strain in her voice clear, “I think I’m sick or something my…” she groans as the pain briefly gets worse, “My stomach really hurts.”

He sits up behind her, the mattress shifting as he moves, and he presses a hand to her shoulder.

“Do you need help to the bathroom?” He asks, kindness to his voice that makes her cheeks burn. She wants to say no, wants to make it there herself, but she’s not sure she can. He’d seen her in worse states she reasons to herself. He’d picked up the pieces after she got way too drunk at a girl's night shortly after they’d moved in together a year ago.

“Yes,” she says, nodding sharply, “I do.” He stands without further comment, turning the main light on as he does, and he walks round to her side of the bed. She pulls the bedding off from over her lap and he freezes on the spot, his eyes fixed on her with a tinge of horror shining in them. “Em…”

“What?” She looks down, following his gaze to her lap, and she gasps. She’d bled through her sweatpants and she could see there was also some blood on the mattress below her. It was enough to make alarm rise in her chest. She swallows thickly, “Wh…what?” She repeats before she looks back up at him as if he had the answers.

“Ok,” he says, springing into action, his Hotch mask slipping into place as it so often did when there was a crisis. He kisses the top of her head before reaching for her phone because it was closer than his, typing in the passcode before he opens up the contacts, “I’m going to call Jessica, then we’re going to get you changed and to the hospital.”

“Aaron that-”

“It’s not up for debate,” he says, already pressing Jess’s name in Emily’s phone, “Something is clearly wrong, sweetheart.”

“It’s probably just my period,” She says, trying to dismiss it, to minimise both of their concerns, “It’s a bit late so…” She drifts off, the realisation hitting her just as quickly as the pain had. She’d felt this pain before, the familiarity of it showing its true face to her as she does the math in her head. She looks back at Aaron and sees how he dials Jess’s number again, clearly having reached her voicemail the first time, “Aaron? I…” she presses her hand into her belly as the cramp rolls through her again, “I think I might be having a miscarriage.”

His eyes widen in a way that would be comical in any other circumstances, “What?” He asks, “But you aren’t pregnant.”

“I…I think I might be. Or at least,” she clears her throat, pushing down the preemptive sorrow that she doesn’t want to feel, “Or at least I was,” she blows out a breath that seems to catch on every rib on the way out, shuddering as it leaves her, “It feels like…” she pauses to wince, her face screwed up, “It feels like when I was in Rome. After the....”

She drifts off again, but she knows she doesn’t have to say anything else, that she doesn’t have to explain any further as he closes his eyes, the realisation hitting him too. She’d told him about it when they first got together. Pieces finally fallinginto place for him that had been missing ever since the case when she had acted so differently from her usual self. Another thing this woman he loved had gone through. Another piece of proof of her unyielding strength.

Any reply he might have is cut off as the phone finally connects to Jess, her sleepy voice coming down the line.

“Jess, I’m so sorry to call at this time of day.”

He reaches out and grabs Emily’s hand as he explains the situation to Jess, and she can hear the muffled sounds of the other woman rushing around her home on the other end.

If love would be enough to help, Emily knew she had it in abundance.

___

It feels like days, not a matter of hours, have passed when she’s next in their bedroom. She feels dazed, like she’s watching everything around her happening from behind a glass wall.

“Sweetheart?”

She turns to look at Aaron, unmistakable sadness on his face that she can hardly bear to look at, something she refused to call guilt gnawing at her insides. Her eyes flick to his hand, to the bag he’s carrying full of medication that he’d listened to the instructions for, and medical grade sanitary towels that the kind nurse had given them because of the time of day it was when Emily was discharged. Aaron said he’d go out later to get more, and it makes her stomach turn.

She’d bought the same ones for JJ when she’d just had Henry.

“Do you need anything?” He asks, a desperate look in his eyes that tells her he would do anything to help her. That he’d go right across town to the tiny bakery she liked the pastries from and camp outside until they opened if it made her feel even the tiniest bit better.

“I think I just need to sleep,” she says, turning towards the bed and finally looking at it. They hadn’t made it before they left, the sheets and comforter thrown all over the place, the blood she’d lost still standing out against the sheets. A physical manifestation of the panic that tinged the air.

The bed looked different now. Pulled together neatly like it was in a hotel, bedding she recognised from the closet that she’d washed and put away only that week.

“Jess said she changed the bed,” he explains, his gaze burning into the back of her head, “She said she didn’t want you to-”

“I’ll have to remember to thank her,” she says, cutting him off, polite in a way that makes her sound a little too much like her mother. She walks over to her side of the bed. She was still in pain, her body aching in a way she had forgotten it could. She sits on the edge of the bed and looks at him over her shoulder, “I really do think I just need some sleep.”

“Ok, I’ll-”

“Alone,” she says, not missing the brief hurt that flashes across his face. “Please.”

It’s a silent standoff for a moment, and she sees the war raging within him. How he is figuring out how to handle this, how to help. He eventually nods sharply, putting the bag of her supplies down on a chair they keep in the corner before retreating to the door.

“Ok, whatever you need, sweetheart,” he says “If you need me-”

“I know,” she cuts over him again, sure if he’s too kind to her that she’ll break, “I know.”

He nods at her, his lips set in a firm line, before he walks out of the room, the click of the door closing the last sound before she’s plunged into silence. She lays down and curls around her pillow, holding it to her abdomen as if it would ease the ache.

She finally lets herself cry, everything she’d felt since she had first woken up spilling free.

___

At first, the knock on the door frustrates her. She pulls the bedding tighter around herself, curling into a ball under it as if she could disappear. She opens her mouth to tell whoever it was, Aaron, to go away, that she wanted to be alone, but she’s cut off by a small voice.

“Emily?”

She closes her eyes, screwing them shut tightly as if that alone would stop the seemingly never-ending tears from leaking onto her cheeks. She pulls the bedding back just enough to reveal her face, and she turns towards the door.

“Hi Jack,” she says, grateful that her voice is relatively even. Gravelly from misuse, but not stuffed full of the sadness she couldn’t shake off, “Are you ok?”

He hesitates by the door, scratching at the back of his head in a way that he had picked up from Aaron. A tell from both her Hotchner boys that always gave away when they were nervous. He looks back over his shoulder, as if he’s being followed, and then back at her.

“Daddy said I should leave you alone.”

It makes her ache, the pain in her chest twisting even tighter. A knot she was sure she’d never be able to undo. Forever tied together around her heart, equal parts grief and love mixing into something she couldn’t name.

She finds herself briefly furious at her fiancee. The thought that he felt as if he needed to protect her from something, from his son, lighting a fire in her belly. It is extinguished almost as soon as it is lit, sorrow that seemed to be in her very veins a dampener to any other feeling.

“Come over here, honey,” she pushes the bedding back and holds out a hand to him, a strange defiance against the man she loves that she can’t explain. Jack doesn’t need asking twice. He’s across the room in a second, under the covers and laying on his father's side of the bed. He lays his head on Aaron’s pillow and looks at her, his brows furrowing slightly.

Emily doesn’t think he’s ever looked more like Aaron. The crease in between his brows. The serious look on his face. The way his jaw was tight.

The concern that shone through the eyes Emily knows he got from his mother.

“You’re sad?” He asks, reaching out and touching her cheek, his hand meeting the sticky residue left behind by her tears.

“Yes, Jack,” she replies, reaching over and pushing his hair off of his face, idly thinking about how he was well overdue for a haircut, “I’m sad.”

She hopes he doesn’t ask why, or at least that Aaron has already given him an age-appropriate explanation of what had happened. She doesn’t have it in her to explain it to him, to try and help him make sense of something she didn’t understand herself.

“Can I help?” He asks, and it feels like a knife to the chest. The look on his face letting her know if he could, he would make her feel better. Yet another thing he had inherited from his father.

“Oh sweet boy,” she says, pulling him in for a hug that helps her feel grounded but also stops him from seeing the fresh tears spilling out of her lash line, “You do help,” she kisses the side of his head, “You always help.”

Aaron finds them twenty minutes later, both fast asleep on Emily’s side of the bed and snuggled up. He pulls the door closed, and feels a flash of jealousy that he hates himself for that she’ll let Jack in, but not him.

___

She feels the bed dip behind her as Aaron joins her. He’d made her eat dinner, a simple meal that he’d put in her hands before he left her to it, the now empty plate on her nightstand.

He’d spent the day loving her from a distance, giving her the space she’d asked for, the space she needed.

Now, she needed him.

“I’m sorry,” she says eventually, her voice quiet but loud in the otherwise silent room.

“What for?” He asks, matching her tone. She rolls over to look at him, laying on her side as her eyes meet his. She shrugs, her lips set in a firm line as her eyes shine with tears. He shifts so he’s laying on his side facing her, he feels his arms twitch to reach out for her, to pull her into his embrace, but he stops himself, not wanting to do anything that would make her shut down again.

“For pushing you away all day,” she explains, her chin trembling, “For the miscarriage. I…I didn’t know.”

It was the thought that kept playing on a loop in her head. She hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Something she seemingly gained the second she was already losing it, a pain in her chest that seemed to match the cramps in her belly. The grief came as a surprise, her world fuzzy ever since the doctor confirmed her fears in the ER. Everything seemed blurred, out of focus. A ringing in her ears that made it feel like she was underwater, everything too far away to reach out for.

Except for Aaron. He was always within reach.

“Oh sweetheart,” he says, finally reaching for her and pulling her into his arms. She goes willingly, curling into his embrace as she buries her face into his shoulder, his t-shirt immediately dampened by her tears, “You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing.”

He rubs his hand up and down her back, aware of his own tears slipping down his face, dropping onto the top of her head. Her pain had always been his Achilles heel, the thing that could threaten to tear him apart. Leaving him unravelled, knowing he’d do anything to make her feel better.

He couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t make it better for her, for them, but he could love her. Something that came to him as easily as breathing.

“I don’t understand why it hurts so much,” she says, pulling back to look at him, waving off his concern as he goes to reach for the painkillers for her on his nightstand, “Not the actual pain,” she adds, “I didn’t know I was pregnant, Aaron,” she says again, shaking her head at herself as she sobs, “I had no idea. So why does it hurt this much? I feel so…empty.”

Aaron places his palm on her cheek and kisses her forehead, then her nose, and then her lips. A delicate thing that he hopes gets across everything he doesn’t have the words for.

“It’s ok to be sad, Emily. I’m sad too. We lost something today,” He says, his voice barely above a whisper, still matching the tone she’d set when she started the conversation.

She smiles at him, her lower lip trembling as she cups his neck, her thumb rubbing at his jawline. She shifts so they are sharing his pillow, curled around each other like a vine as she kisses him softly.

“Something we didn’t know we had,” she replies, resting her forehead against his. “I know we hadn’t really started trying yet,” she says, her smile wavering, “But if it had happened…it would have been nice.”

Aaron feels his heart clench in his chest, a vice tight around it, grief that he couldn’t have anticipated only 24 hours ago threatening to suffocate him. “It would have been amazing.”

She stamps another kiss on his lips before she rests her head on his chest, curling into him again.

“When this all hurts a tiny bit less,” she says, her voice shaking, “Can we talk about it? Having a baby I mean.”

She knew their time was limited. That her age and the damage her body had been subjected to over the years could made it difficult, but she wanted this with him. She hadn’t realised quite how much she did want it until it was snatched away from her.

He holds her impossibly closer, his arms banding tight around her, “Of course sweetheart,” he replies, his lips against her hairline, “Of course we can.”

He can’t think of anything he’d rather do more. The thought of marrying her, of raising Jack and a kid that was half him and half her with her, enough to ease some of the pain in his chest. The promise of a future a bright spark in the distance.

He cups the back of her head to hold her in place, his hand running up and down her back in a pattern he hopes will lull her to sleep.

“What do you need, sweetheart?” He asks, “I’ll do anything.”

She smiles, the first real one all day, and hides it deep in his t-shirt, the press of it against his chest. She knows he means it. That he’d pluck the moon from the sky if she asked him to. Or get out of bed and drive to Mcdonald's and flash his badge until they served him breakfast despite it being the evening. He’d change this for her if he could, just like he would with anything that had ever hurt her. She knows she doesn’t need any of that.

“You,” she replies, sinking further into him, “This.”

“I’m right here,” he promises, kissing the top of her head, “I’m here.”

He always would be.

-x-

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