Work Text:
I.
Aaron is 7 years old. He loves to read - anything will do - and listening to grown-ups when they think he can’t understand. He is a very smart little boy - his teacher told his mom, right before she said he was so serious and was everything alright at home? His mom had smiled too brightly and assured her Aaron had always been like that.
He hasn’t.
But now, he breaks regularly under his father’s fists. He breaks and breaks and breaks again, until he learns to do it quietly. He doesn’t cry anymore, but he doesn’t laugh either. He is overly cautious, tries not to make any noise, and learns to make himself invisible. It works most of the time, except around the one person it was meant for.
His dad always seems to know when he is around.
And so he keeps on breaking, and wonders why he still looks whole on the outside.
II.
When the nurse puts his son in his arms Aaron breaks a little inside. But it’s a good feeling this time, this all-encompassing love that overwhelms him when he looks at the tiny little boy, his tiny little boy.
And he’s never been so terrified in his life.
The classic profiling tools come rushing through his head - the abused turning abuser - and while it’s not the first time it has scared the hell out of him since his wife told him she was pregnant, now his son is here and what if it all turns true? What if he follows the patterns that were set for him a long time ago?
But no. He knows better. Not all abused children become abusers themselves, and in any case he will not allow it. He will never raise his hand on his son in anger. He’d rather die first.
So instead, he pulls his control tighter around him like a cloak and comes home even less than before.
He pretends he doesn’t notice it’s breaking his family up.
III.
They find the little boy too late. The un-sub, who is very well known by now, has been in custody for the past two hours and the boy has been dead for six. They hadn’t known that when they interviewed him over and over again to try to find out where he kept him. It’s the fifth one too, the others all raped then beaten to death, and the man isn’t talking. He just smiles at them and Aaron wants to hit him. But he keeps his face blank and his voice carefully control.
In the end, they find him - his body - on their own and maybe if they had been a little faster...
Jason is looking at him with compassion and Aaron can’t bear it. He doesn’t want it.
So he locks himself in his office and allows himself to break a little more.
Then he goes back to work.
Control is everything.
IV.
When Haley tells him she wants a divorce Aaron can only stare at her. Part of him knew it was coming - part of him is even relieved - but he can feel something break inside.
There is no raised voices, no angry shouts - and Aaron sometimes wonders, when he feels like profiling himself, if part of what attracted him to his wife in the first place wasn’t her level-headed temper.
Still, no matter what, he can’t give up his job, not when there are so many people out there who need him, and so many people he needs to stop.
Haley tells him others can do his job and that his wife and son need him too, but Aaron knows, he knows what the world is like. He also knows he is damn good at what he does and that he can’t risk not doing it, because someone might get hurt, and he might have prevented it, and how is he supposed to live with that?
He is still breaking, but he lets them go.
V.
Jason is moving inside him, all his intensity focused on him and Aaron can only hold on. He arches and moans and clings to him, and he’s never felt anything like that before. He’s flying and breaking and nononono he has to find his control again because who knows what might happen otherwise.
But Jason knows him too well, knows just what he is thinking and won’t let him. He changes rhythm, trusting harder and making him see stars, all the while whispering encouragements in his ears. Telling him he’s here, and it’s alright, and to let go, and Aaron wants to tell him that he can’t, never has, except he is, and it is Jason’s tenderness that undoes him.
And so he breaks, and Jason pieces him back together.