Frank stood sentinel outside of the apartment building, his grimy canvas bag thrown over one shoulder. He'd been there at least ten minutes, just staring at the lights in the windows, in awe of the varied shades of yellows and oranges and bright bluish whites. The shadows that moved behind backlit curtains floated around, going about their mundane lives, and Frank's fingers twitched. He thought about how two weeks ago, each of these shadows attached to humans ignored the sound of a gunshot in their neighbor's home. How each of them ignored the sounds of glass shattering, of bodies clashing. Above him, one by one, the stars were blinking to life, twilight fading gray into deep pockets of blue and the shredded clouds floated ominously weaving their way through the new night. His fingers twitched again.
One, two, three security cameras he could see, probably at least two more he couldn't. Were those here before the attack or after? He tugged his hood up over his head until it shrouded his face in inky black and walked staring down at his feet. Up a small grouping of stairs to the door, he pushed his way in and stopped, breathing in the smell of linoleum and pine sol and something murky and wet beneath it all. These old buildings were all the same. Crisp new walls built over rotten old wood. And the stories that decaying wood could tell. Cut corners, raise cost. He counted the doors. Placed his hand against the one he came for.
He could smell the blood from inside. There was crime scene tape still ripped and stuck to the frame, just a shred of yellow against the brown. Tape ripped away in haste but not all the way. He picked at it with his fingernail, let it slide beneath and stay a minute before he shoved his hand in his pocket and released it. A souvenir, maybe, or just hiding it until he could get rid of it. Aaron didn't need to see it.
He poised his knuckles above the wood to knock, but settled his hand palm flat against the door instead and used his voice. “Hotchner.” He said it in a firm, gruff voice. Unmistakable. “Open up.”
He'd been calling for a week now with no answer, and he was in no mood now to play games. If he knocked, Aaron could decide it wasn't worth answering, a knock felt like someone formally requesting company he was unwilling to give. But Frank's voice rang clear and Aaron would know he'd just as soon break the door down as he would knock. “I ain't goin' nowhere. I got four MREs, my guitar and all the time in the world. You gotta open this door sometime.”
Not a sound. Not even a rustle, but he knew Aaron was in there. Right on the other side. Had to be.
He let his bag drop to the ground, the sound from inside a great hollow thrumming that he felt in his gut and slowly slid his back down the door, leaning heavily against it. If Aaron were to open the door now, he'd simply fall right inside. “I brought my gee-tar,” Frank muttered, hammering his fist against the base of the door impatiently. “I'll piss off your neighbors. Sing somethin' real bad. You gonna make me bust out some Willie? Maybe some Waylon...”
He waited knowing that should have worked, Aaron said he sang like a dying cat in heat, but still no sound. Nothing. He was left with no choice. He pulled the beat up old guitar out of the bag and settled it across his thighs, moving through chords to tune them. One by one his fingers danced along the strings, plink plink plink, tighten, humming gruff and gravelly deep in his throat. Cat in heat my ass, he thought.
“Well, I woke up Sunday mornin' with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt...” he sang, low and slow, his voice like hot honey in the still hallway. “...and the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one for dessert...” Waylon tasted good on his parched lips, through his cinder and ash throat. His legs shivered beneath the vibrations of the guitar and still no sound from inside the apartment. He tried another, Johnny Cash this time. It was bound to work.
Neighbors shuffled by and gawked at him, offered him solemn sleepy smiles as they padded to the mailbox. They weren't really checking the mail, they were checking on him, the vagrant in the hallway disturbing the peace.
It was a full hour of shitty country music serenades before the glass doors opened and in walked Aaron tucked deep inside of a long black wool coat with the brightest blood red lining Frank had ever seen. He walked hunched over, hawk eyes narrowed scanning the hallway for danger.
Frank stopped singing and stood quickly, watching the way Aaron's steps fell hesitant the closer he got. “What are you doing here?”
Frank dug around in his pocket, fished through cigarette butts and hard candy until he found a crumpled piece of newspaper. Fingerless gloved hands carefully untangled the mess and he held it up. Aaron's face above an article about the attack. Aaron only glanced before looking away and reaching his keys for the lock.
“When were you going to tell me?”
Aaron regarded him seriously for a second before walking in. He left the door open, a silent invitation for Frank to follow if he wanted. Judging by the way he'd set up camp, Aaron figured he would.
“Wasn't.”
Aaron had his reasons. He shrugged out of his coat, shielding his face from Frank carefully so he wouldn't see the way his features crumpled around the pain of moving in that way. “Can I get you something to drink?” He didn't wait for Frank's reply to grab a beer from his fridge and pass it to the other man who wouldn't allow more than an arm's length between them since entering. Aaron's eyes flickered back toward the door, locked. Frank locked it. He breathed a little easier after that.
“I need a shower.” Spending all day in his doctor's office, sitting through blood test results and medication checks and CT scans made his skin feel itchy and tight. The only thing to do was wash it off in a long, hot shower.
“There an invitation in there somewhere?” Frank asked, popping the beer open on the edge of Aaron's counter instead of trying to find the bottle opener. Down the gullet he poured it, one bottle one gulp. “Cos I can't remember the last hot shower I had...”
“Your call.” He wasn't going to ask Frank to join him, even if he did want it. Even if he felt an almost desperation to have Frank's arms around him...keeping him away had been easy, keeping everyone away even...but now Frank was here and for the first time in two weeks Aaron wasn't alone with the shapeshifting shadows.
There wasn't ever a lot of talking between them, not really. Aaron was quiet by nature, and Frank preferred to use his energy in other ways but even he was feeling a little edgy and off-kilter by the short answers and stiffness in Aaron's demeanor. He knew things weren't good, but he had no idea the extent of it and he'd sort of been hoping Aaron might at least share with him a little. Enough. “Hey, hey, what gives?” he asked, finally, grabbing Aaron by the wrist before he could shoulder past him. Aaron stopped short but found it almost impossible to make eye contact under that close proximity. Frank was a little scared now. “Geeeeeezus, Hotchner, what'd he do to you?”
Aaron blinked back tears and bit into his lower lip, shaking his head. He'd been through the story now so many times, for the police, for the doctors, for everyone he knew. Profiling his own attack from the hospital bed, searching his place for somewhere Foyet could have gotten in, pouring over the files back and forth, top to bottom. There wasn't anyone who ever got the full story, no matter how they asked. JJ and Derek both insisted he do a cognitive interview, maybe they could find something to show how he got in, but they were met with staunch refusal. It would open up too much he wasn't willing to share. “Please, Frank...I've had a long day and I'm tired. I'd just like to take a shower.”
Frank let go of his wrist and took a step backward, watching the way Aaron walked slow down the hall. His hand jutting out to the side every so often, dragging along the wall, supporting him on unsteady legs. He waited until he heard the shower hiss to life before he even moved. First, another beer, downed in one gulp. Liquid courage.
He leaned against the counter and closed his eyes, his chest hot and tight. There was something eerie in the way he was behaving, some closed off sharpness he'd never seen before. Something that felt like looking in a mirror.
“I'm comin' in,” Frank muttered, kicking out of his boots and dropping his trousers around his ankles. They hit the floor with a thud and his hunting knife stared up at him, bearing her teeth. He didn't care, just kicked it out of the way and finished undressing. “I got a ride down here in the back of a pick-up truck, made friends with a dog named Jerkoff. You believe that? Guy said his thirteen year old picked the name...he calls him Jerky cos he thinks it's a shitty name, but it ain't his dog.” He was rambling, listening to the hitched panicky breathing of the man behind the curtain. He was a little afraid to enter. This was new territory. Up until now, they'd existed only in a series of one night stands, motel rooms, shared stories about weirdos and violence. Never too much. Aaron knew all about Frank, and in turn, Frank knew just enough about Aaron. But there were lines they didn't cross, lines that made this arrangement a whole lot more palatable to both of them.
Crossing the first line, Frank had entered the bathroom. Now he was naked and about to cross the second, what he'd come to know in the last few minutes as the point of no return. Things would be different between them if he pulled back that curtain and entered the tub.
Stepping into the shower, he couldn't help the way his eyes caught on the foreign landscape of Aaron's chest. Frank had always been the scarred one, Aaron's fingertips grazing over ragged bullet wounds and gnarled up shreds and slices. His lifestyle was one that naturally came with new permanent marks, it was expected. And in some ways, it was similar for Aaron, his job wasn't without it's share of danger but...not like this. Franks left scars, Aaron's left bruises. “Those are new. They all the one guy?”
Aaron nodded, scrubbing the soap through his hair. Suds coursed down over his shoulders, catching on spiderleg stitches that Frank thought probably weren't supposed to be getting wet but he wasn't going to say anything. He wasn't a doctor, and even if he was, it didn't seem right, taking this shower away from a man who so desperately needed it. Aaron's face was flushed, brows knit together tight in a frown, but he seemed disconnected entirely from Frank's presence.
So, he stepped forward again until the soapy water coursed against his feet and he reached out, put his hands right on Aaron. Didn't shy away from touching those angry new barely scars...that's what they were, really. Not scars yet, they were still almost-wounds and barely-scars. He could feel their delicate new skin beneath his calloused thumbs but his eyes are locked with Aaron's.
“They ain't so bad,” he whispered, his lips dusting against Aaron's. “Give you a certain je ne sais quoi...”
Aaron's lack of smile at this wasn't surprising, but Frank wasn't ashamed of trying. Before he could open his mouth to try another angle, Aaron's voice broke raw and ragged.
“He's after Haley and Jack,” Aaron rasped, leveling his haunted eyes at Frank. “They're gone. I had them put in WITSEC.”
Now Frank knew why it felt like he was staring hard into a warped mirror. A dirty old carnival mirror, stretched and squashed, warped in every way until they were somehow the same. Two men with their families taken from them. A kinship he'd never wanted to share with anyone, least of all someone he felt this way for. He searched Aaron's eyes for some flicker of hope, something that told him he thought he might beat Foyet and get his family back but there was none to be found. He looked utterly lost and hopeless.
“I'm gonna kill him.”
Aaron broke the eye contact first, his lower lip quivering. He'd never cried in front of Frank before, things weren't like that between them but he was far beyond being able to hold it back. Everything hurt and he was exhausted, his feelings were right there at the surface. Nowhere to hide them beneath the gaping wounds. “Frank...” he whispered and Frank pulled him close, hungrily devouring his mouth with a kiss, all hands and slick soapy skin and trembling anger.
“He's a dead man.” He whispered it into the kiss, a promise Aaron could taste now on his tongue and he nodded. He wanted to believe it more than anything in the world.