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The road is almost blurry, and despite it being just after two in the morning, Penelope knows already that it is not because of the lack of light. She sniffles as she continues, her eyes far less focused than her mind is on the last several weeks. Recovery hadn’t been entirely too awful, and the support, abundance of flowers, and even assorted boxes of chocolate, had certainly made the experience a little more pleasant. Once or twice, she had even made the joke— if this is how you guys will treat me, I should get hurt more often.
Her car slowly pulls to a stop by the curb, her finger automatically drifting over the lock button before she looks over to the house nearby. Her eyes linger for longer than she realizes, and then all at once, reality seems to strike her where she sits.
She sighs heavily and digs out her phone, flipping it open to stare at the screen.
2:17am.
Penelope waits a long few minutes before letting out a heavy breath.
“What are you doing,” she murmurs, shaking her head before putting her car right back into drive, flipping the phone shut again.
Before she even gets a minute down the street, the phone rings, startling Penelope enough to practically slam the brakes. She eases to a full stop at a sign, scrambling for her phone despite the clammy feeling in her fingers. Dread hits her like the bullet when she sees who is calling her.
“H-Hotch,” she stammers out, her fingers practically squeezing the cell to death. “Hi. What’s- uh, it’s late! Why this late?”
“ You parked outside for several minutes,” Aaron replies easily, his tone as collected as it always is. “ Even if those weren’t your license plates- Four, November, Golf, three, Lima, five- you answered the phone far too quickly to have been in home, asleep, like you should be.”
Penelope can hardly answer, at least in a way that would matter. She stammers for a few seconds, still trying desperately to find an excuse.
“ You can park on the left side of my car,” Aaron finally speaks up, “ I’m allowed one visitor beside my parking space. I’ll watch for you to walk inside.”
Penelope has no time to answer before the soft click of the other line sounds out. She hesitates a moment before sighing deeply. She does as instructed, circling back onto the street to pull into the space beside the man’s car. She looks up to the window she knows to belong to him, reassured by the dimly illuminated silhouette of the man just as he said. The woman hesitates again and it takes her a long time to convince herself to climb out of the vehicle.
She hears the chime of her phone and that’s the final push- she knows who it is immediately. So with another heavy exhale, Penelope steps out of her car, waiting until she reaches the doors of the apartment complex before clicking the fob to lock her vehicle. The woman navigates through the lobby and into the elevator, stepping out into the winding hallway only to jump.
“Sorry,” Aaron mutters, nodding at the woman. “I made tea.”
Penelope blinks before following with her own nod, trying to understand exactly how she’s feeling in that moment. The carpeted floor underfoot muffles both her and Aaron’s steps, the hall eerily quiet until they reach the man’s apartment. The door clicks open and it practically echoes, Aaron seeming to pause as if intending to let Penelope in first. It’s barely a split second, and the woman wonders if she would have even noticed had she not known the things he’s been through.
Aaron steps in silently, disarming the chirping alarm before gesturing his companion inside. Once past the doorway, she wordlessly steps out of her sneakers and looks around, brows raising.
“Oh, sweetheart, you have got to decorate,” she breathes out, shaking her head before making her way to the nearby dining table. The files and cellphone sitting there are about the only thing decorative, and even then, she knows definitively they are work related files, and the cell is used for rarely anything but.
“Yeah, what are your suggestions?” Aaron practically snorts, leading his way into the small kitchen to pour a few cups of tea.
“Color!” she laughs, pulling out a seat for the man and sitting beside it. “You strike me as a Van Gogh kinda guy. Some Claude Monet, maybe.”
She nearly misses the way he shakes his head as if shaking away the hints of laughter in his smile. The man silently places her cup down and then his own. As he takes a seat, his eyes flicker toward the curtained window, sighing deeply into his cup.
“So you’re up late,” Penelope remarks, simply letting her fingers rest over the warm glass for a moment. “Or, maybe you’re up incredibly early . Do tell.”
Aaron scoffs as he takes another sip. “Late. Couldn’t sleep tonight.”
“Ah,” she hums and tentatively tries the drink. It isn’t bad- but it could be more sweet than Aaron makes it. She keeps that comment to herself as she drums her chipped nails along the thin glassware. “Well, can’t blame you, we’re in the same boat. Might as well start rowing or whatever we do in this boat.”
“What kind of boats do you like?” he asks, index finger writing circles on the sealed wood surface. “Row boats aren’t good for much except nursery rhymes.”
Penelope snorts back. “I always wanted to be on a gondola in Venice. Maybe with my beautiful knight in shining armor, rose petals in the water, that kind of thing.”
“I’ll get some Canaletto in here then,” Aaron replies with a smile.
Her face brightens. “Painter from Venice.”
He only nods. They share a moment in silence before he looks up, meeting her gaze. She has to refrain from diverting her focus elsewhere. She knows he’ll zone right in on her if she tries too hard to shake him off.
“You must be up late then,” he comments, sitting back slowly without breaking eye contact. “Can’t sleep either? Driving to clear your head?”
She tries to hide the way she falters. “Uh, nightmares. It happens. Just the usual, uh, two hundred pound dinosaur chasing me through an alley way with fire blowing out of his hands.”
Aaron quirks a brow. She knows it’s over.
“A dinosaur,” he repeats. She nods. “Tyrannosaur is the first to come to mind. Yay or nay?”
“Yay faces,” she mutters, hurriedly taking another long sip.
“Fire in his hands, chasing you,” the man goes on.
“That’s the one.”
A very long and damn near suffocating silence takes hold. She finally can’t meet his gaze anymore, fingers drumming in a way to imply idleness. Truthfully, it’s anything but.
“Penelope,” Aaron begins, and it’s so soft that it nearly smooths out the anxiety in the woman’s stomach with just those few syllables.
“I shift a lot in my sleep, and I keep rolling onto my back,” she whispers, and all at once a weight seems to deflate from her chest. “An-and I can’t… I can’t sleep on my back. I feel like I can’t breathe. An-and then I can’t- I can’t—”
“Can’t sleep,” he finishes for her, his tone still gentle as ever. “Phantom pains. The feeling… it’s still fresh.”
Penelope can’t help the fact that her eyes flicker down to his torso. She knows the scars under his button up are just as suffocating as the one under her collarbone.
“How do you ever fall asleep?” she practically cries out, her voice shaking, the glistening in her eyes clear in the illuminating light from the kitchen behind them. “How do you- Hotch, how do you breathe wh-when you start to picture- when you see him in y-your he-head, when you can feel the- the—”
“ Penelope ,” Aaron cuts in, his voice hardly a murmur. “Here.”
He reaches his hand out across the table, his palm displayed toward her. She doesn’t hesitate to grab it, fingers closing around his. He can feel the way she trembles, clinging to him as if for dear life.
“Feel my hand,” he instructs, his words firm now. “Tap with every finger tip. All five. And feel mine now. One . Two.”
He continues counting, until all five of his fingertips have lightly pressed into her tremorous skin.
“One deep breath in,” Aaron continues, going as far as taking one himself. “I want you to smell. You know what tea this is, but what does it smell like to you?”
“Like fruit,” she sniffles, shaking her head. “Apples. I think you added lemon. It-it’s tangy. Like l-lemon.”
“That’s a good nose,” the man chuckles, squeezing her hand once again. “Okay, another one for you. I want you to close your eyes and think of three things any good kitchen has. You don’t have to say them out loud.”
Penelope nods and does just that, her breathing wavering but not nearly as unstable as it had been only moments before.
“Now tell me a word that rhymes with any of those words,” he adds, waiting for the almost puzzled giggle from the woman.
“Bridge,” Penelope half laughs out.
Aaron almost laughs back but his thumb keeps a steady circular motion around Penelope’s skin. “You know my address by heart or do you just know how to get here?”
“I know all my friends’ addresses,” the woman practically giggles, her smile present albeit with a trembling lip.
“Friends, huh?” he repeats gently, the smile never leaving his own lips.
She peeks through one eye. “Duh. What else would you be for me to show up on your doorstep like a lost puppy and you invite me in for tea?”
“A good person,” Aaron replies with a tilt of his head.
“No such luck, papa bear,” she chimes, closing her eyes again. “You may be my fearless leader but that doesn’t get you a hall pass from being my pal.”
“Ah, right.” The man shakes his head and chuckles quietly. “Okay, Penelope. How do you feel now?”
“Grounded, and not in the bad way,” she answers with a slight shimmy. “Do you specialize in talking people down from panic attacks? ‘Cause that was some pretty funky work you just did, o captain my captain.”
“I’ve had my fair share,” Aaron murmurs, drumming his fingers along Penelope’s hand. “I was wondering if you had plans to stay a bit longer, or if you wanted me to drive home with you?”
She opens her eyes, head tilted as she studies his features. There isn’t a hint of hesitation there, nothing that makes her think for even a second that he doesn’t mean what he’s offering, that he doesn’t fully intend to do whatever she asked of him.
“Do you have any alcohol?” she asks slowly, her lips curling together in a way that screams how hard she’s trying to hide her playful attitude.
“Enough to make the three o'clock TV more entertaining than it should be,” Aaron answers with a nod to the living room. “You want to go pick something out while I make us a cup?”
Penelope grins. It flickers for just a second and she casts a quick glance to the door. “O-only if you’re okay with it. I really don’t want to impose more than I have—”
“Penelope,” he interrupts, climbing to a stand with one final squeeze of her hand, “I’m not the type to offer if I don’t mean it. Now go put something on.”
She can only watch with a growing smile, the same old Garcia twinkle returning to her eyes. Aaron savors that expression for a moment before turning into the kitchen once again. He pulls down three more cups as Penelope practically runs to the living area, the spring in her step only bringing further comfort to Aaron’s heavy chest.
With three cups poured, the man lingers a moment, setting the two coffee mugs close together before joining Penelope on the couch. Her energy is more contagious than he can ever expect, but he easily surrenders to it. Her excited chatter does more to clear the fog in his head than any deep thinking can do.
He isn’t even sure how long they sit up together, but each moment is like a treasure Aaron can lock away in his chest for a rainy day.