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0.
Everything happens in such a rush things blur together into one. A rush of water and the pains are real and they say it’s named after Caesar, don’t they? But they say Macbeth was one of them and the legends, they never end well.
He’s the smallest baby they have delivered in years – unquestionably the smallest live birth – and later it will seem unbelievable he survives long enough for the transport up to a hospital with room for an incubator because it’s not easy work for those underdeveloped lungs.
They don’t expect him to breathe for the hour; he screams.
1.
It’s not much of a surprise when he ends up in hospital, though the nurses are amazed looking at his chart that the kid born so small is, against the odds, still fighting a year on. Fragile bones and ribs poking through beneath his skin, infections whittling away at the meagre fat lying beneath. His growth charts are a jagged mountain range. Climb and fall. Climb and fall.
Pneumonia is a nasty thing and certainly a child of his size, his condition, is not guaranteed to pull through. Intravenous antibiotics, God’s will, both; the surprising part is that he survives.
2.
“No. We’re done here. I’m not letting some jumped-up moron tell me there’s something wrong with my son!”
“That isn’t what he was saying.”
“Oh, well, I’m clearly missing something. Care to fill me in?”
“No, I just meant… they did say he might be behind, being born early.”
“For god’s sake, is that what you want people to think of him? Behind?”
“No—”
“Then stop getting hysterical at every little thing.”
“What was I supposed to think? All the other children on the street have already—”
“It’s like you want them to start calling him a—”
3.
Their house is full of people, unfamiliar faces, and Dad lifts him onto his shoulders.
The angle is strange, peering at the top of heads, his house new and alien to him. He’s not sure if he likes it. Dad’s hands on his knees anchor him to the present.
He is distant but invincible here, so tall he could touch the sky if only they were outside. Safe from everyone else. Safe from anyone else.
Noise envelops him as he’s set down amidst a swarm of people. Dad’s hand on his back urges him on to blow out the candles.
4.
His heels bounce against the sun-warmed cabinets as the whisk clinks off the bowl. Mom whisks with one hand, her other keeping it steady, and Aaron sneaks another handful of the chocolate chips.
They’re melting under his tongue and the residue in on his hands while she pours the cake batter into the tin. She slides it into the oven and clicks her tongue fondly at him, reaching for kitchen towel to clean up.
“Oh, go on,” Mom says, setting the bowl on the counter. “You finish it off.”
Aaron runs the spoon around the bowl, eagerly gathering the rest.
5.
“I’ve got you,” Dad repeats. “Keep going, I’ve got you.”
And he does, until the wobbling is scary enough he stops with a screech of brakes and a scrambling hop off the bike, just about staying upright and that’s good enough because he’s doing it.
Aaron turns around but Dad is back with Mom. “Dad!” he exclaims, mostly confused and a little betrayed.
“You did it all on your own,” Dad says. “I told you that you could, didn’t I?”
Mom’s beaming too, her face lit up like Dad’s, and they’re both smiling right at him.
It’s a nice day.
6.
“And date of birth?”
“Second of November, ’71.”
Aaron whines and presses into the comfortable warmth of Mom’s side. She cards her fingers through his hair, keeps his fringe away from the congealing blood on his forehead.
“Oh, poor thing,” the nurse says.
The wrapper of a lollipop is screwed up in his hand. She offers him another and he turns away. All he wants is to go home.
“And how did this happen?”
“He was climbing on the furniture,” Mom says. Lying is a sin but he’s six and that’s old enough to keep it secret. Dad said so.
7.
“Guess what day it is,” Aaron says, bouncing on his heels impatiently.
“Stop that,” Dad says.
He stops, curling his toes in his shoes instead, and waits.
“What?”
“What day it is,” he repeats.
Dad’s face stays stone cold in his realisation and Aaron’s excitement is gone just as fast as it came on. He blinks but his eyes are watering and he can’t talk without giving it away.
“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” Dad snaps. He tosses his coat onto the rack and storms to his office.
The slammed door resonates through the house.
8.
“But he said he’d be home!”
“I know,” Mom says. “And he will be. Let’s eat before it gets cold—”
“We can’t start without him,” Aaron says. “He said he’d be here.”
“Aaron. Dinner. Unless you want to go hungry.”
“Fine,” he says, kicking at the carpet. “You’re ruining it.”
“It’s always my fault, isn’t it?” Mom sighs. “The only thing ruining it is your sulking.”
Aaron sits on the windowsill and rests his chin on his knees. “He said—”
“For Christ’s sake, can you give me a break?” Mom says.
He bites his lip until it bleeds.
9.
“You didn’t think I’d forget, did you?” Dad says.
Aaron shakes his head but the joviality in his tone doesn’t match the storm in his eyes and he knows this game. Tread carefully. Watch out for landmines.
Dad stares right at him and he’s afraid he can see right through him, flip through his thoughts like a book, open it up to whatever page he wants and just read away. But if he moves… so he doesn’t. He stands still under the scrutiny and crosses his fingers in the sleeves of his sweater.
“Good,” Dad finally says. “Good.”
Aaron shivers.
10.
“Not with the baby,” his father dismisses. “It’s too much work.”
It’s not fair, because everything is always about Sean since he was born and sure, he’s a baby but is it that much of a stretch to just let him have this one day? All he’d done was remind Dad.
“What would you know?” Aaron mutters.
Dad’s eyes narrow. He wasn’t quiet enough but he’s frozen where he is. All thoughts about birthdays are gone as soon as Dad raises a hand.
Suddenly he’s stumbling back and—
Dad slams his head against the wall hard enough he sees stars.
11.
“He’s eleven,” Mom says.
“Oh,” his father says. Under his sharp gaze, Aaron ducks his head and stares at the plate. He doesn’t want Dad to say anything about it, he doesn’t, and he sure as hell doesn’t need him to. “I thought I’d missed something important.”
His hand aches from his grip on the cutlery. His eyes are stinging. But it’s fine, because Dad’s right. Birthdays are for little kids. What’s the point in celebrating someone existing? If you want acknowledgement you have to earn it, that’s how the world is.
(That’s what he’s gonna do next year. Easy.)
12.
The party is for his father’s sake and they don’t even try to pretend.
Someone in their bedroom is laughing, hushed voices blending together, and because it’ll be him or Mom’s fault if they mess something up, Aaron edges along the hall silently.
Through the crack in the door he recognises his father. He does not recognise the woman he is kissing.
He can’t do that.
“Mom,” Aaron urges downstairs, his voice low in the crowded kitchen. “Dad’s upstairs, you need to—”
“I know.”
“But he’s with—”
“Aaron,” she says, a distant sadness in her eyes, “I know.”
13.
His father is hard to hate.
Actually, he is easy to hate, and irritatingly easy to forgive. Making up his mind is where the difficulty lies.
Because he can’t stop seeing the silhouette of his father and the woman, bodies pressed together close enough to be one in the shadows, and then his father goes and does things like taking a detour on his journey home from a business trip to pick up a set of fascinating old psychology volumes for Aaron’s birthday. Even if he doesn’t understand why they’re interesting.
He is desperate to hate him.
Why can’t he?
14.
It has to be more for Sean’s sake than his because all of this is just playacting to Aaron. Pretending that they’re a regular family. They’ve surpassed the age where he’s gullible enough to think this might be it, they might actually care, so instead of excitement his birthdays dawn with a sense of resignation. What is it this year? His father throwing a party as an excuse to drink, his mother scrubbing the house from top to bottom, relegated to keeping Sean out the way? Complete ignorance?
It's not like he cares.
(He misses being that young and hopeful.)
15.
When he stumbles home hours later than he ought and drunk on whatever he’d gotten his hands on, the house is dark. Neither of his parents had mentioned it in the morning and Aaron didn’t want to cause an argument bringing it up.
But when he realises it’s completely silent, his father in bed instead of sitting up to catch him sneaking in, his chest goes a strange sort of cold. It is one thing to be ignored. Another to be forgotten.
Drinking would be a hell of a beating if his father did catch him, so silver linings, right?
16.
“Apparently they’re rare,” Haley says, pressing the coins into his hand. “I heard you talking to Mr Callaghan about them in history,” she says. “I didn’t mean to listen but… and then I saw them and I thought you might like it?”
She’d thought of him! She’d thought of him and cared enough about it to buy something she thought he might like whilst she was away – and she’d remembered it in the first place. And maybe that’s just what friends do but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t also be more than friends. Hopefully.
“They’re great,” Aaron says. “Thank you.”
17.
His father goes slow, breath wheezing as life seeps out of him. Aaron almost feels sorry for him.
The night lasts forever. When morning sun spills into the room, he checks the absent pulse in his cold wrist. Sean and his mother are crying. Inconsolable. He probably should be.
(They’ve seen what he’s done, how are they upset?)
Someone has to get things set into motion, so it’s Aaron who rings the doctor, the undertaker, the grandparents who never visit.
And the funny thing is he doesn’t realise.
Not until the death certificate is filled out for the 2nd November.
18.
“What?” Haley says, starting to smile. “What are you looking at me like that for?”
“I’m not,” Aaron says. The roof is cold even through his jacket and his hands are already going numb. Her house isn’t as far out from civilisation as his but it’s enough that the streetlights don’t give the night sky their sick yellow tint.
Something about the stars makes him feel so insignificant he could lie here forever, staring up at them. Like nothing and everything matters and he doesn’t have to choose either. Just be.
Haley asks what he’s smiling about.
He made it.
19.
They haven’t got much money between them, let alone individually. It’s the sort of relationship he imagines as his parents’ worst nightmares and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Nor do they know a ton of people out here.
Aaron grabs pizza on the way home from his afternoon lecture and they eat in front of the TV; her card joins the ones Sean and his mother and Jessica have sent.
She gives him proper pens, the kind with ink refills and his initials engraved on them. Sentimental but useful and she really does understand him like nobody else.
20.
It’s just a letter.
No big deal.
Not like it has anything to do with the course of his future.
Nope.
It’s the worst birthday present he’s gotten and also the best. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. (He does).
“You do it,” Aaron says, because he thinks left to his own devices he’d let it gather dust, too anxious.
And Haley being Haley opens the LSAT envelope before he has the time to change his mind. Her eyes go wide and she grins.
She shoves the letter at him. “Aaron! One seven three!”
“You’re joking.”
She isn’t.
21.
“I don’t want to end up like him,” Aaron says. “If I do get like him, when we’re older, just promise me that you’ll leave?”
“You won’t,” Haley says. “You can’t be. That’s not you.”
He crumples the empty can and tosses it into the garbage with a metallic clatter. “I know, but I need to know you would.”
“He was like that because he was a dick,” Haley says, “not because he drank.”
“It didn’t help,” he says. “And everything has to start somewhere.”
“I know,” she says, “but you’ll never be him.”
Aaron never notices she doesn’t answer.
22.
Haley’s hair splays out across the pillow, a gentle gold in the early light. Aaron pulls her closer with a hand around her waist. Sometimes it’s like an eternity has passed between now and high school – and others it’s like they’re back at her parents’ place, lying on the roof and talking of the half-baked plans of what their lives are now.
They have plans for later, and she’s bought and wrapped gifts despite his assurance it’s fine not to, that they ought to save for Christmas.
In this moment, nothing is more perfect than an easy morning with Haley.
23.
Living out of boxes loses its novelty a lot quicker than it did the first time they moved – out on their own, independent, there was nothing that could’ve made it feel bad – but for an apartment without water stained ceilings and barely functioning waterworks, not to mention closer to college, does make up for it.
It’s the kind of long day where it’s a relief to flop down on the mattress when everything is finished, even if it’s on the floor because they haven’t put the frame together yet. Hasn’t been much time to think.
Aaron likes the simple days.
24.
All their professor had said was he knew Aaron’s father. A passing comment. Enough for him to receive more than a few filthy looks.
As if his father ever helped him.
A classmate – whose sole personality trait, so far, is being from Andover – keeps his voice just low enough for him to hear. “Well, some of us didn’t have to buy our way in.”
Aaron flips over his paper and glances at the man’s score. A 76 to his 89.
“No,” Aaron says. “I take it you did, though.”
He couldn’t care less. It’s just fun to see him splutter.
25.
“It’s the one day you’re allowed to have a day off,” Haley says. “You’ve been at it for hours.”
Aaron flips the flashcard over and sighs. It’s a boring topic, nothing for him to remember it by, and he’s screwed up not paying enough attention to it before exams.
“I know,” he says. “Give me half an hour, then I’m done.”
“Can I help?” she offers. “If you want to talk through it.”
He lets his forehead rest on his desk for a minute and straightens up, massaging his aching head. “That’d help. Thanks.”
“Okay,” she says, “so tell me…”
26.
He’d rather be at home.
This is his father’s game, the politics of it all. Finding the right shoulders to brush. Picking through a conversation, insulting and complimenting in the same breath. It is an unfortunate necessity when he knows he could be curled up with Haley or out to eat somewhere he can enjoy the food for what it is.
Aaron is one of the youngest they have here and, according to his boss, one of the best. Invitations to events like this aren’t to be taken lightly.
He can thank the old man for that, if nothing else.
27.
Everyone acts like he’s young, he has time. And he does – in the scheme of things – yet Aaron can’t help but feel there is something missing. That the years are passing by and he’s stuck in place.
It’s difficult to verbalise so he doesn’t. Aaron isn’t in a bad place in life, far from it, and a little guilty for feeling like he does about it because what is there to be sad about?
He smiles through the congratulations from colleagues and goes home to Haley and ignores the sense of time wasted beating like his heart in his chest
28.
The FBI field office is… frenzied. They don’t have a minute to stop, to rest, and it’s like a weight is lifted from his shoulders when he accepts the job. Reaching their killers before they become killers, the victims’ shaken but unharmed, is what he’s been missing all this time.
Though there is less monotony, the lack of predictability makes planning harder. What is supposed to be a routine (as they ever get) case takes all afternoon and half the night; Haley is already asleep when Aaron comes home at half past two.
“Hmm?” she mumbles. “Love you. Happy birthday.”
29.
It is definitely preferable to a party reminiscent of his father, but there is something off about being back in his childhood home for his birthday. Too quiet. Too peaceful. His gut warns him to be on edge just in case.
In case what? His father’s been in the dirt over a decade.
Sean is all long limbs and long hair he claims is the fashion. Aaron suspects he keeps it because it annoys their mother. She and Sean have always looked similar whereas he’d heard more than once about being the spitting image of their father.
Just his luck.
30.
Being back in Virginia, living here, is bizarre after so long dreaming of running away. Late nights in his childhood bedroom staring at the ceiling and all to be back, not two hours away from that house.
Aaron has Haley, and they have their own house, and the BAU might be a small place but it is exactly the right place for him. They’re carving out their niche, as small as it is, doing something to truly help people.
(His history bears a striking resemblance to some of their unsubs. There’s a reason they don’t know much about him yet.)
31.
The drugs are keeping him too far from conscious for his liking, and hardly touching the deep ache in his ribs. Aaron clears his throat. His mouth is dry. Flashes of memory play out between now and yesterday but all he remembers in detail is the force of the bomb.
He blinks away sleep and rolls over. Jason had been there when he last shut his eyes and it’s Dave this time.
“Didn’t know it was your birthday,” he says.
“What?”
Dave nods at the hospital bracelet slipping down his arm. Aaron pushes it to his wrist.
“Well, happy birthday.”
32.
In hindsight he should’ve expected it.
The embarrassment is the good kind, if such a thing exists, and he’s smiling despite his face growing warm.
“Oh, you thought we’d let you forget?” Dave teases.
Aaron shrugs it off, because the thought hadn’t really occurred to him at all. It still feels foreign, birthdays. He doubts that will ever stop.
The gifts are harder to get through only because it’s strange receiving quite so many. What they’d call little things, sure, but that they’ve thought about it and gone through with collectively pretending to forget until the last minute—
It’s nice.
33.
Jason hadn’t told him about the paperwork that comes with the job.
It is nothing he can’t handle but that doesn’t make it light work – and he’s supposed to keep an eye on everyone else’s because inconsistencies are on him and their higher-ups aren’t forgiving.
Half the struggle, Jason once said, was getting them to believe behaviourism warranted a major focus at all. The other half is catching their unsub - and you can predict how an unsub is going to react.
More than anything he just doesn’t have the time to slow down. It’s fine. He can celebrate later.
34.
“Hey, buddy,” Aaron murmurs. Jack coos and blinks up at him with inquisitive blue eyes.
He lifts him out of the crib and Jack gurgles, clenched fists starfishing out. He’s tiny and light and fragile and solid and warm all at once. His son.
“I know,” he says, bouncing him gently. “Must be a lot to look at, huh?”
Jack makes a little noise.
“Do you know what the best birthday gift I ever had is?” he teases. “I think you do. Yes, you do!”
Jack’s legs flail in the air as he coos.
“Oh, yes, you do!” Aaron smiles.
35.
It hurts more that she knows what he’s going to say than it does to have to admit it.
“You’re not going to be back in time,” Haley says. “I made the reservation because you said you would.”
“I know,” Aaron says. “I know I did. If you give me the number I’ll see if I can—”
“Don’t,” Haley says. “I wouldn’t want to burden you.”
“Haley,” he pleads. “I thought I would. I promise.”
“Yeah, you always do.” She sighs, static on the phone, as Jack babbles. “That’s the problem.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Happy birthday, Aaron,” she says ruefully.
36.
The papers come at an awkward time, their communication almost entirely through their respective solicitors, and Haley is (somewhat) rightfully pissed at him so Aaron doesn’t expect anything.
After all the years, the absence stings a surprising amount, as juvenile as it is of him to mind it.
What gets him is that Jessica, who is more pissed, still sends him a card. It’s filled in to the absolute bare minimum and honestly he’s surprised she did. Hopes it hasn’t caused an argument between them.
Hopes it isn’t tearing apart their family too, since he has the talent for it.
37.
They don’t take no for an answer. Because having his family somewhere across the country and being completely and utterly useless to them is not enough of a no.
Aaron does not voice his other objection, which is it makes him feel all of ten years old again and forced to play his role in their perfect family tableau. He never did figure out how to fit in.
His birthday lands during a case this year, quite possibly the first strike of luck he’s had all year, and he doesn’t care how much they complain. He has work to do.
38.
He doesn’t want to see them, he doesn’t want gifts, he doesn’t want anything except the ordinary to happen. For one thing Aaron doesn’t deserve it and for another he genuinely doesn’t want to celebrate. As if there’s something worth being happy about.
The kid gloves they’re treating him with have that benefit, at least: they listen to him.
It is a lonely day, aches in a familiar way, and it does not surprise him that he’s ended up like this once more.
There is a statistic: people are more likely to die on their birthdays.
How many choose to?
39.
Aaron agreed to drinks because it felt like the option least tailor-made to ensure he wouldn’t be alone. The least condescending.
But sitting around with the rest of the team, throat burning from his drink, the small talk and music reverberates in that hollow space in his chest. He wishes he’d stayed at home.
And when it’s finally an acceptable time to call it quits, he—
“Hey, Hotch,” Morgan calls.
He turns.
“You all right?”
They both know the answer but it’s not about that. Aaron appreciates and hates that Derek noticed. It’s always Derek.
“Yeah,” he lies. “Thank you.”
40.
“Happy birthday,” Derek murmurs.
His eyes are dark like sun-warmed earth, and Aaron forgets to breathe for a second; being so close to Derek, taking in the smell of his cologne, a fresh, woodsy scent, wonderful and dizzying. He reaches up and cups Aaron’s jaw with a warm hand, tilting his head as he closes the gap between them.
Aaron lets his eyes close as Derek’s lips meet his. The kiss is steady and gentle and just the right amount of insistent; everything he expects from Derek yet so much better than he’s ever imagined.
He smiles; Derek smiles back.