Work Text:
When he gets home, Haley is gone. He feels like he's been kicked in the chest. It's all he can do to stay standing.
It's been all he can do for a few hours now. This case has left him several kinds of upset and confused and hurting. He promised his team he was fine, but he'd intended to go home and fall apart with Haley there to help put him back together.
The team hadn't needed to know about that. He really doesn't want to think about how they would react to seeing him like this. For that matter, he doesn't want to think about them at all. Right now he needs to fall apart, because it's either now or later. He can't let himself break down while he's thinking about the team, holding on to the image he creates for them. He can't be the hero tonight.
He takes a long look around his empty house and then heads for the guest bathroom, pausing in front of the door. With a deep breath he enters, turning the lock on the door even before he flips the light-switch. Hotch slides to the floor and rests his back against the door, relaxing a little now that he's separated from rest of the world. The bathroom is small, but he knows every square inch of it. Haley has never been in here since she always used the master bath, and right now he's extraordinarily grateful for that fact.
He's worn out, so much so that he could probably fall asleep right there on the tile floor. Instead he works his way out of his jacket and his fingers work at the knot of his tie. Something too sad to be a smile ghosts across his face as he recalls Gideon's fingers doing the same, during the Perotta case. That had been a tough case as well, but Haley had been there, and--
He doesn't want to think about that. Haley or Gideon. He'll think about Haley later, and Gideon...He knows how the team sees him, and he works hard to maintain that image. To make sure they need him, because it feels good to be something other than expendable for once. SSA Hotchner is necessary. He is strong. He's focused. He's got everything under control, himself included.
Locked in the bathroom of his horribly empty house, he is someone else. He undoes buttons one by one until he can slip his shirt off and toss it on the floor with the jacket and tie. His pants follow, and Aaron is left stamding in his socks and boxers. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. His armor is gone, the facade he carefully pieces together every time he leaves the privacy of this room. Aaron strips off the last remnants of SSA Hotchner and starts the shower.
It's a rare thing for him to let go of his public persona so completely. It's too dangerous, too difficult to get it back. Aaron sinks onto the floor rug, resting his elbows on his knees. He's starting to get a little shaky; his hair is mussed, and there's a fine sheen of sweat on his body. His breathing grows heavier, rougher, until there's a low gasp that sounds suspisciously like a sob on the exhale. There are no tears. There haven't been any for many years. There's just him, and this raw hot mess of emotion that he doesn't know how to release.
He doesn't let himself think about the case. The room is filling with steam. It's warm, and he's feeling shaky and vulnerable, and he needs to not think about work when he's like this. That can only lead to thinking about this while he's at work, and it just can't happen that way. Instead of the case [a rainbow of bruises distinctly shaped like fingers, hands on a young boy's wrists, eyes locked subserviently on the floor; the boy's anguish when he finally realizes he can never earn his father's love] he calls up the images, the turmoil that he only allows himself to revisit after this careful ritual.
Greens and yellows and violets splashed against shoulders and hips. Blood from a split lip trickling down his chin as he watches in the mirror, and the tears that drip down to dilute it. An impossibly strong hand wrapped around his arm, fingers overlapping--he can't remember his father's face [the profiler in him speaks up, briefly, something about trauma and repression, before he shoves it back down] but he knows every detail of those hands. Sean's face, confused and a little scared, looking back at him from a cramped bedroom closet--Don't move until i tell you it's safe, Sean, no matter what you hear! --because Sean doesn't need to see or experience Aaron's private hell. He does his best to choke back the screams and sobs and yells, because he knows he sounds like a dying animal and Sean shouldn't have to hear it, either.
He lets it fill his mind until he can feel it all again, the ache of the bruises and the sting of nails digging into his skin. Just before his mind becomes convinced he's pinned down like animal waiting for the knife, he makes himself get up and move. He's fighting for air and his limbs don't want to cooperate, but he makes it into the shower. The water falling on his skin helps bring him back to himself, and he picks up a rough washcloth to wash off the memories. Sometimes it takes more to bring him back from that edge, and he knows that the sharp bite of metal is waiting under the sink for the next time he needs it. Ritual over, for now. He's still shaking, though, and he knows he'll wake up in a cold sweat at least once tonight. When he steps out of the shower he retrieves the blade he keeps hidden under the sink. He hasn't used it in so long...Haley hated it, and always stopped him. But she isn't here, and he knows it will help later, when his eyes fly open and he can't remember where, when he is. It's selfish, but no one needs to know.
This is the part of himself that he hates. Basic human need and the world he was born into have conspired to make certain that he can never have what he wanted most [he refuses, just on general principle, to say that he needs it]. It took a long time for him to realize that his father was just not capable of loving him. If he had realized sooner, younger, his hatred of himself would likely be directed at the unfairness of the world instead. He puts it down to his own stupidity, or maybe the foolishness of hope, that he didn't become one of the unsubs his team chases.
It's really not so bad, being smacked around. It was something he endured willingly, even gratefully, when he thought it would earn him his father's love. The secret wish of his heart was never for rescue, or an end to the beatings. It maybe would have been a lukewarm second best, a consolation prize, better than nothing, but it was never what he wanted. Every night as a child, he prayed [until he didn't] for his father to have some miraculous change of heart and begin to love him. He offered up his mind, his free will, his opinions, and even his body on a sacrificial altar...but no matter how much he gave, he received nothing in return.
That doesn't sound so terribly unlike his marriage. Up until tonight he'd complied with Haley's every demand, ignored every mistake she made. The hang-up call and Haley's guilt had been as good as an admission for him, and his anger had inspired defiance. He's lived long enough that her absence tonight should be less surprising than it is. Really, it shouldn't be surprising at all--he was never good enough for anyone to love before, so why would now be any different?
He doesn't mind the scars on his skin, and he never has. It's the invisible wounds that make him feel like he's dying.