sequinsmile-x

[sequinsmile-x]

Lovesick

She hated it. Hated that she wished someone were here and keeping her company, making sure she drank plenty of water as they brought her tea and meds. And she hated that she couldn’t have that.

AKA the one in which Emily is sick twice. Once when she's alone, and the other when she is not.

-x-

Hi besties,

Hope you are all okay <3

This was inspired by a really nasty sinus infection that I had last week that I've only really fully recovered from this week. I live alone and was feeling a little sorry for myself and the first section of this fic was born.

I then, of course, had to give Emily a happy ending, if only to annoy the anon on tumblr that is annoyed by me always writing happy endings <3

As always let me know what you think <3

-x-

Warnings: mentions of sickness/throwing up

Words: 2k

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

It had been a long time since Emily had wanted her mom when she was sick. 

It was a desire that had faded when she was young, a realisation she’d come to as a teenager, and one that made her all too aware that she would never be her mother’s priority, that any sickness was an inconvenience, something that would distract her mother from her important work. It was a hard learned lesson, one that finally sank in after one too many sighs and for goodness' sake, Emily’s as if she’d planned to get sick just to annoy her. 

Despite that, despite all the years of looking after herself, as Emily lies in her apartment in Paris, her skin burning up because of a nasty case of the flu, she thinks of her mom, and for a moment, she wishes she were here. She doesn’t know what Elizabeth was told, if she had the clearance to know she was alive, or if she thinks her only daughter was dead. A part of Emily that she isn’t proud of wonders if her mother has any regrets, if, in the depths of her grief, she tried to reach out to grasp onto fond memories of them, only to find there were none, her hands as empty as the house that had never really been home to either of them. 

She groans as she rolls over in bed, a balled-up tissue in her hand that she rubs against her sore nose, and she coughs again, and it takes everything in her not to burst into tears. 

She’s healed, she knows that, but her scar aches when she coughs anyway, a phantom pain chasing her as she tries to catch her breath just like the man who killed her had. It was a penance of sorts. A constant ache that reminds her of the decisions she’s made, every choice that has led her here. 

Usually, she was fine with it, could justify every single thing she’d done as she replayed it all over and over in her head when she couldn’t sleep at night. But now, her skin warm to the touch and her chest aching with a cough she couldn’t shift, she couldn’t help but wonder how she’d ended up so alone. She hated it. Hated that she wished someone were here and keeping her company, making sure she drank plenty of water, as they brought her tea and meds. And she hated that she couldn’t have that. 

She knew even if she was back in DC, if Ian hadn’t torn through her life for a second time, her mom wouldn’t be the first person she’d call if she needed something. 

The last time she was sick, a nasty sinus infection that had come out of nowhere, Penelope brought her freshly baked bread and enough decongestants to start a meth lab. JJ had sent her a video of Henry saying, ‘Get well soon, Aunt Emmy, ’ and sent Will over with some soup when the rest of the team had to go away on a case, and she was too sick to go. Spencer had inundated her with articles he’d read on the best way to clear up sinuses, every one of them annotated with notes on what he thought was nonsense, and what he thought might help. Derek sent her teasing texts and did all of her paperwork for her, all the while telling her to get better soon because the team wasn’t the same without her. 

And then Aaron had texted her, checking to see if he could come over to bring her some snacks - as if she wasn’t overwhelmed with all the food the others had brought her. But then he showed up with Jack in tow, and as the little boy sat with her on the couch, just as bossy as his father, as he told her to sit down and watch a movie with him, Aaron cleaned her entire apartment. Never complaining once about the number of balled-up tissues strewn across every surface, or the amount of empty blister packs of medication. He did it happily and unprompted, and smiled at her in a way that made her stomach flip. 

After her showdown with Ian, when she was dead to almost everyone she knew, Aaron came to see her in the hospital before she was moved to another. A name that wasn’t hers was on her notes, and dried soil on his pants from when he’d sprinkled it into a grave that had a name that was. She didn’t remember much about it, only the pain she knew she’d never forget and the soft touch of his hand against hers. He’d held a cup of water up for her, held the straw to her lips so she could take a sip, as he told her they’d have her home soon. 

She sniffs and rubs her nose again, sighing as the tissue feels rough against her bright red skin. She leans over and opens the drawer in her nightstand, and she digs through it, smiling sadly when she pulls a photo out of the back of a book. It was one of the whole team, a photo of them all smiling and laughing in a bar that was taken shortly before JJ was forced to leave the team. It was the last time everything felt normal, the last time she’d felt anything close to the feeling of home that she’d been chasing her whole life. 

She places the photo down on the bed next to her head and places her hand over it, hoping in some way she can draw comfort from it, as if she could reach into the past and steal just one moment from the person she used to be. 

___

“You just had to order from The Green Dragon,” she grumbles as she settles back against the wall next to the toilet, letting her head rest on his shoulder. She grimaces when he kisses her clammy forehead, but she wraps both of her arms around one of his anyway, hoping in some way just having him closer will calm her stomach. 

“I’ve ordered from here hundreds of times,” Aaron says, swallowing thickly against the turning of his own stomach, “I’ve never got sick before.” 

Emily pulls back to look at her boyfriend, narrowing her eyes at him, diminished by the playfulness that lingered in them even though they’d been throwing up for hours now, “Well,” she starts, pressing her fingers against her lips as she swallows thickly, “I don’t think we’ll ever be ordering from there again.” 

He chuckles and kisses her forehead before he encourages her back against his side, “Agreed,” he says, running his hand up and down her arm, “I’m sorry.” 

She turns her head and kisses his shoulder, “Unless you cooked those….” She swallows thickly again, her throat getting briefly tight as she thinks about the food, “Salmonella-ridden spring rolls, you have nothing to apologise for.” 

He hums against the top of her head, “Still, take out and a movie was my idea for date night,” he says, guilt rolling in his stomach along with everything else, “And we ended up sick.” 

She squeezes his arm and then links her hand through his, marvelling once again at the feel of his fingers between hers. “It was a nice date until we started throwing up.” 

They’d been together for two months. Two, amazing, incredible months that she thinks may have taught her more about love than she’d ever learnt before. He was kind and funny, and handsome, and there were moments when she was convinced that he knew her better than she knew herself. He’d helped her find herself when she came back from Paris, helped her rearrange all of the pieces of herself, finding new places for them as she glued herself back together. He never expected her to be the same as she was before, and he knew what it was to live in the after, and it drew them closer to each other, pulled them towards each other until they became this, something she was now sure was inevitable. 

In her more romantic moments, when she let herself get lost in the fantasy of them that didn’t feel much like a fantasy anymore but a reality, it felt pretty to think she’d always been walking towards this. Towards him. That their life together, something she knew they would have even only two months in, was her prize for everything she had endured. 

She covers her mouth again and groans, and she swallows it back, suddenly all too aware that she’d spent the last couple of hours throwing up in front of her new boyfriend. 

“I should head home,” she says, smiling at him as she pulls back, “I don’t want to be in your way while you’re sick.” 

He grabs her hand before she can get any further, his eyebrows furrowed as he tilts his head at her, “Why are you leaving?” 

She groans as she sits back on her heels, trying to get herself ready for how awful it’s going to feel when she stands up, “Because we’ve been together 8 weeks, honey,” she says, squeezing his hand, “It’s way too early for you to see me like this.” 

He smiles at her, the very same smile she’d fallen in love with much longer ago than she’d care to admit, and he encourages her closer, “We’ve both seen each other in much worse states than this, sweetheart.” 

She knows it’s true. He’d sat by her beside, and she’d sat by his. They’d seen each other torn apart and barely hanging on, and in comparison, this was nothing, this was normal. The kind of thing any couple could experience, and the ordinariness of it makes her stomach flip for an entirely different reason than the bad Chinese food they’d shared. 

“Really?” She asks, even though they both already know she’s going to stay, and he nods as he pulls her closer again.

“Really,” he confirms, stamping his lips against hers, “I want all of you. The good…” he smiles as he drifts off, “Well, I’d say and the bad and the ugly, but I don’t think it’s possible for you to be either of those things.”

She chokes on a laugh and shakes her head at him, her hand over her mouth as she presses her other hand on his shoulder, “Don’t make me laugh.” 

“Sorry,” he says, reaching out and tucking her hair behind her ear, “But it’s true,” he winks at her when she rolls her eyes, “Plus, I want to look after you. It’s part of the Aaron Hotchner boyfriend experience.” 

She shakes her head at him again and cups his cheek, running her thumb back and forth under his eye.

“I want to look after you, too,” she says, and could see it. A lifetime of them looking after each other in every way possible, and it makes her smile, makes her lean in to kiss him again and rest her forehead against his as she scrunches her nose up, “Your breath sucks, by the way.” 

“Yours isn’t exactly great either,” he says, before leaning in for another kiss, smiling when she furrows her brow at him, “Worth it.” 

She sinks against his side and groans, “I don’t know if I would have made it home anyway,” she grumbles, “Just the thought of getting up from the floor makes me want to throw up.” 

He kisses her temple, and she knows if love was enough to make her feel better, it would, that her nausea would disappear in a second, and his would too. “I’ll go get some water and the bedding in a minute,” he says, “We can stay here until we feel better.” 

She hums and pulls him closer, both of her arms wrapped around one of his again, “Not yet,” she mumbles, her cheek on his shoulder, “I need you right here to hold my hair when I inevitably throw up again.” 

His reply is a promise murmured against her hairline, and it’s one she knows he’ll keep for the rest of their lives. 

“I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.”

[sequinsmile-x]

Take on this Whole World

Sometimes Emily would look at Hazel and wonder where the time had gone, how her little girl had gone from an impossibly tiny thing being placed on her chest for the first time, to the rambunctious five-year-old who had had her, Jack and Aaron sit down for a fashion show of sorts of her favourite outfits the night before so she could pick the perfect thing to wear to her first day of school.

AKA - the one where Aaron and Emily struggle with their little girl's first day of school.

-x-

Hi besties,

This is some pure family fluff for the lovely WildingFlowers birthday. I hope you have a lovely day <3

I will never tire of writing these two in lovely little domestic moments, so I hope you never tire of reading them.

As always, let me know what you think <3

-x-

Warnings: None

Words: 2.2k Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

“Are you awake?” She asks even though she knows the answer, even though she can feel her husband shifting behind her on the bed, can feel the ripple of the muscles in his arm as he subconsciously tightens his hold on her. 

Aaron hums against her temple as he leans in to kiss her, his voice rough and thick, and hers when he murmurs against her hairline, “Yes, sweetheart, I’m awake.”

She sighs as she switches on the light on the nightstand and then turns in his embrace, her lips pressed together in a smile she knows he can see through. She swallows thickly and reaches up to run her fingers through his hair, trying to do anything and everything to distract herself from the day ahead. 

“How would you feel about just staying in bed and pretending today isn’t happening?” She asks, scrunching her nose up as she says it, all too aware that it wasn’t possible, that the time would pass even if they did hole up in the house with the kids all day. 

“You know I’m never against more time in bed with you,” he smiles softly at her, love and support he always had waiting for her pressed into his dimples as he leans in to kiss her, his lips stamped quickly against hers before he pulls back, “I can think of a certain little girl, who spent an hour last night picking out her outfit for her first day of school, who’d have something to say about that.” 

Her first day of school. 

Jack had spent the summer telling Hazel all about her new school, enthusiastic as he told her about the teachers he’d had when he went there and the things he’d done, and she knew that was part of why the little girl was so excited. She always wanted to be exactly like her big brother, and knowing he loved school made her preemptively love it too. 

Sometimes Emily would look at Hazel and wonder where the time had gone, how her little girl had gone from an impossibly tiny thing being placed on her chest for the first time, to the rambunctious five-year-old who had had her, Jack and Aaron sit down for a fashion show of sorts of her favourite outfits the night before so she could pick the perfect thing to wear to her first day of school. Emily loved watching her children grow up. She was endlessly proud of them and the people they were becoming, but she wanted time to slow down, to stay in this period of her life a little longer. The time she knew she’d look back on fondly when the kids were all grown and living their lives, the house they’d grown up in a place they’d visit with their favourite snacks always on hand, and their rooms a museum of their childhood, happy memories permeated into the walls.  

“You’re right,” she grumbles, kissing him again even as she furrows her brow. Then she rests her chin on his chest to look up at him, narrowing her eyes as he smiles at her when she pouts, “Besides, Zac will be up soon,” she says, turning her head to kiss Aaron’s palm as he cups her cheek, “We both know how he feels about lie-ins.” 

Zachary had been a welcome surprise. They’d tried for another baby for a while after Hazel, but had never had any luck, their hope of expanding their family fading with each month, each year. She’d finally accepted that they wouldn’t have any other children when she took a pregnancy test just to rule it out before she spoke to her doctor about the menopause. She’d burst into tears when the test came back positive, a mix of shock and happiness burning tracks down her cheeks and keeping her words in her throat as she tried to choke out the news to Aaron. Zachary was 9 months old now, and she couldn’t imagine their family without him, the final missing piece of the puzzle she never thought she’d get to have. 

“I can’t believe she’s old enough to go to school,” she says, unaware she was going to say it until it’s out in the air around them, “When did that happen?” 

“I know,” he replies, running his hand up and down her back, his fingers slipping beneath the hem of her t-shirt as he chases the shiver his warm skin causes when it touches hers, “It feels like just yesterday she’d only sleep if she was lying on your chest and I was reading to her.” 

She chuckles, the sound catching in her throat, and she has to clench her jaw for a second so she doesn’t cry. 

She’d promised herself she wouldn’t until Hazel was in her classroom. 

“Yeah,” she says, resting her cheek against his chest so she isn’t looking at him, knowing just one sympathetic look from him would tip her over the edge, and she blows out a shaky breath, “Remember that night you read her a chapter from one of your profiling manuals?” 

He laughs and kisses the top of her head, “I don’t think either of us could have coped with Goodnight Moon again.” 

She smiles, but it fades, and she sits up just enough to look at him, “She’ll be okay.” 

She isn’t sure if it’s a question or a statement, but he nods and kisses her forehead, his response pressed against her skin. 

“She’ll be okay.” 

A cry from the nursery cuts off any further conversation, and she sighs, leaning forward to kiss him before she gets out of bed. 

“I’ll get him,” she says, shaking her head as he tries to get up too, the offer of wrangling their baby on the tip of his tongue so she can get some extra time in bed. “It’s okay,” she says, squeezing his hand before she lets it drop to the bed, “Besides, I think in about 10 minutes you’ll be being told to braid someone's hair for her first day.” 

She winks at him and heads out into the hallway, and some of the heaviness that had settled onto her chest is eased the moment she sees her little boy. She closes the door behind her as she walks into the nursery. 

“Hi, sweet boy,” she says, kissing the side of Zachary’s head and then his cheek as she lifts him from his crib and rests him on her hip. “Good morning,” she says, kissing him again, smiling when he stops crying almost immediately, happy to be in her arms. She swallows thickly when he smiles at her, his tiny fingers pressed against her cheek, a laugh peeling out of him when she kisses his hand, “Let’s make a deal, Zaccy,” she says, kissing him one more time before she steps over to the changing table, “If you stay this small forever, you can have all the contact naps you want.” 

He coos in response, his hands clapping together as she lays him on the table, a jumble of noises escaping him that she knew would one day soon give way to actual words, and she takes it as a yes. She pokes his nose and smiles when he giggles again.

“Then we have a deal,” she says, “But I hope you know a verbal contract is binding in the District of Columbia.” 

___

She’s okay. 

She blows out a breath as she reads Aaron’s text for the dozenth time, sighing before she shakes her head at herself and puts her phone down so she can try to concentrate on her work. Ever since they’d dropped Hazel off at school, the little girl barely looking back at them as they left, they’d taken it in turns assuring the other that everything was fine, and that before they knew it, they’d be picking her up and taking her home. She looks at the pile of paperwork on her desk and then back at her phone, and she groans.

Ever since she left the FBI and took the job Clyde offered her in Interpol’s DC office after she turned down the one in London, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d missed her old job. This was one of them. She wished she could look up from her desk and see her husband in his office. She wished he were nearby and could reassure her in person, and make her feel slightly less insane for spending most of her morning flicking through pictures of Hazel on her phone. 

“Coffee,” she says to herself, blowing out a breath and nodding as she stands up, “Coffee will help.” 

She grabs her phone and her purse and heads out of her office, and then past the kitchenette where a fresh pot of coffee was on the counter, and into the elevator and out of the building. It’s only when she’s in her car and halfway to Hazel’s school that she really registers what she’s doing, and she tells herself she’ll stay just for a little while to hopefully catch a glance of her little girl at recess. 

She’s telling herself that she can never tell Aaron about this, something close to embarrassment thrumming in her veins as she approaches the school, when she spots a familiar figure standing by the gate. She rolls her eyes as she approaches and raises an eyebrow when their eyes meet. 

“What happened to ‘she’s fine?’” She says, unable to stop herself from smiling when Aaron beams at her, handing one of the two takeout coffee cups that he’s holding to her. 

“It took you a little longer than I thought it would,” he says, leaning in to kiss her, “I was worried I’d have to go and get you another coffee.” 

“I can’t tell if I should be mad or not that you know me so well.” She hums and sips the coffee he’d bought for her, the unmistakable taste of Splenda tasting like something closer to love and understanding as it hits her tongue. “I didn’t even know I was going to do this,” she grumbles, knocking her shoulder against his as she hears the bell and sees kids start to pour out onto the playground. She smiles when she sees Hazel run outside, her braids bouncing against her shoulders as she giggles and talks animatedly to the little girls flanking her on each side. Emily swallows thickly, overwhelmed by the emotions blooming in her chest, the flowers of them making it hard to breathe. “She’s already made friends.” 

“Of course she has,” Aaron says, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer, stamping a kiss against her temple before he carries on, “Everyone likes her the moment they meet her,” he smiles at her as she turns to look at him, and he wipes a stray tear from her cheek, “It’s just one of the many ways she’s exactly like her Mom.”

She smiles, “You didn’t like me when you first met me.” 

He shakes his head at her, his refusal dampened by the loving smile on his face, “It’s not that I didn’t like you, I just didn’t trust the transfer to my team that I didn’t approve.”

“You can rewrite our history as much as you want to, honey,” she says teasingly, straightening his tie unnecessarily, sure she’d fall to pieces in the safety of the love shining in his eyes, “But we both know it took you a while to warm up to me.” 

He hums and hooks his finger under her chin to make her look up at him, and he winks, “It’s only because of how beautiful you are; it was distracting. And I was married to someone else at the time.” 

She kisses him, because it’s all she can think of doing in the moment, a way to punctuate a playful argument they’d had so often she’s sure she could script it, a back and forth they’d have for the rest of their lives. She rests her head on his shoulder and looks out at the playground again, easily locating Hazel and her new friends, and she sinks against him when she hears their daughter’s laugh. 

“She’s okay.” She says, and Aaron wraps his arm around her, holding her close as he drops a kiss to the top of her head. 

“She’s okay,” he replies, and she pulls back to look at him, her eyes shining with tears and her smile trembling. 

“We should go back to work,” she says, her gaze drifting back to their little girl, but she makes no attempt to move, held down in place by love and guilt and everything in between. She feels stuck between two parts of her life, slowly starting her journey down the path where her children would need her less and less. 

“Want to go break Zac out of day care and spend the rest of the day at home?” Aaron offers, his smile wide as she looks up at him, and she sighs in relief, her smile as wide as it had been all day. 

“God, yes.” 

[sequinsmile-x]

Take on this Whole World

Sometimes Emily would look at Hazel and wonder where the time had gone, how her little girl had gone from an impossibly tiny thing being placed on her chest for the first time, to the rambunctious five-year-old who had had her, Jack and Aaron sit down for a fashion show of sorts of her favourite outfits the night before so she could pick the perfect thing to wear to her first day of school.

AKA - the one where Aaron and Emily struggle with their little girl's first day of school.

-x-

Hi besties,

This is some pure family fluff for the lovely WildingFlowers birthday. I hope you have a lovely day <3

I will never tire of writing these two in lovely little domestic moments, so I hope you never tire of reading them.

As always, let me know what you think <3

-x-

Warnings: None

Words: 2.2k Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

“Are you awake?” She asks even though she knows the answer, even though she can feel her husband shifting behind her on the bed, can feel the ripple of the muscles in his arm as he subconsciously tightens his hold on her. 

Aaron hums against her temple as he leans in to kiss her, his voice rough and thick, and hers when he murmurs against her hairline, “Yes, sweetheart, I’m awake.”

She sighs as she switches on the light on the nightstand and then turns in his embrace, her lips pressed together in a smile she knows he can see through. She swallows thickly and reaches up to run her fingers through his hair, trying to do anything and everything to distract herself from the day ahead. 

“How would you feel about just staying in bed and pretending today isn’t happening?” She asks, scrunching her nose up as she says it, all too aware that it wasn’t possible, that the time would pass even if they did hole up in the house with the kids all day. 

“You know I’m never against more time in bed with you,” he smiles softly at her, love and support he always had waiting for her pressed into his dimples as he leans in to kiss her, his lips stamped quickly against hers before he pulls back, “I can think of a certain little girl, who spent an hour last night picking out her outfit for her first day of school, who’d have something to say about that.” 

Her first day of school. 

Jack had spent the summer telling Hazel all about her new school, enthusiastic as he told her about the teachers he’d had when he went there and the things he’d done, and she knew that was part of why the little girl was so excited. She always wanted to be exactly like her big brother, and knowing he loved school made her preemptively love it too. 

Sometimes Emily would look at Hazel and wonder where the time had gone, how her little girl had gone from an impossibly tiny thing being placed on her chest for the first time, to the rambunctious five-year-old who had had her, Jack and Aaron sit down for a fashion show of sorts of her favourite outfits the night before so she could pick the perfect thing to wear to her first day of school. Emily loved watching her children grow up. She was endlessly proud of them and the people they were becoming, but she wanted time to slow down, to stay in this period of her life a little longer. The time she knew she’d look back on fondly when the kids were all grown and living their lives, the house they’d grown up in a place they’d visit with their favourite snacks always on hand, and their rooms a museum of their childhood, happy memories permeated into the walls.  

“You’re right,” she grumbles, kissing him again even as she furrows her brow. Then she rests her chin on his chest to look up at him, narrowing her eyes as he smiles at her when she pouts, “Besides, Zac will be up soon,” she says, turning her head to kiss Aaron’s palm as he cups her cheek, “We both know how he feels about lie-ins.” 

Zachary had been a welcome surprise. They’d tried for another baby for a while after Hazel, but had never had any luck, their hope of expanding their family fading with each month, each year. She’d finally accepted that they wouldn’t have any other children when she took a pregnancy test just to rule it out before she spoke to her doctor about the menopause. She’d burst into tears when the test came back positive, a mix of shock and happiness burning tracks down her cheeks and keeping her words in her throat as she tried to choke out the news to Aaron. Zachary was 9 months old now, and she couldn’t imagine their family without him, the final missing piece of the puzzle she never thought she’d get to have. 

“I can’t believe she’s old enough to go to school,” she says, unaware she was going to say it until it’s out in the air around them, “When did that happen?” 

“I know,” he replies, running his hand up and down her back, his fingers slipping beneath the hem of her t-shirt as he chases the shiver his warm skin causes when it touches hers, “It feels like just yesterday she’d only sleep if she was lying on your chest and I was reading to her.” 

She chuckles, the sound catching in her throat, and she has to clench her jaw for a second so she doesn’t cry. 

She’d promised herself she wouldn’t until Hazel was in her classroom. 

“Yeah,” she says, resting her cheek against his chest so she isn’t looking at him, knowing just one sympathetic look from him would tip her over the edge, and she blows out a shaky breath, “Remember that night you read her a chapter from one of your profiling manuals?” 

He laughs and kisses the top of her head, “I don’t think either of us could have coped with Goodnight Moon again.” 

She smiles, but it fades, and she sits up just enough to look at him, “She’ll be okay.” 

She isn’t sure if it’s a question or a statement, but he nods and kisses her forehead, his response pressed against her skin. 

“She’ll be okay.” 

A cry from the nursery cuts off any further conversation, and she sighs, leaning forward to kiss him before she gets out of bed. 

“I’ll get him,” she says, shaking her head as he tries to get up too, the offer of wrangling their baby on the tip of his tongue so she can get some extra time in bed. “It’s okay,” she says, squeezing his hand before she lets it drop to the bed, “Besides, I think in about 10 minutes you’ll be being told to braid someone's hair for her first day.” 

She winks at him and heads out into the hallway, and some of the heaviness that had settled onto her chest is eased the moment she sees her little boy. She closes the door behind her as she walks into the nursery. 

“Hi, sweet boy,” she says, kissing the side of Zachary’s head and then his cheek as she lifts him from his crib and rests him on her hip. “Good morning,” she says, kissing him again, smiling when he stops crying almost immediately, happy to be in her arms. She swallows thickly when he smiles at her, his tiny fingers pressed against her cheek, a laugh peeling out of him when she kisses his hand, “Let’s make a deal, Zaccy,” she says, kissing him one more time before she steps over to the changing table, “If you stay this small forever, you can have all the contact naps you want.” 

He coos in response, his hands clapping together as she lays him on the table, a jumble of noises escaping him that she knew would one day soon give way to actual words, and she takes it as a yes. She pokes his nose and smiles when he giggles again.

“Then we have a deal,” she says, “But I hope you know a verbal contract is binding in the District of Columbia.” 

___

She’s okay. 

She blows out a breath as she reads Aaron’s text for the dozenth time, sighing before she shakes her head at herself and puts her phone down so she can try to concentrate on her work. Ever since they’d dropped Hazel off at school, the little girl barely looking back at them as they left, they’d taken it in turns assuring the other that everything was fine, and that before they knew it, they’d be picking her up and taking her home. She looks at the pile of paperwork on her desk and then back at her phone, and she groans.

Ever since she left the FBI and took the job Clyde offered her in Interpol’s DC office after she turned down the one in London, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d missed her old job. This was one of them. She wished she could look up from her desk and see her husband in his office. She wished he were nearby and could reassure her in person, and make her feel slightly less insane for spending most of her morning flicking through pictures of Hazel on her phone. 

“Coffee,” she says to herself, blowing out a breath and nodding as she stands up, “Coffee will help.” 

She grabs her phone and her purse and heads out of her office, and then past the kitchenette where a fresh pot of coffee was on the counter, and into the elevator and out of the building. It’s only when she’s in her car and halfway to Hazel’s school that she really registers what she’s doing, and she tells herself she’ll stay just for a little while to hopefully catch a glance of her little girl at recess. 

She’s telling herself that she can never tell Aaron about this, something close to embarrassment thrumming in her veins as she approaches the school, when she spots a familiar figure standing by the gate. She rolls her eyes as she approaches and raises an eyebrow when their eyes meet. 

“What happened to ‘she’s fine?’” She says, unable to stop herself from smiling when Aaron beams at her, handing one of the two takeout coffee cups that he’s holding to her. 

“It took you a little longer than I thought it would,” he says, leaning in to kiss her, “I was worried I’d have to go and get you another coffee.” 

“I can’t tell if I should be mad or not that you know me so well.” She hums and sips the coffee he’d bought for her, the unmistakable taste of Splenda tasting like something closer to love and understanding as it hits her tongue. “I didn’t even know I was going to do this,” she grumbles, knocking her shoulder against his as she hears the bell and sees kids start to pour out onto the playground. She smiles when she sees Hazel run outside, her braids bouncing against her shoulders as she giggles and talks animatedly to the little girls flanking her on each side. Emily swallows thickly, overwhelmed by the emotions blooming in her chest, the flowers of them making it hard to breathe. “She’s already made friends.” 

“Of course she has,” Aaron says, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer, stamping a kiss against her temple before he carries on, “Everyone likes her the moment they meet her,” he smiles at her as she turns to look at him, and he wipes a stray tear from her cheek, “It’s just one of the many ways she’s exactly like her Mom.”

She smiles, “You didn’t like me when you first met me.” 

He shakes his head at her, his refusal dampened by the loving smile on his face, “It’s not that I didn’t like you, I just didn’t trust the transfer to my team that I didn’t approve.”

“You can rewrite our history as much as you want to, honey,” she says teasingly, straightening his tie unnecessarily, sure she’d fall to pieces in the safety of the love shining in his eyes, “But we both know it took you a while to warm up to me.” 

He hums and hooks his finger under her chin to make her look up at him, and he winks, “It’s only because of how beautiful you are; it was distracting. And I was married to someone else at the time.” 

She kisses him, because it’s all she can think of doing in the moment, a way to punctuate a playful argument they’d had so often she’s sure she could script it, a back and forth they’d have for the rest of their lives. She rests her head on his shoulder and looks out at the playground again, easily locating Hazel and her new friends, and she sinks against him when she hears their daughter’s laugh. 

“She’s okay.” She says, and Aaron wraps his arm around her, holding her close as he drops a kiss to the top of her head. 

“She’s okay,” he replies, and she pulls back to look at him, her eyes shining with tears and her smile trembling. 

“We should go back to work,” she says, her gaze drifting back to their little girl, but she makes no attempt to move, held down in place by love and guilt and everything in between. She feels stuck between two parts of her life, slowly starting her journey down the path where her children would need her less and less. 

“Want to go break Zac out of day care and spend the rest of the day at home?” Aaron offers, his smile wide as she looks up at him, and she sighs in relief, her smile as wide as it had been all day. 

“God, yes.” 

[sequinsmile-x]

Was it you who wrote the fic where JJ is like “you’re not a mom” or something to Emily when she knew about her miscarriage? Thought about it trying to find it again thx :)

Hiiii

Yes that was me!

It’s called Endless Spring 😊

[sequinsmile-x]

And Aaron or Emily leaving work during their little girl recess to watch her from the school fence 😂 because they want to make sure she is fine and maybe running into each other! 😂

HAHAHA YES

Emily at Interpol and Aaron at the FBI, and they are each texting the other like “she’ll be fine, don’t worry” and then bump into each other at the school 🤣

[sequinsmile-x]

Schools in the US are starting to go back and I’m tempted to write about Hotchniss’s little girl starting school and neither one of them coping with it well.

Their daughter, on the other hand, is fine 🤣

[sequinsmile-x]

Bestie looking for angst fics of yours! Kinda they fight and make up kind of thing lol ? You have so many I don’t even know how to narrow the search?

Bestie I say this with all the love in my heart but i’m going to need you to be more specific 🤣🤣

Do you remember what they were fighting about? Because I’ve written a fair few haha

[sequinsmile-x]

My Twisted Knife, My Sleepless Night, My Winless Fight

He’d wander the halls of their home like a ghost, stuck somewhere between the living and the dead, all of his mistakes and things he wishes he could change just one step behind him as they followed him and his weary footsteps around the house.

The one in which Aaron can't sleep.

-x-

Hi besties,

This was largely sponsored by my insomnia the last several nights. Sleep is alluding me for one reason or another, so I had to make it allude one of them too...and I've been really mean to Emily lately so it was Aaron's turn <3

As always, let me know what you think!

-x-

Warnings: Insomnia, anxiety, pregnancy

Words: 2.8k

Read over on Ao3, or read below the cut

He’d struggled with sleep for years. 

He’d always prided himself on how well he could cope on little sleep. It was a badge of honour, something the team would joke about - are we sure he isn’t a robot - when he was the last to reach for the coffee pot on long nights when cases drew out around them. It had helped when Jack was tiny and Haley was at her wits' end, crying from exhaustion because she’d wanted to do all the night feeds until he kissed her on the forehead and told her to sleep. He’d sat up in bed for hours at a time, a newborn Jack asleep against his chest, and his wife snoring softly next to him, and he’d go to work the next morning and be able to do his job without thinking twice. 

Not long after the explosion in New York that killed Kate Joyner, everything changed. 

It started with the ringing in his ears. It was constant. Impossible to ignore. Every time he closed his eyes, he was right there, ears ringing from the explosion and his hands wet with Kate’s blood. He was kept awake by it, replaying it all again and again as he tried to figure out if there was anything he could have done differently. He settled back into something close to normality after that, got used to sleeping again when he could and managing when he couldn’t. 

Then Foyet happened, and Aaron would see him in every shadow, would hear him in every creak in the floorboards. In those first few weeks, he thinks he only slept at all because of the medication he was on, his head fuzzy and everything out of focus as soon as he took them for the pain he’d still feel even now on his worst days. After Haley died, after he failed to save her, Aaron’s ability to sleep well went with her. He was haunted by it, the phantom of everything he could have done, and everything he couldn’t change, chasing away any chance of rest. 

He’d go through phases where it was fine, when he’d be able to sink into bed, wrap his arms around Emily, and fall asleep, lulled into it by the press of her against him and the smell of her hair. Then, inevitably, the insomnia would rear its ugly head.

It always started with a night of tossing and turning, an itch in the back of his head that he couldn’t place, everything and anything running through his mind on a loop he couldn’t break. It was frustrating, would make irritation that did not help lick at his insides, and he’d eventually get a few hours of broken sleep that did nothing to mitigate the exhaustion that was heavy in his bones. 

It had been weeks of it now. Weeks of lying in bed until Emily fell asleep and then sneaking out, a kiss against her temple as he murmured his love against her skin, unable to cope with just lying there until his body gave up and would let him rest fitfully. He’d wander the halls of their home like a ghost, stuck somewhere between the living and the dead, all of his mistakes and things he wishes he could change just one step behind him as they followed him and his weary footsteps around the house. He’d do paperwork sometimes until his eyes were blurry, work he’d always have to inevitably do again in the morning when he would furrow his brow and wonder what the fuck he’d been thinking the night before. Sometimes he’d do chores or housework they’d put off for months, or he’d quietly sit in the soon-to-be nursery as he folded and refolded impossibly tiny clothes for the baby growing beneath Emily’s skin, trying to do everything he could to make sure his daughter knew she was loved before she was even born. 

Aaron knew that Emily knew. She wasn’t a stranger to insomnia herself, had her own demons that would linger in their bedroom at times. More than once, he’d woken up in the middle of the night to find her reading, or just lying there, her hand wrapped tightly around his as she stared at the wall, using him as an anchor to everything she had now. She’d asked him more than once if he was okay, her brow furrowed as he’d slip past her in their hallway most evenings as soon as she got back from work, his hands on her hips as he kissed her cheek and said he was going out for a quick run, hoping that maybe this time it would tire him out enough to sleep. He’d get home and cook dinner - refusing help from her because she needed to rest, a combination of doctor’s orders and his own - and he’d tell her that he was fine, even though they both knew he wasn’t. 

She had enough to worry about; that’s what he told himself every time he came close to breaking down. She was 37 weeks pregnant. She was exhausted and anxious, and emotional in a way he knew she hated, prone to tears shining in her eyes at a moment’s notice, her famous control over her emotions in front of everyone except him left somewhere back in her first trimester. 

She had enough to worry about without having to worry about him, too. 

He sighs as he watches the clock in the living room tick past 3 am, and he rubs his hands over his face, hoping that by some miracle, he’d manage to wipe away the exhaustion he couldn’t remember not feeling. Usually, he would have gone back to bed an hour ago, would have been lying next to his wife, his arm over her waist and his palm on her belly, and desperately trying to get some rest before the sun rose and it all started all over again. He's about to get up, about to head back upstairs to try to sleep, when he hears a door upstairs open, followed by his wife’s familiar footsteps, slightly dulled by a pair of socks she’d no doubt stolen from him. 

He smiled as he hears her start walking down the stairs, the thunk of her feet against the hardwood punctuated by a quiet curse, loud in the otherwise silent house, as the baby gets pressed up against her lungs. Her ability to be stealthy was another thing she’d lost to pregnancy. Her gait had changed, so her footsteps were heavier than they used to be. He wondered if she knew that she talked all the time these days, that she’d mutter sentences under her breath to the baby, both in English and French, narrating everything she was doing as if their daughter was conversing with her. 

She’d never say it outloud, because on some level she truly believed if she did, he’d think she didn’t love their little girl, but she was over being pregnant. She felt out of control of so many things, including her body, which no longer felt like her own - and wouldn’t for a while yet, since she was planning on exclusively breastfeeding - and being at the mercy of whenever the baby decided she was ready to be born was, he knew, driving her crazy. 

“Let’s check on Daddy,” she says, just before she comes into view, her smile soft and tired as she walks, waddles, into the living room wearing a t-shirt that used to belong to him, the Harvard emblem stretched across her belly as she idly rubs circles where he knows their daughter will be kicking. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he replies, smiling at her in a way he hopes covers how tired he is, “Are you okay?”

She nods, walking towards him, talking around a yawn as she makes it to his side, “I’m okay. Woke up to pee because there’s a baby girl on my bladder,” she says, smiling gratefully as he helps her down onto the couch, his arm automatically around her shoulders, “I thought I’d come and check on you.” 

He clenches his jaw, irritation he could only direct inwards burning up his throat. He kisses the top of her head and takes a moment to breathe her in, letting the smell of her, of home, dampen out the anger he thinks he may be woven through his DNA with nothing more than her presence. 

“Sorry.” 

She pulls back to look at him, furrowing her brow as she cups his cheek, “Don’t apologise,” she says, “I was worried about you. Usually, you’re back in bed by 2 am.” 

He sighs and shakes his head at himself, “I haven’t done a very good job of hiding it, huh?” 

She hums and runs her fingers through his hair, smiling sadly as he chases her touch, “In your defence, honey, I am up several times a night to pee these days,” she says, “Plus, even though I am the most pregnant person to ever waddle the earth, the bed is empty with out you.” 

He closes his eyes, guilt flooding his lungs because this was what he’d been trying to avoid. “You have enough to worry about.” 

“While that is true,” she cups his cheek again, and the teasing edge to her smile slips into seriousness, her eyebrows furrowed as she makes him look at her. “When are you going to learn that you’re worth worrying about, too?” She asks, running her thumb back and forth under his eye, trying to soothe the tiredness pressed into his skin. She presses her lips together, “Do you know what’s causing it?” 

He shakes his head, “Not really. I just…can’t relax enough to sleep.” 

She stares at him for a moment and bites the inside of her cheek, choosing her words carefully. “Having a baby is a big change, I know it’s probably not helping-”

“I love her, Em.” He says, cutting her off, an edge to his voice he knows she doesn’t deserve, something he wants to protect her from, even though he’s the one wielding it, his exhaustion making him feel like he was behind glass, everything around him muffled and slightly out of focus. 

“I know,” she replies, much calmer than him, not biting on the argument he’s unintentionally trying to start, nor offended by the grippiness he usually didn’t have with her, “I know you do. I do too,” she says, shifting his hand so it moves with their little girl, “But that doesn’t make it any less of a big, life changing thing bringing home a new baby,” she tilts her head at him, understanding and love he wasn’t sure he deserved shining in her eyes, “It’s understandable if that is what is making you anxious.” 

He sighs because he hates that she’s right, that she’s put into words what he’s been struggling to admit to himself for weeks, and he clenches his jaw tightly when he feels tears pressing at the back of his eyes. 

“Things changed after we had Jack,” he says, shaking his head as he sighs, “Things were good for a while, but things changed and…looking back at that’s when things started to fall apart. When Haley wanted more from me, and I couldn’t give it to her for reasons that feel so stupid now,” he swears he can hear his heart pounding in his head, a wave of emotion he’d usually be able to contain overwhelming him, “I don’t want…” he clears his throat, “I can’t let that happen to us too. And I feel so guilty I couldn’t do the same for her”

“Hey,” she says soothingly, the same tone of voice she used when she spoke idly to the baby, “It won’t happen,” she says, smiling when he opens his mouth to argue, her finger against his lips to stop him, “I’m not Haley, and you’re not the same man you were then,” she reaches up and presses her thumb into the crease between his eyebrows, “You’re still kind, and funny, and insanely handsome,” she says, smiling when chuckles, the sound wet in his chest, “But you’re making different choices. And that’s all you can do, and it’s the best way to honour her too.” 

He knew she was right, that he was making better choices now than he had before, that he was doing better at balancing everything, but it didn’t make the guilt any easier to take. It didn’t make sleep any easier to come by when he was haunted by all the things he couldn’t take back, that he wasn’t sure he would take back, because it would mean not being here with Emily, something that seemed more inconceivable than anything else. 

“I just…” he drifts off and swallows thickly, kisses her palm when she makes him look at her again, not letting him stop soaking in the comfort she had ready and waiting for him. “I’m so tired, Em.” 

She hugs his head to her chest and kisses the top of his head, soothing words she usually reserved for Jack murmured against his skin as he cries because he just wants to sleep. 

“I know you are,” she replies, scratching the back of his head. “I know,” she repeats, kissing his hairline, “I know you are, sweetheart.” The use of the nickname he usually used for her passes from her chest to his, and he holds her tighter as if he’d find solace in her skin. 

If he were honest with himself, he thinks he might have already. She was his guiding light, his port in a storm, and he liked to think, on the days when the good outweighed the bad and he could believe in happy endings, that she was the very thing he’d been limping towards all these years. 

“I’m sorry I tried to keep this from you.” He mutters against her chest, the t-shirt that used to be his damp with his tears. 

She smiles and pulls back to look at him, “It’s okay. I know what you were trying to do,” something sparks in her eyes, a type of mischief he can see their little inheriting, one of many things she’ll get from her mother that will make him incapable of saying no to her, “Plus, you aren’t the only one in this house who tries to keep things to themselves instead of sharing.” 

He hums, “You mean like you and the peanut butter cups?” 

She scoffs at him, her laugh bright and beautiful, and briefly a little too loud as she lightly slaps his shoulder, “Hey, those are for the baby. Not me.” 

“Sure, sweetheart,” he says, stamping his lips against hers, “I believe you,” kissing her again, smiling when he tastes chocolate and peanut butter, “Even if you do have a secret stash of them in your nightstand.” 

She playfully narrows her eyes at him and shakes her head, scratching her nails through his hair, smiling as he leans into the touch again, “Do you want to stay here for a little while?” She asks, trying and failing to hide a yawn, “Or do you want to try to go to bed?” 

“Let’s go to bed,” he says, pulling away enough to stand up, offering her a hand as he helps her up too, “Even if I can’t sleep, I can do my favourite thing.” 

She tilts her head at him, not letting go of his hand as they start to walk towards the stairs, “What's that then?”

He kisses her temple and palms her belly, “Snuggling with my girls.” 

She rolls her eyes at him and shakes her head, stopping them so she can kiss him, her lips catching the corner of his lips. “You’re ridiculous,” she says, winking as she kisses him and yawns again, “But it just so happens that’s our favourite thing to do too,” she rubs a circle on her bump, “Isn’t that right, baby girl?” She smiles at him as they start heading up the stairs, “Maybe you should call in sick tomorrow so we can snuggle all day.” 

He smiles and nods, too tired to argue or to try and convince himself that it wasn’t a good idea, “Yeah,” he agrees, “Yeah, that sounds nice.” 

She falls asleep the moment they are in bed, sandwiched between him and her pregnancy pillow. He lies behind her, his palm on her belly and his nose against her hairline, and he does everything he can to relax. It takes another hour or so, but he finally succumbs to sleep, safe in the knowledge that no matter what, he’d always have this. 

[sequinsmile-x]

My Twisted Knife, My Sleepless Night, My Winless Fight

He’d wander the halls of their home like a ghost, stuck somewhere between the living and the dead, all of his mistakes and things he wishes he could change just one step behind him as they followed him and his weary footsteps around the house.

The one in which Aaron can't sleep.

-x-

Hi besties,

This was largely sponsored by my insomnia the last several nights. Sleep is alluding me for one reason or another, so I had to make it allude one of them too...and I've been really mean to Emily lately so it was Aaron's turn <3

As always, let me know what you think!

-x-

Warnings: Insomnia, anxiety, pregnancy

Words: 2.8k

Read over on Ao3, or read below the cut

He’d struggled with sleep for years. 

He’d always prided himself on how well he could cope on little sleep. It was a badge of honour, something the team would joke about - are we sure he isn’t a robot - when he was the last to reach for the coffee pot on long nights when cases drew out around them. It had helped when Jack was tiny and Haley was at her wits' end, crying from exhaustion because she’d wanted to do all the night feeds until he kissed her on the forehead and told her to sleep. He’d sat up in bed for hours at a time, a newborn Jack asleep against his chest, and his wife snoring softly next to him, and he’d go to work the next morning and be able to do his job without thinking twice. 

Not long after the explosion in New York that killed Kate Joyner, everything changed. 

It started with the ringing in his ears. It was constant. Impossible to ignore. Every time he closed his eyes, he was right there, ears ringing from the explosion and his hands wet with Kate’s blood. He was kept awake by it, replaying it all again and again as he tried to figure out if there was anything he could have done differently. He settled back into something close to normality after that, got used to sleeping again when he could and managing when he couldn’t. 

Then Foyet happened, and Aaron would see him in every shadow, would hear him in every creak in the floorboards. In those first few weeks, he thinks he only slept at all because of the medication he was on, his head fuzzy and everything out of focus as soon as he took them for the pain he’d still feel even now on his worst days. After Haley died, after he failed to save her, Aaron’s ability to sleep well went with her. He was haunted by it, the phantom of everything he could have done, and everything he couldn’t change, chasing away any chance of rest. 

He’d go through phases where it was fine, when he’d be able to sink into bed, wrap his arms around Emily, and fall asleep, lulled into it by the press of her against him and the smell of her hair. Then, inevitably, the insomnia would rear its ugly head.

It always started with a night of tossing and turning, an itch in the back of his head that he couldn’t place, everything and anything running through his mind on a loop he couldn’t break. It was frustrating, would make irritation that did not help lick at his insides, and he’d eventually get a few hours of broken sleep that did nothing to mitigate the exhaustion that was heavy in his bones. 

It had been weeks of it now. Weeks of lying in bed until Emily fell asleep and then sneaking out, a kiss against her temple as he murmured his love against her skin, unable to cope with just lying there until his body gave up and would let him rest fitfully. He’d wander the halls of their home like a ghost, stuck somewhere between the living and the dead, all of his mistakes and things he wishes he could change just one step behind him as they followed him and his weary footsteps around the house. He’d do paperwork sometimes until his eyes were blurry, work he’d always have to inevitably do again in the morning when he would furrow his brow and wonder what the fuck he’d been thinking the night before. Sometimes he’d do chores or housework they’d put off for months, or he’d quietly sit in the soon-to-be nursery as he folded and refolded impossibly tiny clothes for the baby growing beneath Emily’s skin, trying to do everything he could to make sure his daughter knew she was loved before she was even born. 

Aaron knew that Emily knew. She wasn’t a stranger to insomnia herself, had her own demons that would linger in their bedroom at times. More than once, he’d woken up in the middle of the night to find her reading, or just lying there, her hand wrapped tightly around his as she stared at the wall, using him as an anchor to everything she had now. She’d asked him more than once if he was okay, her brow furrowed as he’d slip past her in their hallway most evenings as soon as she got back from work, his hands on her hips as he kissed her cheek and said he was going out for a quick run, hoping that maybe this time it would tire him out enough to sleep. He’d get home and cook dinner - refusing help from her because she needed to rest, a combination of doctor’s orders and his own - and he’d tell her that he was fine, even though they both knew he wasn’t. 

She had enough to worry about; that’s what he told himself every time he came close to breaking down. She was 37 weeks pregnant. She was exhausted and anxious, and emotional in a way he knew she hated, prone to tears shining in her eyes at a moment’s notice, her famous control over her emotions in front of everyone except him left somewhere back in her first trimester. 

She had enough to worry about without having to worry about him, too. 

He sighs as he watches the clock in the living room tick past 3 am, and he rubs his hands over his face, hoping that by some miracle, he’d manage to wipe away the exhaustion he couldn’t remember not feeling. Usually, he would have gone back to bed an hour ago, would have been lying next to his wife, his arm over her waist and his palm on her belly, and desperately trying to get some rest before the sun rose and it all started all over again. He's about to get up, about to head back upstairs to try to sleep, when he hears a door upstairs open, followed by his wife’s familiar footsteps, slightly dulled by a pair of socks she’d no doubt stolen from him. 

He smiled as he hears her start walking down the stairs, the thunk of her feet against the hardwood punctuated by a quiet curse, loud in the otherwise silent house, as the baby gets pressed up against her lungs. Her ability to be stealthy was another thing she’d lost to pregnancy. Her gait had changed, so her footsteps were heavier than they used to be. He wondered if she knew that she talked all the time these days, that she’d mutter sentences under her breath to the baby, both in English and French, narrating everything she was doing as if their daughter was conversing with her. 

She’d never say it outloud, because on some level she truly believed if she did, he’d think she didn’t love their little girl, but she was over being pregnant. She felt out of control of so many things, including her body, which no longer felt like her own - and wouldn’t for a while yet, since she was planning on exclusively breastfeeding - and being at the mercy of whenever the baby decided she was ready to be born was, he knew, driving her crazy. 

“Let’s check on Daddy,” she says, just before she comes into view, her smile soft and tired as she walks, waddles, into the living room wearing a t-shirt that used to belong to him, the Harvard emblem stretched across her belly as she idly rubs circles where he knows their daughter will be kicking. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he replies, smiling at her in a way he hopes covers how tired he is, “Are you okay?”

She nods, walking towards him, talking around a yawn as she makes it to his side, “I’m okay. Woke up to pee because there’s a baby girl on my bladder,” she says, smiling gratefully as he helps her down onto the couch, his arm automatically around her shoulders, “I thought I’d come and check on you.” 

He clenches his jaw, irritation he could only direct inwards burning up his throat. He kisses the top of her head and takes a moment to breathe her in, letting the smell of her, of home, dampen out the anger he thinks he may be woven through his DNA with nothing more than her presence. 

“Sorry.” 

She pulls back to look at him, furrowing her brow as she cups his cheek, “Don’t apologise,” she says, “I was worried about you. Usually, you’re back in bed by 2 am.” 

He sighs and shakes his head at himself, “I haven’t done a very good job of hiding it, huh?” 

She hums and runs her fingers through his hair, smiling sadly as he chases her touch, “In your defence, honey, I am up several times a night to pee these days,” she says, “Plus, even though I am the most pregnant person to ever waddle the earth, the bed is empty with out you.” 

He closes his eyes, guilt flooding his lungs because this was what he’d been trying to avoid. “You have enough to worry about.” 

“While that is true,” she cups his cheek again, and the teasing edge to her smile slips into seriousness, her eyebrows furrowed as she makes him look at her. “When are you going to learn that you’re worth worrying about, too?” She asks, running her thumb back and forth under his eye, trying to soothe the tiredness pressed into his skin. She presses her lips together, “Do you know what’s causing it?” 

He shakes his head, “Not really. I just…can’t relax enough to sleep.” 

She stares at him for a moment and bites the inside of her cheek, choosing her words carefully. “Having a baby is a big change, I know it’s probably not helping-”

“I love her, Em.” He says, cutting her off, an edge to his voice he knows she doesn’t deserve, something he wants to protect her from, even though he’s the one wielding it, his exhaustion making him feel like he was behind glass, everything around him muffled and slightly out of focus. 

“I know,” she replies, much calmer than him, not biting on the argument he’s unintentionally trying to start, nor offended by the grippiness he usually didn’t have with her, “I know you do. I do too,” she says, shifting his hand so it moves with their little girl, “But that doesn’t make it any less of a big, life changing thing bringing home a new baby,” she tilts her head at him, understanding and love he wasn’t sure he deserved shining in her eyes, “It’s understandable if that is what is making you anxious.” 

He sighs because he hates that she’s right, that she’s put into words what he’s been struggling to admit to himself for weeks, and he clenches his jaw tightly when he feels tears pressing at the back of his eyes. 

“Things changed after we had Jack,” he says, shaking his head as he sighs, “Things were good for a while, but things changed and…looking back at that’s when things started to fall apart. When Haley wanted more from me, and I couldn’t give it to her for reasons that feel so stupid now,” he swears he can hear his heart pounding in his head, a wave of emotion he’d usually be able to contain overwhelming him, “I don’t want…” he clears his throat, “I can’t let that happen to us too. And I feel so guilty I couldn’t do the same for her”

“Hey,” she says soothingly, the same tone of voice she used when she spoke idly to the baby, “It won’t happen,” she says, smiling when he opens his mouth to argue, her finger against his lips to stop him, “I’m not Haley, and you’re not the same man you were then,” she reaches up and presses her thumb into the crease between his eyebrows, “You’re still kind, and funny, and insanely handsome,” she says, smiling when chuckles, the sound wet in his chest, “But you’re making different choices. And that’s all you can do, and it’s the best way to honour her too.” 

He knew she was right, that he was making better choices now than he had before, that he was doing better at balancing everything, but it didn’t make the guilt any easier to take. It didn’t make sleep any easier to come by when he was haunted by all the things he couldn’t take back, that he wasn’t sure he would take back, because it would mean not being here with Emily, something that seemed more inconceivable than anything else. 

“I just…” he drifts off and swallows thickly, kisses her palm when she makes him look at her again, not letting him stop soaking in the comfort she had ready and waiting for him. “I’m so tired, Em.” 

She hugs his head to her chest and kisses the top of his head, soothing words she usually reserved for Jack murmured against his skin as he cries because he just wants to sleep. 

“I know you are,” she replies, scratching the back of his head. “I know,” she repeats, kissing his hairline, “I know you are, sweetheart.” The use of the nickname he usually used for her passes from her chest to his, and he holds her tighter as if he’d find solace in her skin. 

If he were honest with himself, he thinks he might have already. She was his guiding light, his port in a storm, and he liked to think, on the days when the good outweighed the bad and he could believe in happy endings, that she was the very thing he’d been limping towards all these years. 

“I’m sorry I tried to keep this from you.” He mutters against her chest, the t-shirt that used to be his damp with his tears. 

She smiles and pulls back to look at him, “It’s okay. I know what you were trying to do,” something sparks in her eyes, a type of mischief he can see their little inheriting, one of many things she’ll get from her mother that will make him incapable of saying no to her, “Plus, you aren’t the only one in this house who tries to keep things to themselves instead of sharing.” 

He hums, “You mean like you and the peanut butter cups?” 

She scoffs at him, her laugh bright and beautiful, and briefly a little too loud as she lightly slaps his shoulder, “Hey, those are for the baby. Not me.” 

“Sure, sweetheart,” he says, stamping his lips against hers, “I believe you,” kissing her again, smiling when he tastes chocolate and peanut butter, “Even if you do have a secret stash of them in your nightstand.” 

She playfully narrows her eyes at him and shakes her head, scratching her nails through his hair, smiling as he leans into the touch again, “Do you want to stay here for a little while?” She asks, trying and failing to hide a yawn, “Or do you want to try to go to bed?” 

“Let’s go to bed,” he says, pulling away enough to stand up, offering her a hand as he helps her up too, “Even if I can’t sleep, I can do my favourite thing.” 

She tilts her head at him, not letting go of his hand as they start to walk towards the stairs, “What's that then?”

He kisses her temple and palms her belly, “Snuggling with my girls.” 

She rolls her eyes at him and shakes her head, stopping them so she can kiss him, her lips catching the corner of his lips. “You’re ridiculous,” she says, winking as she kisses him and yawns again, “But it just so happens that’s our favourite thing to do too,” she rubs a circle on her bump, “Isn’t that right, baby girl?” She smiles at him as they start heading up the stairs, “Maybe you should call in sick tomorrow so we can snuggle all day.” 

He smiles and nods, too tired to argue or to try and convince himself that it wasn’t a good idea, “Yeah,” he agrees, “Yeah, that sounds nice.” 

She falls asleep the moment they are in bed, sandwiched between him and her pregnancy pillow. He lies behind her, his palm on her belly and his nose against her hairline, and he does everything he can to relax. It takes another hour or so, but he finally succumbs to sleep, safe in the knowledge that no matter what, he’d always have this. 

[sequinsmile-x]

You write happy endings…people moan. You write sad endings…people moan. You write calm chapters…people moan. You write eventful chapters…people moan.

People who are doing the least are the biggest keyboard warriors taking time out their day to say nasty things for no real good reason.

The irony is I bet these are the same people who preach mental health when they’re the ones who are hurting others for no good reason - do a little self searching and be kinder to yourself rather than picking on others!!

I speak for the 99% of us who love your work and have notifications turned on for when you post that your work is fab, it’s restbite from how shitty life can be and having that little bit of escapism is a real treat for us all 💙

Thank you <3 that really means the world to me. This is such a nice little corner of the internet <3

I really intended to sit down tonight and finish something up to post but I've been at a baby shower/birthday party today (my friend is due ON her 30th birthday) and I think socialising took up all my brain power.

[sequinsmile-x]

why do you always write happy endings? it feels unrealistic

I think thats exactly why I write them.

The world is a horrible, depressing, awful place to exist most days. Especially at the moment with the seemingly never ending roll of bad news and people doing terrible things to each other.

I write happy endings because I think Emily and Aaron deserve them, because god knows they never really got them in canon, at least never for long.

I write happy endings because I love them. Because it's a reminder that good things can happen. That people can fall in love and stay in love and live life together.

I write happy endings because I think the world needs them, even if that means I have to write them myself.

[sequinsmile-x]

Nooooo! Please write it! If they send you hate I will fight them 😫😫😂

thank you <3 it's nice to know I always have you in my corner <3

[sequinsmile-x]

i don’t understand how people hate on SGW it’s honestly one of my favs 😣

Thank you so so much <3

Multichapters are weird because people expect full on action in each chapter, but it's like the good old days of TV when there were 22 episodes a series...some chapters are filler/have less going on and that's totally fine!!

But there is some drama on it's way soon ;) the last bit of drama in SGW <3

[sequinsmile-x]

I want to write SGW so badly but every time I post a chapter these days I get hate for it and it means I just end up staring at a google doc really anxious, which takes the fun out of my favourite hobby 🙃🙃

[sequinsmile-x]

The Ring

When she comes back from Paris, nothing is the same, and the ring he bought that was intended for her stays in his desk drawer.

(She finds it, years later, when his desk becomes hers.)

Emily, Aaron, the ring, and a new start to their story.

-x-

Hi besties,

This is a continuation of a mini fic I wrote back in 2021 called 'The Ring,' which is chapter 2 in my mini fic collection 'Folklore.'

The other day I got an anon asking me if I'd ever considered doing a follow up/continuation of it, and I'll be honest up until then I hadn't, but then it was all I could think about.

The first part of this in italics is 'The Ring' as originally posted so you don't have to dig through my archive to find it.

I think what we can all take from this is that my sinus infection cleared, all the mucus is gone and it left all the insanity behind

As always, let me know what you think <3

-x-

Warnings: none

Words: 4k

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

He should have seen it. That’s all Aaron can think about as he sits next to her hospital bed in a room in Bethesda, a fake name on her paperwork and a funeral being organised under her real one. She had been acting off for weeks, rebuffing his offers of dinner, of dates at the park with hot chocolates with liquor in as they walked hand in hand and talked about anything and everything.

Emily had been his cornerstone when Haley was killed. Looking after both him and Jack in a practical way. She brought over takeout, and she helped Jack with his homework. She sat with Aaron in silence, understanding the need to not talk but also not wanting to be alone. It shifted, eventually, the way they felt at ease around each other helping the line between friendship and something else blur.

It was Emily who made the jump, knowing he never would. She asked him to dinner and gently suggested Jessica take Jack for the evening. It took him until their main course arrived for him to realise it was a date. He kissed her when he walked her to her door, tentative at first until it gave way to the passion that had been simmering for longer than either of them would freely admit.

They loved each other, and had said as much, and as time went on, Aaron could see a future with her.

Then things changed, and this is where they had ended up. Emily alive, which felt like nothing short of a miracle given her injuries, and everything else turned to dust on the floor of a warehouse in Boston. He made the decision to sign away the life of the woman he loved, the woman he had wanted to spend his life with, in order to protect her.

“They all think I’m dead?” She asks, her voice thick with pain and sorrow.

He nods and reaches for her hand, relieved when she links her fingers through his. “Yes, I’m so sorry, Em. If there was another way-”

“It’s ok, I understand.” She says, trying and failing to smile at him. “Jack?”

Aaron shakes his head. “I haven’t decided what to tell him yet.”

“I’m so sorry, Aaron.” Emily says, tears gathering in her eyes. “Everything is so fucked, and it’s all my fault.”

He leans forward and places a hand on her forehead, pushing her bangs out of the way so he can run his fingers over her skin, something that had always soothed her.

“Baby, you have nothing to apologise for.” He says gently. “We’ll get him, and then you can come home.”

She smiles sadly at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

She’s drifting off, eyes glassy and words slurred as a combination of pain medication and exhaustion takes over. “Like you still love me.”

Aaron closes his eyes, trying to push back the emotion that he didn’t want to burden her with. Not when she had already taken on so much by herself. He knew her well enough to know she thought that this had changed his feelings. That knowing what she had done with Ian Doyle, that a part of her had loved him, would stop Aaron from loving her.

“That’s the thing, Em. I will always love you.” He opens his eyes, and she’s already asleep.

When she comes back from Paris, nothing is the same, and the ring he bought that was intended for her stays in his desk drawer.

(She finds it, years later, when his desk becomes hers.)

___

She kept the ring. 

She slipped it into her purse and took it home, placed it in her safe alongside her passport. She looked at it every night, stared at it for a second every time she placed her gun into the safe. It was a penance of sorts, a self-inflicted punishment for choices she isn’t even sure she’d make any differently if she were given a chance, a phantom of a life she never got to live. Andrew had asked her about it once, curiosity and an edge of jealousy in his voice as he saw the small ring box over her shoulder one night as she put away their guns. She lied. An easy, familiar thing that was sweet instead of bitter when it tripped off her tongue as she told him it was her grandmother's. 

The truth felt too precious to share, a jewel that was much rarer than the diamond Aaron had once bought with her in mind. It was theirs. A snippet in time that could have been forever if things had been different. If she’d been brave enough to stay, or if he’d been bold enough to follow her. She thought about it a lot, more than she wishes she did. She thought about a different life that would visit her in her dreams, the familiar but faded feeling of him pressed against her, the out-of-focus faces of the children they’d idly talked about when it felt like they had all the time in the world. She’d get drawn into it, would get lost in it until her alarm would sound and she’d be torn from it into an empty bed in an even emptier house. 

The worst part was, they were good at being friends. He’d call her occasionally, or she’d call him, and they’d talk about anything other than them. She’d ask about Jack, and Aaron would ask about the team, and it was almost enough. 

They’d been in touch even more since Will died. She’d been the one to call the old members of the team, starting with Spencer and then Derek, like she was the herald of death. She left Aaron to last, chose to speak to Alex Blake and Kate, people she’d never worked with directly, before him, because she knew the conversation with him would be the easiest one. She wouldn’t have to pretend to be strong as she relayed details of the funeral and JJ’s request for flowers if people wanted to send them. He’d known something was wrong the moment she said hi, had asked what was going on before she even sucked in a breath. 

He’d called her weekly since then, always at the same time on a Saturday. He handed out advice she asked for over what to do with JJ coming back to work so soon, had shared in her frustration over Voit’s continued involvement with everything. It felt like old times, like little hints of what used to be, as she sat on her couch, her cheeks warm as he made her laugh about something, and her heart heavy when the call had to end. 

She hadn’t realised how important their weekly calls had become to her until he doesn’t call one weekend. She’s sitting on the couch, her phone in hand as she watches the screen as if it would make him call any faster, and a glass of wine on the coffee table. She’s about to call him, half convinced that something must have happened to him as she Googles which hospitals are closest to his house, even though he’s three states away, when her doorbell rings. She sighs, because of course her takeout would arrive right now, and she opens the door without looking up, her focus still on her phone as she looks through articles to see if a man in his sixties has been in an accident in Michigan, holding out the money for the delivery guy.

“Your tip is in there, too.” 

She hears a chuckle, one she hasn’t heard in person for years, and she looks up, her breath caught in her throat as she finds herself staring at the man she’d spent the last 30 minutes convinced had been in some kind of terrible accident. He’s smiling at her, her takeout in hand, and when she blinks, she can see him doing the exact same thing over a decade ago. 

“Aaron?” 

“Hi,” he says, clearing his throat when he hears the shyness in it, unsure about his plan for the first time all week, “I was thinking, instead of talking on the phone this week, we should catch up in person,” he looks at the money she’s still holding out to him and smiles, “I paid the delivery guy, we arrived at the same time, so you can put your money away.” 

She stares at him, her mouth still hanging open ever so slightly, but she nods, shaking her head at herself as she steps back and lets him in, forcing the money back into the pocket of her jeans. 

“Yeah, of course,” she says, ignoring the way her heart hammers in her chest as he walks past her, because how could he still smell the same as she remembered “I…” she chokes on a laugh and turns to look at him, her arms crossed over her chest as she leads him to the kitchen, “This is…what are you doing here?”

He pauses for a moment before he puts the bag of takeout down on the counter, “Like I said, I thought we-”

“Not here,” she says, more forceful than she means to be, “I mean here in DC.” 

He feels nervous under her unrelenting gaze, a look in her eyes that had always drawn him in, a depth to them he’d willingly drowned in more than once. He clears his throat again and looks around her kitchen, busying himself with getting out the crockery for the food she’d bought. He can’t help but smile when he finds the cabinet with the plates on the first attempt, even though he’d never been here before.

“I was here looking at some houses.” 

She furrows her brow, tightening her arms over her chest as he finds the cutlery on the first try too, feeling oddly exposed over how well he knew her, “Houses? Why?” 

He smiles at her as he tears open the plastic bag the Chinese food was in, “To live in,” he says, and his smile gets wider when he sees how much food is in front of him, “It’s a good thing you still order enough food to feed a small army.” 

She steps closer to him, something close to hope sparking in her gut, dangerous and overwhelming as the smoke of it fills her lungs, “You’re…you’re moving here?” 

He stops what he’s doing and makes eye contact with her, and he nods, “Jack is in Baltimore for school, he’s planning on staying there for med school too,” he says, telling her something she already knows, giving her the final pieces to the puzzle he’d been laying for weeks, worried if she knew he was planning on moving back that they’d have to talk about everything they never talked about before he was ready to. “I hate being so far away from him after everything, but he’d kill me if I moved to Baltimore,” he smiles as he starts to serve the food, “DC seemed like a good compromise.” 

He was coming back. After all this time, he was coming back, and she has to pinch herself, digs her blunt nails into the flesh of her bicep to make sure she was awake and that this wasn’t a dream. 

“Why…why didn’t you tell me?” She asks, and he holds out a plate of food for her, all of the different things she’d ordered separated out because he knows she hates them mixed together on the plate, and she takes it from him, tries to hide her reaction when their fingers brush. 

“Why don’t we eat, and I’ll tell you everything?” He suggests, and she nods, nodding towards the living room so they can sit down. 

He tells her about missing Jack, about missing home and her. He’s shy when he says it, avoids her eye contact as he chases noodles around his plate so she doesn’t see the flush in his skin when he says what he’s never had to say. She chastises him for keeping it a secret, a playfulness to her tone that she thought she’d lost as she kicks at his thigh with her foot. He says he hasn’t found a place to live yet, that he’s in town for a couple of days to look at a few more houses, and that he’s staying in a hotel downtown. 

Her offer for him to stay at her place is out in the air around them before she can really think about it, but she insists when he hesitates, not quite sure she’s ready to watch him leave again. When it’s clear he’s staying for the night, she gets him a glass and grabs the bottle of wine from the kitchen, and everything feels like it used to. She makes him laugh, the kind of laugh only she’d ever been able to pull from deep in his gut, and he does the same for her.

Later, she’d ask herself why she asks him, whether it was the wine or his comforting presence, but she sighs in a brief moment of silence and watches him carefully. 

“Do you ever think about it?” 

He tilts his head at her, “Think about what?” He asks, even though they both know he knows, each of them nervous to be the first to bring up what they’d never spoken about. 

She rolls her eyes at him but carries on, feeling braver than she has in a long time, “Us. What we had…” she says, sighing sadly, the sharp knife of regret cutting through her, “What we could have had.” 

“All the time,” He nods, his lips pressed together in a firm line and his eyebrows furrowed. She has to grasp her thigh with the hand not holding her wine glass to stop herself from reaching out to soothe the deep line between his brows, to refamiliarise herself with the ridges of it, “I think about it all the time.” 

She clears her throat, and her tongue peeks out to wet her suddenly dry lips, and she tastes the bravery on them, uses it to carry on even though her heart is hammering in her chest. 

“I found the ring,” she says, and his shoulders go tight, his jaw so tense he’s surprised it doesn’t shatter, and she smiles sadly at him, shrugging one shoulder as if it was nothing even though they both knew it was everything, “I still have it, actually.” 

“You…you still have it?” 

She nods, “In my safe in my home office,” she says, staring at the glass in her hands, unsure what she’ll find if she looks up at him, unsure if she wants to know, “It felt wrong to get rid of it or sell it. So I kept it.” 

They fall into silence, and for the first time since he showed up, it’s awkward. Thick and cloying and weighing heavily on them both until he speaks again, the seconds that had passed feeling like hours. 

“I’m sorry.” 

She looks up so quickly it cricks her neck, but she barely feels it, her focus instead entirely on the apology she hadn’t needed or expected, “Sorry? Why are you sorry?” 

“I never meant…” he clears his throat, pushes down everything he’d pretended hadn’t been living right at the top of his chest for years, “I was going to propose to you in my office…your office,” he shakes his head at himself, “And then you…and then everything with Doyle happened. And then when you came back, you weren’t okay, and I didn’t want to put any pressure on you. I kept the ring even after you left because I didn’t want to get rid of it either. It almost felt like I was…” 

“Saying it never happened,” she finishes for him, finally finding the words she’d been looking for all these years for why she’d kept the ring herself, and he nods, smiling at her in a way she’d dreamt of countless times. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, “And I never wanted to do that. So I kept it there, and I left so quickly because of everything with Peter Lewis. It was only when Jack and I were in witness protection that I realised you’d probably find it. So, I’m sorry.” 

She swallows thickly, and she wonders if he can hear her heart beating, or if his is beating in time with hers, if they’d always been more in tune with each other than they’d realised. 

“Don’t apologise,” she says, itching to reach out for him, to break the embargo on touching each other, but she knows if she starts, she won’t want to stop, “If anything, I should be the one who’s sorry,” she says, and he tilts his head at her curiously, and she laughs humourlessly, “If I’d have just…I don’t know, come to you back then? If I’d told you I still wanted to be with you but needed to be better first. If I’d found the damn ring before I left for London…things might be different.” 

He sighs, “Em-”

“Don’t you think about that too?” She asks, cutting over him, pressing her lips together to stop her chin from trembling, all of the loss that had happened in the last few years weighing down on her in a way she knew would be easier if she hadn’t had to shoulder it all alone, “What if we’d got married back then, or had a kid or two,” she looks away as she wipes a stray tear from her cheek, furious at herself for letting it fall, and she clears her throat as she looks back at him, “Don’t you think about ever think about it?” 

“Of course I do,” he says, gutted by the implication that he wasn’t haunted by it too, that he hadn’t spent years imagining she was his wife, like he hadn’t closed his eyes and tried to picture a little girl with her smile and his eyes and a little boy with dimples they’d playfully argue came from each other. "But, I think you're looking at it through rose tinted glasses, Em," he says, smiling at her over the glass of wine she'd poured him. She chokes on a sound she can't name, stuck between the way he says Em, the memories it brings up from half a lifetime ago, and the suggestion that she was looking back on something romantically.

"Me? Rose tinted glasses?" She scoffs, and she wonders what it means that the way he smiles at her has the same impact as it did all those years ago, as if no time had passed and he hadn't just rocked up on her doorstep out of nowhere. 

"You were miserable, sweet..." he drifts off and catches himself halfway through the term of endearment she'd always loved, clearing his throat to cover it as if she hadn't dreamt of him saying it most nights since he'd last used it. "You were miserable, and even if we had got back together and done all of those things, it might not have even lasted. You couldn't stay. And as much as I wanted you to, as much as I wanted you with me, I love you enough to let you go."

She sucks in a breath, feels the sharp edges of it against her ribs as her mouth goes dry, all of the air sucked out of the room as she stares at him.

"Love? You...you didn't say loved. You said..."

Her eyes drift closed as she remembers a moment from nearly 15 years ago, when she was dead to almost everyone but him. 

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” 

“Like you still love me.” 

“That’s the thing, Em. I will always love you.”

“I’ve always loved you,” he says, and she knows he’s thinking of the same moment too, that he’s been transported back to a hospital room in Bethesda. When she opens her eyes, he’s looking at her in a way he has done for years, in a way she’s had to ignore for almost all of them, and the breath she’s been holding escapes, makes her shudder as it passes her lips. “Nothing has ever changed that. Nothing ever will.” 

“Aaron…” she says, drifting off as he shifts towards her, choosing to be the brave one this time, and his knee knocks against her thigh as his breath skips across her face. She looks at him, tries to remember the last time they were this close to each other, and she thinks it might have been when she snuck into his office just before she left to hunt down Ian, when she’d broken their long-standing rule of no relationship stuff in the work place by kissing him and hoping he didn’t taste the desperation in it. She rests her forehead against his, settles into this strange embrace, and wonders how he’s even warmer than she remembered. “You’re moving back here?”

Whatever he’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that, and he frowns at her as he pulls back, curiosity tugging the corners of his lips up into a smile as he nods and confirms what she’s said, “I’m moving back here.” 

She’s kissing him before she can really think about it, her lips slotting against his like she’d only kissed him goodbye that morning, not like it had been nearly 15 years and countless heartbreaks since then. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her closer, his nose squished against her cheek as she sighs contentedly, her hand pressed against his chest as she pushes him back. 

“I love you too,” she says, unashamed this time when a tear slips past her lashline, turning her head to kiss his palm when he reaches up to catch it, “I always have,” she says, kissing his palm again, “Always will.” 

He takes her glass from her and rests it on the coffee table before he pulls her in for another kiss. She tries to commit it all to memory, the press of his lips against hers, the scratch of his beard against her cheek, the warmth of his hand on her back. It’s only when he pulls back to look at her, adoration in his eyes that she was never quite sure she deserved, that she realises she doesn’t have to commit this to memory, that if she wants him, he’s right here in front of her. 

“You shouldn’t buy anywhere,” she says, pressing her thumb into his lower lip, testing the feel of it. She smiles when he looks at her curiously again, “A house. You shouldn’t buy a house,” she adds, shaking her head when his eyebrows shoot up his forehead, “I’m not saying you should move in here tomorrow, we have a lot to talk about and figure out,” she says, running her fingers through his hair, “But buying somewhere seems pointless.” 

“I could ask my realtor to show me some rentals?” He suggests, hearing everything she hasn’t said, things that would seem too much too soon after everything else they’d shared this evening. 

She nods, biting her lower lip as she tries to contain her smile, kissing him quickly, unable to stop herself now she’d started. “That sounds perfect.” 

Twelve months later, he finally proposes, but not with the ring that still sat in her, their, safe, because it was bought by a man who no longer exists for a woman who no longer exists. He buys something new, something that marked the new beginning neither one of them was taking for granted. When he proposes in the office that was hers, that was once his, the place where they’d met and their story started for the first time, she smiles, dropping to her knees and saying yes before he even finishes the question. 

(They get married in their backyard, in the house that was once only hers, where their story started anew.) 

[sequinsmile-x]

The Ring

When she comes back from Paris, nothing is the same, and the ring he bought that was intended for her stays in his desk drawer.

(She finds it, years later, when his desk becomes hers.)

Emily, Aaron, the ring, and a new start to their story.

-x-

Hi besties,

This is a continuation of a mini fic I wrote back in 2021 called 'The Ring,' which is chapter 2 in my mini fic collection 'Folklore.'

The other day I got an anon asking me if I'd ever considered doing a follow up/continuation of it, and I'll be honest up until then I hadn't, but then it was all I could think about.

The first part of this in italics is 'The Ring' as originally posted so you don't have to dig through my archive to find it.

I think what we can all take from this is that my sinus infection cleared, all the mucus is gone and it left all the insanity behind

As always, let me know what you think <3

-x-

Warnings: none

Words: 4k

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

He should have seen it. That’s all Aaron can think about as he sits next to her hospital bed in a room in Bethesda, a fake name on her paperwork and a funeral being organised under her real one. She had been acting off for weeks, rebuffing his offers of dinner, of dates at the park with hot chocolates with liquor in as they walked hand in hand and talked about anything and everything.

Emily had been his cornerstone when Haley was killed. Looking after both him and Jack in a practical way. She brought over takeout, and she helped Jack with his homework. She sat with Aaron in silence, understanding the need to not talk but also not wanting to be alone. It shifted, eventually, the way they felt at ease around each other helping the line between friendship and something else blur.

It was Emily who made the jump, knowing he never would. She asked him to dinner and gently suggested Jessica take Jack for the evening. It took him until their main course arrived for him to realise it was a date. He kissed her when he walked her to her door, tentative at first until it gave way to the passion that had been simmering for longer than either of them would freely admit.

They loved each other, and had said as much, and as time went on, Aaron could see a future with her.

Then things changed, and this is where they had ended up. Emily alive, which felt like nothing short of a miracle given her injuries, and everything else turned to dust on the floor of a warehouse in Boston. He made the decision to sign away the life of the woman he loved, the woman he had wanted to spend his life with, in order to protect her.

“They all think I’m dead?” She asks, her voice thick with pain and sorrow.

He nods and reaches for her hand, relieved when she links her fingers through his. “Yes, I’m so sorry, Em. If there was another way-”

“It’s ok, I understand.” She says, trying and failing to smile at him. “Jack?”

Aaron shakes his head. “I haven’t decided what to tell him yet.”

“I’m so sorry, Aaron.” Emily says, tears gathering in her eyes. “Everything is so fucked, and it’s all my fault.”

He leans forward and places a hand on her forehead, pushing her bangs out of the way so he can run his fingers over her skin, something that had always soothed her.

“Baby, you have nothing to apologise for.” He says gently. “We’ll get him, and then you can come home.”

She smiles sadly at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

She’s drifting off, eyes glassy and words slurred as a combination of pain medication and exhaustion takes over. “Like you still love me.”

Aaron closes his eyes, trying to push back the emotion that he didn’t want to burden her with. Not when she had already taken on so much by herself. He knew her well enough to know she thought that this had changed his feelings. That knowing what she had done with Ian Doyle, that a part of her had loved him, would stop Aaron from loving her.

“That’s the thing, Em. I will always love you.” He opens his eyes, and she’s already asleep.

When she comes back from Paris, nothing is the same, and the ring he bought that was intended for her stays in his desk drawer.

(She finds it, years later, when his desk becomes hers.)

___

She kept the ring. 

She slipped it into her purse and took it home, placed it in her safe alongside her passport. She looked at it every night, stared at it for a second every time she placed her gun into the safe. It was a penance of sorts, a self-inflicted punishment for choices she isn’t even sure she’d make any differently if she were given a chance, a phantom of a life she never got to live. Andrew had asked her about it once, curiosity and an edge of jealousy in his voice as he saw the small ring box over her shoulder one night as she put away their guns. She lied. An easy, familiar thing that was sweet instead of bitter when it tripped off her tongue as she told him it was her grandmother's. 

The truth felt too precious to share, a jewel that was much rarer than the diamond Aaron had once bought with her in mind. It was theirs. A snippet in time that could have been forever if things had been different. If she’d been brave enough to stay, or if he’d been bold enough to follow her. She thought about it a lot, more than she wishes she did. She thought about a different life that would visit her in her dreams, the familiar but faded feeling of him pressed against her, the out-of-focus faces of the children they’d idly talked about when it felt like they had all the time in the world. She’d get drawn into it, would get lost in it until her alarm would sound and she’d be torn from it into an empty bed in an even emptier house. 

The worst part was, they were good at being friends. He’d call her occasionally, or she’d call him, and they’d talk about anything other than them. She’d ask about Jack, and Aaron would ask about the team, and it was almost enough. 

They’d been in touch even more since Will died. She’d been the one to call the old members of the team, starting with Spencer and then Derek, like she was the herald of death. She left Aaron to last, chose to speak to Alex Blake and Kate, people she’d never worked with directly, before him, because she knew the conversation with him would be the easiest one. She wouldn’t have to pretend to be strong as she relayed details of the funeral and JJ’s request for flowers if people wanted to send them. He’d known something was wrong the moment she said hi, had asked what was going on before she even sucked in a breath. 

He’d called her weekly since then, always at the same time on a Saturday. He handed out advice she asked for over what to do with JJ coming back to work so soon, had shared in her frustration over Voit’s continued involvement with everything. It felt like old times, like little hints of what used to be, as she sat on her couch, her cheeks warm as he made her laugh about something, and her heart heavy when the call had to end. 

She hadn’t realised how important their weekly calls had become to her until he doesn’t call one weekend. She’s sitting on the couch, her phone in hand as she watches the screen as if it would make him call any faster, and a glass of wine on the coffee table. She’s about to call him, half convinced that something must have happened to him as she Googles which hospitals are closest to his house, even though he’s three states away, when her doorbell rings. She sighs, because of course her takeout would arrive right now, and she opens the door without looking up, her focus still on her phone as she looks through articles to see if a man in his sixties has been in an accident in Michigan, holding out the money for the delivery guy.

“Your tip is in there, too.” 

She hears a chuckle, one she hasn’t heard in person for years, and she looks up, her breath caught in her throat as she finds herself staring at the man she’d spent the last 30 minutes convinced had been in some kind of terrible accident. He’s smiling at her, her takeout in hand, and when she blinks, she can see him doing the exact same thing over a decade ago. 

“Aaron?” 

“Hi,” he says, clearing his throat when he hears the shyness in it, unsure about his plan for the first time all week, “I was thinking, instead of talking on the phone this week, we should catch up in person,” he looks at the money she’s still holding out to him and smiles, “I paid the delivery guy, we arrived at the same time, so you can put your money away.” 

She stares at him, her mouth still hanging open ever so slightly, but she nods, shaking her head at herself as she steps back and lets him in, forcing the money back into the pocket of her jeans. 

“Yeah, of course,” she says, ignoring the way her heart hammers in her chest as he walks past her, because how could he still smell the same as she remembered “I…” she chokes on a laugh and turns to look at him, her arms crossed over her chest as she leads him to the kitchen, “This is…what are you doing here?”

He pauses for a moment before he puts the bag of takeout down on the counter, “Like I said, I thought we-”

“Not here,” she says, more forceful than she means to be, “I mean here in DC.” 

He feels nervous under her unrelenting gaze, a look in her eyes that had always drawn him in, a depth to them he’d willingly drowned in more than once. He clears his throat again and looks around her kitchen, busying himself with getting out the crockery for the food she’d bought. He can’t help but smile when he finds the cabinet with the plates on the first attempt, even though he’d never been here before.

“I was here looking at some houses.” 

She furrows her brow, tightening her arms over her chest as he finds the cutlery on the first try too, feeling oddly exposed over how well he knew her, “Houses? Why?” 

He smiles at her as he tears open the plastic bag the Chinese food was in, “To live in,” he says, and his smile gets wider when he sees how much food is in front of him, “It’s a good thing you still order enough food to feed a small army.” 

She steps closer to him, something close to hope sparking in her gut, dangerous and overwhelming as the smoke of it fills her lungs, “You’re…you’re moving here?” 

He stops what he’s doing and makes eye contact with her, and he nods, “Jack is in Baltimore for school, he’s planning on staying there for med school too,” he says, telling her something she already knows, giving her the final pieces to the puzzle he’d been laying for weeks, worried if she knew he was planning on moving back that they’d have to talk about everything they never talked about before he was ready to. “I hate being so far away from him after everything, but he’d kill me if I moved to Baltimore,” he smiles as he starts to serve the food, “DC seemed like a good compromise.” 

He was coming back. After all this time, he was coming back, and she has to pinch herself, digs her blunt nails into the flesh of her bicep to make sure she was awake and that this wasn’t a dream. 

“Why…why didn’t you tell me?” She asks, and he holds out a plate of food for her, all of the different things she’d ordered separated out because he knows she hates them mixed together on the plate, and she takes it from him, tries to hide her reaction when their fingers brush. 

“Why don’t we eat, and I’ll tell you everything?” He suggests, and she nods, nodding towards the living room so they can sit down. 

He tells her about missing Jack, about missing home and her. He’s shy when he says it, avoids her eye contact as he chases noodles around his plate so she doesn’t see the flush in his skin when he says what he’s never had to say. She chastises him for keeping it a secret, a playfulness to her tone that she thought she’d lost as she kicks at his thigh with her foot. He says he hasn’t found a place to live yet, that he’s in town for a couple of days to look at a few more houses, and that he’s staying in a hotel downtown. 

Her offer for him to stay at her place is out in the air around them before she can really think about it, but she insists when he hesitates, not quite sure she’s ready to watch him leave again. When it’s clear he’s staying for the night, she gets him a glass and grabs the bottle of wine from the kitchen, and everything feels like it used to. She makes him laugh, the kind of laugh only she’d ever been able to pull from deep in his gut, and he does the same for her.

Later, she’d ask herself why she asks him, whether it was the wine or his comforting presence, but she sighs in a brief moment of silence and watches him carefully. 

“Do you ever think about it?” 

He tilts his head at her, “Think about what?” He asks, even though they both know he knows, each of them nervous to be the first to bring up what they’d never spoken about. 

She rolls her eyes at him but carries on, feeling braver than she has in a long time, “Us. What we had…” she says, sighing sadly, the sharp knife of regret cutting through her, “What we could have had.” 

“All the time,” He nods, his lips pressed together in a firm line and his eyebrows furrowed. She has to grasp her thigh with the hand not holding her wine glass to stop herself from reaching out to soothe the deep line between his brows, to refamiliarise herself with the ridges of it, “I think about it all the time.” 

She clears her throat, and her tongue peeks out to wet her suddenly dry lips, and she tastes the bravery on them, uses it to carry on even though her heart is hammering in her chest. 

“I found the ring,” she says, and his shoulders go tight, his jaw so tense he’s surprised it doesn’t shatter, and she smiles sadly at him, shrugging one shoulder as if it was nothing even though they both knew it was everything, “I still have it, actually.” 

“You…you still have it?” 

She nods, “In my safe in my home office,” she says, staring at the glass in her hands, unsure what she’ll find if she looks up at him, unsure if she wants to know, “It felt wrong to get rid of it or sell it. So I kept it.” 

They fall into silence, and for the first time since he showed up, it’s awkward. Thick and cloying and weighing heavily on them both until he speaks again, the seconds that had passed feeling like hours. 

“I’m sorry.” 

She looks up so quickly it cricks her neck, but she barely feels it, her focus instead entirely on the apology she hadn’t needed or expected, “Sorry? Why are you sorry?” 

“I never meant…” he clears his throat, pushes down everything he’d pretended hadn’t been living right at the top of his chest for years, “I was going to propose to you in my office…your office,” he shakes his head at himself, “And then you…and then everything with Doyle happened. And then when you came back, you weren’t okay, and I didn’t want to put any pressure on you. I kept the ring even after you left because I didn’t want to get rid of it either. It almost felt like I was…” 

“Saying it never happened,” she finishes for him, finally finding the words she’d been looking for all these years for why she’d kept the ring herself, and he nods, smiling at her in a way she’d dreamt of countless times. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, “And I never wanted to do that. So I kept it there, and I left so quickly because of everything with Peter Lewis. It was only when Jack and I were in witness protection that I realised you’d probably find it. So, I’m sorry.” 

She swallows thickly, and she wonders if he can hear her heart beating, or if his is beating in time with hers, if they’d always been more in tune with each other than they’d realised. 

“Don’t apologise,” she says, itching to reach out for him, to break the embargo on touching each other, but she knows if she starts, she won’t want to stop, “If anything, I should be the one who’s sorry,” she says, and he tilts his head at her curiously, and she laughs humourlessly, “If I’d have just…I don’t know, come to you back then? If I’d told you I still wanted to be with you but needed to be better first. If I’d found the damn ring before I left for London…things might be different.” 

He sighs, “Em-”

“Don’t you think about that too?” She asks, cutting over him, pressing her lips together to stop her chin from trembling, all of the loss that had happened in the last few years weighing down on her in a way she knew would be easier if she hadn’t had to shoulder it all alone, “What if we’d got married back then, or had a kid or two,” she looks away as she wipes a stray tear from her cheek, furious at herself for letting it fall, and she clears her throat as she looks back at him, “Don’t you think about ever think about it?” 

“Of course I do,” he says, gutted by the implication that he wasn’t haunted by it too, that he hadn’t spent years imagining she was his wife, like he hadn’t closed his eyes and tried to picture a little girl with her smile and his eyes and a little boy with dimples they’d playfully argue came from each other. "But, I think you're looking at it through rose tinted glasses, Em," he says, smiling at her over the glass of wine she'd poured him. She chokes on a sound she can't name, stuck between the way he says Em, the memories it brings up from half a lifetime ago, and the suggestion that she was looking back on something romantically.

"Me? Rose tinted glasses?" She scoffs, and she wonders what it means that the way he smiles at her has the same impact as it did all those years ago, as if no time had passed and he hadn't just rocked up on her doorstep out of nowhere. 

"You were miserable, sweet..." he drifts off and catches himself halfway through the term of endearment she'd always loved, clearing his throat to cover it as if she hadn't dreamt of him saying it most nights since he'd last used it. "You were miserable, and even if we had got back together and done all of those things, it might not have even lasted. You couldn't stay. And as much as I wanted you to, as much as I wanted you with me, I love you enough to let you go."

She sucks in a breath, feels the sharp edges of it against her ribs as her mouth goes dry, all of the air sucked out of the room as she stares at him.

"Love? You...you didn't say loved. You said..."

Her eyes drift closed as she remembers a moment from nearly 15 years ago, when she was dead to almost everyone but him. 

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” 

“Like you still love me.” 

“That’s the thing, Em. I will always love you.”

“I’ve always loved you,” he says, and she knows he’s thinking of the same moment too, that he’s been transported back to a hospital room in Bethesda. When she opens her eyes, he’s looking at her in a way he has done for years, in a way she’s had to ignore for almost all of them, and the breath she’s been holding escapes, makes her shudder as it passes her lips. “Nothing has ever changed that. Nothing ever will.” 

“Aaron…” she says, drifting off as he shifts towards her, choosing to be the brave one this time, and his knee knocks against her thigh as his breath skips across her face. She looks at him, tries to remember the last time they were this close to each other, and she thinks it might have been when she snuck into his office just before she left to hunt down Ian, when she’d broken their long-standing rule of no relationship stuff in the work place by kissing him and hoping he didn’t taste the desperation in it. She rests her forehead against his, settles into this strange embrace, and wonders how he’s even warmer than she remembered. “You’re moving back here?”

Whatever he’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that, and he frowns at her as he pulls back, curiosity tugging the corners of his lips up into a smile as he nods and confirms what she’s said, “I’m moving back here.” 

She’s kissing him before she can really think about it, her lips slotting against his like she’d only kissed him goodbye that morning, not like it had been nearly 15 years and countless heartbreaks since then. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her closer, his nose squished against her cheek as she sighs contentedly, her hand pressed against his chest as she pushes him back. 

“I love you too,” she says, unashamed this time when a tear slips past her lashline, turning her head to kiss his palm when he reaches up to catch it, “I always have,” she says, kissing his palm again, “Always will.” 

He takes her glass from her and rests it on the coffee table before he pulls her in for another kiss. She tries to commit it all to memory, the press of his lips against hers, the scratch of his beard against her cheek, the warmth of his hand on her back. It’s only when he pulls back to look at her, adoration in his eyes that she was never quite sure she deserved, that she realises she doesn’t have to commit this to memory, that if she wants him, he’s right here in front of her. 

“You shouldn’t buy anywhere,” she says, pressing her thumb into his lower lip, testing the feel of it. She smiles when he looks at her curiously again, “A house. You shouldn’t buy a house,” she adds, shaking her head when his eyebrows shoot up his forehead, “I’m not saying you should move in here tomorrow, we have a lot to talk about and figure out,” she says, running her fingers through his hair, “But buying somewhere seems pointless.” 

“I could ask my realtor to show me some rentals?” He suggests, hearing everything she hasn’t said, things that would seem too much too soon after everything else they’d shared this evening. 

She nods, biting her lower lip as she tries to contain her smile, kissing him quickly, unable to stop herself now she’d started. “That sounds perfect.” 

Twelve months later, he finally proposes, but not with the ring that still sat in her, their, safe, because it was bought by a man who no longer exists for a woman who no longer exists. He buys something new, something that marked the new beginning neither one of them was taking for granted. When he proposes in the office that was hers, that was once his, the place where they’d met and their story started for the first time, she smiles, dropping to her knees and saying yes before he even finishes the question. 

(They get married in their backyard, in the house that was once only hers, where their story started anew.) 

[sequinsmile-x]

Also I love living alone. It’s great and I enjoy my own company etc. but when I’m sick I hate it because I still have to look after myself and there’s no one to lean against on the couch or to play with my hair

Fanfic girl has a sinus infection and my head is still too full of snot to write. Hoping I’ll be better enough tomorrow to finish something up to post.

Chop chop sinus infection xo I want to write