Chapter Text
Christmas Eve
"You can come in," came the low voice, groggy and heavy with exhaustion. Aaron's voice was pinched, there was no real breath to it, no wind just gravel and gritty pain. Derek stepped in slowly, one foot and then the other, his boots squeaking on the linoleum floor. He fiddled with the zipper on his jacket, flicking the metal nub up and down while he entered the room. Don't be a coward, he repeated in his head, as if it made a difference at all. He wasn't afraid of his feelings, he wasn't afraid of Aaron, he was only afraid of making a monumental mistake. Was this the right thing to do for both of them? Should they try again or was it better that they stay apart? If he listened to his heart, he would be dropping to his knees and begging Aaron to take him back - but his head said to hold off. To wait it out, not to force anything just because the situation felt dire. The conflict between the two was, for the moment, insurmountable. A complete stalemate.
Aaron's hand stayed pressed against his ribs like he was holding them in place, arm resting across his chest protectively while the other lay flat against his side beneath the blanket. There was an intense look of focus on his features, his brows knit together in concentration.
"You came back," Aaron whispered when Derek made no attempt at conversation, only stood beside him taking in the sight. He was careful not to move while he spoke and Derek was dragged back to dark memories of Foyet, to those first few hours alone in the hospital, to watching over him as he slept. How he wouldn't move then, either. Every breath tore at wounds stitched up and packed tight with gauze, every shift threatened to spill what was so carefully being held in place.
"What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment."
Aaron hummed and nodded almost imperceptibly. The movement was so slight Derek nearly missed it.
"They got you on any good meds?"
"Not yet." He thought he recalled a conversation between Jessica and a doctor earlier about steroids and something for the pain, but he'd been half-asleep at best when they spoke. His memory was unreliable at best, and truth be told, he couldn't be completely sure they hadn't given him anything. Having holes in his memory was unsettling.
"So you're just raw dogging the pain huh?" Derek asked, and Aaron let out a pained little laugh followed by a low, miserable groan. "Sorry."
"Don't be."
Aaron pressed his fingertips into the spaces between his ribs, rubbing at the soreness between breaths as if it might help. It didn't but it made him feel like he had some control over what was happening to him. The thought of it was alarming - his chest riddled with red hot infection and inflammation, a fresh new pain beneath old scars. Lying in the bed was bringing back memories better left buried but touching it helped, touching it reminded him that this was different when his foggy fevered brain did him no favors.
"Jess said she doesn't think they'll discharge you today."
"I can discharge myself," Aaron pointed out. It wouldn't be the first time. "I can't miss Christmas with Jack. He's probably already scared…"
"Can you even sit up on your own?" Derek glanced at the monitor, at his high pulse and fever, shaking his head at the insinuation that he could or should just walk out the door. That Jack would somehow prefer that. Derek knew otherwise.
"I'll figure it out. Derek, it's Christmas." As if that was argument enough. In Derek's mind, it was as good an argument against leaving as it was for. From the hallway he could hear nurses talking excitedly, he could see the twinkle of a small Christmas tree at the nurse's station lit up even in the daytime and from a small radio set just beneath the counter he detected the telltale notes of Bing Crosby. Christmas in the hospital. Humans were miraculous, trying to find a way to bring home everywhere they went, even in the worst circumstances.
"The kid is managing, he's being spoiled rotten. He slept with me last night, but he was up and out the door before I even woke up this morning. Sean is taking him out sledding later, they already built a snowman. I helped. I know he's scared but he's actually doing alright and I think he'd rather think of you here being taken care of than there worried that something bad was going to happen so far away from help."
"It snowed?" The last snow he'd seen had barely stuck and now winter had completely arrived while he was trapped in the hospital missing it all. He'd heard everything Derek said, but the idea of it dumping snow while he lay in here slammed hard into his sternum and left him breathless. The first real snow had always been his favorite.
"Yeah. It snowed big time. Maybe once they get you a little more comfortable we can take a walk, get you outside for a few."
Aaron closed his eyes and imagined the drive from his mother's house to the hospital, imagined Derek crawling through thick snow in his little sedan, fishtailing and getting stuck. What he'd been through to get here was not lost on Aaron - he'd made that drive in the dead of winter, in a little hatchback beater with a heater to listen as his father gasped for air around the cancer in his lungs, to listen to his shattered awful voice pleading forgiveness not because he was actually sorry but he knew his end was near and he was afraid of paying for his sins. He'd pushed his cheap little car, the only thing he could afford all on his own without his parents help, through the snow for that. To this day he'd never told anyone about that night, about that conversation, about his silence. He let his father pour out every dark thing on him, every regret, every black and evil thought and gave him nothing but silence. Maybe he would be a better man now if he'd been able to find it in him to forgive, but the best he could do was sit there and listen.
He could understand his father's urge to apologize, his intense need to unburden himself while laying in that hospital bed. He was feeling not all that different. Looking up at Derek who fought his way through the snow to be here, Derek who had agreed to this silly theatrical production just so he could save some face with his mother, Derek who deserved a better holiday than this filled him with all of those same feelings of regret.
"Derek, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen. It came on so fast. I never would have asked you to do this if I thought it was going to be…like this."
"You kidding me? I don't think I could live with it if I wasn't here."
"You would be having a fun Christmas in Chicago with your family, I'm sure you would have managed."
In truth, Derek was aware that if that had been the case he might never even have known this was happening. Aaron wouldn't have told anyone. He would have spent his Christmas alone in a hospital bed, and when he came back to work no one would ever be the wiser.
The thought of it made Derek so sad and so angry he thought he might burst at the seams.
Aaron's face scrunched up in pain before Derek could say anything, could ask him why he kept things like this so quiet, and Derek reached out to touch his shoulder while he rode out the pain. It seemed to come in waves, though Aaron would tell him later it really didn't - sure, it got worse in waves, but it was constant searing pain. His chest was on fire, a flaming blade sinking deeper with every breath.
Without giving it much thought, Derek reached up and pushed the call button for the nurses. He wondered if Aaron ever would have bothered to do that if he was here alone, more than likely not. He assumed they would just come when they were ready and he could just wait it out. Derek, on the other hand, firmly believed that he shouldn't have to wait anything out.
When the nurse popped her head in to check on them, Derek spoke up before Aaron had the opportunity to dismiss her. "Hey, I know you're busy but he's in a lot of pain here," Derek said, squeezing Aaron's shoulder lightly to keep him quiet. "Is there anything you can do?"
She frowned and looked over at his white board. "He was due to get a steroid shot and a drip of morphine about an hour ago - did they not come in?"
"No," Aaron whispered. Derek huffed angrily, barely managing to keep his reaction in check. It wasn't her fault, and it wasn't Aaron's fault, but that didn't make him any less frustrated.
"I"m sorry about that. It must have been overlooked during shift-change, I'll put in an order right now."
Derek looked down at Aaron suffering silently and felt the familiar anger boiling inside of him. Anger at the hospital, anger at Aaron, just…anger. It got really damn exhausting being the only one willing to speak up, the only one who gave a damn. The only one who ever said a word.
"How long would you have waited?" he asked through gritted teeth, knowing he should just bite his tongue. But his tongue was going to bleed if he spent any more time biting it on this trip.
"Until they were ready," was Aaron's quiet answer.
"What's the point?"
"They're busy. It's Christmas. I'm not dying just because it hurts." He had a laundry list of things he'd rationalized, and each one made Derek's anger dissolve into something that just felt hot and miserable. That was Aaron in a nutshell - it wasn't the worst he'd ever experienced, and so by those standards, it was fine. He was okay enough to push through, okay enough not to burden anyone with his needs.
"You deserve to be cared for just the same as any other patient on this floor, Aaron. It's a simple fix. And besides that, man, it's their job. You're in here because you need care and their job is to provide that care."
It was likely Aaron never would fully grasp that concept, at least in relation to his own suffering. Others, sure. He would have done the same thing if it was Derek in this bed, if it was Jack in this bed, hell even if it was his damned father…but not for himself.
"You don't have to stay," Aaron said while the nurse worked on his IVs, setting up his morphine drip and talking him through the upcoming steroid shot. "You should be sledding with them."
"Are you kidding me? I'm not trying to be out there in knee deep snow flying down some mountain. That's a Sean thing."
"Is Alicia with them?"
"Nah. She's history."
Aaron smirked and shook his head. The morphine was already kicking in and thank goodness because Derek needed him to lighten up a little or this was going to go one way: fight. The last place he wanted it to go even if it seemed like that was all he wanted. They couldn't seem to talk anymore without friction.
"Figures."
"It was because of you. She wanted to leave because you were sick and he wasn't having it, so she dumped him and went home."
That didn't please Aaron, but he couldn't find the right set of emotions to pull from. He wasn't surprised, he wasn't sad about it, he'd barely even had a chance to speak to her. She had kept her distance the whole time and now he understood why. Still, breaking up with someone at Christmas seemed cruel even under those circumstances and as resourceful and understanding as Sean was likely to be, he had to be hurting. Aaron hated being away from him, and he hated being the reason for Sean's suffering.
It certainly wasn't the first time. He'd handed down more than his fair share of pain to his brother by virtue of his choices.
"Feeling better yet?" Derek asked, noting the way the crease between Aaron's eyebrows had smoothed. The steroid shot they'd given him was supposed to reduce the inflammation, and Derek was a little jealous of that morphine hitting his blood stream and glazing his eyes over.
"Yes," Aaron replied quietly. "Thank you."
Derek reached up and touched Aaron's hair, brushing it away from his forehead. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow, the sweat of holding off hours of worsening pain, and he sighed. "Do you think we stand a chance?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed gently, fingers still trailing through Aaron's hair. It was so soft, the feel of it so familiar against his skin.
"I'm the last person you should be asking."
"I really want to believe we do. Being with you always feels right, but I don't know how to live with knowing I'll never get the whole story. Hell, I'd settle for half but I don't even think I'd get that."
"I understand," Aaron replied. The morphine was kicking in and fast, his muscles that had been so tense to stave off the pain began to relax. There was a brightness to his skin, his cheeks flush with fever but something else too - the relief of a brief reprieve from pain. "It isn't that I don't want you to know…"
"Part of it is."
Aaron's lips ticked upward slightly in the mockery of a smile. "Maybe. But I don't mind you knowing, I just…"
"You don't know how to tell me. I know. You never have been good at talking about yourself."
"Why do you think I invited you here in the first place? Everyone else will tell you my story…"
Derek nodded and smiled a little sadly, reaching for Aaron's hand. He turned it over in his own hand, thumb running along fingertips. "How long were you in the woods?"
It didn't come as any surprise to Aaron that Derek had uncovered that story. It wouldn't surprise him in the least to find that Derek suddenly knew everything there was to know - everyone in town loved to talk if you were willing to listen, and Derek was a good listener. With his edges softened by medication and the utter relief it had provided, he found it easier to talk. "I don't know. I was only six, time didn't really make sense to me. It was a long time. Days. I had a very active imagination…I remember thinking that I was being hunted so I kept running and hiding, but looking back I'm fairly sure I was just outrunning the search party. My father never hugged me harder than he did when he found me that day. It was the last time I remember really knowing he loved me."
"When you were six?"
"I'm sure he never stopped, but I don't remember him ever showing it again." Love and violence, Derek thought. Combined, they had created the man in the bed. They'd turned him into the man he was for better or worse. That was the recipe.
"Sean said that you almost lost your fingers."
"That might be an exaggeration. My mother says it was touch and go for a while. I was in this hospital for two weeks, though, I do remember that. My dad spent more time here than my mom did."
Derek couldn't quite detect the emotional undercurrent, the morphine drip had already transformed his mannerisms into something soft and languid. His hand, once so firmly pressed into his side, had relaxed and slipped down toward his belly. The tension in the room was relieved as well. He closed his eyes and when he next spoke, his voice was low. Raspy and breathy, Derek could tell it hurt him to speak, but he did it anyway.
"I've never told anyone this," he began, eyes still closed, unaware of the magnitude of the moment for Derek. Barely aware that he'd been singularly struggling over being kept at arm's length, unaware that drawing Derek in even a little was the answer to all of their problems. That this one thing could change the course of their history. All he could think about was being in a hospital bed and holding onto the weight of a confession that he didn't want to carry anymore. His father's empty and desperate apologies had nothing on this. "Not Haley or Jessica, no one…sometimes I think I hate her more than I ever hated him. It's an ugly feeling, Derek. I try not to give it much space, but trips like this remind me. It's hard for me to be near her. I do it for Jack…he loves her, and she him. I watch the way she is with him and I'm reminded of how she was with Sean, and I'm jealous. I think she knows it, too."
Derek struggled to find his own voice then, the weight of what Aaron confessed hitting him hard. He tried to think back, wondering if he'd forced this trip at some point, thinking about all of the times he'd insisted that Aaron call her or that they go and visit her, never realizing what he was really asking.
He loved his mom more than anything. She was his rock, she was his reason for breathing some days, and she'd certainly been his lifeline more than once - it crushed him to know that Aaron didn't know that feeling. He didn't know that immense love. And that the small solace he had in Haley's parents would forever be poisoned by his job.
"I know what you must think of me for saying that."
"No," Derek croaked, the emotion in his voice unmistakable and thick. "You don't."
"How can I feel that way about a woman who never laid a hand on me?"
"There are worse ways to hurt someone than using your fists."
Aaron went silent, and in the low morning light Derek thought he detected the shimmer of tears on his cheeks. He reached out and thumbed a tear away, his hand lingering at the side of Aaron's face. He needed a shave badly, the stubble tickled his palm.
"Aaron," Derek whispered. "Look at me. Please."
Opening his eyes, Aaron hesitated for a moment before turning his head. His hand found its way back to his side, squeezing the pain that broke through the morphine haze, but he didn't let his gaze drop.
"I get that there will be times you can't tell me everything, and I don't need to know every horrible thing that happened to you when you were a kid…but I need you to let me in. If this is going to work, if we give it another shot…I can't be an outsider."
"That was never my intent."
"But it's what you did. I love you, and I never stopped loving you…but we're a family if we're together, and that means we're a team. I'm not just here for a good fuck and to play house, I'm all in."
Aaron cleared his throat, a move that brought a spark of real pain up his sternum and into his shoulder, and he let out a low whining sound before it passed. The inconvenience of a raging chest infection at a time like this was too much to bear and yet he couldn't let it steal the moment. Licking his lips, blinking away the blaze of pain, he shook his head. "You've never said that before. That you're all in."
"I know. I've realized a few things since we've been here. We both need to do better, that's what I'm seeing. Probably you more than me, but I guess I need to improve a little." The last bit was said with a smirk, to lighten the mood just as the doctor entered the room with his clipboard, barely noticing the tender moment he was interrupting. "Put a pin in it."
"Okay," Aaron whispered with a small encouraging smile.
"Mr. Hotchner," Doctor Washington announced. "You have an accumulation of fluid in your pleural space, the lining of your lungs. I'm sure you've noticed it's been difficult to draw a full breath for at least a few days now, maybe longer."
"Dr. Jensen suspected walking pneumonia."
"That's the tip of the iceberg, but it's a good thing you were seen. The labs he ordered have been helpful. I've scheduled you for a procedure called a thoracentesis to drain the fluid, which should improve your situation immediately. It will help you breathe easier, which should relieve some of the pleurisy pain. Of course…"
"I'm not getting out of here today."
"…no. No, if we do this procedure, I can have you discharged in 24 hours as long as we don't have any complications. The procedure is generally done on an outpatient basis, but given your circumstances and history I'd like to hold you for observation. You play nice and we can have you home in time to enjoy Grace's famous Christmas goose."
Aaron didn't react but Derek frowned. "She makes a goose? Of course she makes a goose."
"Oh, her Christmas goose is famous in these parts. She'll make one for her house and one to be delivered to us here at the hospital. I volunteer to work every Christmas so I don't miss out. She raises them herself you know."
Aaron held a neutral expression, able to hide under the guise of holding off pain, but given the confession he'd just managed…Derek thought it had nothing to do with his faulty lungs at all. It must be hard to come home and have everyone sing her praises feeling the way he did. Knowing that everyone else knew a version of her that had never been accessible to him.
"What's the recovery look like?" Derek asked, changing the subject abruptly. "Is he gonna be feeling better after you do this?"
"No procedure is without risk, especially given his tricky medical history. We'll do our best to make it as quick and minimally invasive as we can. After that it's going to look a lot like managing pain and inflammation and keeping an eye on things to make sure we don't have a recurrent buildup of fluid while it heals. The lab results should be here soon; if it's a bacterial infection we'll run through a course of antibiotics. If it's viral, I'm afraid we have to focus on comfort measures until it runs its course. For now, rest is the best medicine."
"Not sure if you know this, doc, but he's not good at rest…"
"I assume that's how a relatively fit man like him ends up in the hospital for something like this."
"Yeah…so okay. Procedure and then we chill and if it's all good we're back home by lunch tomorrow? That's not bad. We miss Christmas morning, but maybe they can hold off on opening presents until we get back. Think Jack'll go for it?"
Aaron shook his head and smiled. "He's going to hate it."
"Too damn bad."
Dr. Washington left after that, not wishing to intrude on their conversation any further but promising they would be back soon for the procedure. They would do it right there in the room and Derek was pleased to know that he could stay.
Derek turned back to Aaron the moment they were alone and met his eye - he looked so out of it, so tired, so over everything. He needed to sleep - real sleep, deep comfortable sleep.
"We can do this."
"You should go back. Be with them. Enjoy your holiday, Derek. I'll be okay here."
"You know there's no way in hell I'm leaving you here alone. If you think for one second I'd actually do that…"
"I don't. But who would I be if I didn't suggest it?"
"And now I see why Jessica says we're so damn irritating. She's not wrong."
"She rarely is."
Derek found his fingers once again trailing through Aaron's hair, his touch feather-light. "Wonder if they'll let us get outta here for a bit after they work their magic? I think you need to touch some snow."
"Derek…" Aaron whispered, reaching up and grabbing Derek's hand, pulling it down and threading their fingers together. He was weak, Derek could feel it in his grip. "I love you."
"It's about damn time you said something."
"You talk so much it's hard to get a word in," was Aaron's reply. Derek grinned.
"I see how it is."