Thanksgiving
just a short little Hotch and Haley (& Jessica) thing
“How’s Aaron?”
She can see him from here, listening to her father speak with that look in his eyes he gets any time he’s near Roy. It makes her throat tighten, her face flush. He’ll swear it’s better this way for him, that his father’s death was a relief and it’s too painful to see his mother. Not when she looks at him like he’s still five, his little fingers clutching her sundress. Not when he can never forget the nights she left him alone in that house. Not when he can still hear his own screams bouncing off the walls. Feel the chill of her breaking eye contact, the moment she decided it was just easier to let him go. He wakes up in the middle of the night still and has to sleep on the floor -- he spent seventeen years squeezed underneath his bed and it’s hard to shake that fear. He hasn’t spoken to Sean in months, not since Aaron had to pay his bail. He didn’t even tell Haley, he was gone for three days. Just long enough time to get Sean home and clean for a few hours.
Then he comes here. He rolls up his sleeves and stands beside her mother while she’s cooking, waiting for her to tell him what to do. He pulls down into himself like a little boy, still towering over her mother. Roy breaks out some fancy dark liquor and makes Aaron have a drink with him and after three fingers Aaron relaxes enough to let Roy get close to him. To settle an arm around his shoulders or just touch his arm in conversation. Jessica will roughhouse. Get them both into trouble being loud and her mother will come in and demand Jessica “leave that poor boy alone, Jessica Brooks. I don’t know why you have to be so mean to him.” And Jessica will wrap her arm around Aaron’s neck to drag him down to her height so she can mess with his hair until Roy finally calls an end to her merciless teasing.
