Have Yourself Another Dream
A/N - Well hello, friends. It's been quite a while. Miss you all. This wasn't planned ... but somehow it just kind of found its way into creation. I'm rusty ... but I've been watching s5 all over again and dealing with some tough stuff so ... so here it is. All my love to Vic & Kirby for their unwavering support and dealing with me day in and day out. TW for discussions of and references to abortion and infertility themes throughout. I hope you enjoy - thank you for reading! 💓
It starts in the most inopportune of moments - in the middle of a police station in Princeton New Jersey, of all places. They’re giving a profile to two dozen weary police officers terrorized by an arsonist precisely every four days, and the clock is ticking close to the end of day two. They’ve been stretched thin by the case, running on little sleep and even fewer credible leads, yet Emily almost doesn’t mind the exhaustion this time around. It’s a distraction from the what if, and the countdown to the date she’d cemented in her mind, the one that might just mean it worked this time around - that yet another month of failure won’t pass them by. Enough time has passed that she can’t ignore the tiny voice in her head, the one that tells her something is wrong - something has to be wrong.
At first the pain is so subtle Emily wonders if she imagined it - but then it happens again -the all too familiar twinge of a single cramp somewhere too deep to reach that radiates through her abdomen before it’s gone - a fleeting moment, nothing more. And yet, she knows what’s to come now as the tentative, fragile hope she’d built over the last few days disintegrates into nothing within a matter of seconds. Of course. Emily fights the grimace that darkens her face, willing herself to keep up with the pace of the practiced back and forth they’ve mastered over the years. She wills herself not to look at Aaron, who is still speaking confidently only feet away from her. I can’t disappoint him again. The sound of his baritone voice reverberating through the room is enough to make her head spin. I was a fool to think this month might be it, she thinks as the same pain returns with a little more intensity this time, accompanied by the tell-tale sticky sensation of blood between her legs- a vicious proof that once again she failed.
_____________
It’s been 10 months since they started trying- the decision wasn’t been made lightly or without a lot of thought. But it feels like the next natural step, following a backyard wedding hosted by Dave a year ago, and a few innocent, yet inquisitive comments from Jack along the way. “I’d be a great big brother, Daddy. If Dylan can be a big brother, so can I.” Emily lets Aaron handle that one on his own one early morning before school. She smiles into her coffee mug as Aaron amusedly listens to Jack rattle off all the reasons he’d be a better big brother than his best friend in second grade. But she sees the look that passes over her now husband’s face - something she immediately recognized as longing - as if he had the same thoughts as his son, that he’d been thinking about it too. She would be lying if she hadn’t felt the same way. Her hope to one day be a mother was something she’d always kept safe in the back of her mind, something she’d quietly hoped for but it never felt right, a secret wish she could never quite vocalize. At least not until now. She knows the odds weren’t on her side - the likelihood of success steeply declining for women approaching 40 and even less afterward - but maybe they’d have a chance after all. Maybe, if they were lucky and the stars aligned.
“I want to try, Aaron,” Emily tells him later that night, only after she’d read the same page of her book three times, unable to concentrate on it any longer until she gets it off her chest. “I’ve been thinking about it and I want to start trying.”
“You mean -” He looks up from his own book, wide eyed. “You mean for a baby?”
She rolls her eyes. “No, Aaron. To run a marathon.” For a moment, it looks like he believes her and she stares at him incredulously. “Yes for a baby.” Emily swats him on the shoulder with her book. “What the hell did you think I was talking about?”
“I didn’t want to assume!” He laughs, feigning hurt and rubbing his shoulder. “You could take someone out with that thing.” But he’s smiling, it reaches his eyes and he looks so damn happy it makes her heart swell. It’s the only encouragement he needs; Emily grins as he moves them both so his body covers hers, her eyes closing as his lips find her neck, his hand deftly working the waistband of her yoga pants.
Maybe this could work out after all.
_____________
The first few months were actually fun, a giddy type of hopeful excitement new to them both. The possibility of pregnancy was never far from their thoughts. Haley had gotten pregnant almost too easily- a “first time unicorn,” as she’d joked to Aaron years ago - yet Emily’s negative tests didn’t feel alarming right away. “Next month,” they assured one another with an encouraging smile, the promise of what another four weeks might bring. Mentions of babies began to work their way into their daily conversations - weighing the pros and cons of a larger house to accommodate their growing family, discussions of how they’d tell Jack and then the team - and that hope carried them through the early days of unsuccessful trying.
But six months brought a newfound frustration, shortly followed by the eight month mark with an overwhelming sense of defeat. It’s how Emily finds herself sobbing in the bathroom clutching a tiny stick with only one stark pink line one morning before work. It’s where Aaron finds her, still in the clothes she slept in the night before, uncharacteristically slumped against the bathtub with tear stained cheeks and red eyes. He quickly pulls her into his arms, his lips pressed to the top of her head. It only makes her cry harder. “You didn’t have to come up here.”
“I could hear you from downstairs, Em,” he says, chest tightening at how she stiffens in his embrace, mortified at the thought someone might hear her break. “Jack left awhile ago.”
“It’s like you can read my mind.” Her face flushes with shame, her cheek hot against the fabric of his shirt. “I didn’t want him to hear me … and I couldn’t bring myself to come downstairs like this.”
“He’s excited for his field trip. He didn’t even notice. Dylan’s mom picked him up almost forty-five minutes ago. They had to be at school early.”
The moment he says it he regrets it - the mention of Jack’s friend’s mom, heavily pregnant with her third baby, brings a few more unspilled tears welling in her eyes and threatening to spill. Aaron curses himself inwardly for bringing it up. She chokes back a sob and shakes her head.
“Talk to me, Emily. Please,” he murmurs to her, even though there was very little to say. A test was a cruel dichotomy - there were no what ifs today. Either she was pregnant, or she wasn’t. And today, she wasn’t. He swallows his own disappointment, at this point desperate to take some of the burden off of his wife and shoulder some of it himself. So far, all he’s done is make it worse.
“It’s negative,” she coughs through tears, showing him the stick after giving it another glance as if a second line will miraculously appear, as if she missed it because she stared at it for too long. “I knew it would be.”
“It could just be too early,” Aaron attempts with as much optimism as he can, but she shakes her head sadly.
“14 days is pretty definitive, Aaron. We both know that by now. But I don’t understand what we’re doing wrong,” she sniffles into his chest, leaving mascara-streaked stains all over his white dress shirt. “I’m doing everything that stupid app tells me to do… logging everything, tracking my period and every other goddamn thing we do.”
“It’s an app, sweetheart. It doesn’t actually know what’s going on in your body. Maybe we didn’t hit the right days this month. You never know.” He’s said all of this before and he’s running out of new things to say with each passing month. “We just have to keep trying.”
“Well it’s all I’ve got right now,” she snaps, the frustration and pain is laced in her tone, raw and real, and there isn’t a single thing he can do or say to make any of this easier for her. “I’m tired of peeing on sticks and waking up to take my temperature at the same damn time every morning and planning sex around peeing on stupid sticks and all this bullshit.” Emily hiccups through tears, her fingers tightly wound around Aaron’s now very wrinkled suit jacket. “I don’t understand what we’re doing wrong. I know I’m older … but 37 isn’t that old. Some women get pregnant well into their forties.”
“We’re not doing anything wrong, Em,” he says soothingly, tracing patterns on her back with his fingertips. “Sometimes it just … takes some time. Your doctor said -”
“I know what she said, Aaron. I was the one at the damn appointment, remember?. But I just have this feeling that something isn’t right.” Her body heaves with effort to take a full deep breath.
He knows there’s more she isn’t saying - the way her lip is pulled between her teeth, the heaviness of her words, the classic roll of her eyes.
“Tell me,” he coaxes, walking the razor-thin line of pushing her too far. He knows her too well by now what that would bring.
“I’m worried that It’s me.” Her voice is cracked, fractured with the anxiety that’s settled itself deeply in her heart over the last few months. That I’m the reason it hasn’t happened yet… or maybe why it never will.” With that she jerks out of his embrace with an awkward shuffle, the admittance finally out in the open. She curls into a tight ball beside him, arms wrapping around her knees, pointedly looking away from him.
“What do you mean, sweetheart?” He attempts to narrow the space between them, but Emily shifts even further away, practically burying herself into the corner of the bathroom. Aaron has to hide the hurt that wraps itself insidiously around his chest, so he settles for taking her hand in his and giving it a squeeze. It’s how they stay for a few long moments until the last of her tears cease and they’re left with the quiet disappointment of yet another month gone by.
“I wonder,” she whispers almost inaudibly, still unable to make eye contact with him. “That this is what I get for what I did…” she trails off, already ashamed at her own admission.
“What you did?” He asks, genuinely confused, reaching over to gently lifting her chin with his thumb. “What are you talking about?”
“In Rome, Aaron.”
Rome. That’s when it clicks.
Rome isn’t something they talk of often - but he knows immediately where her mind is going, the blame she’ll undoubtedly pin on herself for something that happened over twenty years ago when she was a teenager without another option. It was an impossible decision, one without an easy answer. He’s seen the lasting impact it had on her over the years, that no matter how much time passed, it was very much something she carried with her. He sees it in the way she interacted with Jack, with cases they had involving children. It was very much an unhealed wound, and this whole process has ripped it open, fresh and gaping and raw. “No, Em,” Aaron says softly, tucking pieces of her hair out of her eyes. “That has nothing to do with this.”
“It’s karma, Aaron.” Emily sighs resignedly with an inelegant sniffle. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“No, sweetheart. It’s not.” He searches her eyes with his own, as if she might believe him. “Please don’t let yourself go down that slope. That’s not going to help you get pregnant.” He expects her to turn away from him completely, but instead she slides back closer to him, settling against him uneasily, exhausted from crying.
“You don’t know that,” she says, and he hates the sound of despair in her voice.
“You don’t know it either,” he quips. “Stop making chaos in your mind. It’s not going to make any of this easier.”
She rests her head on his chest until most of the tears have dried and the congestion in her head started to loosen. She knows her face must be a swollen mess by now, puffy and red from all the tears. “There’s all kinds of things that can happen because of …complications with that. And it’s been so long …who knows what could be going wrong in there. Or if they did it right …” One tear slips out of her eye; Aaron swipes it away with his thumb.
“You can’t go down that path, Emily. You’re going to make yourself crazy if all you think of are what if’s and what’s going wrong. We have to take this day by day. There are no easy answers, no easy fixes.”
“But what do we do, Aaron?” She whispers. “What do we do if this doesn’t work?” The truth is, she knows what they’ll have to do. She isn’t a fool to what comes next. She’s done the research late at night when he’s sound asleep beside her - chances and statistics, stories of successful outcomes and the ones of those who weren’t so lucky. An entire battery of invasive tests awaits her, hours consulting with a team of doctors vying for success rates, more procedures and decisions and the cruelty of waiting. Not to mention the thousands of dollars gone without a sure chance they’d take home a baby at the end. It’s more than overwhelming - it’s consuming, and terrifying. Thinking about it makes her stomach roil. Emily stares at her lap.
“We have options, Em. Just because we haven’t taken any of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. We aren’t the only ones dealing with this.”
She sighs heavily, wiping at her face with a tissue. “I know that. But I’m not ready to go down that route yet, Aaron. I … I can’t explain it. But I’m just not ready.”
“That’s fine, sweetheart. You don’t have to be ready, or explain anything,” he says patiently. “Do you want to keep trying? We can take a break this month, if that’s what you want.”
Emily shakes her head, weighing the lesser of two evils. The definition of insanity, she thinks, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result. But what other choice did they have? “I want to keep trying,” she insists quietly as she sits upright, her head spinning.
“Then let’s give it two more months,” Aaron says rationally.. “If you aren’t pregnant by then, we’ll make an appointment at the fertility clinic.” He pauses for a moment before adding, “Luckily there are at least 10 in a five mile radius of us.”
That elicits the smallest snort of acknowledgement. “I guess that’s one of the perks of living around here,” Emily complains as Aaron holds out a hand to pull her to her feet and into their bedroom. “And it’ll only take two hours in rush hour traffic to get there.” On their bed is the suit she laid out for that day, before any of this began. “I just need a few minutes.”
He checks his watch, hiding his frown. “Be quick. We’re going to be late. Garcia will send a search party for us if we aren’t in on time. We were late twice last week,” he reminds her with a wink.
“If I remember correctly,” Emily laughs for the first time that morning, “That was your idea.”
_____________
“Agent Prentiss will take it from here.”
Emily is somewhere far away from reality when she hears Aaron say her name, calling her back to the present. And when she catches his eye from the corner of her own, the look Aaron throws her way tells her immediately he knows something is wrong. He doesn’t take his eyes off her, his gaze piercing and concerned. Most days she hates that he knows her so well.
Yet she doesn’t miss a beat, rattling off her contribution to their unsub’s lengthy profile with ease, as if discussing the motivations of an arsonist was second nature to her. After so many years, it might just be. Yet I can’t seem to do the one thing I’m biologically designed to do, Emily thinks with an overwhelming feeling of disdain as she outlines their carefully-drawn theories of motivation. She patiently answers a series of pressing questions from the officers before thankfully Morgan takes over a few long minutes later. She’s relieved to not have the attention of the entire room anymore, except now the pain has intensified quickly. It’s a reminder of the physical emptiness within her body, emptiness where something the size of a single poppyseed might be. She pushes it out of her mind and instead thinks longingly of the bottle of ibuprofen in her go-bag miles away at the hotel - she tossed it in on afterthought, just in case, fiercely hoping she wouldn’t need to use it.
It ended up being nothing but wishful thinking.
______________
It’s a long day that seemingly has no end until she’s alone again in yet another hotel room, day three looming ahead in a mere few hours. Aaron insisted they all retire for the night, with the intention of starting over again early in the morning with fresh eyes. He sends the team back first ahead of him, under the guise of meeting with the Princeton Police Chief one more time before calling it quits himself.
Everyone is happy to oblige, but Emily knows him better than that by now - it’s also to give her a chance to settle in first, to give her space and some time to process her thoughts. Aaron didn’t have to ask what’d happened - somehow he just knew, like he always did. “I’ll be back in about an hour,” he’d told her before she got into the passenger side of an SUV Rossi was driving. “But I’ll text you when I leave.” He leaves it at that - no pushing, no questions. Nothing but a message less than five minutes later - I love you. It’s going to be okay.
The hotel in Princeton is one of the nicer ones they’ve stayed at as of late, and she takes advantage of the fancy shower, letting the hot spray pour over her back, the steam alleviating some of the still persistent cramps that haven’t let up at all just yet. The water is tinged red at her feet; the sight of it makes her stomach churn. But once her hair is washed and toweled off and she’s changed into something a lot more comfortable than a suit, Emily feels a little bit more human. And when Aaron finally makes it back almost an hour after that, she’s nestled in bed, intensely focused on an episode of Love Island. Distraction at its finest.
“Do you even know what’s happening on this show?” Aaron asks when he sees what she’s watching, an amused grin on his face as he drapes his suit jacket over one of the chairs. “What is this show even about?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Emily ponders, eyes still glued to the television. “But it’s pretty entertaining nonetheless.” She can’t bring herself to tell him what’s on her mind - the disappointment of what’s past, the fear of what’s ahead. She wants to live in a bubble of oblivion for a few more minutes.
“If you say so.” The next article of clothing to go is his tie, followed by his shoes and dress shirt. “I’m going to take a shower.” He drops a kiss on the top of her head on his way, a lingering touch of his hand against hers.
______________
“I should tell the others one of your secret vices is trashy television.”“They’d get a kick out of it,” Aaron tells her as he gets into bed beside her. “Especially Dave.” He has to find a way to break the silence that’s fallen over them, a heaviness in the air that lingers.
“They probably know already. I think JJ told them,” Emily says with a soft laugh and mutes the TV. “I’m glad you’re back.” She presses herself against him, his body still warm from the shower. “Everything went okay back there?” She gets a whiff of his soap, the woodsy scent that will always make her think of him. By now it calms her, reminds her that he’s there, that he’s not going anywhere.
“Yeah. Tomorrow will be a long day.” Aaron wraps an arm around her, pulls her close to his side. He’s not thinking at all about the case now, just his wife beside him. “Are you okay?” He rests the other hand on her abdomen, gently pressing where the cramps had been the worst. “Did the ibuprofen kick in?”
Emily nods, sighing with relief into his chest as he applies light pressure with his hand. Of course he would know the exact spot that hurt the most. “Yeah. Took long enough. How’d you figure it out?”
“Just had a feeling.” He kisses her temple. “I know you pretty well by now, you know.”
“Well you are a profiler. I’d be concerned if you didn’t.” she retorts dryly, leaning into him.
There’s thinly veiled anger and apprehension in her voice, a sense of bitterness coupled with loneliness she never anticipated. It’s too many emotions all at once - and none of them feel remotely good. “I’m tired of feeling so empty all the time, Aaron. I’m tired of constantly being upset about this.”
“I think,” Aaron says slowly, calmly. “I think we should make the call when we get home, Em.” He cups her chin in his hand, gently thumbing her cheek. “We’ll go together.”
“In a way,” Emily whispers. “I’m almost afraid to find out what could be wrong with me.”
“It could be me,” Aaron muses back. “This process requires two of us, you know. I’m half of the equation.”
She laughs, albeit bitterly. “I highly doubt that, Aaron.”
“You never know,” he offers again, just as patient as before. “I very well could be. We don’t have all the answers, Emily. That’s what the doctors are for, you know.”
“We might never have answers,” she says sadly, insecurity flooding her face. “Sometimes it just … doesn’t happen. There are couples who never conceive. Even with help. They try for years and it -”
“Stop jumping to conclusions, Sweetheart.” Aaron says, clasping her hands in his. “You can’t make decisions about information you don’t have.” She opens her mouth to argue, but he presses a finger to her lips. “That’s it. No more negative talk for tonight.” He flips the light as if to prove a point and the room is flooded in darkness.
Emily grumbles but obliges as she curls her body against him needing to be as close to him as possible. “I’m scared, Aaron” she finally admits. The truth makes her feel weak, as if saying it out loud relinquishes whatever semblance of control she had over all of this. She’s exhausted, but there’s one thing she hears as her body succumbs to sleep.
“I know, sweetheart. But whatever happens, we will deal with it, and we’ll get through it.” He kisses her once more as her eyes flutter closed.
Emily has never loved him more than right now.
Oh wow! Its been too too long since we've gotten a new hotchniss fic from @jetaime-jespere! Miss you!
:::off to read right now:::
