Title: Survivor
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Aaron Hotchner/Spencer Reid
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Rating: PG-13
Table: writers_choice
Prompt: #482, Survivor
Author's Note: Mentions of rape.
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Aaron Hotchner or Spencer Reid, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***


"My name is Aaron, and I am a rape survivor."

Aaron looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, wishing that he didn't look so pale and wan. He felt somewhat better for having been to that survivors' meeting and said those words, but they still didn't come out easily, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to go back.

He'd been unsure about whether or not he would go to the survivors' meeting until the last moment, but Spencer had begged him to go, and had promised to be right there by his side. In fact, it was Spencer who had found out about the meeting and encouraged him to take part.

His boyfriend had probably been right, Aaron reflected with a sigh. He couldn't keep all of this inside forever; he did need someone to talk to other than Spencer, and who better than a small group of people who could understand exactly what he'd been through?

He wasn't ready to talk about it with his closest friends yet -- he still felt a little guilty about keeping it from the rest of the BAU team, but he didn't want to face their sympathy, or have them viewing him with sympathy and pity. That would only make things worse.

So Spencer had insisted that if he wouldn't talk to the team, and he refused to go to a therapist, then he'd just have to find people to talk with who could be kept at something of a distance, but who he could trust enough to share his ordeal with so he wouldn't be carrying that burden alone.

But he really didn't carry it alone, Aaron told himself. Spencer was there by his side every step of the way, giving him more support than he'd ever dreamed the younger man could be capable of. He hadn't realized that the man he loved was so strong, so steadfast.

He should have realized that Spencer would be just that, he thought, leaning forward against the counter and closing his eyes. He knew that Spencer had an inner core of steel; it had come through before when he'd been kidnapped and tortured by Tobias Hankel. Spencer wasn't a weak man.

Could he be as strong as his boyfriend had been? Sometimes he doubted himself; there were nights when he still awoke in a cold sweat, Foyet's words ringing in his ears, the feeling of being violated and being helpless to stop that violation seeming to wrap around his body and soul.

"It'll go in easier if you relax."

He couldn't get those words out of his mind; Foyet's voice still stayed with him, as though that evil was still reaching out for him from beyond the grave. He didn't want that voice to linger; he wanted to push it away, to forget that it had ever existed in his life.

But that was impossible. What was done couldn't be erased; he simply had to try to cope with it as best he could, and move on with his life. As the other people at that meeting had said, he was a survivor -- and he had no reason to be ashamed.

If he was honest with himself, that was the real reason that he hadn't been able to bring himself to be honest with his closest friends about what had happened -- the shame the he still felt, and that he was sure he would always feel. It wasn't going to simply vanish.

He had a hard enough time talking to Spencer about it, Aaron thought with another heavy sigh. Talking to the people at the meeting had been much harder -- but then, he didn't know them, which made it easier to talk to them than it would be to talk with people he knew well.

Surprisingly, unburdening himself had made him feel somewhat better, even if he hadn't been able to really talk about what he'd been through. He had broken down before he'd spoken more than a few sentences; he hadn't expected to be so emotional once he'd started to talk.

When the meeting was over, the man who had led it pulled him aside and spoke with him, assuring him that it wasn't unusual for a rape survivor to lose control of their emotions the first time they talked about what they'd been through. Crying wasn't anything to be ashamed of, he'd stated firmly.

That was part of what Foyet would have wanted -- for him to feel ashamed of what had happened, and for him to keep it locked away inside for all of his life, to let it eat away at him. He wasn't going to give the bastard that satisfaction; he would exorcise that shame.

"I haven't really talked about this before ...." He'd been unable to say more than that.

He shouldn't be ashamed of that, either, Aaron told himself firmly. LIke the group leader, Paul, had said, it was normal for someone who had been through such an intense experience to have a hard time talking about it -- especially an experience that carried such a stigma.

Spencer had helped him through it; his boyfriend had been right there with him, keeping close by his side, watching to make sure that he was all right. He had spent the rest of the meeting after he'd tried to speak clinging to his lover, feeling drained and exhausted.

What some of the other people there were saying got through to him -- one man, in particular, had pointed out there was no shame in surviving a brutal attack, and that they should all consider themselves strong, capable people for doing what they'd had to do to survive.

There was nothing wrong with being a survivor, Aaron told himself now, raising his head and staring at himself in the mirror. If he hadn't survived, he would have left a void in so many people's lives -- and Jack might have lost two parents, instead of only one of them.

He had no doubt that Foyet would have gone after his ex-wife even if he himself had died; the bastard would have done everything he could to wipe out his family. He would have wanted to do a thorough job in making sure that not a trace of Aaron Hotchner, other than memories, still existed in this world.

And he'd almost achieved that end, Aaron thought with a shudder. There had been a point, just before he'd passed out, when he had wanted to die. He had almost given up -- but knowing that he still had Spencer and Jack in his life had made him hold on.

He couldn't leave his son alone -- or his boyfriend. At the time, Jack had still had Haley, but if he had let himself give up, then Spencer would have no one. He would be alone -- and Aaron had known that he couldn't give up on the man who was his future.

So he had made himself hold on, fighting through the pain and the shame of what Foyet had done to him, trying desperately to find the light at the end of the tunnel. And when he'd found that light, Spencer had been there, smiling at him and holding his hand, guiding him to safety.

"I love you." Three little words that had always been so hard for him to say.

When he'd seen Spencer sitting by his bed, those words had come so easily. It was because of Spencer that he was a survivor; the love he felt for his boyfriend had pulled him out a darkness that had beckoned so beguilingly, a darkness that it would have been easy to sink into.

He hadn't felt like a survivor then; he'd felt more ashamed than he'd ever been in his life. He hadn't been able to tell Spencer about what had been done to him; the shame of it had gone too deep. He'd told his boyfriend eventually, of course, but it had taken far too long.

Spencer didn't hold it against him that it had taken him so long to let that secret out. How long had it been? Aaron thought, looking back over the past months. A few weeks? He wasn't sure of just how much time had passed between the attack and him telling Spencer about it.

The important thing was that he had shared the experience with his boyfriend, and that he hadn't kept carrying it around like a weight on his shoulders. That weight had lightened considerably when he'd finally been able to share it with his lover -- and that was when he'd started to feel like a survivor.

Aaron took a deep breath, studying himself in the mirror again. He looked less pale now, and he felt more steady. Maybe this was only the result of talking about something for the first time, something that he'd been sure would always be kept locked inside.

Thanks to Spencer, he didn't have to keep it all locked away any more. He had a group of people that he could talk to -- even if they did have to travel an hour by train to New York so he could keep that side of his life away from where he lived and worked.

Maybe one day he would be able to talk to the rest of the team about being a rape survivor, Aaron told himself as he turned on the water, reaching to splash some on his face. But this wasn't the time. He still didn't feel quite comfortable letting all of those tangled feelings out into the open.

He would get there eventually. But for now, it was enough that he could talk to Spencer, and now to a group of people who had gone through much the same thing he had. They were all survivors, sharing his pain -- and helping him to get past the experience and move forward.

He was a survivor. He was alive. And in the end, that was what really mattered.

***