December's busy. The sort of busy where Juliette and Aaron can't even stop at the end of the day to enjoy a moment of calm in each other arms, because they're too tired to think of anything but sleep.
They wake up not to each other, but to paperwork or new cases or a lead. It's well known the holidays are hard for most people, but it apparently takes serial criminals to another level.
A week before Christmas, they finally catch a break when closing a case brings them back to Quantico mid-day, and Hotch gives them the rest of the day off. Juliette convinces him this includes himself, packing up his paperwork to pick Jack up from school.
They drive home to Christmas music, at the boy's request, and finally decorate the fake Christmas tree Haley bought when they were first married. While Juliette isn't religious, she agrees to join in on the holiday for the sake of Jack, even finding herself enjoying the day.
Naturally, this doesn't last long. Just as Aaron is finishing dinner, a call from Cruz takes them away once again.
He would have been confused by why they're being called in for a single murder if he wasn't warned about the media involvement. Swallowing a handful of Advil and hoping they can catch a break before Christmas, he meets with Garcia before calling the team to the round table.
"Local teenager Tara Harris found murdered inside her home last night. Looks like a blitz blow to the forehead, then the UnSub stabbed Tara before slitting her throat." Garcia starts, wincing at the gruesome photos. "But he didn't stop there, he then used her phone to upload an image to all of her social media sites."
"He staged a selfie?" Rossi asks, earning confused looks from the rest of the team.
Juliette would be more baffled by how Dave knew what a selfie, is if she wasn't stunned by the nature of the case. Looking through Tara's social media on her tablet, she can tell she was something of an internet sensation.
She could feel the tension forming in her shoulders, having to work a case so involved with social media along with everything else going on, it's something of a nightmare for Juliette.
Typically, she would stay behind to work on the profile, but this time she stoically offers to go to the crime scene, to get away from the social media talk even for a moment.
Driving to Maryland with JJ, she would usually try to check up on her mental health. This time she's lost in her head staring at the trees that fly past the SUV window. JJ notices her demeanor shift from the second Garcia presented the case, but she doesn't broach the subject until they're driving back to Quantico, "Are you alright? You've been more quiet than usual."
"Uh— yeah..." Juliette starts, trying to shake off her own feelings. "I just... don't like social media."
JJ would have pressed more, but since they're pulling into the Bureau parking lot, all she can do is nod.
Juliette doesn't waste time rushing back the round table, reporting what they found in the bedroom. Once she's done, Morgan starts with what they've discovered, "Tara may as well have sent an e-vite to the UnSub. She regularly checked in at a foursquare location which she tagged at her home named Harris Ranch."
"She had just posted that she was grounded, that her parents were away with the car." Kate adds.
When the room is silent, flipping through files and hoping Garcia can help with the missing piece to the profile, Juliette all but storms to the bathroom. Aaron might have thought she's simply in a bad mood, but the concerned look on JJ's face is enough to make him rush after her.
Even though it's a bathroom with stalls, he knocks on the door and wait a moment before entering the women's restroom. All of the stalls are open, but Juliette's standing in front of a mirror splashing water on her red-rimmed eyes.
He picks up a handful of paper towels and hands them to her, pulling her into a side hug. She half-heartedly wipes her face before burying it into Aaron's suit, holding him with a tightness he didn't expect.
It's only a few moments before her shoulders begin to shake and she can feel her legs weaken, then he's the only thing holding her up. Tired of fighting against her body weight, Aaron holds her tighter and gradually brings them to a sitting position on the bathroom tile.
In his grip, she slowly calms her breathing until the room in silent, minus her sporadic sniffles. Soon, Aaron asks, "What's going on?"
"The social media, it's just Griff... and I—" She shakes her head into his chest, "It's dumb."
She struggles to hold back her tears more when he runs his hand through her hair, because the fact he knows exactly how to calm her down hurts more than she expected. "I used to hate Jack's plays." He starts, feeling her furrow her brow from where she's pressed into his shirt.
"Haley and I... we met through our school play. When Jack started playing in school productions, I thought they were too much. I almost wished we had a case once, just so I wouldn't have to sit through a show and be reminded of her."
He leans his head on top of hers, "Last year, when Jack waved to me from the stage, the smile on his face... it changed the meaning of the plays for me. Now, when he brings home those invitations, I think about that smile."
"What I'm trying to say is, it's not dumb to be reminded of him by the little things. You can try to give them a new meaning, though."
Juliette sits up nodding, leaning her head against the wall behind them. After a minute, she says, "A new meaning... like murder?"
Aaron closes his eyes and exaggerates a deep breath, and Juliette can't help but smile leaning in to kiss his forehead. "I'm sorry... I know what you mean. Thank you."
He opens his eyes and leans down, connecting their lips for as long as he can until the threat of an open case becomes too much.
x
By the end of the case, Juliette might as well associate Twitter with murder. It takes four days, and two more lives lost before they can catch the UnSub, leaving the team drained and ready for a break.
Aaron sends them home as soon as they've closed the case, and Juliette drags him home in time to bake cookies with Jack. Their couch is fully occupied during the evening's Christmas movie, with Jessica staying over for the holidays.
After Jack's asleep, they spend hours wrapping Christmas presents in silence. It's not that they're unhappy, but the quiet almost makes up for a month of police radios and airplane engines.
It's well past midnight when they finally hide Santa's presents in their closet and set up on barstools with a Christmas Eve drink. It's not long before this turns into breathless kissing, hushed until they can tip-toe to their bedroom.
Falling asleep with her head on Aaron's bare chest and his hand gently encasing her waist, Juliette suddenly feels as if nothing can faze them. That is, until Garcia calls three hours later.
Aaron's jaw seems permanently set on their drive back to the office, speeding through the empty roads with pure anger settling in his bones.
He's angry with the monster who would kidnap children for a day that should be spent with their families. He's mad with whichever bureaucrat decided their team should work this case, knowing they haven't had a full day off in a month. Then he's mad with himself, for choosing his career instead of raising his son.
But all Juliette knows is that he's mad, and her soft touch on his shoulder isn't helping. So, she finds herself preparing to solve the case as quickly as possible, hoping to make it home for Christmas by some miracle.
"I hate to call us in on this Christmas Eve, but there are less-than-merry happenings in our very own Cortland, New York. Last Christmas, 11-year-old Joshua Parker disappeared on the morning of Christmas Eve. This morning, he turned up at a fire station ten miles from where he was last seen." Garcia starts.
"I know this case." Kate looks up from her tablet, "The same thing happened last year."
"Yes, that would be Tommy Wilcox, ten years old. He was found on Christmas Eve, he went missing the previous year."
"He died a few hours after they got him to the hospital." Spencer adds. "How's Joshua?"
"He's physically stable, but vacillating between catatonic and completely freaked out" Garcia looks almost hurt, showing the next photo on her screen, "Just an hour ago, Hunter Olson was reported missing from his suburban neighborhood."
Hotch steps up from his place in the back of the room, "We're heading to Cortland, hopefully to find this boy before Christmas."
x
Despite their best efforts, their first lead only comes that evening when Joshua's doctor sends over his report, and they discover he was kept solitary in a wooden box.
Then, a man comes into the station claiming his brother, John Bidwell, is the UnSub. Sitting in the interrogation room, Juliette and Aaron listen as he explains in detail how his father would beat them until they couldn't walk, then swing back a beer from the hands of his hardworking wife.
He tears up explaining how his dad locked John in a wooden trunk on Christmas Eve for sneaking a look at his presents, then disappeared for good the next morning. With the wooden box gone and his mother covered in dirt, it was only a matter of time before he put the circumstances together.
Aaron exits the conference room, he storms away from the team and into the bathroom, with Juliette following against her better judgement. She finds him splashing water on his face, his shoulders so tight he could be permanently shrugging.
She wordlessly walks up behind him and delicately begins to massage his neck, moving down his shoulders as he catches his breath in the mirror. Once the silence in unbearable, she asks, "Is everything alright?"
He shakes his head, but replies, "Not now, we need to close this first."
So she pauses her hands on his waist and feels him turn around, meeting his lips for a careful kiss before leaving the bathroom together.
Another two grueling hours pass while they interview the mother, racing to an abandoned family farm as the clock strikes midnight. Aaron exits the SUV before it's fully stopped, tearing John off of the hood of his car with the force worthy of a child killer.
They know it's over when he glances to a plank under the car, moving the vehicle and using bolt cutters on the single padlock. To Juliette, Aaron looks like a superhero picking up the child from the buried box and holding him like he would Jack.
But when the moment ends, when Joshua's handed off to an EMT and the BAU and CSI are the only ones left at the scene, Aaron looks more like a lost puppy. He's standing off to the side, staring at the ground with nothing left but his own thoughts.
When Juliette finds him like this, it takes all of her strength to pull him out of sight before engulfing him in a hug. He returns the embrace, and she's momentarily confused by how tight he's holding her until she feels the faint shakes of his torso.
Silently crying into Juliette's shoulder as the sun rises above them isn't how he imagined Christmas morning, but it leads to the one thought ever at the back of his mind: should he really be doing this job?
Once his face is dry and the scene is processed, the team tiredly races to the jet and back home, but a silent Aaron can't shake the idea from his head.
He and Juliette are quiet on their mid-day drive home, charging their mental battery in order to give Jack the best half-Christmas. They greet him with as much love and enthusiasm as possible, submitting to any idea or shenanigan he comes up with until his eyes droop during yet another evening movie.
Carrying him to the mess that was once his bedroom and seeing Jessica off, Juliette and Aaron are yet again silent, climbing into bed and curling into one another. It feels like hours before Juliette speaks up, saying what she knows she shouldn't be thinking, "Do you ever think... maybe this job isn't worth it in the long run?"
To her surprise, Aaron answers, "All the time."
She sits up, but leans into the pillows after struggling to restrain her thoughts. Eventually, she starts, "I'm starting to think Blake had the right idea. I just... I think I've sacrificed too much for this job to give up now."
Aaron shakes his head, "This isn't healthy, I— this isn't the only thing in our lives. We can create new things to not give up on."
Juliette nods in agreement, but the words that come out of her mouth aren't the ones either of them were expecting, "Marry me."
He looks down to meet her eyes, as if to say really? but she doesn't budge. Maybe it's not the way she imagined their proposal, but there's no going back now.
Finally, a small smile creeps onto his face with a laugh, "Yeah, I'll marry you."
He pauses, "But you have to let me propose the traditional way."
She smiles back, her eyes glistening, "Alright."
She leans up from the bed and meets his lips with hers, tingling when his hand gracefully encases her jaw. Separating, the full force of what just happened hits her, and her mind moves too fast to stop her mouth, "Wh— What about Jack?"
Aaron simply laughs at her concern, "He actually asked me about this a few months ago, we already have his blessing."
His nonchalance seems to calm her down, because Juliette smiles and leans into his chest once again, "Good."
They could talk about the future until the sun rises, but soon the caffeine wears off and the dark begins to draw them in. Just before her breath evens out, Juliette whispers, "I love you."
"I love you."