𝐔𝐠𝐥𝐲 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐬 | 𝐀𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐧 𝐇𝐨𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐞𝐫 (2)

Chapter 21

*Only slight sexual content. And to clarify, nobody knows that it was River who got Adeline drunk bc Adeline drank so much that she blacked out and doesn't remember a thing.

River confused me. She would switch from being sweet and kind to calloused and cold in a matter of seconds. It was like she was acting and kept forgetting which character she was supposed to be. I wondered which parts of her were fake and which were real. But I thought it wasn't as simple as that. Perhaps she was all those things. Perhaps none. I didn't know and I didn't think that she did either. But I would never blame her for that; I was realising that I didn't know myself either.

I thought, as I watched her smile at the cartoons playing on the telly, that somebody must have hurt her a great deal to make her so unsettled in herself. She jumped from emotion to emotion quickly and nervously as if somebody was chasing her. I wondered who. Was it the person that hit her that night? I wished that I could ask her outrightly. But I thought that would be an unfair thing to do. I would be asking her to expose the darkest parts of herself to cater to my curiosity.

And I wouldn't do that. Not to the one person who wasn't judging me for what I'd done.

We lived nocturnally now. Well, I did. River didn't seem to sleep at all. I slept for a very long time. I slept through the sunlight. I didn't like the sun at the moment. Its condescending golden glow seemed to only point out my mistakes and illuminate my flaws. My mistakes were different to other people's. Mine was not mundane. I had not left the oven on and burnt the crumble. No, I had fucked up differently and irrecoverably. Often, I slept through breakfast, lunch and dinner. Only rising to use the toilet or to force down a packet of biscuits. Even then it wasn't until my bladder threatened to burst or my stomach growled.  I stayed in bed, even if I didn't sleep, until River got home from watching Jack and Rosie.

We didn't talk about the fact that she was watching my children, spending more and more time with them. Loving them like I do. She got back around ten at night: the time Hotch would be home. Sometimes later. On those occasions, I knew Hotch would have had a difficult day and I wished I could talk to him about it. I was so tempted to call him, but I feared hurting him any more. When she got in she talked with Spencer, who met her on the subway, for a long time. Sometimes they had sex and sometimes they just talked. I felt like a burden then, like I was intruding on their lives, forcing them to whisper in hushed tones through thin walls.

Afterwards, River would come to my room.  She flicked on the lights and drew back the curtains even though it was dark outside. Despite my protests and groans and leave-me-alone's, she always yanked the covers from my clammy body. She pulled me into a sitting position and got me dressed, sorted my hair and brushed some make-up on my face. Because I needed a little help with those things now. She pushed my feet into comfortable shoes and pulled a coat over my comfortable clothes. I didn't wear pretty things anymore —I didn't see the point. 

Then she'd take me around the city. More often than not we just walked in silence. We would walk for miles and miles. River in her heels. She said, she didn't know how to fix things with words and that some things just needed time. She said, she wanted me to walk everything off and that I should walk until my eyes closed. She said, that if I was going to spend all day in bed she'd rather I was sleeping and not thinking. It was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in such a long time that I felt a rush of affection for her.

We would come back to Spencer's apartment and smoke on Spencer's balcony, sitting in Spencer's armchair. It was very disrespectful and unkind of us. Because Spencer didn't like the smoking or the drinking.

I always wondered why he put up with it and I think it came down to love. But it wasn't a good thing. I think Spencer was afraid of losing his partner and his friend if he spoke his mind. That was what scared me. I thought that I could walk all over him and he would still be as sweet as spring to me. I didn't like to think like that. Despite living in the same apartment, we didn't see much of each other because, I think, he struggled with understanding how I could be the same person he thought I was after I'd done what I had. I understood and I kept to my room. Kept to my bed. Kept to myself.