“And what about my team?”

Hotch leaves socks everywhere. His nightstand always has at least three glasses of water and various other things stacked atop its small surface – Hotch’s glasses precariously at the top. He shaves in the sink and “cleans” it but there’s always little hairs everywhere. He uses three-in-one soap in the shower. Snores. Hogs the covers. Sweats in his sleep. 

But… Emily has never needed Hotch, he’s always been there. She couldn’t explain the feeling because it isn’t just one. It’s like a live wire connects them, courses from one of them to the other in a constant exchange of energy. Which makes it a physical matter, her body knows his well in this exchange of equal parts. She had felt a disturbance in her chest, like her heart couldn’t quite work as well as it wanted, before she had found Hotch in the hospital after Foyet’s attack. Her body stung with the burns from the near severance, the entry and exit of burning high voltage through delicate skin. The wire throws sparks, sizzles and arcs a bright white heat but it stays connected. 

Toe to toe, lip to lip. A give and take of equal parts, understanding until her hand moves to the sore spot on his side or his rough thumb exactly where the throb is in her head. The shivers of desperation and adrenaline, cold lips. The smell of sterility and medicine. The taste of salty tears or copper blood. Love in only desperation, love without bravery and dedication. Love as it exists rawly. 

She knows that he loves her. It soothes her aching heart just a little to consider the warmth. The way that he extends his fingers out to her, waiting for her to take hold of him. Never speaking, never needing to. He looks at her the way no one else ever has – understanding her. Knowing what she wants, how she needs it. There is never a hint of annoyance, of inconvenience. He wants to love, and god Emily hopes she’s shown him the same.

He could die and she will never know or he may live and she still doesn’t know how to change it. Mostly, she can’t. 

She sits. Pacing becomes taxing, her legs now trying to shake embarrassingly with adrenaline now useless but ever present through her. Reid doesn’t seem to mind that she chooses the chair beside him. He’s chosen to sit right beside JJ, and now Emily is forced to hear the trance-like information in his dry, never fluctuating monotone as if all he is stating is merely facts. Devoid of the attachment they all know Reid has for Hotch. But Hotch has been on blood thinners for years, all kinds of medications that Spencer could recall with incredible accuracy and no hesitation to bridge the gap between prescription names and the duty they fulfilled. These things accounted for how Hotch had panicked, why he had fought them so ceaselessly as they tried to slow the rapid dumping of his blood onto the floor. He was in shock. 

The team is already in shambles. Uneasily, none of them know where or how to stand by each other. Trust is such a delicate thing, such a tricky feeling to have alongside love. And that’s what the problem is – love. And if Emily dying and now suddenly being alive was not challenging enough, Hotch has made it worse. He’s made it impossible to feel petty. Forced open again were the roles they know instinctively with one another. Reid and Morgan had kneeled down beside one another, calling to JJ for help on the radio as Hotch lay crumpled on the floor. It didn’t matter that Hotch had lied to them, his warm blood spreading beneath their fingers had warned of distance with permanence. He wouldn’t be across the ocean this time, technically only one emergency phone call away. And so they placed their hands over the wounds, trying to ward off the black closing in Hotch’s vision.

It’s haunting imagery even as Reid recounts it so factually. 

Somehow, it makes the doctor’s news go down more smoothly. Emily’s thinking about how the surgeon looks very much like a nonsense kind of military guy, seems very trustworthy, like the perfect guy to be working on Hotch. It takes a moment to hear the doctor and she frowns, “what?”

“We’re going to take Agent Hotchner up to surgery but the operation room won’t be ready for another twenty minutes.” The doctor says this slowly, watching Emily’s face still mixed with confusion. “He’s asked for you, I can take you back to his room.”

Dumbly, Emily onlys nods. Her numb lips mumble out, “Yeah, okay.” 

They go just down the hall, turn and the doctor motions her forward into a room. Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity – not a single trait she possesses at this moment. Professionalism stripped. Masks out of place. The fear of losing Hotch sits immensely on her chest, enough that she can’t stand the reality of seeing him. Had he faltered in her doorway like this? Too afraid to see her attached to machines, in moments so intimate and tense Emily’s mind has wiped them from her memory. It scares her that she might see through him here, feel his weak heart and his dying breath. 

Still, she can’t resist seeing him. Emily has spent so long without them all but even now Hotch feels so far away. She can see that parts of him are not here, have not arrived yet from the plane overseas. Maybe he can see that about her too. 

Emily’s stomach sours at the familiarity of the sight of Hotch laying still. His head turns ever slowly towards the noise at the door, his lips cracking upward feebly. Unable to stop herself, Emily smiles at Hotch. 

“Em–” he mouths the rest of her name and Emily moves faster to him, around the other side of the bed to take his cold, clammy hand. He opens his mouth again and Emily presses her lips to his, preventing his voice from catching on her name. The oxygen canal under his nose is wedged between them, plastic digging into the skin of their faces but deterring neither. Emily moves just enough to touch her forehead to his, their breath hot against the other’s face and still Hotch tries to tip his head up. “Emily,” her name is so loose on his tongue that it’s no better gargled out but it’s her’s. 

“Shh,” tears finally fall down her face and Emily stands back up, hearing the distressed noise that leaves Hotch. She wipes her eyes and when her hands move from her line of vision, his pale fingers are stretched up in search of her. Emily doesn’t think about taking his hand, wrapping both of hers around his, so gentle and mindful of the wires and lines poking under his skin and monitoring his body. His grip is delicate but desperate, her own possessive.

They say nothing. Tears wedge from the corners of their eyes. Uselessly, Hotch opens his mouth and weakly his voice tries to obey his mindless command to say her name. It seems the only thing he’s capable of, the only thing he needs or wants to say. She brings his hand to her lips, first to kiss and then gently pressing a little bit of warmth back his fingers. Emily holds his hand to her face, closes her eyes and relaxes into the feeling of his fingers gently spreading to touch her cheeks, the corners of her eyes, her nose. 

Overcome by some sort of sorcery, Hotch lies perfectly still, his unseeing eyes are aimed at Emily, fingers loosely woven in her’s as the doctor’s prepare to take him to surgery. Emily knows any sort of separation between them would snap him from wherever he’s sunken to, because she knows he’s only kind of here with her. Tethered by the curl of her fingers around his. She watches his eyes sink as sedatives swirl into his IV, the moment that he becomes tired and fights it. 

Irritatedly, Hotch tries to shift and he groans, not feeling pain, but his body is still aware of the injury. His fingers clench and Emily steps a little closer, watching his face as she holds his hand tighter, their palms together. His face relaxes against his will, eyes sinking and hardening in intensity for the briefest moment on her. 

“Don’t go–” he chokes out, she feels a fleeting strength in his grip on her hand. Where his fingers press into the skin of her hand, trying to keep her here. There’s a sharp clarity in the request, in his eyes. He knows what comes next, knows this feeling, he wants to wake up and find her here. He wants her holding his hand. He wants… her.

“I–” her voice is no stronger than his, it breaks more tears from her eyes. I can’t – but she can. She could. Emily is here now, she could be here when he wakes again. She stands watching him watch her, the neverending stream of tears following the soft lines of age in the corners of his eyes. Stray tears that slide down the tip nose. But she’s not brave enough to love him like this when he’ll remember. 

“Emily.”

“Relax,” Emily manages, her voice wet and suddenly Hotch’s hand is so very heavy. “You’re going to be fine,” she says gently, moving her grip to hold the weight of his arm. Mirroring tears fall from their eyes as weakly Hotch tries one last time to speak her name. Only his lips move, his eyes on her until they finally shut, tears falling down his face. His fingers give a twitch and Emily squeezes his hand back quickly.

She can’t let him go. His hand is limp in hers, tears that Emily caused are fat and damp on his dark eyelashes. She hears the doctors and nurses preparing to move him, she knows she needs to place his hand back on the bed, but she holds it. Maybe he is still awake, still fighting desperately to twitch his fingers again, to move his slackened lips to form her name. She squeezes his deadened fingers and this time it’s his name that goes unanswered. “Aaron?” Emily reaches to touch his face, not hearing a nurse trying to direct her out. “I love you,” mindlessly, Emily brushes a tear from his eye. “Aaron?” 

It feels as though there is nothing to say. Dreadfully, aimlessly Emily walks back to the waiting room. The floor… the walls… tile… She moves on feet that just seem to know where to go because her head is empty. Stuffed, almost, with soft cotton like a doll. She can feel the soft, dry edges touching her skull. Maybe it’s just bellows of smoke, nothing solid at all but graciously containing quantities of heat in bursts. 

Whatever it is – it hurts.

—----------------

The knife bites under the side of Emily’s chin and burns where her skin splits under the blade. Blood rushes in her ears, drowning out Ian’s grumbled monologue, the hairs on her arms painful pinpricks. Ian stays close, his hot breath burns her cold skin as he breathes her name, Lauren, against her neck. He comes up, lips brushing above the bleeding cut on her jaw, to her ear. Emily can hear Ian’s smile as he whispers into her ear, making her twitch, trying to flinch away from proximity. “That looks like it hurts.”

Emily takes a shuddering breath, stills herself, and looks over to Ian. Her lips tight, her voice hissing as she reminds him, “You’ve done worse.” She looks into his eyes, unnerved by the knife point touching her skin at one sharp point. Ian had hurt her worse, putting his hands on her too many times to count. Their relationship was always real, regardless of the details. Years ago, she loved him too much, stood in his kitchen with tears in her eyes, glass shards in her hair, and around her feet. Ian would come back a few days later with purple lilies the same shades as her healing bruises. 

Ian smile sours, twists into a snarl. He grabs the back of Emily’s hair, jerking her head back, and Emily shouts at the sudden strain, her toes pushing at the floor as much as she can as he pulls for her to move further than she can. Ian puts the knife back against her throat, against where her throat bulges at the angle, but Emily doesn’t look away. There is no fear. She’s not afraid of him. When Ian sees it, he releases her with a chuckle. Emily rocks back down with a thud, she leans forward, dropping her hair over her face as she wills her tears to go away. She can’t cry. She can’t.

Ian crouches down in front of her, putting his hand on her knee and guiding it up until he’s touching her side. He’d bound her arms and legs to the chair, knowing how clever his Lauren could be when presented with a challenge. He just looks at her, taking his time, she can’t go anywhere. Ian reaches up from her side and touches her cheek with the back of his hand. He smiles when she leans her head away. Shaking his head, Ian sighs. “I wasn’t talking about you,” he says sweetly. She’s startled and doesn’t flinch when he reaches up to push his hand through her hair and hold the side of her head. Bringing her close to him. “I know what you can take, Lauren.” Emily flinches as Ian stands too suddenly, his hands coming down, and grabs the sides of the chairs and jerks her around. “I was talking about him.” The spin startles her, making her unable to gather her bearings for a moment. Staring through a spinning room full of black dots, it takes her a moment to realize what she’s looking at. Who she’s looking at. 

Laying semi-conscious on the floor in front of two of Ian’s men is Hotch. Emily tries to keep a straight face, seeing his drained complexion and his mouth hanging open to suck at laborious breaths while his eyes rest aimlessly on the concrete below.  

Ian gives a silent gesture and the men nod, hauling Hotch upright. One grabs Hotch by the hair, pulling his fallen head up, and places the blade under Hotch’s chin, drawing blood. 

Hotch’s face is pale, white and his throat bared to her as one of Ian’s men holds Hotch upright by his hair. She can see the whites of his eyes. Hotch makes a small sound, a ragged breath, and Emily watches his eyes move. But his efforts get him nowhere, his chest moves faintly with his shallow breaths, his blood just keeps rushing down his front. His pants are soaked. The floor's puddle is only growing. He’ll bleed to death, Emily realizes. He's going to die. Stop. Stop. Stop. Emily sets her eyes forward. Ian starts talking again but she can hardly think, let alone hear. Foyet had Hotch for an hour, at least. Video footage, she’d watched it all, and Hotch had survived each slow-moving second. Survived. She glances over at Hotch again, watching his eyes slowly roll forward again, his consciousness fleeting but there. Still there.

Caught in Hotch’s deadened glaze, Emily sits perfectly still. She can’t look away from him. She watches blood trickle down his neck, slipping down below his collar to gather and soak into his shirt. 

Ian says nothing. The man with the knife smirks and nods his head. 

“No!” Emily yelps but it’s too late. 

Hotch clutches at his throat, not pain twisted on his face but confusion, and he’s looking right at her. His mouth opens and Emily tries to scream his name but she can make no sound, suddenly doesn’t have the breath to.  The men release their hold on him and Hotch falls limply forward, head hitting the ground, and he lays on his stomach. 

Emily watches as he twitches and shakes, as the blood begins to puddle out and slowly stops. 

It isn’t until Ian steps between them that Emily truly believes what’s in front of her. 

“Tell me where Declan is, sweetheart. Don’t make his death senseless.”

Death. Hotch is dead. He’s really dead. Emily’s eyes rake over his prone form, waiting, until she realizes that he has fallen completely still. No longer shaking or twitching. She’s the one shaking, that she has snot and tears soaking her face.  She can’t look away from the back of Hotch’s head, all the short hairs on the back sticking this way and that. All Emily can feel is pain, bright and heavy from her shoulders to her stomach. The nevers. All the things that will never happen again. The fact that she’s sitting here and he’s… and he’s gone and all she wants is for him to come back already. The weight of it sucks at Emily’s air, her hope to live right now bled to death in front of her, and no matter how she gasps for it, every breath isn’t enough.

“Emily!” Ian is in her face in an instant. “Emily!”

Emily suddenly finds her arms free and wildly, eyes pinched shut, blindly she swings at him. Her shoulders are grabbed and Emily jerks with the hard shake she’s giving. Opening her eyes, Emily finds herself inches from Dave, his too-tight fingers holding onto her arms. “Emily?”

She blinks, eyes adjusting to the darkness in the room. Looking at Dave all she can think of is Hotch on that floor. Dave would be devastated, and Emily realizes she’s still crying, still sucking at the air – she’s devasted. Dave says nothing more, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her against his chest. His hand rests atop her head and he sways them gently. Emily clings to him, her fingers aching with her hold on his shirt. 

“Oh sweetheart,” Dave whispers, rubbing her back. “I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night and worrying myself gray over that man for the last twenty-years.” Pressed against him, Emily can feel him take in a deep breath and shake his head. “Showed his age a little today, huh?” He shivers a little at the thought. Aaron had shuttered, laid there for moments far too long, too still. Even when Aaron had opened his eyes, his mouth had opened to and the only noise to leave was ragged, gasping breaths he took greedily like the air in the room had been thinned out. 

Emily hides herself against him for a moment, knowing immediately that her dreams must not have been very silent. That she must have screamed for Hotch like she had tried in her dream.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She’s there again in an instant, Hotch’s ashy face looking back at her. “No.” Emily sits up, turning her head away as she wipes at her face with the end of her t-shirt. The weight of the grief is still there, it’s pressed and wedged itself up under her ribs. And any thought of it brings another wave of tears and she can’t keep them at bay. 

Dave looks at her softly, “alright.” He knows even if she won’t say – he doesn’t know but he is correct in the educated guess he’s made. She was dreaming about Hotch, not a happy dream. “He’s probably awake,” Dave offers, “old habits die hard.”

Hotch is an insomniac. The coffee he consumed never helped but Hotch is a nocturnal man, Emily knows he’d normally be awake. The hospital had released him with medication, cocktails of things that should certainly put Hotch to bed early tonight, but that is dependent on him taking them as prescribed and… Emily knows he hasn’t taken them. 

“They checked him over good,” Dave reaches over and wipes a tear from the side of her face, “he’ll be moving slow for a while, but he’s okay.” Dave pats Emily’s leg, “might wanna splash some water on your face.”

Emily nods and stops, narrowing her eyes a moment at the ground. She looks at Dave for a moment, compulsively going to question how he’d made the assumption she was going to leave their room and go look for Hotch, and then deciding better. She wipes at her face with her hands again and moves with Dave to stand. Her legs shake beneath her but Emily rights herself, finding them not weak just unstable. All of her is shaking. As she walks to the bathroom, Emily can hear Dave opening the hotel door, peaking outside. 

He comes to the closed bathroom door and gives a soft knock, “He’s getting something from the vending machine.” 

“Okay,” Emily says back. She doesn’t look closely at herself, just under her tired eyes to make sure she really got her mascara off before. Checking the water with her fingers, Emily bows her head and splashes some water over her face, an immediately regrettable decision as she closes her eyes and there he is again. Pale bloodless face and all the white’s of his eyes. The back of his head and the cowlick he can never tame. 

She can’t keep seeing him like this.

Emily says nothing to Dave as she leaves, attempting to look inconspicuous without any hope. Nothing she has done in the last forty-eight hours has been very low profile. Most of the first day is blank. Vividly, Emily remembers the hospital but after she left Hotch’s room she had just moved like a robot. For the team she scraped together a few words, Hotch was conscious but too weak to speak. And then she went to the precinct, picked up all the paperwork she could find, and has been cooped up in her hotel room since. Which has been fine because Rossi has stayed at the hospital except tonight Hotch is in the hotel too, waiting with the rest of them on arranging travel plans in the morning.

Emily steps out into the cold and she sees Hotch immediately. He’s at the end of the hall, leaning on the last bit of railing against the brick. She hasn’t seen him since she’d gone back before his surgery. 

He looks better than he had before. He’s back in his own clothing, only a t-shirt and what looks like pajama bottoms. Naturally, she thinks, he wouldn’t think to grab a coat. Emily tries to make her eyes wander, she scans miscellaneous trash scattered along the ground, cigarette butts left nearby but seldomly within pots that likely once had flowers but not recently, but she looks back up. 

Hotch backs up from the rail, holding onto his chest, and his head down. 

Only a few steps away, Emily moves her foot out and nudges a flowerpot. She smiles when Hotch’s head snaps up. The pain is quickly hidden behind by accusing squinted eyes, “Sneaking up on me?”

Emily rolls her eyes, “if you weren’t going–”

“What?” Hotch interrupts, loudly.

“Nothing,” Emily puffs. She was going to say deaf, if you weren’t going deaf… He should have heard her coming. He needs to get his hearing checked again. “Nevermind. What’re you doing out here?” 

Hotch painfully straightens himself up and nods his head toward the vending machines humming in the alcove. “Snack,” he answers simply. “I could ask you the same,” he cocks his head to the side in a way that very much means that he is asking. 

Emily hums, stepping around him, and nodding her head toward the machines – she expects that he’ll understand her silence, as that’s how it’s supposed to go – but he stays right where he is, that gloomy glare all the more frightening without any lights to soften it. “What?” she asks, finally. 

Hotch shifts himself carefully, his hand never leaves the railing, “Why are you awake?”

Emily huffs, “That was not the question we agreed on.”

Silence. 

More gloomy glare. 

Emily sighs, “I’ll tell you, alright?” She motions her hand toward the machines, “But I need a snack first.”

Hotch accepts the bargain with a nod and his face tenses, jaw clenched as he drags himself forward a step, releasing his grip on the railing, his safety. The next step is stuttered, stiff –

Emily mutters and steps up beside him, wrapping her arm around his back. “Thought you got shot in the shoulder, not the leg.” She can think of no better excuse to invade his personal space and Emily finds comfort in the feeling of the muscles in his back constricting and pulling. Emily can’t help but look up at him, wondering if this is a good excuse in his mind too. 

“I’m bruised head-to-toe,” Hotch manages slowly, wrapping his arm around her, each word spoken one by one. “My head hurts…” 

The sound that comes from Emily is wet, a little less dismissing huff than she would have preferred. She can just see his eyes losing their focus as he thinks, it’s half a laugh and half… not. His pain is unbearable, worse than her own somehow. 

Hotch looks at her, steps not exactly moving in a straight direction and therefore reliant on Emily to keep them going forward. Drugs have made his tongue loose in his mouth, and without his normal filter, Hotch raises an eyebrow, “that can’t be why you’re awake.”

Emily repeats the noise and she can see it’s even more confusing for him, and still an unconscious confirmation. She rolls her eyes, “no.” 

“Very convincing.”

“Not everything’s about you, Aaron.” Looking at him, Emily can’t help but smile and he can’t seem to help it either. Emily turns to the bright lights of the vending machine, slipping out from under Hotch.  “I need chocolate. What’re you getting?”

Hotch leans against a machine, looking at his options. “Pretzels.”

Emily makes a face but makes the selection, watching his treat fall to the bottom of the machine. Her eyes rake over the options, consciously ignoring Hotch’s even gaze on her.

“I have an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon Tuesday.”

Emily gets a Snickers, puts in the code, and bends down for the snacks.

“It was a relatively clean shot. The bone should heal on its own without a second surgery.” 

Emily’s lip twist, “not very clean.” It leaves only a whisper but when she stands, she can tell he’s heard her. He’s looking at her with a flat, interpreting gaze, like he’s right inside her head, floating around with her racing thoughts. “It wasn’t.” Her voice is tight, her whole body fighting his invasion. “You–” her voice cracks. She’s not fighting him, she’s fighting the tears that have been trying to fall all day. 

Hotch steps forward and Emily throws her hand up. “No,” she says, firmly but softly. “Please…” her voice is still shaky and he stands still, waiting patiently as she takes a deep breath. Emily clears her throat and wipes her eyes, she looks up at him with a smile. Eyes still wet, she laughs, “I can’t handle a hug right now just–” 

Hotch nods, understanding. 

She smiles tensely, forcing another laugh, trying to shake the rest of the feelings away. “God, Hotchner,” she scrubs her hand down her face, “why do you always do this to me?” 

Hotch’s lips tighten. 

Emily takes another shaky breath and she rolls her eyes at the expression on Hotch’s face. “Your face is going to get stuck like that one these days,” she says, raising an eyebrow at him.

His dark eyes keep seeing right into her, his silence strong. With the release of a breath he relaxes just a little, “how do we know it hasn’t already?” 

“Good point,” Emily agrees. “It does usually look like that.”

“Mmm,” Hotch hums. Seeing the face he’s making, Emily already feels annoyed before he speaks. “I can only assume you have more on your mind tonight besides my face being stuck like this. It’s never kept you up before, at least.” 

Emily narrows her eyes, smiling, “you’re relentless.” He seems unbothered by the accusation. Emily’s smile falls into a tense grimace, “it has nothing to do with– … you.” She really wants to finish the sentiment strongly but she meets his eyes. Lying is fun, it’s easy. When lying can also hide her carefully behind the safety of its shade, there’s nothing she would rather do. But she doesn’t want to lie, not when she’s looking right at him. 

“It’s just dreams,” Emily’s voice surprises herself, how softly, tentatively she speaks. 

“They’re never just dreams.”

Does he know? Somehow, Emily thinks he can see right to the dream itself. A strange mirroring image of the man standing over her now and the one on his knees – both looking at her, waiting on her. “It was a different dream  tonight,” her eyes dart between his, “but the same thing always happens…” 

He has to know. He’s looking at her like he can see himself, like he can see her thrashing in her imaginary bonds. “What happens?”

His voice is too soft, he’s too gentle. Emily doesn’t want to cry but her lips are bunching up, betraying her with an ugly cry building itself up. She can’t look at him. “I lose you,” her voice breaks.

“Emily.” Does she say his name like this? There’s little time to wonder, eyes closed she goes where he tips her chin up, knowing he’ll taste the tears falling down her face when his lips press to hers. “Emily,” she can feel his breath on her face. She could hear him say her name over and over. He says it like no one’s ever spoken her name before. The thrill is like hearing your mother language in a foreign country. Like hearing it for the very first time. “I’m here. I’m here.”

“I know,” she complies miserably, “I know.” She cries anyway and he comes closer. Emily realizes that she’s leaning into his side. His side because his arm is strapped securely between them, bound to his chest. His hand on the back of her head until she’s done, left with only a little embarrassment. 

“I have something for you,” Hotch says and Emily laughs wiping at her face. 

“What is it?”

Emily feels with giddy excitement to take Hotch’s hand to go back down the hall to try and silently slip through the room he’s sharing with Reid without waking him. She’s surprised the genius is sleeping at all but the last few days have been exhausting, she doesn’t know how she’s awake. Hotch opens the door to the little porch connected to the room. “Wait,” Hotch whispers, easing the door shut.

She waits anxiously outside, shivering with excitement encouraged with the chill of the wind. It’s all of a minute and the door is opening as Hotch comes back out. Emily can see at once that Hotch’s nerves have taken him over, making him unsure of himself. 

 “It’s… kind of strange,” he says, not meeting her eyes, and she finds the gift curled in his fingers. She moves her hands close to his to accept it into her hand. “The bullet chipped my collar bone,” his cheeks are flushed, red with embarrassment. “You don't have to keep it. I thought… I thought you might want it.”

Bone, his bone. A chip of his bone. Emily closes her fingers around it, squeezing it in her palm. When her fingers open the bone feels so different. Her thumb strokes it curiously. “I love it,” she says, examining it between her thumb and forefinger.

“Y– You do?” Emily looks up – he seems so surprised. Surprised and then warm, something incredibly warm shines over his eyes, changing the way that he’s looking at her. “I love you.” 

Emily opens her mouth, she’s only more confused by Hotch’s certainty. He makes no move to take it back. No nerves. He’s looking right at her and he knows it, he’s just telling her. It’s more than that. She can tell it’s more. He knows she loves him too. 

“You were all I could think about.” 

He had asked for her in the hospital. Had he been saying her name all that time before she’d come back? The same persistence or worse than what she’d seen when she had been right beside him holding his hand. Emily looks all the way up at him as he stands closer and closer. Her lips part for his and she lets him kiss her again, barely restraining from leaning fully into him.  

“I couldn’t stand the thought of dying without seeing you one last time,” he whispers against her lips, looking deep into her surprised eyes. “You’d better be the last thing I see before I die.” 

Emily’s breath stutters, her eyes dart down to his lips, before coming back up to his eyes. “Ask for me,” she whispers.

Claiming to know the weak, incapacitated man means immediate paperwork. Suddenly, there’s a doctor standing in between Emily and her view of Hotch. It’s quite scary now to not have him in her sights, as if he will disappear again. The doctor is talking about the first surgery — there’s a tube and drains — the strain it placed on Hotch’s heart. Emily looks straight at Hotch, hearing but unwilling to feel anything as the doctor tells her that Hotch’s heart is weak. Weak? Emily shakes her head and the doctor keeps talking. They are watching him closely, the next twenty-four hours are critical. Emily’s still caught up on Hotch’s weak heart. 

Maybe this man isn’t Hotch at all. 

Emily never considered anything about Hotch weak. His problem is that he is too strong. He can physically endure the storm, the only living, standing thing for miles and so that makes him think that he has to. Because he can do it by himself, he must. It makes him selfish, guarded, and lonely. It does not make him unfeeling. He’s always there with his hands balled into fists, his eyes wet with tears he won’t let fall. His voice betrays him, breathy from strain. He feels, there’s no denying it, but Hotch will try. His body will fail him long before his heart. 

Some of the doctor’s previous words come back to Emily as she approaches Hotch’s room. From here she can see the tubes running underneath the thin blanket across his chest. Iodine stains his skin in swipes, thick gauze visible beneath his gown. His face is utterly expressionless and Emily’s throat feels tight, her eyes darting to the floor. 

Weak, huh... Emily pulls a chair up beside him. She glances again at his face which is so pale, her eyes dart to his hand, he probably feels as cold as he looks stiff. 

Emily pulls in a slow breath, forcing herself to shake off this unsteady feeling. It’s more than fair; it’s definitely someone else’s turn to be strong for a while. He’s done a good job and held the burden long enough. Restlessly, Emily picks at her fingers. Her hand comes to her teeth, peeling away stubborn bits of her skin until her middle finger is bleeding and her pointer finger stings. On the bed, Hotch's finger twitches. Everytime Emily looks up at it and then at his face, waiting for an expression to cross his blank features, and everytime nothing. 

A nurse steps in preparing his next round of medications and Emily stands silently and leaves the room. 

To her annoyance, it is the moment she is not there to see his finger twitch that Hotch’s eyes manage to crack open. There’s an intense pressure over the right half of his chest and some machine in the distance sputters out a shrill alarm that irritates the tinnitus in his bad ear. He tries to turn his head, get away from the noise, but the canal under his nose is pinched to his cheek and the plastic hurts. The sound is making his ear hurt and finding his arms immobile, Hotch lets out a panicked grunt. He moves his head uselessly on the bed, a deranged, raw panic overtaking him.

“Hotch.”

Emily Prentiss. His eyes lock onto her, a single raft in the middle of the ocean. A familiar face. He flinches from the doctor, pulling in another ragged, scared breath from his straw-like throat, but Prentiss is standing right by the bed. She is comforting enough for that part in the back of his brain alight with terror, seeking to flee, to ease. She is easy to focus on hovering so close, he feels safer with her here. Scary and strong, she’ll protect him. He’s distracted enough that the doctor is able to slip her cold stethoscope under his gown. She instructs him to breathe, deep breath, but Hotch’s eyes are on Prentiss. It feels like days since he’s seen someone familiar, though he hasn’t a clue how long has passed since right now and… whatever came before. 

The doctor speaks to Prentiss and she stands there at the end of the bed, eyes locked with Hotch, while the doctor’s words go in one ear and out the other. One of the machines begins to make a new sound, liquid being moved and another dose of medications snaking through the tubes into the I.V. taped to the back of Hotch’s hand. His head tilts on the pillow, eyes struggling to stay open. She watches his fingers twitch and he moves his head uselessly fighting sleep. 

The doctor leaves and Emily hesitantly, watching Hotch watch her, takes her seat back at his side. “You need to rest,” she repeats the doctor’s sentiments. 

Hotch has no verbal response, just a terribly slow blink. 

Not bold enough to take his hand, Emily places her hand at the end of his, their fingers grazing. “The other’s will be here soon, rest.”

His finger twitches against hers and he exhales slowly, lips hardly moving and distorting the words he mumbles incoherently. He’s asleep in an instant, pulled back under. For a moment, the creases of pain remain claw-footed in the corners of his eyes, down the sharp lines between his eyebrows. All that time before spent wishing for something from him is all gone, Emily can’t tear her eyes away from the lines. 

He pulls in a deep breath and they ease away. 

The sounds of the room are never ending. Lights blink back feedback that Emily can’t understand, things hiss and churn and move. Emily has nothing to do but think. Should she be grateful it’s not worse? But how much worse can it really get? Hotch isn’t dead… yet. That’s worse but that might just be next. Doesn't make much sense to be grateful for what hasn’t happened when it might merely be hours away. She can be angry but she can’t do anything. She can cry but she doesn’t even feel like doing that. So she sits. Thinks. 

Emily flinches when her phone vibrates in her pocket and she rises quickly as her adrenaline does, moving from the room to the hall in anxious anticipation for the team to arrive. Still, Hotch remains in her sight. Happy to let someone else take charge, Emily stands on the edge of the group as the other’s step into Hotch’s room. They haven’t had the opportunity to see him yet but Hotch’s eyes open to slivers and Emily can feel their hazy focus gather on her. She’s quick to move, eager to make use of the words like whispers leaving his dry lips. Until she’s holding his bloody clothing, clothes she’d just seen him in, dried stiff. 

The other’s leave to get Haley and Emily watches them from the end of Hotch’s bed. 

“Prentiss.”

“Hmm?” Emily turns slowly back to face Hotch, not sure she can manage to keep her own expression level. Not when looking at him like this makes her stomach hurt. 

“You were at my apartment? Could you tell how he got in?” 

Emily slowly shakes her head, “I couldn’t.” 

Hotch nods solemnly, as he stares up at the ceiling. 

“Do you want to talk about what happened?” 

He clears his throat, eyes lowering to find her, “I don’t know. After he stabbed me the first time it all goes blank.” 

Liar. She’s not certain what he does remember but he’s lying about it. He remembers something well enough to wake him in a panic, instantly obtaining attention from a nurse or doctor. She hasn’t seen it but she’s not stupid, Emily’s aware of what’s happening. And he’s looking at her now, fully expecting her to let it go, knowing she won’t call his bluff. 

“If you do,” Emily offers, with a shrug. 

Hotch cracks the driest, faintest smile. Graciously, he’s been given a momentary pass and it makes Emily smile too. If there’s anyone anymore who might poke and prod the information from him it is probably her. And it scares him at the same time it relieves him. Because Emily isn’t just saying it, this won’t leave her mind until it leaves his. She’s judgemental as hell but she understands, maybe more than he wants her to. 

The energy is off but Emily tries to find comfort in silence. It’s usually easier, anyone who spends time with Hotch has to be used to a little silence. He’s not much of a talker himself, unless inhibited by alcohol or anytime he hasn’t got to be in slacks. Or… a hospital gown. Hotch has got to be comfortable and he’s clearly not. It’s easy to be comfortable in silence because when Hotch is comfortable it just feels comfortable. Safe. Easy. Hotch feels like none of those things right now and Emily can’t either. 

He’s stripped down to his raw skin, no armor in sight, just a weak man, tired and confused by the countless medications fighting his body to live and manage his pain. 

It feels wrong to even look at him like this. Emily’s seen him in jeans, Aaron with hair astray from the toddler sitting on his shoulders gripping it for dear life. She’s seen him drink himself a little silly, criss-crossing his long legs while he walks like a crane in deep water without any of the grace. But that was a choice. He’d cried, smiled, and been exhausted before but everytime that was a choice. Even knowing him without the armor, it feels wrong to see him without when she knows he wants it. 

 If there weren’t medications muddling his blood and keeping his heart calm, it would certainly ache more than it does now. Without full access to feeling, Hotch can’t even find it within himself to be embarrassed. Later, it will come later. 

She watches him try and turn his head, uncomfortable in a way neither of them can identify. “Do you–” Emily moves anxiously, “do you want to sit up?” 

“Please,” he whispers, turning his head back to her.

When the bed moves he flinches and the combined motions make him stiffen and suck in a breath that he holds. Emily stops the bed but he shakes his head and silently he’s thankful she understands and the bed keeps rising until he’s sitting up. 

Boredom was better than what comes next. Emily looks everywhere but at Haley as she comes down the hall, Derek directing her into the room. Jack goes to Dave who distracts him quickly and effortlessly. Emily looks at the floor, counting linoleum tile to keep her distracted. Otherwise, all she’s got to think about is her possibly dying friend and the ex-wife and child he’s sending to witness protection. 

Haley leaves with Jack on her hip and Emily stands, hands anxiously twisting together. She feels panic for Hotch, watching them leave. Her heart pounds in her chest, fear makes her hands shake at her sides, as she watches them leave wondering if they will ever come back. 

Valiantly, uselessly, Hotch tries to fight off his fear. He jerks himself awake every few hours, sucking in tight breathes and eyes darting around. Foyet’s name isn’t far from his lips and Hotch sits vigilantly unconvinced that Foyet isn’t the door’s shadow across the wall or the stuffed bear in the windowsill. Nothing can be done to soothe his irrational fear. Dave tells him that he’s safe, and holds his hand. Derek sits by the door, facing whatever comes in. Emily is hiding in a shadow, the only comfort he can truly find. This feels safe, having her hiding in the same domain as Foyet. Let the man show his face, he’ll find someone much scarier waiting for him.

Hotch is in no position to make decisions for himself. However tired but lucid he was worsens as Haley and Jack leave. Fat tears roll down the sides of his face, his words are breathy, weak. He’s scared and lonely, a little clingy. 

“Em’ly?”

She sees the pulse ox out of the corner of her eye, doesn’t hear him call her, and she moves to his side close to the hand he’s moving around vaguely. “We’re just going down the hall,” she tells him because she’s already explained twice that he’s going to surgery. His surgical team has already been down, they’ve told him this. But he’s confused and agitated and terrified, so Emily is given permission to come as far as she can. That means sitting in the hall, waiting to move Hotch once he’s asleep, less likely to be alarmed by the changes in his environment. “Rest,” she says, placing her hand over his. 

He’s asleep by the time they are ready and his eyelashes bat as he’s put under. Emily grabs his hand when he moans, turning his head fitfully, and with an exhale he relaxes again. 

His sleep is black, soundless, and then he is in that car, the smell of cheap cologne burning his nose. Foyet’s singing along to the radio, drumming his hands on the wheel and singing off-key to Guns N’ Roses. Bloody, wet hands come from the darkness, blurry eyes peer over surgical masks saying words to him in morphed muttered languages. Fingers take hold of him, arms lift his limp body and his eyes are rolling back into his head. He’s conscious and not, he feels dead. Floating. A thumb presses on his jaw and a feral part of his brain clamps his teeth together. His mouth is pried open and his breath restored, cold solid oxygen sitting in his balloon lungs. He’s limp, his oxygen deprived body greedily taking what it’s given. Hotch is taken right back to the car, ends up swarmed and overtaken by the hands. The dream is fitful and never ending. 

Dave goes with the doctor, the first to take in the news. Hotch’s heart stopped again and he’s still intubated to try and alleviate the strain on his heart. Watching Hotch’s chest move with breaths a machine takes brings tears to Dave’s eyes. It’s hard to not believe something right in front of you but Dave does it. Hotch had never been that youthful, bright-eyed rookie. He’d come hardened and strong, too strong for his own good. Dave had thought it would get him killed but it seemed that never knowing when to back out of a fight has been the only thing keeping Hotch alive. That’s all Dave has now, hope in the man who has never figured out how to back down. The ICU has different rules and no sooner than Dave’s ten minutes is up, before he can even get off the floor, his phone is ringing. There’s a case in Oregon. 

Hotch is by himself when he wakes twenty-five hours later. Medicated cocktail weighing him down, he was only vaguely present through the veil. He can’t be certain he’s actually awake, that he’s not just swept up in another dream. He gags weakly around the tube in his throat. Tears roll down the corners of his eyes and he fights perilously against the doctors. He shifts in and out of consciousness, medicated calm keeping him from fighting the machines helping him, and his drug-addled brain conjures visitors from the shadows of the room. 

Dave is there six hours later when the doctor removes the tube, in the corner of the room while Hotch coughs, gagging and stiffening in pain. He cries for Haley with a voice and throat too raw to make more than rasps. But fat tears leave his eyes, his lips form her name soundlessly, persistently until his eyes are rolling back into his head before his eyes have fully closed. 

In his sleep, Hotch cries. He makes small, hurt sounds and whimpers, recoils from fears only he can see.  

“What’s wrong man?”

Hotch’s blurry vision slowly settles on Morgan, “mm?”

“Something bothering you?” Morgan frowns when Hotch moves his head again. Hotch’s clarity is sharpest in the hour before his next dose of pain medication, when the pain is the clearest. It’s been only twenty minutes since the most recent dose, Morgan had watched Hotch go from restlessly sedated in his slumber to limp, melted into cot below him. Steadily for the last five minutes Hotch has been making little agitated noises in sleep, now his eyes are open and he’s moving uncomfortably. 

Morgan is ready to give up when Hotch turns to him, and he steps closer, ready to be beckoned any which way at just a rasp from Hotch.

“Hurts…” he mouths.

“Do you want to sit up?” Morgan asks. He hates not being able to help. He hates sitting here not able to do a damn thing. “I can sit the bed up.”

Hotch nods. He turns his head away, pulling harsh breathes audibly, lips twitching with pain he’s barely hiding. “Wanna go home,” he grunts, panting. “Please,” he whines, turning and hitting Morgan with the full force of gut-wrenchingly teary, pathetic eyes. 

Morgan’s done this job before, sitting by Hotch’s beside, but typically Haley is near. He just covers for a short while, waiting for her to come back and soothe Hotch back to himself. Morgan had tried but he had learned long ago he needed to stick keeping Hotch occupied with games or being the muscle needed to assist. “I can’t,” Morgan strains out. “I would,” he lies, because right now he just might, but as quickly as he’d do anything to make the tears stop, the idea of Hotch being home scares him far more right now. 

Hotch sucks in a sob, turning his head in shame to hide, even if Morgan can see his lips pulled up and more tears squeezing out of his shut eyes. 

“We can go outside,” Morgan offers, though he’s not certain. But the idea gets Hotch’s attention and Morgan will bat his eyelashes and flirt with however many nurses or doctors, man or woman, it takes to make it possible. “I’ll be right back,” he whispers, squeezing Hotch’s arm. 

It takes minimal eyelash batting to get a wheelchair. The nurse out in the hall is happy to see that Hotch’s visitors have returned and she’s willing to see a whim out. He does better with visitors. She had attributed most of his restlessness and somberness to being more alert, perhaps just more himself. But she can see a difference. Hotch watches her with sad but hopeful eyes as she moves medical equipment out of their way, she can tell that he is more himself with his friends nearby. 

It is not that the roles usually go Morgan in the wheelchair and Hotch pushing but it does feel like roles have been swapped. It makes more sense for Hotch to be the assistance not the assisted, it’s difficult for Morgan to make peace with. But this is what it is. 

“The grass.”

Morgan obeys, turning the wheelchair off the path and into the grass. He stops it just a few feet from a bench, pushing the brakes down. “You up for a walk?” he asks, stepping around the side and watching Hotch gingerly lift and lay his feet in the grass. “Where are your socks?” He doesn’t know how he didn’t notice it earlier but now fire burns in chest at the sight, heating up his face. All Hotch does is shiver, every moment of all day. He comes in and out of pain but constantly he’s cold. 

Hotch ignores him, moving his hands to prepare to stand like he’s capable of summoning enough stubbornness to get himself out. 

Morgan offers support silently. Again, he’s familiar with this. He knows good and well the only way Hotch will take his shoulder to lean on is if they are silent. Morgan has had to catch Hotch from falling, he knows that if he says anything Hotch will simply push him away and choose to fall. 

Bare feet on the cold ground eases something in Hotch more nagging and persistent than the pain. He’d grown up running around without shoes, tracking his muddy footprints on his mother’s scrubbed hardwood. As painful as it is to stand, Hotch bares through it because it feels amazing. He’s not ready to give it up.

“I forget you’re a good ol’ boy,” Morgan chuckles and immediately his eyes dart to Hotch, not certain his comment won’t end in Hotch laying in the grass. He receives a warning, narrowed eyes. But in all fairness, Morgan grew up in the city. He wasn’t walking anywhere barefoot, he still wouldn’t. “You can’t go anywhere without shoes in Chicago,” he says and Hotch allows the slight distraction as he drags himself through walking. “Nails and needles and–” the list goes on and Morgan shakes his head thinking about it. “I don’t understand the appeal. Sticks, bugs, and what’re those plants called with the needles? I’ve seen ‘em in the grass, man, why would you chance stepping on one of those?”

Hotch’s response is a puff, he clearly has an opinion but he can only focus on one thing at a time. 

They say nothing on the bench. Morgan watches the breeze move the tree leaves, pleasantly warmed by Hotch proximity.

Leaning into Morgan, too weak to even hold himself upright, Hotch finds himself unable to escape his curiosity. “Why are you here?” The breeze nearly sweeps up his question and for a moment he thinks Morgan hasn’t heard him. Morgan moves his arm around Hotch’s shoulder, carefully pulling his blanket tighter and only then does Hotch realize he’s shivering. 

“You hate hospitals,” Morgan says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. It is the truth so maybe it is. “You’ve never left me alone in a hospital,” he says to the foliage and then he turns, looking at Hotch. “You’ve never left any of us.” Maybe he hasn’t personally been there but everytime Hotch has been in the field, doing the hard work, so that they can have visitors when they’re hurt or sick. Everytime, always. And when the job is done, when things are truly safe again, Hotch will show up. It’s never been more apparent than now. 

“It’s late,” Hotch says stupidly and Morgan laughs and looks at him with this sad look that even mind-boggled Hotch knows means Morgan is keeping silent for his sake. That he could say something that would be emotional and very telling about Hotch in a way that he most definitely doesn’t want to hear. Certainly not right now. 

The truth is easy, Hotch asked. Not recently but years ago now, when the only people who showed up at the hospital were Morgan and Haley. His ghosts were different then but Morgan didn’t need to know their names, he just wanted to help. The request had come from Haley and Morgan has been with Hotch every night he’s spent in the hospital that Morgan has known of. He’d sit in the doorway of every hospital room until one or both of them dies, everytime. Nothing would change that. 

“Thank you,” Hotch says, loudly, clear.

Morgan scoffs. It’s the first he’s heard Hotch sound like himself, voice and all. He reaches for Hotch’s cold hand, hospital bracelets scratching his skin, “always, man.” 

Roy Brookes inherited money from a great-aunt and opened a little convenience store. Jessica and Haley had been raised in Georgia until Roy got that money, and then he moved his family to Virginia, where he had grown up. There were lots of kids in the neighborhood but Haley’s favorite was Aaron. 

The first time Haley met Aaron, they were four years old. Aaron was already in Kindergarten and could read and write his name, but Haley’s first impression was a dirty little boy hiding behind his mother’s sundress. His mother had run a washcloth over his face and hands but the dirt had prevailed, remaining dusted underneath his chin and under his nails. His father had tried to encourage him out but Aaron gave all his replies from behind his mother, wrapping the loose fabric of her dress around himself to hide. 

He was smaller than her despite being six months older, already missing his front teeth, but still quick to smile, always laughing. He didn’t do as well with the crowd of kids as she did, so he mostly played by himself. Off on his own task as the other’s raged imaginary wars on one another. She liked his company, how he was both calm and yet capable of great chaos. 

Haley spent so much time with him that she didn’t notice that everyone else didn’t like him. And they really didn’t like him. They excluded him on purpose, unable to say what was so strange about him, but able to narrow it down well enough. There was something inexplicably off about Aaron, something not quite normal. Haley realized it too, she could tell, even if she too could not name it. Aaron being weird had never bothered her, though. 

Until one day the other kids decided that it wasn’t enough to ignore him. 

Haley punched Robby Pine in the stomach, unable to even hear the words coming out of his mouth. She’d felt like a cartoon bull with smoke blowing out of her ears. Unable to feel or hear a thing over the burning anger rising in her. Her body moved on its own mission, stomping over to Robby and punching him so hard that he collapsed down on the spot. Unable to do anything but whimper and gag at the unexpected pain. 

She told the principal he was making fun of Aaron’s glasses. Haley couldn’t remember what he’d said but she knew it was worse than glasses, it always was. But it wouldn’t matter anyway. Haley walked away with a new understanding of the world around her. 

Roy had known in that instant that Aaron Hotchner was going to bring his life nothing but stress. Haley had always been the angel. Jessica was the sort to punch bullies, she had before. His oldest was a spitfire, not his youngest. But the moment Haley’s elementary school called to inform him that she had hit another student, he knew he was screwed. It was certainly some cosmic vengeance, his own hot-headed protective streak being passed down flawlessly to his daughters.

Haley refused to apologize and she didn’t feel bad about it at all. 

The next damning of fate came when Aaron got pneumonia that winter. Haley went on a hunger strike, stubbornly sitting at the kitchen table with her arms tight across her chest, and her chin pointed away from the dish in front of her. She refused to eat until she could see Aaron. Breakfast was one thing, Haley puts up a fight eating eggs anyway, so they wrote that off. She’s upset her friend is sick. But she refuses lunch and even though her stomach growls as she looks down at the dinner her mother’s put in front of her, she shakes her head.

Roy had caved. Knowing he wouldn’t cave, Roy knew neither would Haley. 

The hospital was too silent, too tense. Haley had only ever seen Aaron’s parents from afar. His mother at the front door with a wash rag, wiping him down before letting him come in the house. His father’s car pulling into the driveway, the black of his suit and the impossibly large shadow he cast in the last remnants of the day’s light. Up close they were different. Aaron had gotten his dark hair from his mother and it was his father’s grimace that he was mimicking each time he stopped to think. But she didn’t think that they looked that similar, too old and too big to look much like Aaron. 

Aaron’s father moved first. Haley looked up at him as he shook her father’s hand, unable to see his clenched jaw and the tears in his eyes until he bent down to her level, trying to force his weak mouth into a smile. “You must be Haley,” he whispered. He’d moved his hand as if he was going to touch her, his eyes glazed, and the ache in his chest yearning but it fell back down. The soft tears pooled in his eyes dangerously close to spilling over and he cleared his throat. “He never stops talking about you.” He had glanced then to Aaron and Haley’s eyes had followed, and then stayed. “He loves you a lot, you guys are best friends, huh?” 

She’d never cleanse the sight of him from her mind. Aaron had always been small, smaller than her, but he’d never this small. He was in pajama bottoms, the Superman ones she’d seen him in many mornings when she made it to his front door before he’d finished breakfast. It didn’t matter that they swiftly tried to keep her distracted, her eyes kept glancing back at Aaron. Haley was convinced he’d eventually wake up, he’d look over and smile, and she’d be released from talking to the adults. She’d crawl on top the bed with him and they’d play. But he doesn’t. 

Things changed. The pneumonia had nearly killed Aaron, his parents had made preparations for a reality the doctors were fearful was soon coming. No one needed to tell Haley, she could feel it. 

There was nothing Roy or her mother could do to comfort her, she wept and sobbed until her head throbbed, until her stomach ached, and there were no more tears to come. 

Two mornings later, Aaron’s father leaves for work an hour late. Haley comes out to wait on the porch for the bus, from across the street she sees Mr. Hotchner and waves, but then she sees Aaron’s blue coat and green hat and shouts with glee, rushing over to them. Ignoring Jessica’s shout that they’re not supposed to cross the road. 

Mr. Hotchner pulls her up on his lap, smiling between the two children. “He’s still sick, sweetheart,” he warns. Then his attention turns softly to Aaron, sleeping, with his face buried in his father’s suit jacket. “What’da say, buddy?” Mr. Hotchner asks, bouncing his knee to wake Aaron. “How do you feel?” 

Aaron’s still pale and sweaty but once his eyes are open they focus blearily on his father. Mr. Hotchner rubs his back and Aaron lays his head back down on his father’s chest. His eyes still barely cracked open, fighting exhaustion to keep looking.

“Do you have a fever?” Haley asks, touching his head. Mr. Hotchner puts his hand near hers and she looks up, waiting for him to say, and nods her head in agreeance. “Does your tummy hurt?” she asks, pointing. 

Aaron groans and hides his face. He’s old enough to know to use the bathroom on his own, just beginning to be trusted to shower on his own– and he can feel the huge, regressing steps he’s taken backward. Being sick made him feel like a baby, so many bad things were happening. He was embarrassed, no matter what his father or mother said. Only babies wet the bed, only babies have accidents.

“Alright little lady,” Mr. Hotchner stands and Haley takes his hand. “Here comes the bus, don’t slip.” He lifts Haley up over the steps and she giggles. He stands at the road and waves Haley off and Haley waves extra hard but Aaron doesn’t move, not even when Mr. Hotchner tries to get his attention. 

Haley’s favorite part about Aaron’s house was the fireplace. Mr. Hotchner cut wood all year round to keep enough for the hard winters and each year, the warmest place to be was curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace. That’s where Aaron wanted to be as his fever came down, he was too weak to want to play. Just lay curled up underneath his blanket, not interested in eating. So Haley came to him. She’s content just to be there with him, to have her friend back. So Haley lay there with him on the rug, doing her homework and reading. She’d ask him questions about the rain cycle or the planets and he’d try to remember. By the end of the week, it’s as if he was never sick at all. Their parents watch them run through the yard screaming and playing. 

Everything changes the year Aaron goes to middle school. He’d liked being in Kindergarten, teaching her letters she didn’t know, but then first grade came and Haley was in Kindergarten and they realized they would never be in the same grade. Recess was the most important part of the day and Aaron and Haley lived for it, and then middle school came. Haley felt trapped, like a little baby, while Aaron and Jessica got to go to middle school. And then Sean was born. Aaron stops coming out to play, he’s distant, and every time Haley tries to go over Jessica stops her. 

He starts missing school. Haley tells them about it at dinner, and Jessica’s eyes stay pointedly fixed on her plate. Roy makes up an excuse and he shifts the conversation. 

Aaron stops playing with her but he waves as he mows the lawn. Things change slowly, slightly. He talks to her on the bus, and listens more than anything, but Haley always manages to get a little something out of him. He talks about books and his new baby brother, but mostly about books. He’s reading, Jessica says he reads during class too, and Haley tries to lift his bookbag but she can’t, and he tells her that the librarian let him take out four books today. Haley can’t keep up with which book he’s reading but she talks to him about them. 

One night Haley gets up, eerily guided by an off feeling, running down the hall and to her sister’s room. Jessica’s already awake, holding Sean and standing at her window. Jessica had been babysitting Sean since he was born, he loved her, but nothing she could do would stop his wailing. Sean screamed and screamed and Jessica held him, standing shocked, as she watched from her window down at the horror outside. 

Mr. Hotchner runs out to the car with Aaron in his arms, frantically waiting for Roy to throw the door open so he can put Aaron inside. Aaron is completely limp in his father’s arms, head and arms swaying as he’s carried. The two men scream at one another, and Jess looks at her sister. Neither had heard their father raise his voice, neither had seen him behave as he does then in the street. 

No one speaks of what happened that night. 

Aaron returns, a white cast on his right arm up to his elbow, and a shiny black eye. He won’t tell her either. 

—---------------------------------

Haley searches the crowd for Aaron’s crooked pirate hat. Her father waves at her from the aisle, a small bouquet of flowers in his hands. Her mother shouts her name and Haley can practically hear Jess grumbling under her breath that Haley isn’t looking for them, she’s looking for Aaron, she always says his name as a sigh, full of disapproval. 

“Haley?” 

She whirls around and finds he’s already behind her, “hey! I was looking for you.” Haley walks right into him, hugging him, and giving him the seconds he always needs to understand what’s happening. Hesitantly, she feels his left palm press against her back.

Aaron keeps the small flower he has for her protectively hidden in his palm, shy now that he’s standing in front of her. “You brought me a flower.” Boys had given her flowers before. Pink roses that smelled like perfume and purple lilies she’d pressed in books. But never a dandelion. She picks up the little flower carefully, brushing her thumb over the top. Haley could remember picking them at recess, braiding their stems together to create flower crowns. She wonders if he remembers this too. 

Aaron looks away from her, blushing, “Sean gave it to me for good luck. I– I– …. you deserve more–”

Haley shakes her head, “no. It’s perfect.” She rocks up on her toes to kiss his cheek, her lipstick on his face the same shade as his flushed cheeks. The perfect gift from the worst pirate in history. “Now,” she says, “your acting skills, sweetheart, that’s another conversation.”

He shakes his head but he smiles.

Haley tucks the dandelion behind her ear. She smiles at him one more time and turns, finally answering her friend’s shouts of her name. “I’m coming! Just give me a second!” she shouts back. Haley turns back to Aaron and grabs his hand, “I’m doing Romeo and Juliet with the community theater. Will you help me with my lines?”

“O–Okay.” 

“Good!” Haley releases him, the dandelion peaks out of her hair, “I’ll talk to you later.”

He stands frozen in place, his hand falling back down to his hip as it leaves hers. Sweetheart. He watches her skip over to her friends, turning away finally when their excited screams become too loud. Aaron hangs his head and slips through a side door, watching the floorboards disappear under his feet as he finds the familiar deserted halls of the school. His feet take him to his locker and he stands frozen in front of it, his hand half-raised to put the combination in the lock. 

 Sweetheart. He had called her that a million times. Maybe more often than her name. He’d called her sweetheart just a few hours ago, as they learned over their chemistry project. Oh, sweetheart, he’d glanced over at the math on her page, just copy what I have. He had been her math tutor for as long as they’d been in school together. 

It just… nobody has called him that since he was little. And now there’s a big empty sucking hole in his chest. Pressing down on his lungs, creeping up his throat. 

It’s pathetic. He puts his back to the lockers and slides down, putting his head on his knees. 

A month later, he is shipped away to boarding school. His mother hadn’t looked at him since his father delivered the news. Aaron had broken down in tears begging her to give him another chance. He hadn’t done anything. His grades were fine. He didn’t do anything. If she could ignore him as he hyperventilated at her feet, sobbing for her, then she wouldn’t break now, not ever.

He cries and pleads to stay but his tears carry no currency, they mean nothing.There is no warning and Haley hates him for not telling her. But Aaron withholds the information from everyone, he can’t imagine they’d care, and he can’t face it. The news comes suddenly anyway, he has only one night to prepare his things. And he doesn’t tell Haley. They have only an hour and it’d only be wasted if he told her. 

She’s tired, half-asleep on him when he finally moves. She has school in the morning so he helps her climb back down off the roof and back into her room.

“Haley.” He whispers her name from the tree outside her window, smiling when she comes back. 

She opens the window again. “What,” she whispers back, “you’re gonna get us caught!”

“I love you.”

Haley blushes, “Aaron–”

“Shh,” he holds and taps his finger to his lips. “Shh, go to bed.”

“Okay,” she calls back, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He hesitates but nods, “I’ll see you.” 

—---------------------------------

 When Aaron comes back he’s quiet, and never meets their eyes. Two months later Aaron and Sean come over in the middle of the night and Haley wakes to the sounds of the ambulances outside. 

“My dad died.”

Aaron had always been tough but he wasn’t mean. Grief makes him angry. Haley has never seem him act so coldly. He stands alone during the ceremony and Sean grips Haley’s hand with all the might he has, never tearing his eyes from his brother. Aaron stares with a wide-gaze, blankly at the unturned ground, never at the casket, never at the minister. 

“Runaway with me.” 

Haley could feel something coming. His heart rate had picked up, she could hear it pounding with his fear. His arm felt a little heavier around her. “Where?” 

Aaron laughs, and the sound makes her stomach twist, she turns her head up to look. To see the awkward too big smile on his face, the tears pooling in his eyes. The anguish. “Anywhere.” 

Haley lays back, looking back up at the stars. A few months ago this is all they had. A shared night sky, miles and miles apart. She didn’t even know where he’d been sent, just that he was here one day and gone the next. Shipped away in the middle of the night. 

There’s a real thrill to anywhere. Between them they could get away, anywhere they wanted. 

“After I graduate,” she says, turning to look up at him again. “We can go to college–” Aaron sighs, shaking his head, annoyed, and looks away from her. “Aaron, please, I’m being serious.”

He sits up and Haley shrinks when he pulls away, pushing himself away.

“Aaron, I’m not– I’m not trying to say anything.” Her parents had been hounding him about plans for months. His own should be worried, but one couldn’t be bothered when he was alive, and now dead, only Aaron’s mother remains and she hasn’t seemed concerned since the day she brought him home from the hospital. And Aaron couldn’t stand the attention, let alone the expectations. The first was uncomfortable, the second foreign and infuriating. Together, they spun Aaron indignant, pissed to be suddenly noticed and lectured. 

He’d graduated the year before her, got a steady job, and was staying home taking care of Sean. Which he thought was the right thing to do and it contradicted what her parents thought. 

Haley leans forward, “I need you to go with me. You’re the smarty pants, who is else going to read my essays and teach me calculus?” 

While he was at boarding school, the Brooks had stepped in. The morning after Aaron left, Jessica found Sean sitting in the driveway sobbing. His shoes weren’t tied and his coat missing. Aaron had always gotten him up. Always made sure he remembered to brush his teeth, found his coat, and made sure his clothing was weather-appropriate. Without any guidance, and without any breakfast, Sean had missed his bus. And he’d given up on the spot. 

Sean needs Aaron. 

“I like the University of Richmond.”

She watches him carefully. He glances at her and shrugs, huffing, “Richmond?” Aaron crosses his arms,“no. Can you imagine me in the city?”

Haley laughs and scoots through the distance, leaning into him. She crosses her arm over him, “they’ll turn you into a city boy.”

He huffs, “no.”

“Yes,” Haley argues, “you’ll be wearing loafers and suits in no time.”

“Over my dead body.”

—---------------------------------

“No!”

Jess pounds harder on the bathroom door, “Aaron I have to piss! Open the fucking door or I’m gonna kick it in!”

“I’m showering!”

Jess turns from the door, stomping towards their shared room but Haley pops out of the spare, meeting her halfway. “Just wait,” she requests, slipping past Jess in the small hall and going to the door. “Aaron?” she says sweetly, “I gotta brush my teeth.”

They both hear him huff from the other side. “Fine,” he hollers, and they hear the shower curtain jerk back. He throws the door open, naked and dripping wet. “That what you wanted?” he asks Jess, and he turns and gets back into the shower. 

Jess stands for a moment, shocked and processing, but she rolls her eyes, “like I’ve never seen you naked.” 

Aaron had basically lived with them during Haley’s last year of high school, which doesn’t really matter because the three of them were inseparable. And that became a problem with the dynamic shifts. Aaron and Jessica had split unofficial custody of Sean. He’d only listen to them, but he was sweet with Haley. He’d slow down with her, lay in her lap, and let her fill his baby-soft hair with flowers. Sean would hold her hand without a fight but Haley was a good student, a good girl. She had clubs and things to do, theater to perform. Jessica and Aaron had time to burn waiting to pick her up, Sean came with them. 

Aaron had already been helpless in love with her little sister, he’d always followed her everywhere. And frankly… Jessica was too. Haley is annoying, bossy, petty, and way too dramatic, but Jessica couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, any place but where her sister is. It was always unspoken that wherever Haley was going, Jessica would be too. And then it became also expected that along with Haley would be the Hotchner boys and Jessica. 

And it was true. Aaron in one of his dark sweaters, maybe if the humidity were bad enough, and his mother had seemed very convincing with her worry, he’d have on a thinner long-sleeved shirt. Seldomly, he’d have the sleeves pulled to his mid-arm but he was always wearing jeans and his beat-up sneakers. He looked serious and threatening smoking across the street from whatever building Haley was in. Which was entirely the point, he perfected warding everyone off. And beside him would be his baby brother with whatever snack Aaron brought with them and Jessica, in the overalls she’d worn nearly every day or her Roy’s old army jacket. 

Being sisters, Jessica knew the day after Haley and Aaron lost their virginities. She’d clutched her head like she was suffering a bursting aneurysm and rolled back on Haley’s bed with so much force she’d rolled straight off and onto the floor. Their mother had come up to see what they were screaming and laughing about and left with as much confusion as she’d come in with. As disgusted as she was, Jessica still listened to every detail. 

And now she shares an apartment with them. She’s seen his back half already once this week. They’ve been doing this a long time, he knows that Jessica and Haley go back and forth between bedrooms to show each other what they’re wearing or if they’re changing, if he doesn’t want that to happen then he shouldn’t get dressed in their bedroom while they’re changing. 

Living with him just means, far more regularly than she would care for, she catches them in the middle of activities that should really be conducted behind locked doors. The trouble is they don’t lock doors like they should. 

There are prices to be paid with their situation.

Jessica stands scowling as she watches how gently Aaron rubs the lice shampoo through Haley’s hair. He’d rubbed her head hard and gotten soap in her eye washing it out. “Your head is such a weird shape,” she says, pouring more soap into his palm. The lucky asshole just shaved his head, rubbed a little soap on his bare scalp, and got to call it done and safe. 

“I think it looks fine,” Haley says, turning her head and smiling back at Aaron lovingly – a sight that makes Jessica nauseous. “You look handsome.”

Aaron smiles and leans down to kiss her, “thank you.” 

Jessica rolls her eyes, “disgusting.” She watches closely and her petty plan of retaliation only doubles as she watches how gently Aaron tilts Haley’s head back, using his hand to shield her eyes, and continuing to take great care. 

Haley had brought the lice home in the first place. She works at a daycare with, Jessica imagines, a thousand drooling chubby-legged toddlers. Who wobble and sway, grabbing at things with sticky, uncoordinated hands. But Haley loves it. Even though one of them gave her lice, and Aaron and Jessica by approximation. 

Jessica works in a store, stocking shelves on midnight oil in the peace and quiet of the after-hours, long after everyone else has gone to bed. That is a good job. No snot, or dirty diapers, or crying. Just a quiet, silent store and her. 

Aaron works at a bakery, which astounds Jessica because she’s never seen him make a frozen pizza without burning it. They meet one another in the hours that cross over. They get along best when they only have one another, with Haley there they fight for her attention. But Jessica likes to know that Aaron hasn’t been mugged on his walk to the bakery at three in the morning and he likes to know that she’s made it home when she gets off work. 

When Jessica comes home she’s expecting a dark, empty living room when she comes in. There are many mornings when she doesn’t make it to her bed and she falls asleep on the closest soft thing– the couch. But as she comes through the door she finds that despite the crescent moon hanging in the sky tonight, there’s a full moon catching the street light outside through the curtains,

“Aaron!” She picks up one of Haley’s pretty pillows off the other couch and throws it down onto him as hard as she can.

It’s a pillow so it harmlessly hits his back and rolls down, but he bolts right up. It takes him only half a second to sit up, look around wildly, and become aware of his current lack of dress. The pillow quickly covers what Jessica’s already been forced to bear witness to. “Jess,” he rasps, “you scared the hell out of me.” 

“What the fuck are you doing?” she seethes in a whisper.

“Haley and I got into an argument–”

“What?” Jessica asks, “Why?”

He shrugs, “I don’t know, she was mad about… something.” Aaron glances towards his room and then shrugs again, “I think she’s on her period–”

“Ugh!” Jessica exclaims, rolling her eyes. She shakes her head, ignoring his ‘what?’. She walks away, “You would say that,asshole.” She goes straight back to her room, “sleep somewhere else! I don’t want your junk where I have to sit!” Her door slams shut. 

They lived together for three years of college, and for half of Aaron’s time in graduate school.

—---------------------------------

Aaron had honestly thought the most nerve-wracking part about getting married would be having to ask Haley. He didn’t have to walk down the aisle and for that he was immensely grateful but Haley did beautifully. Aaron had stood shaking with anticipation, face wet with tears he couldn’t wipe away fast enough. Half convinced, until he’d seen her, that she’d take her father’s advice and run. 

The most nerve-wracking part is after the wedding. 

Haley’s sobbing in front of the vanity in the hotel, a pile of bobby pins sitting in front of her. Her arms hurt and she’s beyond doing anything but sitting there clutched by exhausted sobs with a thousand more little daggers pinning her hair back to her skull. 

Nervously, Aaron steps behind her. He’s shed most of his suit, left now to his white t-shirt and slacks, and feels a strange, immense guilt that she’s crying. Clumsily, Aaron’s fingers pick through her hair, trying to figure out where the remaining bobby pins are. Her crying is making him nervous, it’s her wedding night and she’s supposed to be happy, and if she must cry then they are supposed to be tears of happiness. But the day had worn her down, enough to sit and cry in her dress over bobby pins. 

“Here,” he offers, pulling a napkin from his pocket. “I forgot–” Once the food had been brought out, Hotch couldn’t keep up with it. There was so much and he couldn’t get a hold of any of it fast enough. People who hadn’t paid him much mind before, Haley’s family who doen’t even like him, were all trying to talk. Everyone needed something. He’d grabbed a napkin and began stuffing food into it, unable to hear them over the rumbling in his stomach.

Haley starts to cry harder but Aaron can tell that these tears are very different. She doesn’t wait for what he has to say, unfolding the napkin and taking the little loaf of bread he’d taken out. “I’m starving.” She picks off a piece of the bread and bites into it, moaning. “God,” she gasps, “this is good.” 

Crying subdued, Aaron finds his hands are a little steadier, his brain a little less fogged and able to find the bobby pins hiding in her blonde hair. He tosses one to the dresser, the little plink rewarded with a piece of bread Haley holds overtop her head. Aaron leans forward and accepts the bite. He groans too happily at the taste of cheese and bread warmed against his body heat, “that is good.” 

As the lasts of the bobby pins come free, Aaron understands why she was crying. “I don’t care for these,” he mumbles, glaring at the pile of pins as he sweeps them into the palm of his hand. 

“Here,” Haley holds a bag open for him, ready to receive them. 

“You’re keeping. them?” 

“Yes,” Haley giggles. She pushes them into the bag from his palm as he stands there continuing to glare at the offensive things. “I’ll need them for something else.”

With a grunt as her reply, Aaron flops down onto the bed face-down and after a moment he feels the bed dip. Haley pats his butt affectionately and her hand comes up, rubbing between his shoulder. Aaron turns his head and looks at her – she’s still wearing her dress. They smile at the same time, the same idea gracing their minds as they gaze at the other still in their gowns. 

“There’s still some wedding activities left,” Haley whispers, moving her hand between them, taking her finger and tapping his nose. 

Aaron smirks, “yes, ma’am.” 

Youth burns in their viens – that youthful, go-getting spirit the only thing that carries them through their goals. 

He’s asleep when Haley rolls over, poking his ribs until he grunts. “Roll over,” she whispers. 

Aaron groans, “no.”

“Yeah,” she pokes him again. “Roll over, it’s my turn.” He lays still and ignores her. “You’re shivering like a big baby anyway. Roll…” she shoves him, “over.” With a sigh, Aaron turns over, pulling more blankets up over his shoulder. Haley scoots behind him and hugs him, pulling him back against her. “See, don’t you love this?”

Aaron grunts, “like wearing a jet-pack.” Fingers poke into his ribs and Aaron squirms. “Yes, yes,” he relents. He yawns and Haley can feel the yawn pulling him back down, his muscles relaxing. “Love you,” he whispers.

Haley squeezes him.

—---------------------------------

In his second year with the BAU, things began to really change for Aaron. He’s not just the newbie, his opinion is starting to be viewed as expertise and he’s gotten better – his natural instincts have mingled with the knowledge he’s developed. 

Dave calls her first, and tells her everything that he knows but it isn’t much. But the last he’d seen of Aaron he was breathing on his own, awake and alert. Dave doesn’t tell her about the full extent of things yet, he fears it would only worry her. When she can see him for herself, it won’t be as scary. The details over the phone only take root in the imagination, an awful place to ponder on nightmares such as this. 

He calls her again, shortly after, when Aaron comes out of surgery. It’s a matter of hours but Haley’s in a cab, on her way to the hospital from the airport, and she finds immediate relief in hearing Aaron’s voice. She can hear the tears he’s fighting to keep at bay as he tells her“we’re in misery”. Dave holds the phone to his ear and Haley can hear him chuckle as he softly corrects,“we’re in Missouri, Aaron”. His response is a whine, a sad,“that’s what I said.” 

When she gets there he’s asleep, Dave tells her that Aaron’s been weepy. Haley believes him. Alone, Haley sits down on the edge of the bed, picking up Aaron’s hand from the bed. His left arm is in a tight sling strapped down his chest but she can see the tube snaking up underneath his gauze. Haley doesn’t know the rest of the machines but she recognizes the chest tube and the strained sound of his breathing. 

Tears prick his eyes the moment he sees her and wetly, he tries to speak but Haley shushes him gently. Still agitated, Hotch shifts his head back and forth, anxiously moving with nowhere to go. Haley stands and leans over him, her hand never leaving his, while her other gently comes over the top of Hotch’s head. Her fingers tame strands of hair sitting however they like, dampened by sweat. “I’m right here, sweetheart. You’re okay, just rest.” Her thumb brushes down between his eyebrows, pressing where they bunch up, relaxing them. She watches him fight it, a caught breath and a small jerk of his head. But he doesn’t want to move away. “Just rest, Aaron.” 

He’d always called her sweetheart. Long before she’d ever thought about love there he was with his thick accent and blushing cheeks, following her dutifully wherever she went. He was always there, from six through thirty. She’d made mud pies with him in her mother’s garden, giggling at as his accent and the way he called hersweetheart like they were already adults. He’d stopped when they were ten, began blushing instead. He kissed her for the first time when they were sixteen, he’d changed suddenly after fourteen and Haley couldn’t keep up. They were no longer the same. No longer little kids with missing teeth and matching sneakers. Something had changed and he wouldn’t tell her what it was. He’d called her sweetheart again for the first time in years and Haley clung to it. 

Haley liked reclaiming the name, she didn’t like that the BAU was trying to make him hard when he wasn’t. Aaron was always a sweetheart, too good, too kind. They’d only hurt him. 

And they did. 

Haley would never forgive them for this. 

Brakes squeal and everyone is silent, not even Foyet speaks. 

“Oh,” Foyet says after a long moment, “now this is fun, Hotch.” And the line had closed. Gone. The call ended. 

Haley shakes where she stands, waiting. All she can do is wait. There’s a gun to her chest but Jack isn’t here – and Aaron’s coming. Her eyes swell with tears. An hour ago, Aaron was dead. She didn’t know what to do with herself, what was there to do? Haley had left Aaron to avoid exactly this, being the first person to call, the name signing a death certificate. And he’d still died. She can hear the fear in his voice, proof of life that she doesn’t even care. He’s alive.Aaron’s alive.

Aaron opens the front door and some small hope in Haley’s chest flutters – because Aaron’s home. And it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since she’s last thought that, it still brings that comfort. Aaron’s comfort. 

Haley runs and hides as Foyet leaves her, grinning maddeningly as he goes to join Aaron in the kitchen. 

She can hear them and she knows Jack must too. Aaron grunts,pained, and Haley flinches, hands pressed to her ears at the sound of something breaking heavily, more grunts and groans coming. She sits completely still, croached down in the corner behind the couch, but feels the need to run when she hears footsteps. 

“Where’s that bastard son of yours?” Foyet. “Where’d everybody go?” He stops in the living room, looking around with his arms extended out. Haley can see the knife in his hand, wet with blood. Aaron’s. “Just tell me where he is Hotch,” Foyet nearly sounds like he’s whining but he’s still smiling. He turns, he must be able to see Aaron from there, “if you tell me I promise I’ll make it fast.” He turns back towards the kitchen, sulking, “come on, let’s have some fun. Little boys do nothing for me, you know that. He wasn’t even–”

Haley flinches – and she hears Aaron roar, haggard and exhausted, but rampant with fury. There’s endless destruction, things breaking so quickly Haley isn’t sure where they are or who is winning. 

And then it’s silent. Not silent. 

Haley’s heart freezes – something’s being dragged. 

 Someone. 

They come to the living room and all she needs is the one ragged breath to know it’s Aaron. A ragged, weak breath. 

Foyet moves around the living room, “I’m going to show that little brat both of his dead parents.” A table is thrown over onto it’s side as Foyet tears the room apart, searching for Haley. She moves her head, peeking behind the chair, and she sees Aaron face. It’s scrunched up in pain, he’s weakly trying to lift his head from the ground. “And I’m going to tell him that it was all your fault.”

Aaron head falls back and he looks at the ceiling. 

“How old is he?” Foyet asks, shoving a couch away from the wall. “He might be my youngest yet.” 

Aaron sees her. They lock eyes and Aaron’s eye twitches and she watches him peel himself up from the ground, wobbling dangerously – and then she sees his chest. The blood. All his own seeping down the fabric of his shirt. 

She looks away. She doesn’t think about it, Haley pinches her eyes shut and holds her hands over her ears. One of them is going to die and Haley can’t listen. It will either be Aaron or Foyet, and she’ll either hear Aaron die or hear as he takes another man’s life. 

Haley hasn’t seen him like this in years. Blood comes and goes, he’s clumsy and quick to rush into things without thinking, but she hasn’t seen him afraid in a long time. There were always startles – spiders, fires, and wolves – but that was just tight, quick. He was just startled by a silly fear, something inspired by nightmares. She’d only ever seen him afraid of one thing. The only thing he knew would kill him before he could ever kill it. 

His father was a big man, bigger than a little boy could imagine. It didn’t matter how big Aaron got, he was still just that little boy. 

And here that fear is. His chest is a massive hole and his eyes dart around him, trying to find Foyet. He can’t breathe, his lungs are filling with blood, and he’s still trying to ensure the threat is gone. That Jack and Haley are safe. 

But Foyet is unmoving. Haley had waited, timed silence passed by the sound of Aaron’s ragged panting. And Foyet had not moved. Not a twitch, not a moan. He did not breathe. Haley had been slow to stand, afraid still of a dead man. But he was dead, and now it was over. 

Haley crouches down on the floor beside Aaron, trying to lift the unsteady corners of her mouth up. His eyes are open wide as he pants, his dilated pupils focused on her while his gaze flattens. His chest is a massive hole, sunken in like a drain. Blood pumps out and gathers, weighs down his lungs, fills his lungs. His breathing hitches, grated and raspy, as he lifts his bloody and broken left hand towards her. Lifting it as high as he can, just inches from the floor. 

She’s clean of the carnage all around her – blood splattered across the walls, broken glass around her feet – but she is clean. The moment she touches him, blood slides between their fingers and Haley brings his arm closer to her, pressing their hands to her chest. His bloodied, broken hand weakly holding on. She sniffles back tears, leaning over him gently. Haley kisses his cheek, wiping the tears from his face with her free hand. “Hey, sweetheart.”

His broken fingers try to curl around hers, his open mouth moves to speak but his voice is cut immediately by a wet cough, he spits up blood onto his lips. 

Haley wipes it away quickly, leaning down pressing her forehead into his. “Oh Aaron,” she sobs, shifting her grip on his hand, holding it there as she feels him cease to be able to hold it there himself. She wishes she could start over. Go back to that sunny afternoon in the front yard, when their parents stood protectively over them. To the boy wrapped in the ends of his mother’s dress. 

Aaron’s next breath takes two of her own and Haley holds onto him, pressing them tightly together in the last seconds. They’re masters at the art of togetherness, nearly every waking moment from the day they first met. There is no separation, not even divorce had driven them completely apart. They’re one. One person. One breath. One life. 

“Aaron?”

His arms begin to burn, shaking underneath him, and his brain lagging behind the present moment, Hotch realizes, only as he falls, that he’s fallen over. The ground is cold and hard, the impact jarring but nothing more than a deep echo coursing through him, ebbing into the numbness overtaking him. Hotch lays in the mud, chest a tight pain and limbs frozen in vain, trying to scrunch up and preserve his heat by becoming smaller. He shivers and gasps for breaths, foggily watching the sky. The sun’s coming up, lighting the sky a pleasant soft blue. 

Hotch stops shivering and he lays with vacant, fluttering eyes watching the sun slowly crawl upward. 

Absently, floating further from himself, Hotch realizes time is slipping away. Warm, gooey time, like putty, the sun. “Got a ‘pointment,” Hotch whispers deliriously to himself, cracking a smile. He forces himself upright, guided aimlessly to move, and stumbles forward until he crashes into a tree he hadn’t seen, holding onto it with burning, hurting hands. Up his legs shoot daggers of pain and he stands for a moment, too disoriented to move. 

One foot-dragging in front of the next, Hotch walks hunched over, arms drawn up but hands uselessly hanging. “Milkshake…” he mumbles, stepping through the slush of wet snow. “Going to the…” he stops, trembling but no longer shivering, as he stands for a moment looking absently at a sudden sharp rise in the embarkment. 

Aimlessly, Hotch turns, mumbling intangibly, even to his own ears. His feet keep moving forward but stiffly, his gate stutters and Hotch trips over himself, falling back into the mud. His face smacks the ground and his vision fades in and out in pulses, webs of pain spreading out over his temple. On the other side of the water is a house, with warm lights on, and smoke bellowing out from the chimney. Blinking heavily, Hotch stretches his arm out, fingers dipping into the waves rocking gently to shore, towards the house. 

“Hotch!”

Morgan comes trampling through the trees, what little wildlife Hotch hadn’t scared away scatters quickly now from the thundering pound of his feet. The ground changes from the wet underbrush of snow-covered layered leaves in various states of melting and freezing to slick mud, leaving no traction beneath Morgan’s feet as he approaches the water and he slides to a stop, “Hotch!” His bellow echoes over the water, puffing with a plume in the frosty air. 

A faint, soft sound, hardly audible comes from his left, and although covered in mud, Morgan immediately sees him. “Hotch!” He slips and his arms spin, but Morgan doesn’t slow down in his approach. Icy ground biting into his knees, knees sinking into the mud, Morgan leans over and scoops up Hotch’s shoulders, careful with his head. “Aaron?” he gasps, pressing his hand to Hotch’s face and finding his skin pale, his lips blue. The sudden dry heat against his cheek causes Hotch to moan, turning his head away. But Morgan pats his face again, irritably, Hotch peels his eyes open. “You have to get up, the car is up there.” 

Things like this never happen with any sort of warning – then again, Hotch is the sort to jump at only the most sporadic opportunities to try and get himself killed. 

Just behind them, Morgan had watched as the Unsub ran to the dock, taking one glance over his shoulder and jumping head-first into the water. Hotch hadn’t bothered to look back, he’d followed immediately after. Out of the water, Morgan could only see both their floating heads. Immediately, Morgan had stripped out of his coat, tossing electronics onto the dock and waiting for any sign to follow after them.

One head disappears beneath the water– 

“Hotch!” 

The floating head turns and begins swimming quickly away. 

The frozen, murky water had stung Morgan’s eyes but he never stopped to think about it. With Hotch’s heavyweight in his arms, Morgan struggled to keep both their heads up above the water. Pulling Hotch by the straps of his vest the last few feet, he’s so exhausted he releases Hotch to the same hard ground that he falls onto. The slap to Hotch’s back, the wet but unforgiving ground knocks loose the pressure sitting tight and unmoving in Hotch’s lungs. Panting from the exertion, Morgan pushes himself back upright, stiff fingers missing and then grabbing (stinging) as he pulls Hotch’s vest, forcing Hotch upright more and he chokes and gags up a mouthful of water. “Stay here,” Morgan instructed, and he left Hotch right there on the bank. 

Stay is an easier instruction to follow than walk. Hotch’s legs tremble as they walk, his cold, heavy arm over Morgan’s shoulder sending a new current of murky water drooling off of Hotch and down Morgan’s back. “Just keep walking,” Morgan puffs. He’s shivering, physically shaking but Hotch isn’t. Each of his limbs seems to have taken on thirty additional pounds of weight, he steps as though moving large tree trunks. Hotch’s leg crisscross back and forth in front of each other, he wouldn’t move in the correct direction on his own. He moves forward because Morgan keeps a tight hold on him, correcting his crossing steps.

“I have to get you out of these clothes.”

Hotch groans and looks around them, “wh– wh’r ‘r we?” 

“Huh?” Morgan pays him only half a mind, not able to make out Hotch’s gibberish and more concerned with pressing matters. Hotch is in no shape to dish out orders and certainly not in a place right now to be making demands or being too stubborn to accept help. Not with the way Morgan has had to drag his big sorry ass out of a frozen lake and then also up a damn hill. But – Hotch is just looking at him. He’s sitting in the car, on the edge of the seat right where Morgan put him, waxing and waning out of needing to be held up by Morgan’s hand and over-tensing his abdomen to prop and sway himself semi-upright. 

Hotch is blankly staring at the interior of the car – getting blasted by dry, intense heat that feels like it’s slowly burning through him. The heat stings. Morgan’s stepped away, he hasn’t realized it, hasn’t thought about how or why he’s gotten here. The clattering sound of things being dropped doesn’t make him flinch, he hears it through the filter of white noise rattling around in his head. Then there's heat – intense heat on his neck, more sliding down his back, pulling and moving his arms. It all hurts. 

“Your clothes have to come off,” Morgan grumbles, “stop fighting me.” His voice is sharp and clear through the muddle in Hotch’s head. Hotch sags back against the seat and Morgan grunts out a thanks. Buttons fly as Morgan rips his dress shirt open but the wet shirt requires even more struggling. “Sorry,” Morgan says, bending Hotch’s arm awkwardly and getting a pained grunt in response. As Morgan moves to pull Hotch’s undershirt off, Hotch tries to sit up, his cold fingers collecting and fumbling in Morgan’s way at pulling at the hemm. 

“I ca–can do it-t.” 

Morgan lets him and silently, as the wet material sticks right to him like glue, he tugs the material away from Hotch’s face, and over his head when his arms start to shake. And Hotch’s numb fingers try and push his dress slacks open. 

“Can I do it?” Morgan asks impatiently and Hotch angrily grunts, throwing himself back and letting his arms slack to the side. He’s shaking again — shivering, teeth making a horrible chattering sound that Hotch doesn't realize is coming from him. Morgan pulls Hotch’s slacks from down under his hips and Hotch wants to fight but he can’t move his legs. Morgan moves Hotch’s stiff body around, and sighs, “ugh – small miracles, thank you black boxers.” Morgan wastes no time throwing the soaked pants to the ground and begins to pull at his own coat, working his arms out of it. Hotch groans as Morgan grabs his hand where it’s fallen to his lap, pulling it through the arm of Morgan’s coat but he doesn’t fit as the other arm is guided through. 

It’s a second thought, Morgan straightens and he’s going to shut the door, and he thinks twice. At first, Morgan wants to push on, forget Hotch’s seatbelt, and get them the hell out of here, but – No, no because reckless Hotch plus cars always mean an accident. As Morgan leans over Hotch they make eye contact and Morgan can see the depth, he can tell that even blearily, if only barely Hotch is back there. Behind twitching blue lips and red-rimmed eyes. 

“Makes it easier for us,” Rossi says, climbing the weathered hotel steps. “Would’ve spent months in trial,” he sighs, coming to the top of the landing and leaning on the railing a moment. “Go on,” he motions Emily and Reid ahead of him. “Now we can go home and those two are dead, everybody in the city tonight gets to hug their kids close and know they’re safe. That’s a win, couldn’t ask for anything better.” He turns to take the next flight, joining Hotch in the back. “You remember that case with the, ugh, what were their names? That couple in Oklahoma, real rednecks, killed three couples–”

“Howards,” Hotch mumbles, dejected. 

“Yes,” Rossi agrees, “the Howards. Those two–”

Hotch turns hard at the top of the steps, not glancing back as he heads straight for his room, ignoring the rest of the conversation and Rossi’s frustrated and then confused calls of his name. His shaking hands miss the first swipe of his room key into the lock, as soon as the door rings Hotch pushes inside, letting it shut behind him. 

Reid, Prentiss, and Rossi stand bewildered by the stairs. Every night Hotch makes his rounds. It’s standard and predictable that Hotch stands and watches each of them enter their rooms. It’s customary to the point that they tell him goodnight and still anticipate that he’ll be around an hour or two later to ensure they’re still fine, usually just going through the routine of bedtime. 

And besides routine, Hotch always waits for whoever is rooming with him to go in first, as he holds the door. 

“Shoo,” Emily shakes her head, reaching up and planting a supportive, but rather mocking, hand on Reid’s shoulder. “Good luck.”

Reid helplessly looks between them. “Prentiss,” he whines but she raises her hands, this isn’t on her. “Please,” he tries desperately but he’s left as Rossi and Prentiss join one another in walking towards their own rooms. “Guys…” 

Reid sneaks into the room, despite it being half his. Making sure the door doesn’t make a sound, gently easing it shut and releasing the handle slowly. Hotch’s bed is made, untouched from this morning, and the sight of the sheets he left pulled back and in a mess makes Reid feel a pang of guilt and shame. Feeling anxiety already from the unpredictability Reid conceives from Hotch’s behavior, every little thing he’s left out or not done suddenly feels like an infraction, things that Hotch will be mad about. 

But Hotch is in the bathroom. Safely contained to, technically, another room.

Reid  walks over to the bed and sits but he stands back up, anxiously looking around him. Contemplating for a moment, Reid wrings his fingers and decides to start picking things up, hoping that this will place him in Hotch’s good graces. 

Several things fall in the bathroom loudly and Reid flinches, nearly dropping the mug in his hands. He looks over to the closed door, and too quietly calls, “Hotch?” Every frazzled bone in his body tells him to keep picking up, to ignore the sound, and not start yelling – which will only make Hotch madder. He starts to duck his head, moving quicker now to pick more things up, but something else guides him over to the counter. Gently, as to not let the mugs hit the hard countertop loudly, Reid sets them down. He brushes his nervous hands down his pants and returns them to one another, twisting and pulling at his long fingers as he hesitantly sneaks closer to the bathroom. 

“Hotch?” he asks, again too quietly. Reid can’t bring himself to speak louder, to say Hotch’s name again, so he presses a little closer to the door, careful and mindful that he might be seen from the other side underneath the door. But as he steps closer he can hear the sounds coming from the other side. He can’t tell what it is but it’s definitely a noise that makes him only 10x more uncomfortable as Reid’s confronted by the fact that he can’t walk away. That he certainly has to knock on this door. “Hotch?” Reid manages just a squeak above what he’d managed before. “Ar–Are you okay?” 

With no answer, Reid takes a step back. He works his hands through his hair a moment, leaving them against his face as he takes a deep breath and blows it out. “Ho–Hotch?” Knocking nearly takes Reid out but he manages weakly, “Hey… Ugh, I’m– Are you okay? Do – Do you want me to come in?”

He waits a full minute without response before gently putting his hand on the doorknob, hoping with all his hope that the door will be locked. If it’s locked he can go get someone else, let them be brave. It’s unlocked. Reid opens the door just a crack, “Hotch?” With his face to the door, slightly ajar, he can hear now the sound of harsh breathing, and he opens it just a bit more. 

Hotch is on the bathroom floor, sitting down beside the toilet, his knees to his chest and his face hidden against them. He looks up, wearing an expression that Reid’s never seen before, one that scares him back a step. Hotch’s eyes are raw and red, swollen. Wild. They’re not the piercing depth Reid’s used to, they don’t hold an emotion that he recognizes immediately. Hyper-aware of every mood shift, Reid has adapted to Hotch. He doesn’t really have an answer for why but he can just see it. And this look is not one that Reid is familiar with. 

Reid tries to back out further but Hotch’s eyes are locked on him now. 

Hotch tries to speak but he manages only the beginning syllable of words Reid can’t understand. His right hand comes up and grabs his chest, his fist closing around the material of his dress shirt. “Reid,” he manages, gasping, “Ca–Call–.” He tilts his head back, mouth open as he pants for air. “Heart–”

Reid tilts his head slightly, narrowing his eyes. He studies Hotch for all of a second and comes to his own conclusion. He looks down at the floor and back to Hotch before he hesitantly steps in. “I think–” Reid looks again at the hand Hotch holds to his chest. “Statistically, the average age for a heart attack in men, who make the proportion of the static, is sixty-five. Though, a heart attack shouldn’t be ruled out by that factor. Diet and heart health play a big factor in that but four to ten percent of heart attacks are people younger than sixty-five.” 

“W-What?”

Reid sits down on the floor in front of Hotch, crossing his long legs underneath him. “I don’t think you’re having a heart attack.” 

“My– My chest–”

“You’re having a panic attack.” Reid points a finger at Hotch’s head to the pulsing vein he can see, “your heart is beating very quickly.” He reaches slowly and watches Hotch, gently wrapping his hand over the back of Hotch’s wirst, and finding his pulse. “Yes,” Reid nods his head, “very quick, about 160, but not irregular. Can’t rule out an arrhythmia but that doesn’t fit… Your chest pain, does it feel like pressure or sharp?”

Fingers against Hotch’s pulse, the fast pace keeps up with Hotch’s frantic gasping. And after several long moments measured out by these two things, Reid frowns. He pulls his hand back away and Hotch tilts his head back again, letting it rock to the side, the rest of him trying to curl in that direction. Reid watches in terror as tears start to come down Hotch’s face, both of his hands up to his chest. 

“You’re experiencing a panic attack,” Reid offers lamely, pulling his own hands together. “You’re not dying, Hotch. It should be over soon.” A stretch of the truth. Reid’s had panic attacks before and he knows that ‘soon’ is all too relative. He’s had some last anywhere between five minutes and an hour, and they all always feel like hours. Hours of that sharp pain and a panicking brain reassuring and trying to prove that you’re dying. 

That sharp glare presents itself for a flash as Hotch’s red eyes snap to Reid. “You’re not a doctor,” Hotch grits out. “Jus’ a smartass wi-with – ” Hotch cuts himself off with a whimper, fist tightening and his eyes pinching shut. 

Reid flinches a little, and feels the impulse to scoot himself away, out of arms reach, but Hotch keeps his hands clutching his chest. “Do– Do you want to me to go get–”

“No!” Hotch shouts, louder than either were expecting and they both flinch. “No, no don’t.” 

Reid really wants to move now as Hotch starts sucking in worse breathes, his chest hitching. He knows this. Knows the feeling. Breathing is hard enough but in a flash it becomes laborious, trying to catch up but never getting enough. Like the rooms a sucking black hole, the oxygen running out, already too thin, but now dwindling. 

“L–L–Leave,” Hotch sobs, pulling now at his shirt, turning his head from Reid. “Please,” he rasps. 

Reid stands quickly, going backwards until his back hits the ajar door. “Okay,” he obeys too quickly and stops too ubruptly. He stands frozen, unable to leave despite desperately wanting to. “I’ll be right back!” He turns quickly on his heel and runs to the fridge. He throws the door open and looks frantically around it. “Where’s the ice?” he asks and whirls around, looking at the rest of the room in a stupor. 

The ice machine is down the hall. 

Reid stands blinking as he tries to think of what to do. He doesn’t think he can leave Hotch, as much as he wants to put a great distance between them, he feels nervous now, just steps away. 

“I’m sorry,” Reid says, coming back into the bathroom, really to himself. Hotch doesn’t acknowledge Reid coming back in. Trapped in his own mental hell, every limb numb, whole body shaking, all Hotch can do is be painfully aware of his breathing and his heart, which he waits antipanting the contraction that makes the muscle give out. 

The rush of water into the tub is drowned by the ringing in his ears. 

Reid stands up, the tap turned all the way to the blue C, and searches for a wash cloth. He grabs a towel and dumps the cup holding the hotel supplied two-in-one shampoos, throwing the first into the bottom of the rub. The cup fills quickly and Reid turns and freezes. 

Hotch is still crying, eyes closed and head turned from Reid. 

“Sorry,” Reid says, drops the cup, instead pulling the towel out from under the water. Soaked, the towel is heavy, ice cold water pouring all over as Reid holds it up. “Sorry,” he says again and tosses the towel down over top Hotch’s head. He takes several quick steps back, trying to ensure he’s out of arms reach. 

For a scary second Hotch grabs at the towel in terror. When the white cloth is pulled down Hotch takes in a deep breath, the towel laying in his arms. “What the hell,” he gasps, looking up at Reid. 

But this is Hotch. Reid can see it in his eyes, Hotch looks confused, shocked, but somewhat like himself. 

Hotch’s head smacks the bathroom wall and closes his eyes. The towel is freezing and heavy, soaking into his sleeves and the front of his shirt. He feels jerked back from a ledge, but he’s still standing by the rocky cliff. One wrong step and he’ll go back over but his head feels empty. His racing thoughts starved off as his body concentrates on the too cold towel across his lap. 

He blinks his eyes open, squinting at the light as Reid steps over and picks the towel back up. Ears still ringing, Hotch can hear the tub run, and he watches in numb complacency as Reid puts the towel back under the cold water. 

Again, the wet towel flops down but this time into his lap, and Hotch sucks in a breath at the contact. 

“Your respiration rate is slowing down.”

Hotch grunts and listens to his body's call to be united with the floor, slowly leaning over until he’s on his side. From behind his closed eye, he can see Reid step back into the light burning through his lids. “Alright,” Hotch commands breathlessly, holding his trembling hand up between them. “I’m okay, that’s enough.” His hand falls down to his chest and Hotch closes his eyes, feeling already bone-deep exhaustion trying to pull him down through the floor. “Shit,” he curses breathlessly. He’s still overly aware of his breathing and his heart but his hand rests on his solar plexus and below his palm he can feel the muscles moving, can feel his heart returning to a less alarming pace.

“Adrenaline fatigue results in lethargy but bathroom floors have seven hundred and sixty four bacteria per square inch. A motel bathroom can have millions of–”

“Reid,” Hotch grumbles, “just turn the light off.” 

Reid rocks back and forth, wringing his hands, “but–” He really tries to listen but he turns around and comes right back. “Enteric pathogens – Escherichia coli! Staphylococcus aureus, Dermatophitic fungi–”

Hotch groans from the floor, and after a moment, turns his hand to the floor, weakly sitting himself up with shaking arms. “You do know those have layman names,” he remarks, looking down as his soaked towel flops wetly to the floor. 

“You’re not a layman.”

Hotch huffs, and starts to use the toilet to push himself up. He looks up, confused, when Reid extends his hand down. “I’ve got E. Coli and staph all over my hands,” he reminds Reid and he watches Reid’s lip tighten before he moves a little closer. Reid’s grip is much stronger than his own and given the way everything beneath him shakes, trying to pitch him back to the germ encrusted floor, Reid might just be stronger. Without the helping hand Hotch wouldn’t have been able to get off the floor.

The need to be useful prevails over a desire to continue to stand in the bathroom. Reid darts right out the door as soon as Hotch steadies to feet, “I’ll get you a dry towel.” 

Hotch holds himself up with the sink, putting a little too much faith in the drywall patches around it. He observes himself with mild disgust, frustrated by his damp face and the sleepless circles pitting his eyes. Weak. Internally and out. 

“Sorry,” Reid says, he offers it reflexively but then he does mean it as he stands awkwardly, interrupting Hotch’s sour scowling at himself. “Here.” 

“Thank you.” Hotch takes the towel but just holds it, “I should change.” 

Reid wordlessly lifts Hotch’s go-bag, and he bypasses handing it to Hotch and instead slides through the door, squeezing past and setting it in the sink. 

“Thank you.” 

Reid nods stiffly, fumbling with the door, “uh-huh. I mean, no problem, sir.” 

“Sir?” Hotch asks. He looks deflated, his lifted eyebrow somehow soft and kind.

Reid blushes a little, “yeah– Sorry.” He pulls the door behind him, quickly trying to get away. 

Hotch leans his elbow back onto the sink, and looks behind him, dejectedly sitting atop the toilet seat. His hands come to his face and immediately he can feel his heart rate start to accelerate. Slow breaths do nothing to slow his heart. For a moment, Hotch tries to fight it but he has to move his hands as the panic grips his chest again. With a grunt, Hotch tries to stand but he falls to his knees, and he pulls himself closer to the tub. The edge hurts his chest but he presses harder, he jerks the nozzle all the way over, and light-headed, shaking resumes, Hotch ducks his head under the freezing water. 

“Hotch?” 

Icey water slides down both sides of his neck, cooling his overheated face as it trails through his hair and down over his face. “I’m okay,” Hotch rasps, and he groans when he hears Reid knock on the door. “Reid,” he manages just a little louder, “I’m fine.” 

“O–Okay! … Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Hotch groans.

Reid walks circles around the room, trying but unable to find something to do. There are plenty of tasks but his eyes move right over them, his attention split and remaining mostly fixed on the bathroom door. He moves the mugs around on the counter, nudges his converse by the foot of the bed so that they’re sitting beside one another, and stands there. Reid turns back ot the door when he hears the water turn off and again he attempts to find a task. 

He ends up standing in the middle of the room at the table provided in the mini-kitchenette styled area. For a moment he pushes Hotch’s pen around in circles and opens Hotch’s file, looking through it despite knowing every word in it. 

The bathroom door opens and Reid moves quickly but ends up standing awkwardly, hands clasped in front of his chest. 

Hotch doesn’t look up at him as he slowly exits the bathroom, his hand taking hold of the counter to balance his unsteady legs. Here, he glances at Reid out of the corner of his eye, and rights himself again, standing to his full height and taking a step that Reid can visibly see is not stable. Hotch resumes his slow pace, attempts to. “Reid,” he grumbles and the younger man flinches, turning away immediately and pretending to place his attention back on the file on the table. 

Over his shoulder, trying to look inconspicuous, Reid watches Hotch cover the rest of the small distance to his bed. Kicking at the carpet with his toe, Reid chews on the inside of his lip. He clears his throat, “um, I’ll be right back.”

Hotch grunts softly as he eases himself down on the mattress, “mhmm.”

Reid shoves his feet down inside his shoes, and goes to the door. “Be right back.”

“You said that.”

Reid hurries down the half-hall to where he knows the vending machines are. As he passes the other’s doors he can hear them faintly inside. Prentiss and Morgan are watching something with a laugh track, and Rossi something with the many firing cracks of a gun. The vending machine is just outside Rossi’s door, and it’s sparse. Reid frowns at it. He squats down to see the lower shelves and pulls change from his pocket, sorting coins in his palm before feeding them into the machine. There’s a weird brand of train mix and Reid takes it, looking over to the other machine with hard concentration.

Rossi’s door opens and peaks outside. “Oh,” he leans out, “you need more change?”

Reid rocks on his feet and shakes his head, “no. Does Hotch like gatorade?”

One of Rossi’s eyebrows drops but he shrugs, “I suppose. Why? If you’re trying to bribe him into a better mood you’ll need something a helluva lot stronger, kid.” 

“I’m not,” Reid says, and types in code for the red gatorade. He waits patiently for it drop down and takes it, turning back and walking past Rossi.

“Everything okay over there?” 

“Yeah.” 

The big light is off when Reid comes back in, the lamp on Hotch’s nightstand illuminating the shadows. Hotch hasn’t gotten into bed, his flannel pajamaed legs hang over the side as he sits on the edge, his head slowly being raised from his hands as Reid comes in. 

Reid puts the gatorade and trail mix down beside him. 

Hotch looks up at Reid for a defeated moment, blinkling tiredly. “What’s this?” Hotch asks, wearily. A single finger rolls the gatorade slightly, the packaging on the trail mix crinkling. 

“Carbohydrates increase tryptophan which crosses the blood brain barrier to synethizise serotonin.” 

Hotch hums.

“Chocolate has tryptophan.” 

“Oh.”

Reid rocks back and forth on his feet, rubbing his finger with his thumb. “5-hydroxytryptamine, serotonin, is a monoamine neurotransmitter acting as a hormone. Most of the serotonin in the human body is found in the gastrointestinal tract and it’s absorbed by platelets. Only about ten percent is produced in the brain. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid so the human body doesn't naturally make it. You have to,” Reid points to the trail mix, “eat it.” 

Hotch picks up the bag and it rest in his palm as he solemnly looks down at it. 

“Gatoraide… has electrolytes?” 

“Mostly sugar water,” Hotch says gruffly.

Reid smiles, “produces serotonin.”

Hotch raises an eyebrow, surprised, and when Reid says nothing more, “not going to tell me how sugar become serotonin?”

Reid rocks back on his heels and shakes his head, “No. We should watch a movie.”

“Okay.”

Finding the remote is a struggle and Hotch sits on the bed. His brain is fogged down, like a wet, dewy morning so thick that headlights can’t be seen. Dejectedly, Hotch’s vision is unfocused, eyes cast unseeing to the floor. The sound of the television coming on, loudly, stirs him vacantly. Reflexively, his eyes move to it. 

“Dirty Jobs!” Reid points, smiling back at Hotch. 

The light makes his eyes hurt and Hotch blinks slowly, squinting. It’s not until it starts to hurt his head that Hotch looks away, that he has the thought to do so. Without much thought, Hotch rolls onto his side, facing the wall. White paint. 

Reid says his name twice and hesitantly, afraid but also concerned, he taps Hotch’s shoulder.

He flinches. 

Reid holds the opened trail mix up, “Tryptophan.”

Hotch blinks sluggishly and finally frees his arm from beneath him, opening his palm. 

Reid pours some of the mix into his hand and sets it back on the bed. 

Pushing himself up, Hotch rests his back against the pillows, sitting in the fog of his brain and looking emptily at his hand. Seeing this, Reid sits down beside him, and carefully picks out a few peanuts. It’s only after Reid inspects a peanut and places it in his mouth that Hotch does the same. 

Side-by-side, Reid watches Dirty Jobs and Hotch slowly eats a single piece of trail mix at a time. 

Reid sits up near the end of the episode, suddenly excited by a fact, “oh! Algae is–” Hotch is asleep. Reid hadn’t realized and he clamps his mouth shut, watching as Hotch, unbothered, sleeps on. Softly, Reid leans back. He turns off the lamp on the nightstand and mutes the tv. 

He hasn’t shaken the feeling that someone else should know. Insecurely, Reid wishes someone else had been here. Morgan or Prentiss or Rossi. Any one but him would have done better. 

Hotch starts to snore softly and Reid dares a glance from the corner of his eye. He won’t tell anyone what happened tonight.

Hotch barely manages to swallow the bite but he smiles, stabbing more onto his fork. Jack’s still watching, timing his own bites with Hotch’s. His stomach does an ugly little twist, nausea rampant, but he cleans the plate, they both do. 

Hand against his rebelling stomach, Hotch leans on the sofa as he waits for Jack to come running back with his shoes. In his hands are not his school shoes but the lime green rainboots they fight over frequently. Hotch had gotten Jack real sneakers this year, big boy sneakers, with shoelaces and not velcro. And seeing them, Hotch begins to say something but then he thinks about having to lean over and tie those shoelaces and, instead, he just request Jack hurry up before they’re late.

Getting big boy shoes was supposed to mean that Jack tie his own shoes but it’s not that easy. On the mornings when Jack does tie his own shoes, it takes at least ten minutes. Other mornings he just throws his leg up on Hotch and waits expectantly for them to be tied for him. Shoes with the velcro straps were so much easier for mornings, but Jack had pleaded in the shoe store. 

“Daddy can you get coffee?” 

Prentiss had called while they were in the car and Jack had been silent in the back, Hotch had nearly forgotten he was back there. Hotch glances back rearview mirror, pulling the phone from his good ear, “I already made coffee, buddy.” He replies to phone, “yeah, driving him to school.” Hotch glances back int he mirror again, “Miss Emily says hi.” 

“Hi!” Jack shouts back, kicking his feet back and forth where they dangle. 

“No,” Hotch says, “he just wants a d-o-n-u-t.” He glances back but Jack’s watching the window, humming a song to himself. “We’re already late, Prentiss – He doesn't need— Alright, alright. Yeah fine.” 

They take the same route everyday and Jack notices immediately when they detour. “Coffee?” he asks, perking up and knowing wherever they’re going, it’s not to the school. 

“Yeah,” Hotch huffs, and glances back, “what kinda donut do you want?”

“Chocolate!”

As much as Jack hates being wiped down with a baby wipe, he’s covered in icing and sticky, he doesn’t like that more. “When I get big,” Jack says, pausing as the baby wipe circles back around his mouth, “I’m gonna eat choc’late donuts everyday!”

“Everyday, huh?” Hotch tosses the dirty wipe back into the car and pulls out another, needing another to tackle the mess on Jack’s hands. “If you have it everyday then it’s not as fun when you get one.” 

“It’d be fun everyday.”

The last of the donut finally comes off and Hotch pushes off the car, standing. “Alright,” he pats Jack’s shoulder and leans back into the car, grabbing his bookbag. There’s not much of a point for this silly thing, it’s light as feather, but it is pretty cute. The bookbag is bigger than Jack is. “Here we go,” Hotch holds it and Jack slips his arms into the straps. “You want me to walk you in?”

“Yes!” Jack grabs Hotch’s hand and starts to pull.

“Alright.” His father had never walked him into school. If he had, Hotch doubts he would have grabbed his father’s hand so eagerly. It’s sort of strange, all of it is really. Half of him is certain that he has no idea what he’s doing, and the other half is bewildered that whatever he’s doing isn’t as bad as what was done to him. He has only the one reference, one thing to compare it to and it’s not very comparable. 

They get to the door and Jack lets go, running, “bye! Love you!”

“I love you.” 

Jack waves at the door and keeps going. 

Already knowing what’s waiting for him at the office, Hotch stands and watches Jack until he can’t see him any longer. He feels immense guilt everytime he leaves Jack but it’s not enough to stop him from going and he’s not sure what that means. If that makes him bad at all this. Bad at being a dad. 

Jack hates it. He thinks it’s really cool most of the time. He likes that his dad fights bad guys, he loves superheroes, but he’s coming to realize what that really entails. Now the superhero movies aren’t always that great. Superman gets beamed out of the sky. Batman collapses in an alleyway. Captain America is intombed in ice. The bad guys win sometimes, and Jack knows that, but the heroes, sometimes they die. They get up bloodied and limping, and sometimes they don’t get up at all. 

“He’s in Georgia,” Jess says, “he’ll be home in a few days.” 

Jack erases what he has down on his homework.

Jess watches him, “you’re going to end up with a hole in that paper if you keep erasing it like that.” 

Jack sighs, his head resting on his palm. His work isn’t wrong, Jack’s fairly certain he’s got the right answer, but it’s still not right. Not right enough. 

He hates Mondays. 

He hates when Jess picks him up from school because that means his dad’s already somewhere else. 

Tuesday somehow way worse than Monday. 

“You’re grumpy this morning,” Jess notes and Jack ignores her. She’s used to this treatment in the early morning. Hotch isn’t much of morning person either but more so, Jack just has better mornings with Hotch. He doesn’t want Jess to walk him in and even though she’s bargained a Pop-tart this morning in a small attempt to lift his mood, Jack sulks into the school. 

The PA system is very active and Jack hates it. The class falls to dead silence, fidgety excitement passed around while they cross their fingers in the hopes that it will be them who gets to go home early. But Jack’s heart pounds in his chest, terrified from the second that speaker dings with the incoming message. 

When his father is in Virginia, Jack anticipates along with his peers, joyously for the rush of being pulled from school early. If the chance presents itself, Hotch swings by to get Jack. Every year, at the very least twice, Hotch randomly pulls Jack out and they go to museums or the zoo or the park or wherever Jack’s been itching to go.

But if his dad isn’t in Virgina then there’s no good reason that Jack will be called to the office. He’s never been called to the office while Hotch isn’t in the state, but the day that he is, Jack knows it won’t be for the dentist or a doctor’s appointment like the other students. Maybe Uncle Dave would be there or maybe Miss Emily, but Aunt Jess would be. They’d meet him in the hall, the principal somber-faced, their eyes red from crying. And Jack will stand trapped, like the insects frozen in their amber shells lining his dresser. A mosquito, a beetle, and Jack – caught in their fossilized crystal moments. The day that their worlds cease movement, hazed over, and hardened. 

Jess’s phone pings on the counter and Jack looks up from his homework, watching Jessica’s face when she leans over from the pot she’s stirring on the stove to read it. “Dad says they’re on their way home,” she says. She turns over her shoulder to smile at Jack, “You finish up your homework and he might be here before you go to bed.” Jack doesn’t react so she tries to sweeten the bargain, “we can wait up for him.” 

Jack nods. He’d been too distracted to complete any of his work today. There was a vocab test today and Jack had only written down four of the ten words read out to him. The addition and subtraction worksheet slid in front of him liquified, black ink pooled to the surface, and floated around the page. It seemed every few seconds the class was being interrupted by the office calling down. Jack couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. All he could do was sit and stare down at the worksheets in front of him.

Jessica’s noticed something is off with Jack and she’s tried to worm it out of him, but he doesn’t seem very interested in having that conversation with her. Her imagination has taken hold of the situation just a bit, and she fears the issue is another bully. She’d grown up beside Hotch, she’d known him at the age that Jack now is. She seems to be the only one of them capable of seeing exactly how much Jack is like Hotch. He reminds her exactly of Hotch at this age, so quiet and observant. She’ll say something to Hotch when he gets home, he’s far more successful at working out what’s going on in Jack’s head. 

“Alright,” Jess announces, “this soup is just about done, I’m gonna–” Her phone cuts her off and Jess leans over, seeing who’s calling her. She picks the phone up and takes it with her, heading back towards the guest room as she tells Jack to finish his homework, and that she’ll be out in a moment. 

Jack knows this routine. 

Jess becomes suddenly elusive, distracted. She lets him play in the bathtub until he gets bored of it. The phone rings again and she leaves him to get dressed by himself. Jack doesn’t dry off, he steps right into his pajamas, and he sneaks his way back into the kitchen, crouching down behind the cabinets and listening to the phone call. 

“Why didn’t you go earlier?” Jess asks, her fingertips pressed to her mouth. “That’s serious Aaron–”

Jack’s own hand finds his mouth, his fingernails sucked inbetween sharp teeth as he starts to attempt to chew through. If Hotch were here he’d notice, he’d shoo Jack’s hand away. 

“You’re being stupid, what you’re saying is stupid. You can’t be an idiot like this anymore – ” Jess suddenly becomes conscious of Jack, and where he is. She thinks he’s in the bathroom but still close enough to hear. She takes a deep breath and pushes herself from where she’d sunken against the counter, letting granite bite into her back and hold her upright. “Jack thinks you’re coming home tonight–” Her face scrunches up, “no, no you should definitely stay there–” 

Jack presses his hands against his ears and tries his best to not hear anymore, but he can so he stands and walks into the kitchen. 

“Hey Jack,” Jess says loudly into the phone, jumping, as she pulls the phone away from her face. Her face relaxes a bit, or at least she tries to relax it.  “I’m on the phone with your dad, go get up in the bed and he’ll tell you goodnight alright?” The phone stays down and Jack’s itching to know what they’ll say when he’s gone. But Jess prods him along and he leaves. 

They stay on the phone forever – twenty minutes, Jack watches his alarm clock. Jess never brings him the phone.

Hotch doesn’t come home for another two hours, past Jack’s bedtime but he’s still awake. The front door opens and Jack sits up in bed, listening for who it is. He can hear Derek and Jess from his room, but not a word from his dad. Fear encourages Jack out of bed, carefully venturing to the door so he can press his ear to it. He holds his breath, trying to make as little noise as possible. His fear builds on itself in the silence, and as they begin moving towards the hall, closer to him, it suddenly occurs to him that they might be coming back to his room. And if they do it’s only to tell him that his father isn’t coming home at all.

He’s wrong. They continue past his room. The sound of feet dragging on the carpet as Derek and Jess’ hushed voices carry overtop one another. Jack hears the slow groan of his father’s mattress – a familiar sound. One that would wake Jack in the middle of the night, a small sign of life in the middle of the night. A safety coveted. 

The sound was a relief and yet a burden, a weight that settled stiff and hard across Jack’s shoulders. Made his nerves jumpy – a wrong feeling he couldn’t begin to convey. Though he’d tried to before and he would again. Complaining of a headache or stomach ache. Unsure of the remedy or even the ailment that was plaguing him. 

And it plagues him now, a strong curl of writhing unease as Jack pushes his bedroom door open. The hall is dark and Derek and Jess have taken their conversation back to the kitchen. Jack glances once over his shoulder at them and creeps down the hall towards his father’s room. 

There is none of the snoring that Jack’s familiar with coming from this room. Only soft breathing. Jack creeps around the bed, to the side of the mattress most frequently left empty. It is empty save for his father’s left hand stretched out from the rest of him, uncovered by the blanket. Jack pulls himself up onto the bed. Holds tight to the bedsheets and jumps, he’d learned that trick a long time ago. His mother’s death had hardened Hotch irreparably, but as far as the man Jack knows, he is still just as soft as before – he remains incapable of forcing Jack to go back to his own bed to sleep at night. 

Curling tight, Jack pulls his knees up to his chest, pressing himself into the terrible feeling taking over him. But the bed is soft, so much better than his own.

“Jess?”

Jack jumps, startled by the sudden depth of the voice coming from what he had thought was his dad. He peeks up a little, just for visual confirmation, but it’s too dark.

Hotch pushes himself up on one arm, only able to combat the pain through the undeniable and just familiar enough feeling of knowing he’s going to be sick. Unaware of his audience, Hotch grunts, and whimpers, hanging onto the edge of the bed as everything sways and pitches forward with him. He pants for a moment, trying to gather himself enough to stand. His legs shake beneath him, and more than walking, Hotch lurches forward on momentum and gravity, falling heavily into the bathroom’s doorway, using it to keep himself upright. 

Jack can’t see through the dark but he can hear how hard Hotch hits the bathroom floor. The way his fingers miss and grapple with the toilet lit, until inevitably, and right on time, his stomach curls up tight, and he gags but is unable to bring anything up.

At first, frozen, Jack scrambles over the side of the bed. His legs get caught in the bedding and he lands with a thud on the ground, but he feels only a small ache over the panic ramping his heart back up. “Daddy!”

Hotch gags harshly into the toilet again and he raises his arm up uselessly, trying to shoo Jack away. He can see through the visible pulse now of his vision, which has tunneled in, darkened in spots, timed perfectly with the throb in his head, that Jack is still standing, watching. “Jack–” his voice is wrecked, nothing more than cracks. “Buddy,” Hotch tries again, “go get Jess.” 

Jack stands, shaking slightly with fear, trying to suck his tears back up.

Resting his head on the toilet, sinking to a new low, Hotch groans, a sound artfully echoed in the bowl. “Buddy,” Hotch coughs, “I need you to go get Jess.” His eyes close on their own accord and each breath is a manual thought, harshly pulled in through his open mouth, as drool spills down into the water below. “Please,” he rasps.

Blood rushes in his ears. He’s not sure what’s going to happen next but Hotch thinks this will kill him. The pain is certainly ramping up to a deadly point, like somethings burst and blood should be spilling out of his ears, or out his nose. Something’s got to give, and if it’ll stop this pain, Hotch doesn't care what it is. 

“Aaron?” He’s still leaning on the toilet and as Jess cuts on the bathroom light, he has no reaction. “Jack,” Jess crouches down in front of Hotch, and points Jack away. “Go get Uncle Morgan! Run! Go get him!” 

Jack freezes for only a moment before bolting, he runs as fast as his legs can carry him. He throws the door open and looks both ways down the hall before running towards the main entrance. He’s barefoot and it’s strange, he’s never been allowed to run down the hall, and he’s always wanted to, it’s not as fun this way. “Uncle Morgan!” Jack yells, he can see the older man on the other side of the building’s door, he’s just stepped out. “ Wait! Please, wait! Uncle Morgan!”

Morgan turns and when he sees Jack running towards him, he immediately turns back around, meeting the boy halfway. Jack grabs his wrist and starts pulling him back. “Something’s wrong with daddy,” he rushes, out of breath. “Jess said to come get you ‘cause –.”

Morgan takes off running, Jack somewhere close behind. He doesn’t bother looking back, going straight through the living room and shouting, “Jess?” Her calls from down the hall and Morgan follows, running through Hotch’s room to the bathroom. “What is it?”

Jess stands and moves back, “he passed out. I can’t wake him up.” 

Morgan moves quickly, stepping over Hotch and getting behind him. He slips his arm behind Hotch’s back, gently moving his head back, crouhcing lower, Morgan looks back up. “Go get the kid some shoes, I’ll get Hotch in the car.” With a grunt, he starts to lift Hotch from the floor, painfully careful of his head as Morgan tries not to jostle him. 

Over Jess’ shoulder, where she’s bent down shoving Jack’s feet into his sneakers, Jack watches Morgan carry Hotch out of the apartment. One of his arms is on the other side of Morgan’s back, limp and rocking with the motion of Morgan’s quick pace. 

“Is he dead?” Jack asks. He stands beside Jess as she grabs her own shoes, waiting for her to grab him too and lug him out of the door. 

“No.” This answer comes a little too quickly, not assuring, just positive. Unwilling. Hotch isn’t dead because Jess won’t let him. So, no. He’s not and he won’t until he’s good and old and Jess decides she’s done with him. 

Jack climbs into the backseat and Jess reaches over to buckle him in, before sliding into the middle seat and sitting up between Morgan and Hotch. Who looks dead, Jack thinks. He’s not exactly sure what that would look like, but Hotch isn’t moving. His head remains tipped back in the space between the door and the headrest. He’s not sitting up, he’s tilted and shoved into the chair the way that Morgan had left him. He doesn’t have his seatbelt on either and he doesn’t look back to check for himself that Jack’s buckled in.  

Morgan speeds and Jack watches the dark world outside whip by. 

What does happen if Hotch dies? Jack doesn’t like the idea. He can hardly remember now how his mother died, and though he knows it’s something that happens, he can’t imagine it could happen again. 

Jess scoops him out of his carseat and Jack lets her hold him. Over her shoulder, he watches Morgan throw open the passenger seat and stick his arms underneath Hotch’s knees and behind his shoulders. It’s not impressive, Jack can’t understand it, really. It doesn’t feel like this is real, or that the man limply held in Morgan’s arms is his father. He’s certainly someone, but… Jack’s dad? He’s not really sure how it’s possible at all. 

Jess runs straight through the doors, towards the first nurse that she sees. “My brother,” she says, turning back and watching the automatic slide shut. Morgan’s still in the parking lot. “He’s a federal agent, he was in an accident, he hit his head and he passed out–” 

The nurse sees Morgan, he sees the man being carried through the parking lot. 

Jess steps back and away, a stretcher procured and now being pulled to meet them as they come through the door. Jack turns with her, his eyes never leave Morgan, never leaving his father. There’s not a thing he can do to help but looking, being witness, feels important. He feels unable to look away, like he shouldn’t, so he can’t. 

“What’re they doing?” he asks, and he’s suddenly anxious, his brain putting together what happens next before he really knows. He tries to pull himself up over Jess’ shoulder, trying to see. “Aunt Jess, what’re they doing? Where’s daddy going?” Jack tries to push himself back, worm back out of Jess’ arms. He becomes suddenly frantic watching as Morgan meets the stretcher, not thinking twice as other men and women surround them. “No!” Jack shouts, “no, daddy! Get away from him! No!” He twists and jerks, trying to throw himself out of Jessica’s arms. “No!”

Hotch’s hand jerks on the stretcher and the elelastic of the oxygen mask slips over his head, the plastic fogging and muffling the weak but present sound that Hotch makes. A nurse comes around to his side, flashing a light, and again he emits the sound, his hand jerking up from the stretcher. “Sir? Can you hear me?” 

Hotch tries to sit up and Jack yells louder for him, only encouraging him further. Morgan steps inbetween them, taking Jack from where Jess can hardly hold him, pinning his arms down as he blindly throws his fist in any direction, trying to jerk, hit, and kick his way back to his father. “You can’t go back there,” Morgan says, but Jack keeps yelling, twisting his shoulders but unable to free his arms. He can see them pushing the stretcher back into a room, he can see his father’s head lifting, turning. “The doctor’s are going to take care of him, Jack. You can’t go back there.”

The door shuts and Jack continues crying but he slumps, smacking his head against Morgan’s shoulder. His face pressed into the fabric of Morgan’s shirt he sobs, his fist gathering handfuls of shirt. The fighting eventually subsides, more violent sobs take over and Jack screams, he cries as loudly as he can into Morgan’s shoulder. 

He cries himself to sleep in Morgan’s arms. 

“What the hell happened?” Jess whispers. She’s managed to wipe the tears from her face, and dislodged the ache in her throat, but her chest is still tight. A band of tension across her ribs. “How did this happen?”

Morgan looks down at Jack. His nose stuffy from crying, his face still wet and eyes puffy. He shakes his head, “I can’t–”

It’s well past her bedtime. This medical emergency is impeding on the sleep she needs to be the fun, cool aunt. No sleep means the jolly good Aunt Jess is not in the building. “Derek, I promise you, if you try and pull some ‘FBI secrets’ on me, I’ll punch you.”

Morgan huffs and moves his arm up, rubbing his fingers over his mouth. “Alright,” Morgan sighs. He distracts himself by rubbing Jack’s back, even though his shoulder is growing progressively wetter from drool, and tears. “In Georgia–”

“I know you were in Georgia.”

Derek cocks an eyebrow up, “you gonna let me finish?” He sighs and licks his lip, “our vehicle was hit. I was driving and his side… His side took the brunt of the hit.” He looks at Jessica, “I could hardly get him to sit still for the EMTs. I let him – I mean, he’s Hotch, you know, you can’t make him do nothing he don’t want to. So we left, we left the ambulance, and I tried to get him to go to the hospital, after – after we got the guy, but he’s stubborn. He was more worried that Prentiss got checked out, and she did, but the EMT said it was just a concussion so he didn’t think it was that bad.” Morgan shakes his head, sighing, “I took him to the hospital, had to trick him for that, but I couldn’t make him stay. So…”

Jess curses softly, leaning down and placing her head in her hands. After a moment, she sits back up, pushing her hair back up out of her face. She looks at Derek with the heat earlier dissipating, slowly being replaced by something sadder. “Tell me that he was at least… I don’t know, that there was a good reason or something.”

Morgan shakes his head, “no, he’s just…”

“A stubborn asshole?” Jess giggles and Morgan huffs, nodding, and chuckling along with her.

“A very stubborn asshole,” he agrees. Jack shifts, sighing in his sleep and adjusting his head on Morgan’s shoulder, and Morgan’s face falls. He clears his throat. “We were… The victim, the victims, they were… just little kids. When we crashed, we were chasing the unsub.” Morgan looks back over at Jess, “he had a boy in the car. Seven. Hotch, he lost consciousness for only a minute, and he got right back up. He was – he wasn’t gonna let that son of bitch kill that kid.” 

Jess nods, looking down at the floor. “Did you get him?”

Morgan nods, and his smile half tugs up. “Hotch did. Cuffed him himself.” 

“Good.”

It was good. When it happened it felt good, things felt over, it felt like a win. Prentiss needed a few stitches but she was fine enough to be angry with Hotch too. Morgan hadn’t pushed that hard for Hotch to get really checked out. He was exhausted, and by the time he and Hotch got to the hospital, Prentiss was done, waiting for discharge papers, and at that point if Morgan really pushed for it, they all would have been stuck in that hospital for several more hours. 

“I should have made him get checked out.”

Jess shrugs, “you said it, you know? He won’t do anything he doesn’t want to.” 

“Yeah, I guess.” Holding Jack does nothing for his guilt. Morgan should have picked a fight, he’s never shied away from confrontation with Hotch before. But today he didn’t. “He just wanted to get home.”

They sit in the waiting room with nothing more to say. The hours of the night tick by and Morgan only grows more frustrated with himself. He’d skipped out on something important to rush home, and now he’s sitting in a hospital anyway. If he hadn’t been in such a rush, if he hadn’t let his exhaustion guide him, he wouldn’t have been so careless. 

It’s late, early morning by then, when a doctor comes out. Jess is resting her eyes and Morgan’s no longer tired. They peel themselves up from the chairs and follow where they’re directed. After being seated out in the waiting room for so long, they sludge back to room, relieved to at least be reunited. 

“Hey,” Jess goes right to the bed, watching Hotch’s half-lidded eyes track them. He blinks languidly and she smiles down at him, kissing the top of his head. “You scared me.”

“Mmm,” his head rocks over, “wasn’t thinkin’ straight, ‘m sorry.” 

She frowns at him but he can feel her cold fingers over his wrist as she gently picks up his hand. She sighs and rolls her eyes, “stop looking at me with your stupid eyes.” She tries to frown but it only maintains for a few seconds, “ I mean it. I’m mad at you.” 

The right half of his lip twitches up and he slowly rolls his head over to the left, “Jack?”

Morgan turns, showing Hotch the boy still out like light in his arms. “Kid’s slobered down my back,” he smirks, coming closer to the edge of the bed. 

Hotch’s hand trembles as he raises it up, the IV on the back of his hand preventing it from coming any higher off the bed. “Let me see him,” he asks, and he watches Morgan’s eyes dart over him, to Jessica he presumes. “Please, Morgan.” 

They’d raced home for this little boy and the please cracks right through to his heart. “I’m gonna lay him down here,” Morgan says. Unwrapping Jack’s arms from around him, Morgan leans down and gently lays Jack down on the end of the bed. Hotch inhales sharply as Morgan lays Jack down, the tips of his fingers grazing the ends of Jack’s hair. “Is that okay? You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Hotch sighs but any ice in his tone decipates, as Jack stretches and rolls onto his side, wrapping his arm over Hotch’s leg, and pressing his face into Hotch’s knee. 

“You’re not fine,” Jess says. “You were in a car accident, you fractured your skull. You have broken ribs.”

“Cracked,” Hotch rasps and he means to turn to look at her but pain spikes through his head. “They’re just cracked,” he whispers, through clenched teeth. He presses his lips tightly together and tries to contain himself but it only increases, like a great pressure, a weight laid on his head. 

“I’m gonna–” Morgan stands, and motions to the door. 

Jess nods her encouragement for his unspoken train of thought, scooting closer to the bed, and holding firmer onto Hotch’s hand. “Are you in pain?” she asks.

Hotch releases the breath he’d been holding, pulling in laborious breathes a little too quickly. “A little,” he relents.

“A little? You look like you’re gonna pass out.”

“I think I might.”

Jessica squeezes his hand, “Morgan’s getting nurse. Just hold on, okay?”

He tries to tell her that he heard that, he definitely understood, but his reply is cut short. Words are jumbled and all that comes out of his mouth a moan, a groan that deepens and is cut off breathily. His head tips to the side and Jess stands, leaning over him. “Aaron?” she can see his eyelashes move, “the nurse is coming.”

“I know,” he rasps, “my head–”

A nurse steps in, Morgan hot on his heels. “Morning, Agent Hotchner,” he greets, “I was just on my way to you.” He smiles down at the sleeping boy on the bed, “good to see you with some visitors. This the little guy you were worried about last night?” The nurse steps to the head of the bed, eyes flicking around, his attention eventually narrows to the IVs leading down. “Can you rate your pain, Agent? On a scale of one to ten?”

Hotch grunts, trying and failing to lift his head from the pillows. It listly slides to the side, his face has gone ashy, “seven.”

“Defintiely not an seven,” Jess says, she’s moved back from the bed, crossed her arms. “He said he felt like he was going to pass out.” 

“Thought,” Hotch grunts, his voice is a harsh whisper, “and I said might.” 

The nurse glances between them and continues with the task he started. 

“He has a high tolerance for pain,” Jess adds, “and a tendency to embellish the truth when it comes to… these things.”

Morgan nods from the corner, “he’s definitely lying. He’s stubborn.”

Hotch grunts but he can’t think to speak, he can hardly think to hear. Cold, gloved fingers touch him but something colder starts to creep up his arm, and then quickly he feels warm, very warm. “Nnm,” he rasps, his head feels less like something’s splitting it open, and more like hallow space between his ears, a vast, empty hallow place.  

“There really shouldn’t be so many people back here,” the nurse says. Pain treated, he can move on to the other things. “Can you step out for a moment into the hall, for a moment? I’ll collect you when I’m done.”

Eyes closed, breathing evened out, Hotch’s hand twitches. He drags his eyes open, trying to force focus out of his blurry eyes. “They can stay,” his speech has slowed, his voice softened. “Hm,” he turns slightly, “not Morgan.” He squints at who he’s fairly certain is Morgan and grumbles, “traitor.”

“What?” Morgan huffs, “Man– Nah, nevermind, you know what, I don’t wanna see you in your skivvies anyway.” 

Hotch smirks, “don’t think I’m wearing any.” He points to the nurse, “you take ‘em?”

The nurse chuckles, “I didn’t and you’re not.” 

Morgan leaves quickly, not eager to find out anymore than he’s already been told. 

Jess steps back away, stuck in a middle ground between watching what the nurse does and looking away to avoid seeing what she doesn’t want to. The nurse presses around his ribs and Hotch gasps, grunting – it’s not pain, but his body is still somehow aware this pressure isn’t right, that is should be painful. Somehow it’s still equally unpleasant. He jerks, his leg moving with it, and Jack immediately sits up. Sleep clings to the corners of his eye and as his tired brain process the information before him, Jess steps around, lifting Jack from the bed and moving him to the side. 

She tries to move herself between them. Hotch’s gown is open, the blanket across his lap preserves modesty, but doesn’t do much hide the scars across his chest, certainly doesn’t cover the black and blue bruises up his side. But Jack rubs his eyes, and stretches, pushing himself down out of the chair. “Daddy?”

Hotch bats the nurses hand away, turning his head and pushing his hand off the side of the bed. “Hey buddy,” his eyes are getting harder to force open. 

Jack ignores Jess’ request for him to come sit down, taking Hotch’s hand and folding himself up over the bed, lifting up on the top of his toes. He lays his head down and Hotch brushes his fingers through Jack’s hair, trying to tame the unruly strands. Jack reaches up, turning Hotch’s hand over and inspecting the IV taped down. “Are you okay?” 

Hotch tries to think of something but the mush inbetween his ears procures not a single intelligible thing. Reflexively, his hand goes back to Jack’s to hair, something else, not located in his head, guiding him back. 

“You remember what I said about wearing a helmet?” Jess asks, she stands behind him. 

Jack turns his head to look at Jess and puts his hand ontop of Hotch’s, “helmets are to protect my head. So I don’t crack it open.” 

“Yeah,” she agrees, “daddy wasn’t wearing his helmet–”

Jack stands, and with grave concern he asks, “did your brain come out of your ear?”

Hotch cocks an eyebrow up and looks over at the nurse. 

“No,” he says once he realizes the questions been deferred to him. “Your dad’s brain is still sitting snug where it should be.”

Jack narrows his eyes and looks over to Jess, “but Uncle Morgan said that’s what would happen. How come then?”

“Well,” Jess struggles for a moment. 

“Uncle Morgan’s not a doctor,” Hotch mumbles, “neither is your Uncle Reid but he’s always trying to argue otherwise.” 

“But he is a doctor,” Jack argues and he stands back up on his toes to lean back into Hotch’s hand. “Uncle Reid is a real doctor, he told me so.” 

“Mm-mm,” Hotch’s eyes close, and it takes him a long moment to force them back open, “math, chemistry and engineering.” He counts them off with his fingers and then they fall back to rest on Jack’s head. “No, ugh, biology? Anatomy? Whatever doctor’s study.” He glances at the nurse from the corner of his eye, and slurs, “’m a lawyer.”

“You’re a profiler,” Jess corrects. 

“Mm,” Hotch agrees, his eyes closed, “yeah, a profiler.” 

“You’re silly, daddy,” Jack giggles.

Hotch smirks and he manages to crack his eyes open to slivers, “you think so?”

“Uh-huh.” Jack turns back to Jess, “can I get up?”

“Yeah,” Hotch rasps.

Jess sighs and looks to the nurse, he nods his head. “I’m done here, for now. If you need anything, use the call button.” 

She’s adamant about it, but Jack kicks his foot up on bed, trying to get up himself. So she picks him up and puts him back on the bed. “Gentle,” she reminds him and Jack carefully crawls up closer and lays down. 

He curls onto his side, reaches up, “you've got scratchies.” Jack rubs the side of Hotch’s face, frowning at the feeling of his unshaved skin. “I don’t like it.”

Hotch turns his head towards Jack, his chin over the top of his head. “ ‘m sorry.”

Jess leans over, smoothing down some of Jack’s hair, “dad needs to get some sleep, alright?”

Jack nods.

“ ‘m not.” 

“You are,” Jess softy says. “Stop fighting it, just rest.”

Jack moves a little closer and falls still, but between his fingers he rubs the material of the gown now closed back over Hotch’s chest. 

He knew that no one would come check under the bed of a man like Aaron Hotchner. Not even his neighbors would risk leaving the safety of their beds to stick their ankle out and risk being caught themselves. 

Foyet has waited a long time for this. 

Tom Shaunessy was a coward and Foyet had known it the moment that he’d seen the man. Everything about him screamed cowardice, but his eyes especially. Shaunessy could hardly look at what The Reaper had done. As he spoke to Foyet in the hospital, Shaunessy had looked everywhere but at him. Casting his eyes aside to the horrors, unable to even look at what the murderer he couldn’t catch had done. 

That first phone call had excited Foyet and he couldn’t imagine letting something like that go. Not when this was it, not when Hotch was who Foyet had waited all this time for. The pieces were so simple to put together, it hadn’t bothered Foyet one bit to change up his tactics to explore this new, far more exciting avenue. 

Hotch would be the fight he wanted. This would be like nothing before and it’s all coming together perfectly. 

“Hey big guy,” Foyet taps Hotch’s face, smiling as Hotch’s breathing labors harder as he comes to once again. His pinprick pupils manage a slow, lazy climb to focus on Foyet. “Let’s get you outta here.” 

After calling 911, Foyet had passed out. He’d done the research, he knew how many stabs were too many. He could look at pools of blood and know how much was too much, and how much was survivalable. But there is only ever one way to find out. Foyet imagines that Hotch knows these things too. Perhaps Hotch had never held the knife and found out for himself but Foyet has no doubt he’s an intelligent man. And if Hotch could see now the pool of blood being left to clot and thicken in his off-white carpet, he’d see for himself that he was toeing that line. 

Too much and survivable. 

But Foyet knew nine was survivable. He could have been a surgeon, he has very steady hands and is precise with a blade. Maybe he would’ve liked that, if he didn’t like this more. But taking a life is a far better thrill than saving one.

Foyet had waited long and hard for a good fight. And now Hotch had proven himself the proper opponent. The fight that Foyet had always wanted. A fight of equals. The night Foyet stabbed himself he’d never flinched, if he had, he would have nicked something, and dying wasn’t an option. Hotch had endured for the same reasons that Foyet had – for what comes next. 

And Foyet could excuse a little fainting. 

“Come on,” Foyet urges, tapping at Hotch’s pale face, “come on, don’t make me kiss ya’ sleepin’ beauty.” Glassy eyes roll in their sockets as Hotch just barely finds it within himself to find Foyet who smiles down at him, “hey handsome, you ready to go?” There’s no answer coming, not that Foyet is waiting for it. On three, he hefts Hotch up, pulling them both to their feet in a great struggle. Quickly Foyet abandons the idea that Hotch is going to walk himself out, so he prepares for plan b. 

With a grunt, Foyet maneuvers Hotch around. He’s never really had to do this part before but he’s had more than enough time to prepare. Hotch makes no noises now, hangs limply over Foyet’s shoulder. Giving no response to the slap Foyet delivers to the back of his thigh as he asks, “you got everything you need?” There’s no need to respond anyway, Foyet is too busy laughing. 

Hotch passes out and comes to again in Foyet’s front seat, as Foyet wrangles him out his suit jacket. His vision returns, tunneled and littered in black dots obscuring what little he can see, as the Foyet presses Hotch’s jacket against his chest, forcing Hotch’s limp arms up and around himself, holding the jacket to his chest. 

The door slams shut.

—-----------

Hospitals are cold and sterile. The white walls absorb and diffuse, creating an atmosphere that’s nearly unaffected by the change of time, and the passing of guards. Hearts do keep time, a rhythm is predictable, measurable. A steady heart is.

“How long has he been down?” 

“Twenty-five minutes.”

The thing about a stalled heart… on the one hand, it stops blood from accumulating further in the thick puddle of the emergency room floor. No pumping heart means the gushing flow has stopped, their John Doe isn’t bleeding himself dry anymore. On the other, it means there’s no blood getting where it needs to be. Blood can be moped up from the floor. For the most part, it can be scrubbed out of fabric. But bodies, people, need blood far more than the floor does. 

Mr. Doe puts up a fight. They hit minute thirty-two and his heart finds a weak, but present pulse to beat to. Alive more on the stretcher than he had been as he was wheeled in the emergency room’s doors. They’d lifted him from the wheelchair he’d been pushed in on, and deposited him on white sheets with more color than his face. He’d been conscious throughout it, eyes open and loosely tracking movement. A nurse had spoken to him, and gotten minimal reaction to stimuli. They’d lost him after intubation, a predictable crash, dominos falling in line. 

____________________

“He doesn’t look…”

“Alive,” Emily finishes, barely a whisper. She knows what dead people look like. There are days when she spends more time looking at corpses than the actual living breathing people around her. They should be a few more floors down, the morgue would be more fitting. This doesn’t feel like visiting a friend, it feels like identifying him. What’s left of him, that is. 

Dave eyes Emily carefully and precedes into the room. How many of Hotch’s hospital rooms has he occupied now in his career? He’d worked for the Beaurea for over thirty years and hardly ever seen the inside of a hospital until he hired Hotch. Which was by no means a mistake, but it was certainly a decision. There’s not much left of that punk ass kid he hired. 

Dave’s knee creak as he lowers himself into the chair pulled up the side of the bed. He’d seen Emily here earlier, but now she seems far more content to stand in the corner, further away. Admittedly, Hotch looks bad. He doesn’t just look bad, he’s living in a shadowy in-between. The doctors have cleaned him up on the inside but he’s not in the clear. “He’s a tough kid,” Dave says softly and clears his throat, the sentiment adding to the growing knot of emotion stuck in his throat. On one hand he count the number of times they’ve been in this position, but it’s more than twice. “Ever tell you about the car he drove into a lake?” 

Arms crossed, Emily gives a shrug despite knowing exactly what Dave is talking about. Hotch broke both the bones in his lower right leg doing that, he’d hobbled around on crutches for weeks. Scared the hell out of Dave, who had wadded out to grab Hotch by his soaked suit jacket and dragged him to shore, coughing and spitting water up. The story is better than the reality. When Dave tells it, Hotch fought him all the way the hospital, arguing and bickering. That Hotch was downright furious to be carted up in an ambulance and made to stay in the hospital. The reality was that he’d barely managed to get himself to shore, and by the time he was at the shore, in water that would have come to his shins, he was hardly able to keep his head up. Between the freezing water, the sudden impact, and his broken leg, Hotch was in shock. Freezing and shivering. There hadn’t been a lot of fighting. 

Dave tells her anyway and Emily doesn’t interrupt him. She’s torn between looking at Hotch and avoiding him at all costs. Half of her is morbidly curious. Laying here, he looks nothing like himself. It’s him, she supposes, but not recognizably, not in any way she’s familiar. So her eyes keep finding him, hoping on some small, silly hope, that his eyes will open and he’ll look back at her with a face she does know. 

It’s like being left in the room with a ghost. There is an active haunting happening, unsettled spirits. Looking at Hotch… it doesn’t look like he’s settled. Doesn’t look like his own spirit, or even life, inhabits his body. She wants to leave too, but Dave entrusts her, foolishly, to sit watch so that he can go handle bigger things. Emily would much rather be at the emergency meeting with Strauss right now, even if the Director was there, that’d beat this. But Dave’s decided for her, bastard. 

Dave has been gone for twenty mintues when Hotch makes a sudden noise that scares Emily. The room is so full of little noises, she’s grown acquainted to them. She hardly hears the heart monitor, looking up only on the stray beeps. She looks as if she’s got any idea what any one of these machines do, but she has only a rough idea. The leads can be tracked from his chest, so she’s fairly certain of what some of them do, but there are too many other wires. A net of them that she really doesn’t want to understand. 

Hotch makes the noise again and Emily, despite her best efforts to look anywhere else, looks right at him. His eyes are open, hardly, but she can hear him breathing, laborious inhales through pale, parted lips. The sound occurs again and Emily watches, she sees his chest catch, the sound choked out again. 

“Hotch?” 

There comes no reply. 

Emily looks out of the room, there are two nurses at the station, both far more prepared to handle whatever is happening now. But she’s not even sure what’d she say to them. It feels silly, ridiculous, to bring them in here and tell them what exactly? That has made a “weird” sound. None of the machines are making any weird sounds, surely if something bad was happening, they’d be the first to know. 

Taking a tentative step closer, Emily calls his name again. Only a whisper, all she’s brave enough for. 

His chest catches and Emily steps closer, even though she feels the instinctual need to step back. His hand is near the edge, fingers lightly curled by gravity, his wrist up. Not sure where she should be, Emily gets just close enough to nudge his hand with the tip of her finger, “Hotch?” She tries to be within his line of sight, she thinks he is.

He makes the sound again and Emily flinches as it changes, rasping as he tries to pull in air. 

“Hotch?” His hand moves quickly, blindly, and wraps around her wrist. “Hotch,” she tries to pull her arm away from him but she can’t. She pulls but his grip is strong, unwavering in strength. She clenches her teeth, feeling the bones in hand grind together. “Please–” she strains, it hurts, feels like he’s close to breaking her wrist, but she can’t wrench his fingers away. “Let go.”

The panick is starting to take hold of her, her brain easily supplies all the weak places she could hit to get him off of her but her fingers stay over his, trying to pry his fingers away. As Emily grows more desperate, Hotch makes a significantly worse sound and then the pain in her wrist takes second place in things that are freaking her out. Hotch’s grip falls slack back to the bed, but his fingers are still visible in their previous placement on her skin. His chest stops rising and Emily stumbles back from the bed, her hand over her wrist, and her feet trying to rapidly take her away. 

Emily squeezes by nurses as she runs through the door, not looking back at the sound of an alarm going off. 

By the time Dave gets back, the skin on her wrist is purple and pink, actively trying to bruise and immiting a popping sound when she moves the joint. She holds her palm over the bruising when Dave comes up, because he’s already alarmed by the fact that instead of being lead back to Hotch’s room, he’s been deferred to a waiting room. 

“What happened?”

Coming out of the room, Emily had been shaking. Typically, that much adrenaline comes along with a good chase. A place to run to, a lot of energy to physical exert someplace. Now she takes it all with her and she has no where to go. Now as Dave comes to a frustrated halt, hand slipping over his goatee and then falling to his hip, Emily feels the force bubble right back up. 

“He ugh…” Emily stammers, “he just…” Anxiously, her fingers start kneading the agitated skin. “He… I just but I mean–”

“What happened to your hand?” Dave asks and by the way that Emily’s hand snaps to cover it, he already has a pretty good idea what she’s hiding. “Did anyone look at it?”

Emily narrows her eyes for a moment and looks away. “It’s fine.”

Dave nods his head, and takes the chair beside her. “I’m sure it is,” he sighs, leaning back. “Should probably still get it looked at.”

Emily glares at him, her hand protectively held to her chest. “He didn’t mean to,” she mumbles.

“I wasn’t saying he did.” 

Emily looks at him, and then away. 

Dave smiles sadly down at the ground. He’d already gotten a taste of the trouble Emily and Hotch could get themselves into together. Even though their relationship had been formed on distrust, even some hatred and anger. The two of them get on like flames on wood, Dave’s not even surprised that she would feel protective. Though, he’s not sure why Emily feels the need to protect Hotch from him. 

“It really is fine,” Emily says softly. 

“I believe you,” Dave says, “but Aaron–”

“I know,” Emily interrupts. “It’s not broken, he didn’t–” She shakes her head, “it’s just bruised but I’ll– I’ll go get it looked at.”

“Atta girl.”

____________________

Hotch’s breathing sharpens and JJ sits up a little, eyes anxiously darting up to the heart monitor. She watches his eyelashes flutter as he stirs. His hand twitches, jerking against the sheets. He makes a soft noise, inhaling through his nose, and bends his elbow, moving his hand across the sheets towards the left. Twice already JJ had seen him do this. Hotch grunts, agitatedly when his hand comes in contact with the rail. His fingers lazily fumble along the rail until he takes hold of it, wrapping his fingers around it. On the next breath, his eyes open and he looks up for a disoriented moment before turning his head towards the rail.

“You’re in the hospital,” JJ offers quietly, hoping not to startle him. 

He turns his head a little at the sound of her voice but his attention remains on the rail. “I know,” he says hoarsely. He stares for a moment longer at the rail and his hand slips back down to the bed. Hotch turns his head to her and frowns. She has no idea what he’s going to say but she can see him thinking, the look on his face. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says softly.

JJ frowns sadly, understanding all that he’s not said. The crinkles of pain between his eyebrows and his eyes. They’re softer than the rest of him. Windows to the soul. “And leave you here alone?” she asks, brushing her thumb across his knuckles. “You wouldn’t leave me here alone, would you?”

Hotch looks away, slightly shaking his head. 

“Then what makes you think I’d leave you?” 

His mouth lifts a little and he turns his head away, shaking his head. 

JJ knows someone else should be here. Dave or Emily would know what to say. They would take one look at him and understand whatever it is that he’s not saying. But JJ can’t. JJ doesn’t know what Hotch’s thinking. It’s just locked inside of him, behind his determined grimace. 

“I brought juice,” she offers lamely, looking over until she can find her bag. She pulls the bottle out of her purse and holds it, crinkling the plastic around the bottle. “It’s apple,” JJ says, looking down at it. “I don’t know if you like apple juice but I– well I guess… I just wanted to bring something…”

Hotch doesn’t want apple juice. He doesn’t really like juice. If she was offering some tea or coffee he might consider it a little more. “I’m okay,” he says to the wall.

“Oh,” JJ says softly, “okay.” 

Hotch hadn’t been interested in the slightest by anything they had tried to offer him. On the first night, Emily had gotten a few ice chips into him but his defenses were something else in those first twenty-four hours. His control was topsy-tervy. Boarding on crazed and belligerent and then nothing but tears and anguish. But they could be one in the same. They were. And while apple juice wasn’t the first thing she’d brought him or the first thing he’d denied from her, it was still disheartening. 

There wasn’t a whole lot that JJ felt she could do. Which wasn’t a new feeling. Their jobs demanded something from them that it did not ask of her. She couldn’t tell like they could when someone was lying or read between meaningless gestures to understand something deeper. She couldn’t even look at her friend and tell what he was thinking, how could she do it with a stranger? 

But she could do something. JJ enjoyed bringing snacks. She liked being the person hunting down the one specific thing that Reid would eat if he was too anxious or afraid or just sick. JJ liked knowing that she could be relied on in this way. That when everything else was going wrong she could meet this one need. Hunger. She knew their take-out orders by heart and if she needed to make an impromptu change, she knew what they would want. 

Even Hotch. What coffee and a nap could not fix, JJ could. It wasn’t so hard, really, she thought. When it came down to it, a good snack is a comfort. Something simple. And she could appreciate that. JJ thought it was cute, and sweet even how she could spend five minutes making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and she would be in Hotch’s favor for weeks. He’d thank her endlessly. 

But Hotch isn’t eating. He has no will to subsist off anything but what comes into his body through whatever they attach to him next. 

Head turned from her, Hotch closes his eyes but the crinkle of plastic keeps playing through the room. JJ’s anxious hands toying with it. “Okay,” Hotch sighs. He turns to look over at her, not even sure how to ask for the juice, but she’s already looking up, face lit up. 

That feeling in his stomach acts up, guilt tightening in his chest. He’s selfish. Hotch watches her without a word. JJ’s so excited that she moves quickly, grabbing at a paper cup and twisting the lid off the juice. Moving like she’s afraid he’ll change his mind if she’s not fast enough. 

“Here,” she presents the cup with a smile, tapping the straw so that it falls forward towards his mouth. 

Something in his voice whispers the threat of poison, coils tightly in his stomach. Nausea creeps up, thick in his throat. He pulls only a tiny sip from the straw, forcing it down despite his immediate desire to throw it up. 

“It’s important to get fluids in,” JJ says and then glances up at the IV pole, the medications, and hundred other things coming in through the line. Maybe it’s not the same but the way she figures, it’s not gonna hurt, and he can’t stay here so he’s got to start eating and drinking sometimes. JJ places the cup on the tray, close by, and when she turns back he’s still watching her. She’s familiar with this face. The exhaustion that leads to tears, that worn down look on his face. 

Hotch exhales shakily and averts his eyes. “You should go home,” he rasps, barely containing a wince as he raises his left arm weakly to his chest. “With Will and Henry…” 

JJ pulls in a breath, turning her head as tears unexpectedly begin to sting her eyes. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Will and Henry. What would she do if they were sent away? How would she survive? And it felt selfish to even think about them, to have them waiting at home for her. JJ sniffles and wipes her wet face with the back of her hand. “I will,” she promises, taking her seat again and reaching forward for his hand. Hotch closes his eyes when she takes his hand, turning his head away. “But not right now.”

Hotch keeps his head turned from her for a while. Enough time passes that JJ thinks he might have fallen asleep again but then he sniffles and lifts his hand to try and dry the tears that have fallen against his will. The hand she’s holding moves just enough and he squeezes her hand. When he turns, his eyes don’t meet hers right away. He looks to the wall to her side, mouth opening as he struggles to find the words. But then he looks at her, irritated wet eyes, “Thank you for staying.”

Another round of tears nearly takes her out, they block her vision when she stands, leaning over him gently so that she can hug him. JJ kisses the top of his head, “You’re my friend, Aaron.” She looks at him, down into disbelieving eyes. “I’d do anything for you and you’d deserve it all.”

“JJ–”

“Don’t argue with me,” she says sternly. JJ sniffles and wipes her eyes dry, “I mean it and I won’t be argued with.” She puts her hands on her hips and looks at him, a face he’s often enough. A very motherly glare. “So just deal with it, kapeesh?”

Hotch doesn’t even try not to smile. It’s little, hardly a smile at all but it’s a grin at the very least. “Yes ma’am.”

“Ok then,” JJ says sitting back down. “Now back to sleep,” she commands, “it’s late.”

____________________

Hotch is sleeping. Morgan’s checked and rechecked, he’s just barely an expert but this isn't fake. Hotch had been playing at sleep for the last two days now, successfully warding off his visitors. Morgan had been his roommate for the first four years he was on the team, he could tell when Hotch was really asleep. Somehow, Prentiss could too. Morgan wants to know why, and he’s got a pretty good visual given every story Prentiss has ever told him and Hotch’s extreme need to relieve some stress. 

“Princess,” Morgan whispers, glancing slightly at Hotch but he’s been too quiet. “Are you awake?” 

She ignores him, keeping her eyes closed. It’s ten at night and Hotch is sleeping, as far as Emily’s concerned, Morgan needs to shut the hell up and either get a nap while it’s silent or go chatter somewhere else. 

“Emily,” Morgan says a little louder. “Come on, I know you’re awake.”

“Shut up,” she mumbles, cracking her eye open just enough to glance at Hotch. 

“Can I ask you somethin’?” Derek says, sitting up.

Emily sighs and opens her eyes, glaring across the bed between them to Derek. “What?” she demands.

“Earlier,” Derek says, “you said you were in Hotch’s apartment and that nothing looked out of place…” 

Emily nods, slowly. “Yeah, okay. So what?”

Derek sits up a little more, his blanket falling off his shoulder and down into his lap. “How’d you know something like that? What would be out of place and what wouldn’t?”

Emily sighs and rolls her eyes, “I don’t know Derek. Probably because I’ve been to his apartment once or twice. Is that a big deal? Are you jealous?”

Derek huffs a laugh, “hardly.” He smiles, “I was just wondering… I mean I’m his friend too but I don’t know if I could tell if anything was out of place in his apartment.” He shurgs, “but I’ve been there only a handful of times.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing,” Derek smirks. “Nothing at all.”

Emily scowls at him, “you’re such a pervert. Why is that where you nasty head goes everytime?” Emily tugs her blanket up around her, puffing, “I would never… with Hotch? Come on, now.” Derek doesn’t look convinced. “And Hotch would never. He has a whole complex about power, he’d probably think it’d be manipulative. And besides it’d be –”

“Fraternization,” a hoarse voice supplies.

Emily immediately sits up. “Hotch?”

He hums, slowly pulling his eyes open and blinking a few sluggish times. 

“Hey man,” Derek says, he’s already standing, his hand on Hotch’s arm.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Emily fusses, standing too, crossing her arms.

Hotch looks blearily between them and raises his eyebrows a little. “Was trying,” he rasps, voice giving out on him. He tries to clear his throat but his mouth is painfully dry and he winces. 

Emily shoots Derek a dirty look but he ignores her, turing his back to them to fill a cup of water for Hotch. “I’m sorry,” Emily says, “we’ll be quiet.”

“Here,” Derek offers, and he waits for Hotch to raise his hand. He’s not yet been able to hold the cup himself but his fingers loosely curl around it, and Derek does the extra work. 

“Thank you,” Hotch says softly, and Derek nods back, putting the cup down. 

“How’re you feeling?” Derek asks, pulling his chair closer and sitting back down.

Maybe proof of the drugs coursing through him, Hotch hums, eyes already closed, and the corner of his mouth twitching up. “Don’t put me under oath.”

Derek barks out a laugh and Emily frowns at him. “You’re making jokes?” Derek chuckles, “damn, you must be feeling good.”

“Mm.” 

“Alright,” Emily interrupts, “we should be sleeping.” Her voice lowers as she looks at Derek, “not talking.”

Derek raises his hands and Hotch cracks his eyes back open, drowsily taking stock of them. He blinks sluggishly, licking his dry lips, “Why’re you here?”

Derek and Emily shares a glance over him, one that he can clearly see. 

“We’re security,” Derek says, finally. 

“Security,” Hotch repeats. He smirks a little, eyes dragging over to Derek, “...must not be that important.”

“The Beaurea doesn’t think so,” Emily mumbles, taking her chair back. 

“He won’t come back,” Hotch says. Turning his head to look at her is a physical exertion, more energy than he has to dispense. “His jobs done for now.”

Emily only glances at him, moving her eyes instead to her lap, scratching at her nails. 

“Yeah well if he does, he’s gonna have to deal with me,” Derek huffs. 

And without seeing him, Hotch knows Derek’s glaring at the door. Half willing, half daring Foyet to come. But Emily doesn’t share his boldness. 

“He won’t come back,” Hotch repeats and Emily looks up at him. 

She believes him, she trusts the profile that he’d written, but that doesn’t do much to combat her fear. It’s not as logical as the rest. “He’d better not,” she relents, tucking her arms back over her chest. 

The conversation feels far from over, but Hotch can feel his  ill-timed fluttering of his heart trying to beat in his chest. He knows that Foyet won’t come to the hospital. The intent was never to kill him, and as long as Foyet wants him alive, he will be. 

Hotch’s eyes shut on their own accord, his body submitting without a consult to the rest of him. 

Derek sees Hotch first, stretched in the circular booth with his left leg on one-half of the booth. He’s in a sweater Derek’s seen a thousand times – discarded on his bedroom floor, in his laundry hamper, in Hotch’s go-bag – and it makes his aching heart kick up a fuss. The soft material worn to Hotch’s frame; no doubt, the frayed sleeves are pinched over Hotch’s cold hands. 

Emily’s propped up against his shoulder, Hotch slumped down in the booth to her equal height. She’s also in a sweater, hair pulled back out of her face, and no make-up in sight. 

Derek hadn’t known what he was coming here to do but he‘d forgotten Aaron would be here, that if Emily was calling from his phone then she was with him. He’d assumed he’d be coming to pick her up from somewhere more lively, with people swarming and music playing so loudly he could feel the beat in his chest. Somehow Derek had forgotten exactly what they meant to one another. 

He’s not sure how to interrupt this leisure, their complete comfort. “You guys ready?” 

They both glare at him for a moment, narrowing their eyes as they try to focus on his face. Emily breaks first, a big smile on her face as she sits up and starts scooting out of the booth towards him. “Derek!” She throws her arms up and around his neck, leaning into him through the hug. “I forgot you were coming!”

Derek is hesitant to release her but she doesn’t go very far. Emily leans into his side, her arm still around him. Derek nods at Hotch as he climbs out of the booth himself, slower, and comes to stand, leaning into the booth. Derek looks away, smiling at Emily, “you have fun?” 

Emily sighs, “oh yeah.” She points a finger at Hotch and he looks away, color already starting to rise to his face and neck. “That one…” Emily squints her eyes, shaking her finger a little, “he knows…” 

Hotch shakes his head and Derek laughs, reveling in the sudden look of panic on Hotch’s face. But Derek is laughing at Emily, who is still making a face at Hotch. “Come on princess,” he says, squeezing her shoulder, “let’s get you home.” 

Emily steps away suddenly for this part. She searches around the table, “Hotch, do you have your wallet and keys?” 

Hotch, who hadn’t been prepared to suddenly participate in the conversation, struggles to stand upright, shifting his weight unevenly on his legs for a moment. “Sorry?" he asks, nervously. Looking between Derek and Emily trying to piece together what he’s missed.

“Keys, sweetheart,” Emily says, softly, giving him a small sympathetic smile. “Your wallet? Do you have everything?”

The addition of sweetheart feels both endearing and mocking. Hotch feels his face get hot, “I have everything.” 

“Okay.” 

Hotch leads them out of the bar, walking alone, not sure how to insert himself into the natural duo Derek and Emily make. So instead he narrows his focus on walking. Watching and feeling his feet land on the ground, the weight and flexion of muscles. Trying to ground himself through the cloudy drunken haze. He’s working with new hardware, physical and mental. There wasn’t much out in Pakistan except soldiers and sand. Nightmares were often and silent, everyone would cut some slack for the occasional but the persistent warranted a talking to. The shift from home to there had been difficult, there was lot on Hotch's mind and his nightmares didn’t let him forget it.

Behind Hotch, Emily and Derek speak softly to each other. He can hear them as they walk closely behind, but Hotch keeps his attention on walking. 

Emily leans into Derek as they walk, his arm around her shoulders and hers around his back. She keeps an eye on Hotch, old reflexes die hard “I can’t believe that you both managed to hide this,” Emily says, tugging Derek. “You know I love breaking rules and this has lawsuit written all over it.” 

Derek smiles, “what’re you talking about?”

“I overestimated you; I thought you were smart enough to know better than to go after anybody we with work with– though I had some doubts but Garcia swore on her Wish Bear there was nothing so… .”

“What– Wish Bear?”

“It’s a Carebear. You don’t know Carebears?” 

Derek shrugs.

“That’s a crying shame,” Emily tsks, “everyone should know Carebaears. They’re a National Treasure.” 

“I don’t know them.”

Emily shakes her head, “that’s a shame, really a shame.” She pauses only a moment with a frown hiccups and rubs her chest, “he’s a very honest drunk, Derek. You ought to know that. Told me everything.” 

“Who is?”

“Hotch,” Emily says, pointing at him. “Terribly honest. Really did tell me everything.”

“Everything?” Derek asks, he feels completely lost. “About what?”

Emily grins, this knowing Cheshire stretch of her mouth that reflects the mischief gleaming in her glazy eyes. She reaches up and taps his nose, “fucking.”

“Huh?” Derek shakes his head. “Woman, what are you talking about?”

Emily sways as she sings, “Aaron and Derek sitting in a tree. F- U-C- K- I–”

“Alright,” Derek gets it pretty quickly, and nervously he pulls Emily closer to him. “Shh, shh.” 

“Why are you shushing me? He knows,” Emily points at Hotch, “he was there. And he’s the one that told me anyway.” Emily rolls her eyes, “he’s such a blabber mouth when he’s drunk.” 

Derek huffs.

“So don’t tell him any of your secrets,” Emily says, in her wisest voice. “Because I’ll just get him drunk and get him to tell me them.” 

“Okay,” Derek agrees, “I won’t.” Derek’s not sure that he has any secrets that they don’t know anyway. He’d gotten in the habit of confiding in them both. Unlike the both of them, Derek hadn’t lied to them. He trusted them both, not just with his life but with the details. Derek doesn’t want to be mad about it but he also can’t stop thinking about it. Why hadn’t Hotch trusted him? Because Derek knew he’d trust Hotch with information like that, so what was different?

Emily hiccups and pats her chest, “you love ‘im then?”

“What?” 

Rolling her eyes, Emily repeats slowly, “do you love him?”

Derek looks ahead, to Hotch. It felt like the answer wasn’t very clear. Some small part of Derek still felt like there would be an obvious sign, a banner maybe, or a burst of confetti that would mark the right decision. There had been no obvious signs, Derek didn’t think so at least. There were other things. Just standing at the table, waiting for Emily and Hotch to collect their things, Derek felt pulled to Hotch still. Seeing Hotch smile, seeing him squirm and flush under Emily’s attention had ignited some of those feelings raw once again. 

“If it’s taking you that damn long to answer,” Emily hiccups, “then the answer is probably yes, dummy.”

Derek huffs, “and what do you know about it?” He looks over at her, “since you seem to think you know everything.”

Emily smirks, “I know he loves you too.”

Derek hadn’t considered that. To him, everything that happened had seemed like a pretty clear severance. And now Emily is saying it wasn’t and Derek doesn’t know what any of it means anymore. 

Emily’s walking starts to take a bit of a turn and with a stumble, Emily curses, “mierda.” Derek doesn’t understand a bit of the Spanish that leaves her mouth after that. She fires the Spanish off too easily, too quickly. Having done this enough, Derek knew exactly what Spanich brain meant – puking. 

Intuition and experience have taught Derek all he needs to know about what comes next. “Alright, princess,” Derek starts guiding her toward the closest bench and garbage bin. 

She clicks her tongue at him, “ay, no, no es necesario.” She grumbles but sits down on the bench, right where Derek puts her. 

“Stay here for a second, I’m going to get Hotch before he walks off without us.”

“Necestitas ir a dile que lo amas, estupido.”

Derek shakes his head, “just stay here.”

Hotch hasn’t gotten that far but his advantage is enough to make Derek need to jog to catch up to him. “Aaron, hey!” Derek grabs his arm and Hotch turns. “Hold up, man. Emily’s in spanish mode, I left her on a bench, but I think she’s gonna hurl.”

Now that he’s standing close, the street lights catching that honey brown color that Derek had been away from for so long that being close now made his knees weak. Close enough now to see the glassy sheen over Hotch’s eyes too, smell the alcohol on his breath. 

Hotch looks at Derek and then away, to the ground. “Good call.” He glances up again, eyes moving along Derek’s face and he turns away, but he’s held there by the arm Derek catches. Easily, Hotch could turn away but he wants to be pulled closer, for Derek to hold him tighter until he’s certain he’ll leave bruises. But the touch is hesitant and light.

“Wait,” Derek says, and he doesn’t know why he has to say this now. On a dark street. In the middle of the night. “We missed– I missed you. And–” Hotch’s attention turns enraptured, all of him focused on Derek. It burns through Derek. The way Hotch’s eyes flicker the small distance over Derek’s face, to his lips, and back to his eyes. Like a shot of whiskey, heating up his chest and stomach. A comfortable buzz. Derek’s heart pounds in his chest, his breathing getting harder. “I missed you,” Derek stammers again, and he reaches, unabashed, for Hotch’s hand. “And I want us–”

Hotch’s mouth is warm. His lips right against Derek’s and gone so quickly, he leaves their heads spinning. All Derek can do is stare at him. His mouth open, lips tingling. 

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Hotch finally says. His head is buzzing with alcohol, cloudy judgment had lead him to believe this was his chance. And now he’s standing in the silence, having acted on a hasty, drunk thought. Realizing his mistake. Realizing he was wrong. “I’m so sorry, Derek. I… I’m sorr–”

Wine and Aaron, who had been away for so long that Derek had forgotten. He’d grown unfamiliar with the leisurely comfort of this. Of Aaron. Derek wishes he could just have him. Take him to bed and keep him there, away the things that make him cry, away from pain. Safe and here, always. 

Derek doesn’t hear Emily clear her throat but he feels Hotch jump and pull away from him. He can see the blush creeping up from around Hotch’s dark collar, the fingertips hovering over his lips. 

“Puked in a trashcan,” Emily says, rocking back on her toes. “S’all good now.” She smirks, “you guys talk?”

Derek smirks, “something like that.” He wraps his arm back around Emily and shoots a smirk at Hotch just to get another glance of his flushed, shocked face. “Come on, let’s get you home.” 

Emily had been taking Hotch out for years. Sometimes he just needed a friend, someone other than Jessica to talk to. Emily had gotten Jessica’s number right after Foyet. They had instantly reciprocated a friendship. Similar enough to one another and with the same plan in mind, dragging Hotch out of this no matter how he kicked and fought. It was good having someone else on their team, someone that understood Hotch the same way they thought they did. And while Emily was a little hesitant when Jessica asked her to be Hotch’s friend, to take that label when Emily herself wasn’t very sure Hotch considered them friends, Jessica was right. 

And so Emily is his friend. And Jessica is the back-stabbing, secret-spilling mastermind. Sending them out on nights like this when they both think they other is mad at them. Tonight, was one of those nights. And those nights always end the same – at Emily’s. After five years of this, they have long since been banned from trying to sneak back into Hotch’s apartment. They had tried twice to sneak back into the house but drunk and navigating in dark, both times they had woken up not only Jess but Jack. There was no allowance for a third strike. 

“You wanna stay with us?” Emily asks. She hands Derek her keychain and leans back against Hotch, hiding from the wind picking up around them. 

The first key he tries fails, Derek tries another key and looks up as it slides in and turns the lock. “Why? You got something planned?”

Emily makes a disgusted face and shivers, “ew. With you? That’s disgusting.” She slips in the door past him and starts stripping down. Kicking her shoes off in a pile and tossing her coat on the table. “Just for that,” she says, rubbing her eyes and blindly walking towards her room, “you gotta sleep on the couch.”

Derek smirks back at Hotch, a look that doesn’t go unnoticed. Hotch smiles a little, looking down as he toes his shoes off beside Emily’s. He yawns and stumbles down the hall following Emily, “I don’t have to sleep on the couch.” 

“You’re gonna leave me out here alone?” Derek asks, feigning hurt. 

“Mmm,” Hotch hums and shrugs, “yes.” He’s drunk. Not stupidly so but enough to lack forethought, to let go of the reigns let somebody else handle it. Hotch doesn’t realize his mistake until he’s decided to leave his sweater on so he’s warm while he sleeps. Leaving him standing in his clothes while Emily and Derek strip down to something they can sleep in. 

He can’t do that. 

“You sleepin’ in your jeans?” Derek looks up from folding his pants, over to Hotch standing stiffly by the bed, frozen. “You go commando?” Derek asks, hands on his hips, on the waistband of his boxers as he teases. 

“No.” 

Bed ready to be slept in, Emily climbs in, pulling the blankets up around her and laying down. “You can get the light on the way out, Derek.” 

Derek looks at Hotch, feigning hurt. “Princess,” Derek says, “you’re really gonna do me like that? Kick me out to the cold couch?”

Emily hums back, eyes already closed, “oh yeah. There’s only room for two of us and if I have to pick between the two of you…” She doesn't hear anyone move so she adds, “lights please.”

Derek heaves a sigh and starts to go, sensing tension, Emily peaks an eye open to watch Derek softly bid Hotch goodnight. At the door he stops again, “take me to dinner.” Emily almost sits up to see the look Hotch’s face. Derek continues, “I meant what I said earlier.” The lights cut off and he shuts the door. 

It takes Hotch a moment to begin moving and Emily sits up, blinking as he eyes adjust to the low light. “Are you gonna take him to dinner?” Emily asks, scooting closer. 

Hotch sighs, and glancing at her, Emily following his eyes down as he hesitates to completely take his jeans off.

Emily gently reaches over and touches his arm. He’d needed a lot of liquid courage to get him to even tell her anything about what happened at all. Emily had spent a lot of time wondering what they had been up to while she was away, they were all she could think about. Strangers started looking exactly like them. Too many tall slender man with unruly light brown hair but no Reid. No stoic suit with dark hair was Hotch. No JJ. All she could was sit and hope that they were together. And so it breaks her to hear worse. 

“Hey,” Emily says, rolling her eyes and scoffing as she fights back tears, reaching up and brushing them away. “It’s just us, it’s fine. It’s nothing.” Emily waves her hand a little, “I can hardly see, it’s way too dark.” 

Hotch nods solemnly, eyes still on his jeans. Emily understands, somehow she always does. She’ll be angry but she’ll understand. Right now she’s too drunk to be angry, just softened, and concerned instead. Terribly nosy as well. And this won’t freak her out. She’s seen him crazy – panicking to the point he’s in the bathroom hurling into the toilet. She’s helped him change the bandages on his chest. And now they’ve traveled to the very edge together. She had nearly died for him and he had nearly died to keep her alive. 

Now, though, nothing really happens. 

Hotch had told her what had happened, he had told her and yet it is hard for her to believe, even as she sees it. “Does it hurt?” Emily asks as Hotch leans over trying to fish his leg out of his pants.

Hotch sits up and looks down. It had been months now and Hotch still wasn’t used to looking at what remained of his left leg and mostly because he still felt like it was there. His brain hadn’t fully comprehended it was no longer there. It takes Hotch a moment to really hear Emily, to get around to answering a question he doesn’t really know the answer to. “Not really,” Hotch shrugs, because that’s mostly the truth. It doesn’t hurt so much as it isn’t normal. It’s not what he’s used to, so it’s a pain but it’s not painful. 

Emily moves, allowing Hotch to lay back in the bed. “You know,” she says, glancing at him, “if you’d bother to ask, I could have told you that many fake I.D.s would cost an arm and a leg.”

Hotch smirks, huffing as he pulls the blankets up and lays down beside Emily. “It was all those passports,” Hotch huffs.

Emily laughs, "that government stamp comes with an expensive fee.”

“You’re telling me.”

Emily says nothing for a short moment but her mind is still on her first question. Hotch had confessed it all to her tonight. From what he had done in the beginning, trading guaranteed protection for her and in exchange going to Pakistan, to the explosion he couldn’t even remember. One minute he was out in the cool night air looking at the moon and the next he was waking up on a cot, falling onto the ground, and looking at the round, gauze-covered end of his thigh. That he’d spent months in a wheelchair, pushing himself around in the sand, because he still had a job to do. A contract to complete. And if Hotch could do all that, if he could give all that, such a noble idiot, he could still get the guy. 

“Are you gonna take him out for dinner?”

Hotch huffs, “you’re so nosy.” He stares up at the ceiling and sighs, “yeah... I–I kissed him.” The darkness feels like the same animosity of the bar, a safe enough hole to speak the truth in. “He kissed me back.”

“Really?” Emily turns over to look at him, and he glances over at her, smiling a little and nodding. 

“Yeah but… It’s complicated…”

Emily snorts and rolls her eyes, “because you got blown up? Be serious Hotch, he was there in New York. He’s seen you get into trouble, okay, and he’s not gonna care about that.” 

Hotch shrugs, looking away. “I don’t know.”

Emily shakes her head at him, stupid, stupid idiot man. “Why would he be mad?” Emily asks, she moves her right leg over to him, swishing her legs back in forth in the bed, “who would be mad about extra legroom?”

Hotch smiles, even though he’s trying hard not to. “Okay,” he relents. “I said I’d take him to dinner, I don’t even know if that’s what he wants.”

“Oh he definitely does,” Emily says, waving the notion off. “He was like a love sick puppy, you two were unbearable.”

Hotch huffs, he’s not sure that’s true. It was good, better than good, but love sick?

“It’s gonna work out,” Emily says and Hotch looks over at her but seeing nothing but darkness. He nods anyway, not certain but willing to be hopeful. Maybe but what was done, was done. Everyone is home, they survived, and they have another chance to keep going. 

He’d have dinner with Derek and they would have to talk about what happened but maybe things would work out. 

Maybe Derek will understand.