Work Text:
It's hard to differentiate between new sick and regular sick in the aftermath of Foyet's attack.
Hotch sits up at 3am riding a wave of nausea so intense it pulled him from sleep, real sleep. A shame, too, because he hadn't been doing much of that in the last few days and it felt nice to finally get a little. He's so tired it's physically painful. But so is the pulsing in his lower back and the fullness in his groin that tells him once this shockingly intense sick feeling passes, he needs to get up and take a leak. The majority of his diet lately has been liquid and he's been pissing like a racehorse, a small comfort in the grand scheme of things. At least one of his systems works properly. Foyet couldn't take that from him.
He slides to the edge of the bed and sets his socked feet on the floor, wiggling his toes against the wool. Derek hates the way he wears socks to bed, calls it diabolical. An abomination. Wrong. But Derek sleeps warm and Hotch doesn't just sleep cold, he's always cold. "You lose heat through your feet," he would say as Derek tried to wrestle him out of his socks nightly. "I'll freeze to death and you'll be to blame." Which, of course, left Hotch open to some filthy reply about the multitude of ways Derek could keep him warm if he just got rid of the offending socks. He almost always gives in.
Derek doesn't sleep over these days, so he wears the socks and mourns the memory of other ways to keep warm. He misses Derek. This whole Foyet situation has sort of created a distance between them - mostly on Hotch's end, he knows that. He doesn't want to be touched, he doesn't want to be seen, he doesn't want to be loved. He lost his family and he deserves the hell that comes with being the cause of it. And it isn't that he doesn't need those things, or that Derek is unwilling to offer them, it's just that they're both processing a sort of grief over the situation and the trauma has hardened them both in some ways.
Derek isn't going to fight him for his time, and Hotch is just going to have to stop running away and let time smooth over some of the worst of the pain. If Hotch can't stop thinking about the way Foyet asked him about Derek, if he can't get the thought of Derek's credentials out of his mind, how can he possibly allow Derek to keep on loving him? Haley and Jack are in WITSEC, they're being protected, but Derek is in danger and if Hotch allows him to stay close it only gets worse.
This job takes from them a lot more than it gives.
He stands slowly, his hips aching and stiff. The stitches all over his stomach pull as he stretches upright and he feels the blood rush down into his legs, pooling dangerously in his feet almost immediately. His walk is stiff and slow on knees that don't want to bend, hips that don't want to shift and glide, feet that feel like pins and needles but the urgency with which he has to pee compels him forward. It's more of a shuffle than a walk, his back is arched to mitigate the majority of the pain, but he can only do so much. He's weak and everything hurts, there is nothing more or less to be said for it.
When he falls mid-stream, it's mostly embarrassing at first. The blood that rushed to his feet came too fast, and for some reason unbeknownst to him seemed to stay there without making its way back through his system like it should. He can't be too surprised by that, hardly anything is working right these days. The fall had been preceded by a sudden lightheaded feeling, a dizziness that mottled his vision and he remembers reaching for the sink in slow motion before slamming first against the toilet and then to the ground. It's not a total blackout, but it's damn near close, and when he comes to he realizes that this is a lot worse than just a bruised ego and some piss on his pajama pants.
He's bleeding, first of all. It's the gash on his right arm that oozes crimson through the thick gauze wrap. Worse than that, at least at first, is the realization that his arm hurts. Not just in a torn open flesh wound way, not in a superficial way, but deep. Bone deep. He lifts his arm gingerly to his lap and cradles it there while another wave of dizziness crashes over him. This time, though, he knows it's shock. His arm feels heavy and weak and his head feels light and his surroundings are dim. It's all bad news.
When his mind catches up to his surroundings, when the fog lifts just enough, he takes mental stock. His arm is bleeding profusely and might be broken, or at least it's injured enough that it hurts worse than it should and his mobility in it is pretty much nothing. He can't remember whether he'd hit it on the toilet, on the sink, or maybe he'd landed on it funny and tweaked it somehow. He can barely think straight let alone remember the turn of events outside of the fact that he's half naked on the floor in a puddle of piss and his arm hurts.
"Damn," he whispers, because he knows how it goes from here. He's on blood thinners in the aftermath of Foyet and that means he has to go to the hospital, it's non-negotiable. This bleeding won't stop on its own, the wound is too deep and he can't just power through it. If he hadn't just barely survived massive blood loss and his heart stopping maybe, but it's not normal and the doctors were very clear about that. He's stubborn to a fault but he's not stupid. The pain is giving way to a sort of adrenaline soaked numbness, and he uses that to his advantage while he wraps his arm in a bath towel as gingerly as he can and calls Jessica.
"I'm bleeding," he says quietly, pressing as hard as he can against the wound. It makes him feel sick, pressing so hard against the deep pain beneath, but it can't be helped. He can't just bleed out because it hurts. He leaves all of that out, though…at least for now. She'll figure it out when she arrives.
"I'll be there as fast as I can," she replies, her voice thick with sleepy urgency. He feels guilty waking her up. "Stay on the phone with me Aaron."
"Okay."
She talks and he listens, occasionally answering her questions just so she knows he's still there. There's a far away quality to his voice that worries her, but he brushes her off every time she asks about how he feels.
"I feel okay," he keeps reassuring her. It's a lie and they both accept it, she's close enough to walking out the door that it doesn't matter. It's not worth the fight. "The bleeding isn't bad."
"What are you doing to stop it?" she asks and he hears her car start, hears the engine purr, doesn't hear her seatbelt click. He sets his jaw and presses a little harder against the bleeding.
"Seatbelt," he says quietly. She huffs out a few expletives and he hears it click into place.
"Alright, mom…"
"I need a ride to the hospital. If you die on your way here, what am I going to do?"
"Asshole."
He's content to let her call him names, it lightens the mood a little while he waits. She doesn't live far away but she's pulling up in front of his apartment a little faster than he calculates and he ribs her a little for speeding.
"You're bleeding to death," she reasons. "I think I'm justified. Can you walk out here or do I need to park?"
"I'm on my way."
In truth, he probably should have asked her to help him but this situation is already irritating him and needing to have help walking is just more than he can bear. So he goes slowly, uses the wall more than he ever has before, and makes it to her car without another incident. He's wearing one of Derek's hoodies and he's got his bleeding and swollen arm tucked into the front pocket like it's a sling. He feels pretty clever for that.
"Don't bleed all over my car," she warns with a small smile. "We should have taken your car."
"I agree. Your car is disgusting," he argues, glancing around at the coffee cups and hair ties that litter the center console. "I'll be surprised if I don't end up with an infection by the time we get to the hospital."
She laughs at that, glad that he still has his wits about him. She can tell he's in pain, he's always in pain now, but he's powering through what he can when he can. He's able to ignore most of it, and he's able to hide it from people, but she knows his tells. The problem is, she doesn't really know what happened or how bad it is and asking isn't going to get her anywhere right now. There is an order to these things with him, and if you don't follow it you're going to end up slamming into a brick wall. She's got a lot of experience with that wall. Still, wall or not, she can see it anyway, she can see it written all over him in a multitude of small ways.
For instance, he's wearing Derek's sweatshirt, she picks that up right away. It's purple, or it used to be anyway. It was purple in the 1990's when Derek acquired it, but now it's faded into a sort of grayish violet barely color. She's not sure if he's wearing it because it hides how bad his injury is, or if he's wearing it because it belongs to Derek and he needed some comfort even if he won't admit it. She thinks the latter, but the first is a convenient excuse.
"Do you want me to stay?" she asks when she pulls up to the Emergency Room door. The night sky still hasn't shifted to morning, not quite, but it's coming. Tendrils of yellow and gray are slowly creeping over the horizon. She yawns.
"No, go sleep. This is probably going to take hours. I'll call you when I'm finished."
"Alright, Miss Daisy. If you need me you know where to find me."
"Sleeping."
She knows that isn't going to happen. She's going to lay in bed for fifteen minutes anxious, wishing she'd stayed with him, worrying about him until she finally sends him a desperate text just to make sure he's still alive. And then she'll get up and make coffee because it's pointless to think sleep is happening, and with her coffee she'll watch the sun rise.
And she'll text him every fifteen or twenty minutes just to be sure. Maybe she'll even test the waters and ask him what happened.
She's mad at him and has every right to be, but to the untrained eye that would be pretty hard to tell. It doesn't look like anger, except when things get tense. It's better that she's at home worried about him than sitting beside him, because at some point the anger would come back and that's the last thing either of them need.
So she pours her coffee and prays that he's okay as she watches the sun spread its glow over the city.
(x)
"Hotch?"
Hotch glances up from a strangely shaped stain on the floor to find Reid standing only a couple of feet away from him. He has no idea how much time has passed, and for a moment it's not even clear to him where he is. That's more to do with the shock of seeing Reid standing before him, though. He hit his head, he blacked out, but it wasn't that bad. He doesn't think anyway.
He's been at the hospital for hours, he's lost count of how many, and while they've packed his arm up pretty tight to stop the bleeding and ice the swelling where they think he's injured it (where he's praying that it isn't broken), he's got to get labs drawn and an x-ray done to check for damage before they can administer medication to completely stop the bleeding and let him go. They taped the wound, but it's still bleeding, he can feel it. There are so many boxes to check for something as stupid and humiliating as falling while taking a piss.
The piss is still all over his damn floor, too. He can't seem to let that go. It doesn't even matter, no one is going to see it, but he knows.
"Hotch?"
"Sorry," he says, blinking himself out of whatever daze he'd been lost in. It's not the right response, but he's not really sure what to say and he isn't going to pretend. Reid smiles a little stiffly at him and cocks his head to the side, trying to read between the lines. He waits for Hotch to speak.
"What are you doing here?" Hotch asks when he can't really figure out what else to say. Reid doesn't skip a beat.
"I have an MRI scheduled for my knee," Reid offers with an easy smile. "If it looks good, Strauss said she'll allow me to come back to desk duty soon. You?"
"Waiting on some tests," he replies in a vague way. It's not untrue, but it's not the full story and he doesn't intend to offer anything else. He sort of hopes Reid will walk away, will want to sit in a quiet corner and read the books that are hanging in his satchel from his crutches. He doesn't walk away, though, he shuffles his crutches to the side and he takes the seat right beside Hotch. Not even a buffer between them. Hotch attempts to mask what he can, sitting up a little taller to hide the fact that he currently feels like walking death. His creaky bones complain at the effort and his arm, bundled up in gauze and ice, practically screams. Pain from his fingertips to his shoulder. He's supposed to be elevating it but his shoulder hurts, he can't. That doesn't help the slow, constant bleeding.
"Oh." Reid pauses, unable to hide his surprise. He looks at Hotch closely, notices how pale and drawn he is in spite of his sudden erect posture. He looks exactly like a man who is overly concerned with trying to mask all of his pain, and he's wearing…is that Derek's Northwestern Law sweatshirt? There isn't any reason for Hotch to own one of his own, he went to George Washington and from what he's heard from around the BAU, the rest of his family went to Georgetown. He's a local. No connection to Chicago. Not only that, but this particular sweatshirt wasn't new, it was ragged and faded, hung on his thin frame like a gentle hug, and Reid is certain he's seen Derek wear it before. The cuffs that fall over Hotch's big hands have patches that are frayed and there's a spot on the right side of the pocket that looks like it had been chewed by Clooney some time ago, the pocket hangs loose at the corner practically detached. Hotch has no pets, and Spencer doesn't imagine Jack is in the habit of chewing up clothes. "Are you okay Hotch?"
"I'm alright."
"How did you get here? Are you cleared to drive yet?"
"Haley's sister dropped me off."
"Oh. That's nice of her. Morgan gave me a ride. He's in the parking lot now, I'm sure he'll be inside in a minute. Hey isn't that his sweatshirt?" He can't believe he just blurted that out, he hadn't meant to. Lucky for him, Hotch never has to answer.
"Aaron Hotchner?" comes a voice at just the right time, and his attention snaps to the nurse standing mere feet away with a clipboard and an expectant look. An impatient look. "Aaron Hotchner?"
"Yes," he says, looking around and wondering how long the poor woman had been calling him to no avail. "I'm sorry, my hearing isn't great."
"It's alright. Can you walk?"
He should say no, that's the wise decision, but he isn't about to do that in front of Reid for a multitude of reasons. It's just his arm, anyway. You should be able to walk if you hurt your arm.
"Yes," he says, and pushes himself up to standing using one arm. It looks rough, it's choppy and sort of pitiful the way he does it because his right arm is totally out of commission but so is his entire abdomen so it's really not easy to move around. If Reid notices he doesn't say a word. The blood rushes to his feet again and he worries that means trouble, but the lightheaded feeling remains minor and he's able to follow her without incident. She has him lying flat on a bed with his arm elevated above his heart before the vertigo slams into him and rocks his entire world. This time he just closes his eyes and lets it wash over him. It can't hurt him if he's flat on his back.
It's almost comical the way Hotch disappears down the hallway and Derek enters a moment later. Ships in the night. That's just kind of how they are, always in sync.
"You just missed Hotch," Reid chirps as Derek angles for the seat beside his friend. He pauses mid-movement and frowns while the words take him a minute to process. It doesn't really make sense to him right away.
"Say what?"
"Hotch. He's here. He said for some tests…he didn't look good. But I guess I don't really know what a man should look like who just went through what he did, though. Maybe that's just how he looks now. I couldn't really tell what was wrong with him and he wasn't about to tell me. You know how he is."
"Uh…" Derek chewed on his thoughts for a moment. "Yeah. I do…be right back kid."
Reid stares in disbelief at how quickly the mood shifts, at how Derek shoves the coffee and muffin he'd been holding into Reid's hands and rushes toward the admissions desk like his heels are on fire. Shrugging it off, Reid decides he doesn't care to question the motive or the urgency, that's Derek's business. He's not any more of an open book than Hotch is, that's something Reid has learned over the years. Derek talks more and he smiles more, he's outgoing where Hotch is introverted, but ultimately they both share the same amount of nothing.
Reid is content to let it stay that way. Too many times he's pressed an issue and wished he hadn't, and this feels like one of those times. The coffee and the muffin will tide him over. He might not look as bad as Hotch but he's not exactly feeling great himself and he just doesn't feel up to starting anything.
Derek practically slams into the desk in his hurry, forgetting to put on the brakes until the last second. "Aaron Hotchner?" he asks quickly. "Is there an Aaron Hotchner here?"
"And you are?"
He swallows a lump in his throat and shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I'm Derek Morgan, my name should be in his file." He says the last part so quietly it's barely audible even to his own ears, but he really doesn't want Reid to hear that part. Maybe it's common knowledge that he and Hotch are emergency contacts, maybe it's common knowledge that they're even more than that, but since neither of them has ever said a word about it to anyone he's not planning on opening that can of worms right now. They've been one another's medical proxy a lot longer than they've been sharing a bed, but that hardly matters when perception is involved.
"Are you family?"
"What difference does that make?"
She clicks away at her keyboard for a moment and the silence makes him angry. She isn't going to tell him anything, she's going to cite something about privacy and it's going to make him even madder even if she's right, even if it's the law, even if…fuck it.
"Look," he says, trying to mitigate the impending argument. He takes a deep breath and cools his jets a little. "I know you can't tell me anything about why he's here. Can you just…can you have someone tell him that Derek Morgan is here? Let him know that I'm…that I just want to make sure he's okay?" He shouldn't be here, not again, not this soon and it's really fucking with Derek's head.
She seems to contemplate the implications to her job in that question - and she agrees, reluctantly, to give him what he wants so long as he agrees to leave peacefully if he's told that the patient doesn't want to see him.
"That's fine. He probably won't. I just want him to know I'm here."
The nurse who took Hotch back appears in the hallway a moment later beckoning for Derek to follow her, and he's caught by surprise at that. He thought for sure Hotch wouldn't want to see him, especially knowing that Reid was sitting right out in the lobby. It feels dangerous and risky. He follows the nurse quietly, thanking her right away for her kindness. It isn't lost on him that none of them had to help him, that they probably should have just told him to take a hike.
"He's in room 3," she says, pointing at the door. He's got his own room, that's surprising and a little unnerving. There are so few of them available. "Go on in. There's going to be a bit of a wait before he's seen, but he's stable. Let us know if he needs anything."
"Stable?" Derek asks curiously. She doesn't answer before he goes into the room, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click. Hotch looks up at him from the bed with weary eyes. He's flat on his back staring up at the ceiling and his arm is elevated on a pile of pillows. On first glance, Derek can't really tell what's going on.
"I'm okay," Hotch starts, because he can see the concern written all over Derek's features. "I fell in the bathroom and one of the wounds broke open. I'm on blood thinners, I have to come to the ER if I start bleeding."
Derek hears it all, but he's not really absorbing any of it. He's entirely frozen in place, stuck on the sight of Hotch in his sweatshirt. It's bunched up and makes him look bulkier than he is, and Derek feels foolish for thinking Hotch wouldn't want to see him.
"Derek?"
"That's my shirt," he blurts out. "Reid saw you in my shirt."
"I know."
"You're okay with that?"
"I didn't really think about that I put it on," Hotch says in a quiet, subdued voice. He seems resigned to this just being the way it is. "I don't regret it, though."
That makes Derek grin, and he approaches the bed carefully. He's never been so cautious entering Hotch's space before and it feels so wrong to question every movement. That's one of the many things that Foyet took from them. Comfort in each other.
"Show me," Derek says when he's close enough to touch. He hangs back, he doesn't touch, but he could if he wanted to. Hotch indicates his arm without moving it, without moving his body at all. They think he broke it, or at least bruised the bone pretty good, and the way it aches so deep he's inclined to agree with them. He doesn't want to bring that part up right now, though, he focuses on the bleeding. That's why he's in the ER after all.
"It won't stop bleeding," Hotch says with a quirk of his eyebrow, like it's the most casual thing in the world. Like this is normal.
"Why did you fall?"
"Got dizzy." It's such a simple reply, and Derek can't believe that Hotch thinks it's actually going to be enough to sate his curiosity.
"Why…were you dizzy?" Like he should even have to ask.
"That's what the blood tests are for," is the reply. "They think the dosage of blood thinners is too much for me. I'm waiting for the labs to come back."
"Then what?"
"Then they give me something to stop the bleeding I guess."
"Medicine that makes you bleed, medicine that makes you stop bleeding, what's next?"
"They're figuring it out."
He's not worried, he can't possibly be worried. He's got too much on his mind otherwise to try and do the job of the doctors too, he has to just let them do their thing.
"Then what?"
"An x-ray of my arm to see if it's fractured," he says quietly, as if Derek might just nod his way through it. Might just accept it casually. He doesn't.
"Uh, what? Fractured?"
"I hit it on the sink," he says. "Or maybe the toilet. And landed kind of funny." He still doesn't remember. That hasn't changed. "It's probably just bruised."
"And you aren't worried about any of this? How can you be so…"
"Derek…" Hotch sighs miserably, and Derek raises his hands in surrender before Hotch has to finish his thought. It's better that way for both of them.
"Gotcha. You're here and it's being handled. Did you hit your head?" That would explain all of this, the whole situation Derek thinks. Hotch just narrows his eyes and staunchly refuses to answer the question.
"You should go sit with Reid," Hotch says after a long pause. "He probably wanted to spend the morning with you."
"He'll understand…"
"No, I don't think he will. Go Derek."
It's not mean, the way he says it, in fact it's soft and gentle but it is also final. Derek nods. Before he leaves, he pauses in the doorway, one last moment together.
"How'd you get here?"
"Jessica dropped me off. She'll pick me up."
"Alright. Well at least call me later? Please."
"Okay."
(x)
"Thought you forgot about me…" Reid starts when Derek comes walking back out. He'd gone in with such intensity but all that fire is gone now. He looks defeated and sad and lonely.
"What time is your scan again?" Derek asks as he approaches, trying to regain some spark.
"It's in fifteen minutes," Reid says. Derek nods and sits down beside his friend, lost in thought. He sprawls in the chair, resting his head against the wall, closing his eyes. He's distracted in every way, and doesn't hear it when Reid asks him a question. Doesn't hear several things that Reid says to him.
"Morgan?"
"Yeah?" he asks finally, blinking himself back to reality.
"I asked you if you saw Hotch. You were gone a long time."
"Oh. Yeah. Just makin' sure he's all good. You're both gonna drive me out of my mind. I'm gonna need a vacation the minute you're both back at full speed. Somewhere tropical with no cell service."
Reid, smiling, looks down at his lap. He can't believe what he's about to say. "I uh, I think maybe…you might have to take him with you if you go on a vacation…" He never looks up and he keeps that cheeky little smile as he speaks, and Derek wants to smack it right off of his face. It's taunting and a little goofy and Derek can't help the way it warms his chest a little.
"Kid…"
"I mean, unless…can I borrow some of your clothes too? Is that what we're doing now? I really like that brown sweater you wear…" The shit-eating grin is almost too much for Derek to stomach, but he has to laugh anyway. Reid's cheekiness is lightening the dark mood he'd been in moments before. He's still worried, but it's less intense now.
"You're pushin' it."
"Am I? Am I pushing it, Morgan?" Now he finally looks up and meets Derek's eyes, and while the smile doesn't fade, it looks a lot more sincere. Almost sweet. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It's not just you. We haven't told anyone. Things were just starting to get serious and then all this happened and it just…I didn't really know whether we were still…we haven't really talked since it happened…"
"I'd say the fact that he put on your sweatshirt when he wasn't feeling well is a pretty good sign that things are still serious."
"You think?"
Reid searches Derek's features for sincerity, taken aback momentarily by his friend actually asking him a relationship question in earnest. It's never happened before and it'll probably never happen again so he's definitely logging this one as important. Big deal.
"I might not know much about relationships," Reid starts timidly, tucking his hair behind his ear. "But um, I think I do know Hotch pretty well…and I think that…maybe he just doesn't know how to ask you to come close right now. You know, after my time with Tobias Hankel, I was embarrassed to be around you all, like you were looking at me differently. And you didn't do anything to make me feel that way, it was just…it's hard to be forced to be so vulnerable in front of people you respect. In front of your colleagues. I'm rambling, I know…"
"No, no, you're making a lot of sense…"
"I am? Really? What do you think I'm saying?"
"I think you're saying that he's afraid to ask me to come close because he's afraid to look even more vulnerable than he already is. I get that."
"Yeah, I guess that's it. I think what I'm really saying is just that you need to go to him. Don't make him ask, because he won't and honestly Morgan you shouldn't make him. He's going to pretend he doesn't need anyone or anything but he does and we both know it. And if it's you…don't mess it up."
Derek lets out a short but sweet laugh. "No pressure, huh pretty boy?"
"Hey, I'm not the one who decided to start sleeping with the boss. You can handle the pressure. I'm having palpitations just thinking about it."
It's easy after that for Derek to stand up, to move forward. It's where he should be. "Maybe the three of us can get brunch after, huh? Me and my invalids."
"He won't want to do that."
"Ask me if I care right now," Derek shoots with a grin. "See ya in a bit kid."
Before Derek is out of earshot, Reid calls out to him. "You never answered me."
"About what?" Derek stops, turning briefly. He already knows this is going to be something ridiculous. Reid's in a goofy mood today and he likes it.
Reid just grins. "The sweater. The brown sweater."
"Not a chance."