Archive of Our Own

The air was thick with dust, scratching at his throat as he tried to breathe and crunching grittily between his teeth. A banging sound reverberated inside his skull, pounding at the temples and making his vision pulse with stars even though he knew somehow that his eyes were still closed.

It took a while to gather his senses enough to force his heavy eyelids open, but he couldn’t see anything more than he could when they were shut tight. The world had gone dark and he was lying on cold, hard ground – not hard like the outdoors, more like the cool, smooth surface of concrete.

He tried to shift his limbs to ascertain more and heard a groan slip involuntarily from his own lips.

The banging stopped.

“Reid?” said a voice he recognised.

Hotch. Hotch was here. Everything would be okay. Whatever had happened, Hotch would keep him safe.

“Hotch?” he rasped, his voice seeming impossibly weak to his own ears.

“You’re awake,” Hotch said, sounding almost as scratchy.

He felt the warmth of Hotch’s body coming closer even in the pitch dark and a hand landed somewhere near his shoulder.

“Where are we?” he murmured. His eyes were beginning to adjust as he picked up on a dim reddish light filtering in from somewhere. It didn’t illuminate much, but he could tell they were somewhere small and seemingly underground.

Hotch sighed minutely. If he hadn’t been so close, Reid might not have picked up on it, but there was a slight edge in his boss’s voice as he replied.

“We’re in a parking garage at the prosecutor’s office. We were here to meet with the district attorney but the bomber must have struck again.”

“Bomber…” Reid echoed, racking his brain.

He had a vague memory of a case. A map with coloured pins and discarded boxes of Chinese take-out that suggested they’d been working through dinner at some local cop shop. But he couldn’t seem to hold onto the recollection long enough to recall which city, which suspect. Faces and place names were ping-ponging back and forth inside his brain, making the hammering pain even worse.

The clanging sound had gone though and one thing started to make sense.

“We’re trapped?”

The darkness, the cold concrete below him, the pain in his stomach that spoke of more injuries than just a minor bang on the head. He reached up and could feel rough concrete stacked above them, the space too small even to sit up straight.

“We’ve been here about four hours, I would guess. I felt around as much as I could but I can’t find a way out. I heard something moving a little while ago, but it’s been quiet since then.”

He brought his hand up to where Hotch’s rested on his shoulder, the touch of skin feeling more comforting in this moment than anything else.

“Are you hurt?” Reid asked.

There was a small huff of breath and Reid thought he could detect Hotch smiling slightly, although the dim glow of what must be emergency lighting wasn’t really bright enough to see that much.

“Pretty sure my ankle’s broken, maybe some bones in my foot too. When I woke up, some rubble had fallen on my leg. But I’m more worried about you.”

Reid was starting to feel more coherent, though as his brain fired up, the pain in his body began to flare up too. Along with the headache that was most likely a symptom of concussion, he could feel an intense pressure in his abdomen and a sharp twinge in his ribs each time he took a breath in.

There was something else vibrating through his body but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

“You’ve been in and out for a while. Do you remember waking up earlier?” Hotch asked.

Reid would have shaken his head but that seemed like a bad idea. He settled for silence that Hotch seemed to take as his answer anyway.

“You didn’t remember earlier either. You’ve asked me what happened three times.”

That wasn’t a good sign.

“Short-term memory loss, probably a moderate to severe concussion,” Reid reasoned.

“Do you remember what city we’re in?”

He concentrated, he really did, but the innate sense of direction that normally tracked time and location seemed to be malfunctioning

 at the moment.

“Midwest?” he tried, with more hope than confidence.

“Omaha. It’s a serial bomber case. Garcia helped us narrow down a suspect, Vernon Schweitzer. We figured out it was someone with a grudge against the judicial system and his son was just sentenced to life without parole. We should have realised this building could be a potential target though.”

Hotch sounded like a man who’d spent too long alone with his thoughts.

“The team?” Reid asked.

“It’s just us here. Unless there were other devices, I’m sure they’re fine. They’re probably outside trying to get to us. Prentiss and Rossi went to interview his defence attorney and Morgan and JJ went to see Schweitzer’s ex-wife.”

At least someone knew where they were – although even if the team knew they’d come to the building, they couldn’t possibly know their exact position in the parking garage. That would be down to the search and rescue teams who must be working through each level of the multi-storey building.

“The fact that the garage is still intact is promising. Basements can be affected by flooding or the collapse of upper floors, but in general the walls are thicker because they’re designed to take the weight of the building above, so in this case it may be the most structurally sound level to be on.”

“You said that earlier too. I can’t say it’s any more comforting second time around.”

“Sorry,” Reid replied.

A familiar itch began to crawl through his veins.

“You were banging on a pipe?” he asked, now recognising the sound that must have woken him up.

“There’s some kind of metal piping along the base of the wall, I’ve been banging on it every ten minutes or so. I haven’t heard anything back yet but someone might be picking up on it.”

Spencer flicked back through his mental log of survival strategies for extreme circumstances. He’d read accounts of survivors in the Miami DEA building collapse in 1974 and they had stuck with him.

“It’s best to vary the rhythm if you’re doing it at regular intervals. A sound that’s too precise can be mistaken for machinery if they’re digging through the rubble. But if you try three short bursts followed by three long bursts and then three short again, it’s the internationally recognised Morse code for S.O.S.”

His eyes were adjusting more to the low light conditions. He could see the outline of Hotch’s face just a foot or so away to his left. He was reclining slightly, either to stretch his injured leg out in front of him or because the low ceiling didn’t give him much choice.

Spencer tried to shift his body upward but pain burst through his abdomen at the tiny movement.

“Stay still, easy,” Hotch soothed, his hand firm and reassuring. “Some rubble had collapsed on you too when I woke up, and you said earlier that your stomach was hurting. I couldn’t feel any blood around you but there might be internal bleeding.”

Reid moved his hand down to his abdomen, already feeling his shirt untucked from his pants where Hotch must have been checking out his injuries earlier on. Even the slightest brush of his fingers against the too-sensitive skin sent a burst of fire radiating like lightning from every nerve ending.

He really needed… a hit.

That’s what he was missing. It had been too long since the syringe the evening before the case or the pill he’d swallowed last night to take the edge off.

That must have been around 10pm because when they were out in the field, he only ever took something before bed, knowing he had to be sharp during the day in case he was called on to take down a suspect or fire his weapon. So add the four hours Hotch said they’d been down there and it was around 16 hours since his last dose.

No wonder he was feeling shaky and anxious. He moved his hand to his forehead and could feel the sweat beading there.

Hotch would find out. How could he not? They were as close physically as he ever remembered being. There was no way he wouldn’t detect his trembling limbs or the way his heart was racing with anxiety. And that was before the other symptoms set in. Reid had been down this road too many times not to know that this was only going to get worse.

*

Reid had gone quiet and Hotch wasn’t sure if he’d lost consciousness again or was just processing the pain in silence.

Things were significantly better with Reid awake. The hours he had spent with the man’s unconscious body beside him, reaching out every few minutes to check he still had a pulse and that he was still breathing, were truly the loneliest of his life. Lonelier even than that first night after Haley had left with Jack, when he couldn’t remember what he did with his time before they were married.

Even when he was explaining repeatedly where they were and what had happened, getting more worried about the severity of Reid’s head injury each time he had to recount the story, it was better than the silence.

He'd also chosen to deal with his pain privately, though, so he understood the impulse to keep that vulnerability to himself. The jagged bolts of pain shooting up his leg every time he shifted his foot were enough of a reminder; Reid didn’t need to expend what little energy he had worrying about him too.

He could feel Reid trembling slightly beside him. They were almost shoulder to shoulder and the shaking was radiating through the small distance between them.

He moved his hand back onto Reid’s arm, hoping to offer some reassurance.

“It’s okay, they’ll find us soon. Are you still in pain?”

“Mm-hm,” Reid muttered, confirming to Hotch that the pain must be really severe. Reid wouldn’t complain if it was anything less than utterly crippling.

The idea of Reid hurting struck a chord deep in his core that he wasn’t expecting. He’d been forced to listen to Emily being kicked and punched when the followers in Cyrus’s compound worked out she was FBI. That had been hard enough. But with Reid, for some reason, it was more intense, more visceral, like he would have taken twice the pain on himself if it would spare his coworker – no, his friend. He filed that thought away to analyse later.

“Let’s focus on something else. I was trying to recite all the lyrics to Eleanor Rigby while you were out. It’s not the best Beatles song but it seemed as good a way to pass the time as any.”

“How far did you get?”

“Up to the bit about darning socks, but I’m pretty sure I only got about 50 per cent of the verse right prior to that point anyway. I always get lost around Father McKenzie.”

“It was one of Gideon’s favourites, you know.”

Reid was smiling as he spoke, barely visible in the low light but Hotch could tell anyway.

“You’re smiling. I can hear it in your voice. It’s weird how I can hardly see you but I can still tell what your face is doing.”

“Smiling encourages the mouth to draw upwards, which in turn, affects the shape of the oral cavity and the location of the tongue and teeth. It also tends to promote the higher vocal registers so the speaker sounds happier and brighter.”

“Do you always smile when you think of Jason? I thought you were still angry at him for the way he left.”

Reid was quiet for a moment but Hotch could practically hear his brain whirring. It was weird how even without the visual cues, he was still attuned to his coworker’s every mood and movement.

“I was angry for a while, but I also understand why he did what he did. Who’s to say I won’t do the same one day? This job can eat away at your soul until there’s nothing left. Sometimes it’s one awful event that takes you over the edge and sometimes it’s just a tiny little piece every day and eventually it’s all gone.”

And sometimes it’s two days in a shed in Georgia and a syringe full of dilaudid, Hotch thought, but he kept that to himself. Reid had never spoken openly about his ordeal at the hands of Tobias Hankel or the drug addiction they all knew had come after. It wasn’t like the usual rules of disclosure applied when they were buried ten feet underground in a collapsed building, but if Reid chose not to bring it up, he would respect that.

“Do you really think you’ll walk away someday?” Hotch asked. He didn’t want to think about the BAU without Dr Spencer Reid.

“I hope not. And if I do, I hope it’s not until I’m Gideon’s age. But none of us knows what’s around the corner, I guess. I mean when I got up this morning, I wasn’t expecting to get caught up in a building explosion before lunch.”

Hotch chuckled at that.

“Gideon did a lot for me when I was younger. It would be unfair of me to stay mad at him just because he couldn’t stick around any longer. He didn’t owe me anything.”

Hotch had heard the broad strokes of how they met when Reid was in college, but he had never known anything more than what Gideon had explained when he came back to the office raving about a young genius he’d decided to take under his wing.

“What did he do for you? I mean I know you two met at a lecture right? Was it at Caltech or when you were at MIT?”

“It was Caltech. I was 16. He gave a guest lecture every year to the psychology department. The first time I had to sneak in; I was a chemistry student, I wasn’t really supposed to be in that talk. I know he spotted me at the back but he didn’t call me out; he must have wondered what some gawky-looking teenager was doing in an advanced-level lecture about criminal behaviour. But after that I looked out for his name on the guest roster and I submitted questions, and the third year, he called me down to talk to him afterwards. I had at least started studying psychology, alongside math, but it was still a bit of a stretch.”

“He’d realised who you were by then,” Hotch said.

“How do you know?”

“He came back to the office one day to say he’d had the most curious question posed to him at a guest lecture, and it was by some 17-year-old whizz kid from the math department. It was a rare thing to stump Jason Gideon, but he said he honestly didn’t know how to answer. He set it for the rest of us as a thought experiment when we weren’t busy with cases.”

Reid huffed out a small breath, followed by a cough that seemed to gather speed as it racked his body, causing him to spasm and gasp for air.

“In through your nose, that’s it. Breathe.”

Hotch put his arm around Reid’s shoulders, raising his torso off the ground slightly and hoping the extra elevation might make it easier to catch his breath. After a minute or so of pained wheezing, the sound evened out.

“Better?”

“Mm,” Reid murmured, still not taking in quite enough air to form full sentences. He seemed to settle deeper into Hotch’s hold so he left his arm there, propping Reid’s body up against him. The shaking was still discernible and it didn’t seem to be lessening as he got his breath back.

“Well he was very excited by meeting you. He was only doing recruitment lectures once in a blue moon by then, but he always said yes to Caltech. Until you moved to MIT and he said yes to them instead.”

“That third time, he took me out for dinner afterwards. He was quizzing me about my career plans in between picking up on my questions about Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy.”

“You were only 18. Did you have career plans by that stage?”

“I was thinking about NASA. Or academia. I wasn’t hugely excited by either one. I could have gone into research I guess, but even at 18, I already felt like I’d spent enough time in libraries and laboratories to last a lifetime.”

Hotch chuckled, but the movement jostled Reid into another half-cough followed by some wheezing sounds.

“Sorry. I guess I just figured libraries were your happy place, that you’d want nothing more than a lifetime surrounded by knowledge.”

Reid had rested his head on Hotch’s chest after the last bout of coughing, and Hotch did his best to calm his heart from racing too fast at the intimacy of it all. He was there to comfort his colleague while he was in pain, not let himself get carried away by improper thoughts while they were in a life-or-death situation.

“All the book knowledge in the world means nothing if you can’t apply it in real life. I love learning for its own sake, of course, but it’s more meaningful when I can turn it towards something useful.”

“Well I’m glad you worked that out early, I can’t see you rattling around in some professor’s study at Harvard or MIT, still marking undergrad papers and chasing frat boys up for their assignments.”

“Better chasing after serial killers?”

“At least you’re doing good in the world. Gideon lost sight of that. I don’t think you ever will no matter how much this job takes from you,” Hotch said.

“You either. I know it’s been hard this past couple years with Haley and Jack gone. I know you’ve already sacrificed a lot of your personal life for the job. But the world is a better place with you as an FBI agent than if you’d ever given it up.”

Hotch preened slightly at the admiration in Reid’s voice. Others had said much the same thing to him, but it meant so much more hearing it from Reid. He valued the younger man’s opinion higher than his own.

“I think it’s time to bang on the pipe again, it’s been more than 15 minutes,” Reid said, shifting himself with a sharp intake of breath to let Hotch resume his attempt at calling for help. He had no idea whether anyone was hearing it, but trapped in their cramped little corner of concrete, there weren’t any other options – and doing something would always feel better to him than lying there and hoping for the best.

He followed Reid’s suggestion of tapping out the S.O.S. code, cycling through it five times before he figured anyone who was going to pick it up would have done so by now, and manoeuvring himself back into his prior position despite the cramped space.

Soft whistling breaths indicated Reid had fallen asleep or perhaps drifted back into unconsciousness, his face pale in the low light and his forehead surprisingly hot and clammy when Hotch put his hand on it to check. As a father, he knew the early signs of a fever and if Reid was succumbing to some kind of symptom of his injuries, they needed to be found – and quickly.

*

He woke himself up with a shiver, trying to make sense of the cold ground beneath him and the warm body to his side. There was a peculiar feeling of déjà vu as he smelled a familiar cologne and realised he’d gone through this thought process before. Hotch. Bomber. Building. Pain. Keep breathing. Don’t breathe too deeply. Right.

“Hotch,” he whispered, unable to raise his voice any higher just now.

He felt shaky and shivery, like he wanted to crawl into bed under every blanket he owned and go to sleep.

He felt Hotch’s broad hand go to his forehead with the familiarity of someone who’d done this check several times already.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Cold,” Reid managed, burrowing himself into Hotch’s arms in search of his extra body heat.

“You have a temperature. You’re burning up.”

That made sense. Although he suspected it was nothing to do with the head injury or the possible internal bleeding in his abdomen. He’d done this enough times to know exactly what this was.

His eyes began to water and his nose ran, which he tried to wipe surreptitiously on his sleeve. He could feel the ache growing in his muscles, wishing he could get up and walk around to ease the cramps that were starting to set in. But even if they weren’t trapped in a confined space, he couldn’t even think about moving right now.

He tried to keep his eyes open but he felt them drifting shut.

“You need to stay awake, Reid. I know it’s hard but if you’re already running a fever, your abdominal injuries must be more severe than we thought.”

Should he tell Hotch the truth? He’d tried to guard his secret the first time but he knew they had all figured it out. He was better at hiding things now, though. He was confident none of them had picked up on the signs of his relapse. It had been months since he’d watched a teenage boy’s brains splattered over a bathroom wall in Chula Vista followed in close succession by Owen Savage taking revenge on the classmates who bullied him, prompting him to turn to the only way he knew to drown those memories out.

He’d been proud of how he managed to devise a system that allowed him to keep working cases with no discernible impact on his abilities: he would use at weekends and on evenings they were at home, and then when they got called away on cases, he had pills that kept his withdrawal at bay just enough – even though the effect was never as good as shooting up.

He'd managed to get through the New York shooter case, through the minimal loss scenario at Cyrus’s compound, even through going back to Las Vegas and revisiting long-forgotten memories of his mother and father. Although the revelations about his childhood had prompted him to up his dosage more than ever before. But here, trapped under a pile of rubble that still might come tumbling down on top of them, was his web of secrets about to come down with it?

Unless Hotch had a stash of oxy in his jacket pocket, there was nothing he could do even if he knew. And he hated the idea of Hotch being disappointed in him; he valued his opinion higher than anyone’s, if he was honest.

But if things took a turn, he might be too sick to explain himself properly. And if they really went downhill, he didn’t want Hotch discovering the track marks in his autopsy report, or finding the stash of pills in his go-bag and the vials of off-brand hydromorphone in the first-aid kit in his bathroom at home.

“It’s not that. Even if there’s internal bleeding, it wouldn’t cause a fever this quickly,” Reid said.

He was already having to measure out a few words for each intake of breath, his chest feeling more restricted than it had earlier.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Even in the dark, Hotch was a gifted profiler. He’d probably already figured it out but just needed Reid to say it out loud.

“It’s opiate withdrawal.”

The silence hung heavy on the dust-filled air. Reid let his eyes close for a second as he focused on trying to stop his limbs from trembling.

“Okay, how long?”

He couldn’t read anything in Hotch’s tone. He was too practised as a prosecutor at keeping his voice neutral.

“Seven months, 11 days.”

“I meant… how long since you last took anything?”

Reid wasn’t sure he could trust his usually infallible sense of time right now, having already lost track in the dark, enclosed space.

“How long have we been down here?”

“I estimate around six hours by now, give or take,” said Hotch.

That meant it was some time around 4pm.

“About eighteen hours, then.”

“You were using on the case?” Hotch couldn’t hide his surprise at that. Reid was glad he couldn’t see the disgust that must all over his face right now.

“Not like… not what you think. It was just a pill. And I only took half,” he rushed to add, running out of breath in his effort to stop Hotch thinking the absolute worst-case scenario.

“I thought you were doing better. You were going to meetings, weren’t you? I was sure you were.”

He’d never really understood how Hotch knew, but he’d been right about the ‘movie’ – at the time.

“I was, I went to meetings. I made it to ten months.”

“What happened after ten months?”

How could he answer that? Those who had never struggled with addiction couldn’t understand it wasn’t always a lightbulb moment that would make you throw in the towel on your hard-won sobriety. Sometimes it was a bunch of little things, sometimes it was nothing at all. Sometimes an addict just needed to use and they couldn’t explain it even if they wanted to.

“I guess it was a lot of things that just kinda happened around the same time… Ryan Phillips getting shot, Owen Savage turning on his bullies. I needed… I needed to forget.”

Hotch hadn’t moved away, his body still as close as it had been earlier. Reid could feel the tension in his limbs as he processed the news, probably wanting to move around and pace it out as much as Reid needed to move to work the cramps out of his muscles. But Hotch had a busted ankle, Reid couldn’t move if he wanted to and neither of them had space to do more than simply lie there and talk.

Hotch moved away to bang out the regular S.O.S. call against the pipe – three short, three long, three short. Rinse and repeat. Reid had found it almost soothing earlier. Now it felt like Hotch was working his frustration out in clanging metal against metal, louder and angrier than before.

“I’m sorry I disappointed you,” Reid said, the tightness in his belly feeling almost like it was radiating out through his body, sending icy tendrils up to wrap around his racing heart as well.

Hotch came back and resumed his previous stance, snaking his arm around Reid’s shoulders and lifting his torso off the cold concrete floor. Reid breathed a little easier, and not just because of the position.

“Spencer, you could never disappoint me. A terrible thing was done to you, and at the time, I didn’t do enough to help you through it. Am I happy to hear one of my agents is using illegal substances? No. Especially while we’re here on a case. But I’m not going to judge you for it. Not ever. I do need to know what to expect, though.”

The shaking, the sweating, the nausea, the vomiting, the diarrhoea – they had all been his private cross to bear in the past, to varying degrees depending on how long he held out detoxing until the inevitable relapse. He cringed at the idea of sharing those details with Hotch.

“Mostly just this. I might throw up. I’m really hoping I don’t get the runs in here, for both our sakes.”

“How many times have you tried to detox?”

He had to count, his sluggish brain not providing a lightning-fast answer like it usually would.

“It took me two tries the first time, then I’ve tried to get clean four times in the past seven months.”

“Were you on your own every time?”

“Mm-hm,” he murmured. Nodding was still too much of an effort, especially with his head nuzzled against Hotch’s broad, muscular chest. He didn’t want to do anything to spoil the closeness he was enjoying right now.

“Didn’t someone say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?”

“It’s often attributed to Albert Einstein, but it’s apocryphal. That particular phrasing was most likely the feminist author Rita Mae Brown, although the link between insanity and repetition was recognised as far back as the 19th century, at least.”

It was getting harder to keep his breath from running out while his brain still had things to say. For all the ways people had cut him off from his rambling, no one had ever tried dropping a building on his ribs and giving him what was probably a collapsed lung.

“So why didn’t you ask for help?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want to get fired.”

Hotch’s arm tightened around his shoulders as a shudder worked its way through his body.

“I wouldn’t have fired you. No matter what, you can always ask me for help, Spencer.”

His first name sounded strange coming out of Hotch’s mouth. Strange but in a good way.

“Well if we ever get out of here, I promise you can have a front-row seat to my next pity party.”

“We’ll get out of here. The team knows where we went. They’ll be outside helping with the rescue effort.”

Reid chuckled and it turned into a cough that made his belly hurt even worse than before. When he had regained himself, he shared the mental image that had popped into his mind at that.

“Can you imagine what Morgan must be doing right now? I’m surprised he hasn’t Rambo’d his way in here already.”

Hotch laughed back and it was the sweetest sound Reid had ever heard. He could picture the little laughter lines crinkling up around his mouth and the way his eyes were twinkling. Hotch didn’t let himself laugh too often, but when he did, it was a wonderful sight to see.

A jolt of pain burst through his belly – whether they were abdominal cramps from the withdrawal or internal bleeding from his injuries, he wasn’t sure – and he groaned audibly. He felt Hotch’s hold tighten around him and let himself sink into his arms.

*

Hotch cringed as he heard Reid’s breath catch and a groan of pain slip from his lips. He always found it harder watching someone he cared about in pain than when he was hurting himself. Maybe it went back to the years he spent putting himself in his father’s firing line, if only so the man wouldn’t hurt his mom or his little brother, Sean.

It wasn’t that kind of brotherly affection that he felt for Reid, though. In fact, he’d only come to realise over the past year or so what he truly felt, and he’d still never been able to utter the words out loud.

For all her lack of observation skills, Haley was the one who’d noticed it first. The way he’d smile when he talked about the latest Dr Reid exploits at work. The way he always paid special attention to him when they were out at drinks or dinner, making sure Reid wasn’t feeling overwhelmed or uncomfortable. The way he spoke to Jack about the team, with a certain reverential tone every time he mentioned Reid.

The first time she said it – or rather threw it in his face in the middle of an argument – he couldn’t remember hearing anything so preposterous. Except the idea lodged somewhere in the deepest recesses of his brain like a song that refuses to go away, and he started to notice that perhaps she had a point. As the youngest on the team, he’d always felt the need to look out for Reid – but at some time, that had gone past a boss looking out for a younger teammate and become something a lot more personal. Something he hadn’t even recognised in himself before.

He hadn’t told anyone, not even Rossi, but he’d signed up to a dating app needing to test out his theory, ticking both boxes for interested in men and in women. He’d even gone so far as going out on a date with a man named Eduardo – albeit picking somewhere he was sure he wouldn’t bump into anyone he knew. It felt unfamiliar but not wrong, except when Eduardo tried to kiss him at the end of the night and he turned his head to made it a peck on the cheek instead. He found he wasn’t put off by the light stubble or the fact Eduardo was a man – he just wasn’t the true object of his affection.

That person was lying here next to him, struggling to breathe without gasping in pain, and Hotch would do anything to take it away from him.

He stroked Reid’s arm as he trembled, unable to think of anything that could lessen his suffering. He whispered some soothing words and felt Reid relax as his voice washed over him, so he began to talk about anything and everything: what Jack was up to in school, the current neighbourly drama in his new apartment building, the latest intrigue of who wanted whose job in the upper echelons of management.

His date with Eduardo kept surfacing in his mind, but he couldn’t confess that to Reid – it would be too close to telling him how he really felt. Except Reid had divulged his deepest secret and Hotch knew how hard that must have been for him. Given the context of this extreme situation, didn’t he deserve to have just as much honesty in return?

“Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone? Not Dave, not Haley.”

Reid stilled and Hotch could tell he was listening.

“I went on a date a couple weeks ago.”

Reid tensed slightly, his body still trembling. Hotch didn’t feel as nervous as he thought he would, the darkness and their closeness giving him a strange sense of safety, even if they were in the least-safe location he’d ever experienced.

“It was with a man.”

Reid’s head twitched up at that. Hotch had felt his heart rate picking up as he knew what he was about to admit, and from Reid’s position resting his head against his chest, he’d probably noticed it too.

“Oh,” was all he said.

“I’m not seeing him again, I don’t think. But it was nice.”

Hotch was aware Reid was bisexual, although he’d never known the younger man to be in any kind of relationship, with a man or a woman. In fact, if his newly discovered preferences hadn’t been so tied up in his feelings for Reid, he probably would have been the person Hotch would have turned to for advice. As it was, he’d muddled through, keeping the attraction to himself until he understood what to make of it.

He still wasn’t entirely clear about it now, and if fate hadn’t thrown them into this life-or-death scenario, he might never have come clean. But it was like the intensity of their situation and the intimacy of Reid’s own confession had spurred him on.

“Do you think… is it something you’d like to do again?” Reid asked.

Hotch tried to detect whether there was anything beyond simple curiosity in his tone, but his laboured breathing made it hard to think about anything other than how much pain he was in and how the clock was ticking on their rescue.

“I think so. I’m still… I mean, I was attracted to Haley. But it’s like at this age, there are no expectations that I have to conform to, or not from anyone whose opinion I care about anyway. I can just be myself.”

Reid hummed in agreement. Hotch wanted to ask him about when he realised he was attracted to both genders, but despite their deeply personal revelations in the past couple of hours, it felt too intrusive to ask. It was information that should be volunteered, not requested, so he left it for Reid to say in his own time.

“I’m glad. You deserve to get back out there and see whoever you want to see,” Reid said.

This time, Hotch did detect a tiny bite in his voice, but it wasn’t conclusive enough to know for sure what Reid was thinking.

They shifted and the pain in Hotch’s ankle flared, sending a wave of nausea shooting up his body. He breathed deeply until he got himself back under control.

“Are you okay?” Reid asked, after a moment.

“Yeah, it’s just my ankle.”

“We could try and make a splint for it, stop you from jostling it.”

They weren’t exactly flush with material to do that, though. Beyond the piece of rebar he was using to clang on the pipe every so often, it seemed to be mostly rubble around them. He would have to settle for staying as still as humanly possible and trying not to jar his ankle any more than necessary.

There was nothing more they could do until they got out of there – and help was taking a very long time to arrive.

*

Shivers kept racking through his body, raising goosebumps on his flesh and making him feel cold, even though Hotch kept checking his forehead and telling him that he still had a fever.

When he tried to detox the last time, this was about as far as he’d got – eventually succumbing to the knowledge that one hit would make all his troubles go away. If only he had that option right now. But even if they managed to get out, Hotch now knew his secret – well, one of them, at least – and there would be no sweet relief while he was there keeping a watchful eye.

He distracted himself by thinking about Hotch’s latest revelation. He considered himself a pretty decent profiler but he honestly hadn’t noticed a single sign that Hotch was anything but straight. Picking up on dating cues was a far cry from analysing criminal behaviour, though, and Reid had never been much good at reading that side of people’s personalities.

He wondered whether there would be any hope for the crush he’d been harbouring on his boss since he met him and saw that tall, dark and handsome vibe collide with the cool, calm and collected demeanour of someone who knows how to command respect.

He’d always assumed his infatuation would remain unrequited, mostly trying to keep it out of his mind – other than in the occasional moments when he was alone in the shower with no one to judge whose muscular arms and powerful abs he was picturing to get himself off. But now that manly chest was right there and those strong arms were the only things keeping him from dissolving in a puddle of anxiety as he battled withdrawal. His muddled brain couldn’t keep all those tracks of thought going at once.

The tightness in his belly was also making itself known even more strongly, like it was ready to burst. There was no way to tell how much time he had, with too many variables at play to make a confident assessment. But if it was his spleen or his liver that was bleeding, and if the nausea and the sweaty, clammy skin he was currently attributing to withdrawal were in fact signs of acute internal bleeding, he could be in real trouble. With the low light, they couldn’t even assess the extent of the bruising showing on his skin, but he suspected if Hotch could see it, he’d be just as worried as Reid was about his prognosis.

Hotch moved off to bang one more time against the pipe, hoping that eventually someone would respond to the noise. It had been hours, probably somewhere near night-time by now, and they hadn’t heard a thing.

Reid felt his eyes drifting closed, the heavy clanging of the metal that had woken him up earlier now almost lulling him into a stupor.

Hotch shook him awake.

“No sleeping. You have to stay awake.”

“ ‘m sorry,” he mumbled listlessly.

“Keep talking to me, tell me something I don’t know about you,” Hotch said, fear and desperation clear in his voice.

“ ‘bout what?” Reid asked.

“Anything. When you were at college, tell me something about then.”

“Uh… I had my first kiss in the Caltech campus library.”

Why had he chosen to tell THAT story? Of all things, why would he choose to talk about such a personal, private moment? Something about Hotch’s surprising date story and his own reawakened crush had swirled around in his messed-up brain and that anecdote was the result. Great.

“Oh yeah?”

“God, this is so embarrassing.” He broke off to gather his breath and continued in fits and starts. “I was working as a TA for a summer high-school programme. They let me stick around on campus if I was helping out, and by then I didn’t have anywhere else to go. So for once there were other kids my age and there was this boy, Ethan, who was sixteen.”

“And you figured the most romantic spot you could find was between the library stacks?”

Hotch was smiling warmly, he could tell.

“Well, he did. I’m not really one to make the first move.”

“Did it last?”

“For about a week, yeah. Then he went home to New Orleans and by the time he came back to start college two years later, the moment had passed. We’re still friends though.”

His pulse was picking up and he didn’t think it was because of the embarrassing story. He could feel himself slipping, clinging on ever more tightly to Hotch with every breath.

If he didn’t make it, Hotch would be left here alone, holding his lifeless body in his arms. He couldn’t do that to him, he had to keep going. But at some point, the choice would be out of his hands.

Hotch was telling some teenage story of his own, perhaps feeling he should match Spencer’s disclosure with something equally embarrassing. Reid floated on the sound of his voice and the steady thrum of the bass resonating inside his chest as he drifted, his eyes closing and the warmth of Hotch’s embrace taking him under.

He woke some time later to a slight pressure on his neck. He groaned slightly and the pressure went away. Hotch must have been checking his pulse, making sure he was still alive. He really wasn’t sure any more. His body felt detached, like he was floating through a dream.

“You’re back,” Hotch said.

Reid opened his eyes to find Hotch’s face impossibly close to his own, staring at him with concern pooling deep in his dark brown eyes. It seemed marginally lighter.

“I can see you,” Reid slurred, the dreamy feeling persisting even now.

“It’s daytime. Either we’re both getting used to seeing more in the dark, or they’re making some progress towards us and the light is filtering in.”

There was a gash on Hotch’s forehead and dust caking his hair and face.

“You said you weren’t hurt except your ankle,” Reid mumbled.

“It’s just cuts and bruises. It’s nothing compared to you.”

Earlier, that would have been true. Now, the pain was drifting back and forth like water crashing against a shore, sometimes letting him float up on the crest of a pain-free wave and sometimes sucking him under with a force that pushed the air from his lungs and the voice from his throat.

Hotch was stroking his face, encouraging him to open his eyes again. He hadn’t realised he’d let them close.

Reid looked up and Hotch had the strangest expression on his face. Worry and sympathy mixed with something darker in his eyes, some deep-seated fear like an undercurrent of anxiety. Maybe he’d also realised that if Reid didn’t make it, Hotch would be stuck here with his body for who knew how many hours. He’d have to tell the team that he’d died in his arms and Reid would never even have told him how he felt.

Without even thinking, Reid gathered the strength in his neck to lift his head up and meet Hotch’s lips in a kiss. It was gentle at first, then Reid sank back down and Hotch’s mouth followed, tongues meeting and exploring as they danced lightly back and forth. Hotch was every bit as commanding as Reid had dreamed, and he drew the energy he needed from their tender kiss.

They parted a few moments later, Reid’s strength dissipating and his eyes drifting shut.

“I thought you said you weren’t one to make the first move,” Hotch teased.

Reid responded with a half-smile and a flutter of his eyelashes in an attempt to stay awake, then let himself be carried off on a wave with the ghost of a kiss still lingering on his lips.

*

Hotch watched the moment the smile died on Reid’s lips, the marginally brighter light only serving to show even more clearly how dire Reid’s injuries must be. He was ghostly pale, the sheen of sweat glinting on his forehead where his fever had refused to break. Hotch shifted down to see if he could get a better picture of his abdominal injuries, lifting his shirt up as he had in the dark the previous day, but now able to see the deep purple bruising spreading across his stomach and stretching around to his back.

His pulse was still there. A little too fluttery for Hotch’s liking, but there nonetheless. He shifted Reid reluctantly out of his arms, his ankle still sending pain lancing up his leg at every movement, to reach over for the length of rebar and clang it loudly and deliberately against the pipe. His own movements were getting weaker, he could tell, but he could hear sounds of digging and drilling that weren’t there the day before, so he had to keep trying.

After two cycles of the S.O.S. sounds, he heard everything stop. He knew the protocol on building collapses. If movement was heard, they would silence all external noise in the hope of locating the sound. He kept pounding metal against metal, hoping this would be the time they would identify the distress call for what it was. He kept on well beyond the five cycles of Morse code he had been doing up to now, until he heard the machinery resume and had to put his faith in the hope that they’d heard him and were now redoubling their efforts to make it through.

He crawled back within the tiny space and immediately rested his fingers on Reid’s neck again, his own heart skipping a beat in the moment it took to register the movement of his carotid.

Reid must have thought he was going to die. Why else would he reach up and kiss Hotch like that, other than some inexplicable need for human connection right before the end? Hotch didn’t want to think like that, but he could see it in Reid’s eyes and he knew that tiny, blazing burst of passion was like the final embers sparking just as a fire dies down.

The rescuers had to get to them before that happened.

He kept talking to Reid and rubbing his shoulders, hoping he would rouse to the sound of his voice or the touch of his hand. But nothing worked and he didn’t move other than the unnerving sound of his agonised breathing.

Reid roused once, only for a strange gurgling sound to alert Hotch just in time to roll him as gently as he could before Reid vomited. From what little Hotch could see in the dim light, it looked like blood. That wasn’t good.

He kept Reid on his side for a few moments in case it happened again, but there was no more movement. The pulse fluttering under his fingertips seemed to be getting weaker by the moment.

Then he heard it, the blissful, beautiful sound of another human being.

“Fire department. Is anyone there?”

“We’re here,” Hotch shouted, surprised by how raspy his voice sounded.

He shifted over to clank the rebar against the pipe one more time, hoping the reverberation of metal upon metal would carry further than his dry throat could. He pressed a kiss to Reid’s sweaty forehead.

“They’re here, they found us. Reid, wake up if you can hear me. It’s going to be okay.”

There was no movement from the unconscious man in his arms, so he lay there answering any time he heard the call of their rescuers getting steadily closer. He almost cried with relief when the light spilled in all of a sudden and a round, bright-yellow helmet appeared in the space by Spencer’s feet.

It was followed by the hopeful face of a young, black firefighter, who had burrowed his way through a narrow tunnel to create an opening into the small space where they were trapped. He crawled forward, identifying himself as Captain Obeki. Hotch could see another firefighter behind him, the space too small for both of them to get into side by side, along with a bright red basket big enough to transport an adult.

“Good to see you both. You’ve got some pretty insistent coworkers out here who are keen to see you two get out of here.”

He had placed a small pulse oximeter on Reid’s finger to check his heart rate and oxygen levels, then asked Hotch about his own injuries.

“You need to focus on Reid. He had a head injury, he’s been slipping in and out of consciousness. He was having trouble breathing and he’s probably got internal bleeding in his abdomen.”

“We’re taking care of him. What about you?”

Hotch wanted to insist, they just didn’t seem to be getting that Reid was the priority.

“I’m fine, it’s just my ankle. You have to get him out. He’s also… he’s in acute opiate withdrawal.”

He didn’t want to spill Reid’s secrets, but they needed to understand the severity of his symptoms and how to treat them. It would all end up coming out at the hospital anyway so the sooner he could get the help he needed, the better.

Captain Obeki had checked Hotch’s heart rate and oxygen level as well and handed him a bottle of water.

“Okay, we’re going to get your coworker out first. The tunnel is reinforced but we can only take one of you at a time, so you’re coming next, okay. I want you to drink this – sip it, not too fast – and we’ll be back for you.”

Hotch nodded, feeling suddenly bereft as Reid was hauled as gently as they could manage given the small space into the red emergency rescue basket, with ropes attached at either end so the firefighters could safely guide it out of the tunnel.

After hours of nothingness followed by this furious flurry of activity, he was suddenly alone, and the only sounds he could hear were those of the two firefighters manoeuvring Reid down the tunnel until even those disappeared into the distance.

He missed the weight of Reid on his chest and even the agonised sound of his breathing, because every wheeze had been confirmation that he was indeed still alive. Now he had no way of keeping a check on his injured coworker – if that’s even what they were any more. He couldn’t be sure what the kiss had meant, but he knew they both needed to make it long enough to find out.

He sipped the water, trying to force himself to drink it slowly although as soon as it hit his throat, he found himself guzzling it down thirstily, needing the relief it brought.

Then there was more silence, and without Reid there to stay strong for or the surge of excitement at being found, he found his adrenaline level dropping off and leaving him depleted of energy. His eyes drifted closed.

He was shaken awake by the fire captain, opening his eyes to find the man’s concerned face staring back at him.

“No sleeping, not just yet,” he said.

Hotch tried to nod but he found himself too drained even to control the movement of his head. Captain Obeki motioned for another firefighter to crawl into the space alongside him, slightly more room now with only him to rescue, and between them they managed to roll Hotch onto the red basket, only pausing once when the screaming pain in his leg had him begging them to stop, then strapping him in securely just as they had with Reid.

He wasn’t sure if he was entirely conscious as he was hoisted through what felt like an endless tunnel, eventually surfacing into the blinding brightness of daylight.

The firefighters were removing the straps while someone else pulled at his sleeve and inserted the needle for an IV. After a moment, Rossi appeared in his eyeline.

“Hey Aaron, easy does it. You had us worried for a little while there.”

He tried to respond but someone had put an oxygen mask over his face. Even he wasn’t sure what the unintelligible mumble he gave in response was supposed to be.

“Where’s Reid?” he managed to say clearly enough for Rossi to understand.

“He’s already on his way to the hospital. JJ’s with him. They couldn’t wait.”

Hotch closed his eyes at that. He already knew it was serious but the shift in Rossi’s face told him just how bad the prognosis must be. He felt the nausea rising in his gut once again and before he knew it, he was being rolled to the side and the oxygen mask lifted off so he could vomit up the water he’d swallowed less than 30 minutes earlier.

He was rolled back onto his back and let the whirlwind of activity unfurl around him. There were faces – another paramedic, then Rossi was replaced by Morgan and then Prentiss before it was Rossi again – and then blinding pain as something was slipped onto his ankle, sending stars floating through his vision as he struggled to stay conscious.

It wasn’t long before the blue, cloudless Nebraska sky was replaced by the sterile white ceiling of an ambulance, though he could still hear Rossi’s voice speaking to him gently at his side.

“Same hospital ‘s Reid,” he mumbled, and Rossi understood correctly, reassuring him that they were going to the only one in this area.

After so many hours spent holding each other, each keeping the other one alive, he couldn’t bear to be far apart for too much longer. At least if they were under the same roof, he might get to see him.

Hotch couldn’t keep track of what happened next. The lights of the ambulance faded into the fluorescent lights of the emergency department. Doctors and nurses he didn’t recognise poked and prodded at him endlessly. He felt bursts of unbearable pain in his leg as they brought a portable x-ray machine over and a team dressed in surgical scrubs came in to poke and prod some more. He knew Rossi was there on and off, uncharacteristically holding his hand at one point, then he was wheeled away and another mask was placed on his face until he lost consciousness once more.

When he woke up, Rossi and Prentiss were sitting in hard-backed plastic chairs by his bed in the curtained-off bay of a hospital room. Emily spotted him coming round first and was there right away with a cup of water, pressing a straw into his mouth. He accepted it gratefully.

He blinked at them for a moment as the flashes of the past day or so began to fall into some kind of logical order. His ankle still throbbed but not as sharply as before and he could see his leg propped up on a pillow with a large white cast around his ankle and foot. There were tubes and wires leading from him to an array of monitors on the side.

“Where’s Spencer?” he croaked, his throat still raspy despite the water.

“He’s out of surgery. They’re just about to bring him back from the recovery room. Morgan and JJ are waiting for him just across the hall.”

“How long?”

“Were you in there?” Rossi finished for him. “Just over 24 hours. It’s Friday evening, Aaron. You had to have surgery as well. They put pins in your ankle and reset some bones in your foot, it was smashed up pretty good.”

He nodded, eyes drifting again to the large white cast he was sporting. He wouldn’t be in the field for a while, he guessed – though he’d take it if it meant Reid would be okay.

“Did you get the unsub?” Hotch had the name on the tip of his tongue, but his thoughts were still slow to process.

“Yeah, we caught him. He was on his way to wife’s house with a 12-gauge. It looks like he went to the district attorney’s office a couple hours earlier and planted a device on a timer. We hadn’t even got him into interrogation when it went off. We’re still trying to work out how he got past security.”

“How many… casualties?” He stumbled over the final word, knowing he and Reid might well have been among the statistics – could still be, in fact.

“Nine. Mostly from offices on the first and second floors. The upper storeys were able to be evacuated and they managed to rescue the others. You two were the last to be found alive.”

Hotch couldn’t quite process the news. While they’d been caught up in the intensity of the situation, he hadn’t let himself think about the enormity of it all. Now, it would take a while to understand just how close they’d come to death and how lucky they were to have made it out.

JJ came into the room looking serious, followed by a doctor in surgical scrubs.

“You’re Spencer Reid’s next of kin?” he asked, looking to Hotch.

“His emergency medical contact, yes,” he answered, trying to sound as put-together as he could. He didn’t want the doctor sugar-coating it just because he was barely out of surgery himself.

“Dr Reid is doing well. He’s not out of the woods, but his prognosis has improved significantly. Are you aware that he coded in the emergency room?”

Hotch wasn’t, but it didn’t seem to be news to anyone else.

“We got his heart beating again and rushed him up to the OR for an exploratory laparotomy. He had to have a partial splenectomy and we repaired several lacerations to the liver and gallbladder but overall, he tolerated the surgery well and things are improving. We’ll be keeping him sedated for a minimum of 24 hours to let his body heal, then we’ll see how he’s doing.”

Maybe it was his just-awake state but the information felt overwhelming. Spencer’s heart had stopped, he’d had part of one of his vital organs removed, he’d be in an induced coma for another day, at least.

“There is another matter. I understand Dr Reid was in opiate withdrawal at the time of his intake?”

Again, there were no surprised faces around the room. Hotch hated that they all knew his secret, already aware that Spencer wouldn’t have wanted them to be told. But he would also understand that his health came first and there would have been no way to keep it quiet when his life had been at risk.

“That’s no longer a factor since he’s currently on a morphine drip. After a surgery of this scale, there’s really no other option. But we can recommend a step-down programme to ease him off the medication and there are rehabilitation clinics that specialise in the use of narcotics for medical necessity.”

Rossi, obviously sensing Hotch was in no state to lead the conversation right now, stepped in to thank the doctor and ask how soon they could see him. Morgan was with him at the moment and they could each go in one at a time, provided they followed strict hygiene measures to prevent infection in the intensive care ward. Hotch would have to wait until he could manoeuvre himself into a wheelchair, but he would be allowed to see him in time.

That wasn’t going to be any time soon, though, as Hotch’s own doctors insisted he couldn’t be transferred out of bed until he was stronger. He objected vociferously until Rossi pointed out that he couldn’t yet sit upright in the bed.

So Hotch spent an agonising night just across the hall from Spencer but unable to go in and hold his hand or stroke his forehead as he wanted to.

Prentiss appeared the next morning with a phone in hand, saying she and JJ were kicking themselves for not having thought of it earlier. JJ was on a video call in Spencer’s room, holding the phone close to his face so Hotch could see the oxygen cannula in his nose and the slight hint of colour coming back to his cheeks even though his eyes remained firmly closed.

Hotch couldn’t exactly say what he wanted to say with both Prentiss and JJ listening in, and the sight of Spencer unconscious and hooked up to machines was far from soothing, but he did feel better seeing his face and knowing he’d be able to be closer to him by later on that day.

That time came around 11am, when Morgan appeared in his room along with a nurse pushing a wheelchair in front of her. Thankfully the nurse had already swung by to remove his catheter and unhook him from some of the machines without an audience in attendance. So with a firm grip on Morgan’s shoulder for some extra balance, he managed to transfer himself into the wheelchair without jostling his injured foot too much.

They wheeled him carefully across to the small private room where Spencer lay with wires and tubes snaking off to a bewildering assortment of monitors. He was far too still and Hotch took in for the first time the bruising on his temple and the array of abrasions peppering his skin where the explosion had sent debris flying in all directions. It was really a miracle both of them were still alive.

He sat stroking Spencer’s hair away from his forehead and holding his hand – and studiously avoiding looking at the crook of his elbow where a constellation of recent track marks could be seen – until the nurse came to escort him back to his own bed.

When the doctor swung by to update him on his own condition, saying he would have to stay in another night for observation, he wasn’t sure whether to be frustrated at his extended stay or happy that he’d be closer to Spencer for another night. He settled on the latter.

Rossi, Morgan and JJ were back at the station helping with further interrogation of the unsub, Schweitzer, while Emily sat with Spencer and sent frequent text updates to Hotch’s phone, since the nurses insisted on him getting some rest and thus not sitting at Spencer’s side the entire time.

They’d begun to lessen the sedation on Saturday evening and Hotch knew he wouldn’t instantly wake up. But when it got to Sunday morning and Reid still hadn’t stirred, he couldn’t help but start to worry.

The doctors tried to offer reassurance, saying it would take time, but as soon as Hotch was discharged from his own bed – barely able to master the use of crutches yet – he hobbled across to Spencer’s ward to take up residence by his bed.

Morgan was back at his side this time, pulling up an extra chair and helping Hotch sit down, hoping they could bend the one-visitor-at-a-time rule just for a little bit.

“He’s just asleep, not unconscious,” said Morgan.

“How can they tell?”

He wasn’t moving. It looked much the same to Hotch’s untrained eyes.

“He’s hooked up to an EEG,” said Morgan, pointing to the electrodes leading from Reid’s head to one of the monitors beside his bed. “They said it shows increased brain activity compared to yesterday. He’s been a bit twitchy too. It’s only a matter of time before he wakes up fully.”

*

There was a familiar floating sensation as he rode the crest of a wave that somehow transformed into a soft surface that felt like scratchy cotton beneath him and the brightness of daylight all around.

Not trapped, then. But Spencer couldn’t quite unglue his eyes to look around and assess where he might be.

There was a sterile smell and something in his nose that felt like it was drying out his airways, and he heard a faint beeping off to the side. A hospital. Yes, a hospital.

He put all his effort into lifting his eyelids and locked onto a blurry outline sitting just a couple of feet away from him. But with no contact lenses, he couldn’t quite make it out.

A pair of glasses was placed awkwardly onto his face, and the person-shaped outline sharpened into Hotch, staring back at him with concern written all over his face.

“Hey,” Reid whispered.

Hotch’s face broke out into a joyous smile at that one small syllable, crinkling his eyes and mouth in the most unexpected expression of happiness.

“It’s good to see you awake,” he replied.

Reid was trying to join the dots from being stuck in a dark, dangerous basement to the relative safety of this brightly lit hospital room.

“They found us?”

“You fell asleep on me for a bit, and then yeah, they managed to dig through and get us out.”

He tried to nod but his head was hazy. It was a feeling he recognised all too well. He spied the cast on Hotch’s ankle and the crutches propped over to one side.

“Your foot?”

“It’s okay. I had surgery but it wasn’t as serious as yours. You’ve been in an induced coma, Spencer.”

He looked down at himself, now making sense of the IV lines and the wires. He had known it was bad. Had been convinced, in fact, that he wasn’t getting out alive. It was clear from the relief on Hotch’s face that it must have been touch and go, but despite the scientist in himself, he realised he didn’t want to know the details just yet. He wasn’t dead, and that was enough for now.

By the following morning, he’d seen a string of his teammates come through to visit him and had regained enough focus to listen to the doctors as they gave him strict instructions to rest and recuperate. It took another two days but eventually he was discharged into the care of his colleagues with a referral for post-surgical follow-up in Virginia along with a pain management clinic that specialised in addiction.

Morgan drove him to the hotel where Hotch was also on enforced rest, while the others wrapped up the final strands of the case down at the police station and got ready to fly back to Quantico the next morning. The evidence was irrefutable at this point, but they still had to make sure that if it went to trial, the case was rock-solid and Schweitzer would be held to account for the people he’d killed and the others he’d hurt.

Reid’s things were still in the room where he’d left them on Friday morning – though he had a pretty strong inkling that if he looked in his go-bag for the bottle of pills he’d brought with him, it would no longer be there.

Morgan helped get him settled in bed and promised regular check-ins, then left him to rest. He wasn’t sure how long he slept but he woke up while it was still daytime to find a face staring at him from the other queen bed in the room.

“Hey sleepyhead,” Hotch said fondly. He looked supremely comfortable, reading what looked like a case file with his foot propped up on a cushion. He’d obviously been given a key to come in and check on him and had decided that bed rest in here was as good as bed rest in his own room.

Reid shimmied himself up to lean against the headboard with only a moderate amount of pain in his abdomen. Hotch was just a few feet away but after holding onto each other for so long, being so close under such intense circumstances, the distance still felt too great.

He edged over in the bed, a clear invitation for Hotch to follow, and with only a minimal amount of manoeuvring to keep his crutches within reach, he eased himself down onto the bed matching Reid’s position against the headboard.

His arm fell almost automatically around Reid’s shoulders, an echo of the closeness they’d had in the blown-up basement.

“Feels familiar?”

Reid nodded, his head nestling naturally into the space Hotch had created for him. The solid warmth of his chest and the steady thrum of his heartbeat served to ground Spencer back to reality, just as it had a few days before under much more perilous circumstances.

“You were pretty out of it at times. I wasn’t sure how much you’d remember,” Hotch continued.

“I remember,” said Reid, imbuing the simple words with the answer to the question he knew Hotch was really asking.

He could feel Hotch’s pulse picking up pace slightly at that and the insecurity he’d been feeling since he woke up began to melt away.

“It was a life-or-death situation, Spencer. I don’t want you to feel you have to…”

Reid looked up at Hotch, trying to gauge whether he was regretting the kiss or assuming that Reid regretted it. Because he didn’t, at all. He might have been hovering on the brink between life and death, with hormones flooding his body to try and keep his heart beating, but it had been hands-down the best kiss he’d ever experienced.

The only thing he wasn’t sure of was whether that intense moment stuck in the dark with no idea whether they would ever get out could be recreated back above ground level without the looming spectre of death at their heels. But he was a scientist – and the only reliable experiments were those that could be repeated over and over under different circumstances to see if they produced the same results.

He inclined his head towards Hotch and met his lips in a kiss that was loaded with the emotions of the past week. It stayed gentle and reserved at first, until they each parted their lips and deepened the kiss, tongues darting in and out with every bit as much passion as they had shared a few days earlier.

As he pulled away, Hotch’s eyes were dark and full of longing for more.

Reid didn’t believe in fate but he found some meaning in the idea that even the deepest tragedy could give rise to the most wonderful stroke of serendipity, like a phoenix rising from the flames to signify better things ahead.

“Maybe making the first move is a good thing after all,” Reid said and leaned in for another kiss.