(Untitled)

[ssa_dr_reid]

Who: Hotch and Reid
When: 8:24 pm Wednesday, February 10, 2010 
Where: The Hotchner's apartment
Rating: M for messed-up memories, missed meetings, and Mom!Hotch
Status: Incomplete

Comments

[anchor_on_heart]

"Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea, and frolicked in the autumn mist, in the land called Honah Lee..." Hotch sang softly, pulling a light sheet over Jack as the boy nestled deeper into the too-large bed. Although the fever had finally broken, the nightmares it induced had persisted and would for some time. It was simply easier to have Jack close at hand.

The sounds of the door unlocking sent a tense shock down Hotch's spine, his whole body alert, nerves singing--it was only when he heard coffee begin poured that he realized it must be Reid:who else could get in so easily; who else would go straight for the coffee maker?

"Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff, and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff..." Aaron stood and moved slowly towards, the door, backing away but continuing to sing. "Puff the magic dragon, lived by the sea, and frolicked in the autumn mist, in the land called Honah Lee--" Finally out of the room, he closed the door, smiling wanly. It had taken longer than he ever wanted to think it

[ssa_dr_reid]

"Two years, eleven months, twenty-seven days, twenty-two hours and..." he checked his watch again, once more worn over the sleeve of his sweater. "Forty-eight minutes. I don't know the seconds." Reid gulped down some more of the coffee. "Since then I've been held hostage by a cult, shot, contracted anthrax. Why can't I have images from those days stuck in my head?"

"I'm glad Jack's feeling better." Luckily, despite all the thin, pasty evidence to the contrary, he hadn't been sick often as a kid. Reid knew what it was like to be the sole caretaker of someone. "Has he been missing the snow?" Prior to him getting sick, it seemed like there was a new snowman something popping up in front of the apartment building every day. In a way, he was glad for the distraction of Jack being around, but he was equally glad that the boy was in bed. He didn't need to know about what had happened in Georgia.

[anchor_on_heart]

It was no laughing matter that out of all the members of the team, Reid seemed to be particularly cursed-- and in that way the two of them were silently linked, though for completely different reasons. For Hotch, it had always been the weigh of command that put him most at risk.

"Unfortunately we can't pick and choose what stands out the most. On the bright side you've saved hundreds of lives since then, and, really who else but you would be lucky enough to be shot guarding a trauma surgeon?"

It had been one of the smaller ironies, the day after his own admittance to the same hospital, to see Reid wheeling himself into Hotch's hospital room two floors down from his own. As humorless as he'd been at the time, he'd still managed to look at Reid and deadpan: "What are you doing here?" At least Doctor Barton and his son were safe by that time

[ssa_dr_reid]

"Sixty-seven cases. Sixty-eight if you count the Riley Jenkins case, though that wasn't official." He drank some more of the over-sweetened coffee and managed a small smile. "It helped that I was actually on the phone with Emily when he started shooting, and she was able to call the paramedics there right away. Not to mention Morgan, Rossi, and JJ were already on their way