Chapter Text
The hospital room was dark. Not just the regular dim of a hospital room, either, but actually completely dark. There wasn't a trace of light peeping in through the windows, there was a blanket tacked up over the flimsy paper-thin curtains that hung over the small window. He knew that had to have been Garcia, she'd been there last - she was a bleeding heart and that window faced west, the sun would set late and Hotch would be kept awake by even the faintest glare of sunset. As it was now, there was only vague light that filtered in from the nurse's desk at the end of the hallway, but on this floor they dimmed hall lights and allowed patients to close curtains so it kept things as peaceful as possible.
He wasn't in the ICU anymore, but he wasn't on the general admit floor either, it was something they had called step-down and Derek figured that meant it was still pretty serious but no one was dying tonight. Not if they could help it anyway.
He didn't know hospitals very well, though, he could be wrong. He just hoped he wasn't.
The only thing he did know was that step-down didn't come with so many restrictions, and visitors were welcome at all hours so long as they were quiet. He could be quiet. He was really good at quiet, especially when he had to be.
What he was not good at, though, was flowers. He always thought he was until Hotch. Not that Hotch ever told him outright that he wasn't, he would never be so cruel, it was just that when Hotch bought someone flowers there was so much thought and when Derek had bought flowers it was so…well it wasn't the same.
It came down to this: Derek, for all his years wooing suitors, didn't really know flowers. He didn't get them. Of course the simplest things could be true - you could buy a woman a bouquet of roses and she would probably melt over the romance of it all. Red roses are romantic, but they're also lazy…at least that's what Hotch had said after a glass of wine at dinner when his tongue was loose and he was smiling more than usual. "They're a sure thing," he'd said days later, to prove his point, as he walked Derek through a florist's stall at a farmer's market in some podunk little town they'd been driving through on the way to a consult. Road trips were their favorite. Being alone with nothing but the highway and shitty wrinkly gas station hot dogs drowning in mustard to hide the threat of food poisoning and shitty coffee to wash them down and arguing over the radio and hours and hours to just be themselves. "Red roses are romantic, but they also say you didn't try very hard. They're the little black dress of flowers."
"Or the classic black suit and tie," Derek said, flicking Hotch's very simple very safe tie. "So what do you do?"
"I try to match flowers to the occasion or the personality. When I sent your mother the tiger lilies, I was thinking about her small apartment and how a standout bouquet like that would catch her attention and brighten her mood from just about any corner of the place. I thought about all of her family photos and her knick-knacks and the way some colors might blend in, but orange would stand out without feeling busy or gaudy. I thought about her hair…" he paused, smiling softly to himself. "Something like that."
Her hair? Derek thought about that and, not for the first or last time, realized how lucky he was to have caught Hotch's attention. He looked at things so deeply. Derek had always caught the attention of everyone on a surface level, but he'd never managed to catch someone who looked beneath the surface.
"Okay I'm just not built like you. I can't believe you keep all that in your head and can still do this job, man."
Knowing he wasn't built like that didn't make much difference when he realized that he had to take this opportunity to give Hotch flowers. If you don't bring your partner flowers when they're laid up in the hospital, when do you? Especially after such a scary ordeal, being attacked in your own home by a serial killer…he didn't even think flowers were enough, but he had to try. It would mean a lot to Hotch if he did and that was the point. For all the flowers he'd given, he probably didn't receive many.
Derek had agonized for nearly an hour, bonding helplessly with the florist at the little stall in the mall. Hotch would probably tell him a mall florist wasn't exactly the best place to get what he wanted, but looking at the bouquet in his hands…he didn't think he'd done too bad. It was the only place open at this hour between Quantico and the hospital, he did his best. Not even the gift shop was still open.
The flowers were somewhere between pink and lavender, the shades wistful and soft like watercolor paintings on ivory canvas. Roses, hydrangea and alstroemeria tucked in between greenery and baby's breath. Classic and stunning, like something he would imagine in a Jane Austin novel, which Hotch read unapologetically. The flowers matched the worn out copy of Pride and Prejudice tucked under his arm, something Hotch would be comforted by if he found time to be alone and needed to escape.
The flowers themselves were beautiful and mildly fragrant, and they matched the baby pink grippy socks Hotch had been wearing early that morning when the nurses allowed Derek to get him out of bed and take him for a slow walk around the room, his first since being dropped off at the ER by Foyet the day before. If he'd made progress during the day, they promised that they could walk further - maybe even down the hall. That was really going to be something.
Walking into the dark room with the flowers in his arms, he noticed first that Hotch was wide awake, and second that Jessica was sleeping on the cot beside the bed. "She's not much of a night guard," Derek said with a smile. Hotch smiled back.
"No she isn't."
His eyes lit on the flowers, and the sweet smile grew. "Are those for me?"
"What these? Nah, they're for that pretty nurse from earlier…of course they're for you, dummy."
"Alstroemeria," Hotch whispered as Derek set them on the little tray beside his bed. He'd brought them in their own vase, ready to just sit there and be admired. "Peruvian Lily. They symbolize - "
"Devotion and respect. I know. I spent about an hour with a florist trying to pick these out so if you hate them…"
"I love them. They're perfect."
Hotch was crying, silent tears streaking down his cheek in the dark, before Derek could get to the bed. Before he could put a stop to the flow of emotion because crying would lead to breathing hard which would lead to pain, so much pain. He knew where all of Hotch's wounds was and he knew how badly it hurt to breath regularly. Under normal circumstances he might have had more time, but with Hotch being pumped full of pain medication to try and curb some of it at least, it really wasn't surprising at all that he lost it almost immediately. He had no filter. No defenses.
"If you're gonna cry every time I give you flowers…"
"You'll give him even more flowers," Jessica grumbled from her cot on the side of the bed. She didn't bother to sit up, but Derek could feel the threat from where he stood. "Forever."
"Yeah. That's exactly what I was gonna say."