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Garcia had shoved as many of the blankets and pillows as she could into a fresh trash bag and followed them out to the SUV, chattering away about how lucky he was to have Spencer and how Spencer could call her for anything and how she was soooo happy that her two boys were finally able to get together after years of crushing on each other and--
“Garcia,” Hotch cut her off. “Thanks, but it’s time we’re off.”
“Oh, yes, of course, sir,” Garcia rambled, tucking a blanket around Spencer’s torso in the car as if he was a baby, not a 26-year-old. “You can call me and JJ for anything, okay kiddo?”
“I know,” Spencer reassured her for the third time in as many minutes. “Thanks, Penelope.” She smiled and pinched his cheek, then gave Hotch a stern warning about hurting her baby and ruining her ship (which Hotch still doesn’t really get) and then doesn’t stop waving even as Hotch started the SUV and began the 25-minute drive back to Spencer’s apartment.
“Hotch?” Spencer mumbled after a few minutes. “I’m not dreaming, am I?”
“What? No, I don’t think you are,” the older man said. “What makes you say that?”
Spencer shifted in his seat and his long fingers emerged to play with the hem of the blanket.
“I’ve gone the extra mile my whole life to hide the fact that I’m an Omega,” he said quietly. “Not because I’m ashamed of it or anything, but because I was already the weird kid at school, I didn’t need to add anything to that. It just became habit to cover up my natural scent, and since I hadn’t had a heat yet, I didn’t see the need to tell anyone. I don’t really date, so nobody knows but my mother. I think...I think I gave up on the idea of finding an Alpha. They’re so rare already and I’m not the most attractive or likeable person in the world, so I just figured…”
“Spencer,” Hotch said softly. He reaches across the center console to wrap his fingers around the Omega’s. “You’re beautiful. You’re very smart, and very brave, and without a doubt very loyal. Anyone, Alpha or no, would be lucky to have you. I’m honored that you’re letting me help you through your first heat.” He raises Reid’s hand to his lips and presses a dry kiss to the pale knuckles, taking the red light they’re stopped at as an opportunity to turn his head and look into Reid’s brown eyes.
The car comes out of nowhere. One second, Spencer is laughing at a dry joke Hotch made, and the next, they’re upside down, the asphalt drawing nearer as if in slow motion. The SUV hits the ground with a sickening crunch, shattered glass spraying everywhere and the shriek of metal twisting filling the air. The airbags deploy a fraction of a second too late, and Hotch loses consciousness for a moment when his head hits the door of the car as the roof impacts the ground.
When he opens his eyes thirty seconds later, there’s blood dripping from his eyebrow and nose, his arm is definitely broken, and he can’t hear anything. It’s a flashback to when Kate’s SUV blew up over a year ago, and he frantically moves his head until he can see Spencer in the passenger seat.
The SUV landed passenger-side first, so the roof is crushed and Spencer’s head is pressed against the visor, blood dripping from his temple, through his hair and onto the twisted metal of the upside-down car. The seatbelt is keeping him from falling, but it’s also pinned against the door that is no longer anything but crushed metal and Hotch can’t even reach it. Spencer is out cold, not responding to Hotch yelling in his ear as the older man’s own hearing slowly returns.
“Reid? Reid!” he shouts, fumbling to release his own seatbelt. He falls to the ground harshly, small shards of glass embedding themselves into his palms when he pushes himself rightside up. He’s able to crawl out of his shattered window and onto the street, where a large crowd is standing several yards away. There’s plenty of cell phones out, but no one seems to be making a call.
“Call 911!” Hotch yells, staggering to his feet. “Call 911, right now! There’s a federal agent in there! Call 911!”
At his prompting, several people put their phones up to their ears and start chattering, but Hotch ignores them. Instead, he limps his way around the car to Spencer’s side, where the wheels are still spinning. The Omega’s arm is flopped out the broken window, covered in blood, and Hotch can’t get the door open because the weight of the car is bearing down on the frame. The window is so bent that there’s no room to drag Spencer through it, and even if he could, the seatbelt is securing him in place.
Hotch reaches for his pocketknife that’s usually in his slacks, but it’s gone, likely knocked out in the crash. He grabs a large shard of glass instead, the pain of the sharp edge cutting into his fingers not even registering. All that matters is getting Spencer out of the car. He cuts through the seatbelt quickly, and Spencer sags, not able to move much with how crushed the car around him is.
Hotch needs to lift the car up. He knows this, because the door is bent and he needs to be able to open it if he wants to get Spencer out. Right now, that’s all he wants.
When he wraps his fingers around the window’s base, he hears the crowd behind him hush. He starts to unbend his knees, trying to lift the SUV, and the metal bites into his hands. He has to let go to get a better grip, and he hears sirens wailing behind him as he readjusts his hands. He looks down at Spencer’s face, blood staining the pale skin and hair falling into his face, and Hotch knows without a doubt that he will do whatever he can to keep this boy from dying.
He starts to lift again, and the crowd gasps as the car starts to move. There’s a squeal of metal as the door slides along the ground a few inches before lifting up, and Hotch grunts in pain as his fingers start to bleed. Still, he lifts, not allowing himself to stop even as his arms shake and his legs burn. He lets out an animalistic, purely Alpha roar as he gives one last heave, and suddenly there’s a cop by his feet, dragging Spencer out of the car by his shoulders out the newly-formed gap Hotch made by raising the car. He holds on until Spencer’s mismatched socks are clear of the car before dropping it, and there’s a loud crash of metal and glass as the suburban lands back on the asphalt. He gasps out a heavy breath, finally allowing himself to drop to the ground as reality sets back in.
His broken arm feels like it’s on fire, there’s still blood streaming from his nose, glass is twinkling at him from his palms like stars and he can still barely hear right, but when a paramedic (when did they get here?) turns him towards an ambulance, all he can focus on is Spencer.
The younger man is laying on a stretcher where another paramedic stands over him, attaching straps and an oxygen mask to his face. Hotch pushes the EMT holding his arm away and staggers over to the stretcher, needing to feel Spencer, to know that he was alive.
He only makes it a few yards before he blacks out.
Rossi makes fun of him for it later, when they’re in the hospital and the team is allowed to see them. It looks like the Garcia had pulled some [likely illegal, computerized] strings and Hotch and Reid were in a shared room, the curtain divider pulled back so that they could see each other. JJ had delighted in pulling up the YouTube video that an onlooker had taken, showing a very amazing and honestly terrifying clip of Hotch, bloodied and dishevelled, deadlifting a suburban high enough that the first responders were able to get Spencer out of the vehicle. You can clearly hear the Alpha roar that Hotch had made, and the man’s cheeks turn just a tad pink when he hears it. Spencer had laughed nervously the first time he saw the video, but while everyone else was distracted by the rest of the video, the young man had turned his gaze to Hotch and reached out his hand, slipping his fingers comfortably into Hotch’s.
“Thank you,” he’d whispered, and Hotch had squeezed his fingers.