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It started with a tickle deep in his throat while he shaved. He cleared his throat once, twice, felt relief and forgot about it. The tickle didn't appear again until he was sipping his first cup of coffee and perusing the newspaper, glancing through the stock market numbers as if he didn't pay someone else to worry about that on his behalf. He coughed a little, cleared his throat and sipped the coffee again. The scalding liquid burned its way down and he wondered if he should take an antihistamine, thought about how bad his allergies had been the year prior and it was about that time. His car had a thin layer of pollen covering it over the weekend that Jack had drawn all over with his fingertips, little stick figures and soccer balls and shapes. They'd taken it in for a wash, but he wondered if it was settling into his lungs, ready to give him a good knock out punch.
“Dad let's go!” Jack hollered, hefting his backpack over his shoulder. Hotch glanced toward the hallway wondering how he'd sped down from his room so quickly, why he was in such a rush when he hadn't been present moments before and something told him there was someone he wanted to see in the drop off line at a certain time so, rather than being a pain, he set his coffee in the sink and rolled the paper up, tucking it under his armpit. He cleared his throat again as he grabbed his briefcase and his blazer while Jack snatched the keys from the hook, groaning for his father to hurry up.
Desk days were his favorite. He could hole up in his office with his door half closed, surround himself with piles of case reports and spreadsheets and meeting minutes and just lose himself in the minutiae. They didn't happen often enough for his liking, and this was only partial, his afternoon would find him running from the 2nd floor to the 5th floor and back down to the 3rd floor for back to back meetings. He flipped on his space heater, listened to it rumble to life and purr beneath his desk, kicking dusty smelling heat out at his shins. His office was always a little too cold for him, and in spite of it being spring, he felt a chill coming on. The coughing started soon after, first easily muffled by his fist placed against his lips. Short bouts of coughing followed by a sip of coffee to ease the tickle in his throat. From there it seemed to intensify almost by the minute until he stood up and closed his door so he wouldn't disturb anyone in the bullpen. He chastised himself for not taking his antihistamine, now he'd have to wait until he got home.
“You alright in here?” Rossi asked, poking his head into Hotch's door during a particularly violent coughing fit. Hotch nodded, leaving Rossi unconvinced. He approached Hotch's desk and set down a cup of tea and a packet of cough drops with a wink, and Hotch croaked out a thanks the best he could but the hours of coughing had shredded his throat to a pulp.
“Allergies,” he rasped, his voice cutting in and out and he knew he sounded just like he had when he'd gone through puberty a lifetime ago. “It's fine.”
“Sure. Sounds fine,” was all Rossi said before he closed Hotch's door behind him, shaking his head. He was no doctor, but he had a feeling it wasn't allergies afflicting his friend. He sat behind his desk and listened to the coughing, even through the thick cement walls it was loud and disturbing, he couldn't concentrate. It didn't take him long before he decided Hotch had to leave, he had to go home before someone in the office suffocated him to get the coughing to stop. Rossi could see Reid and Prentiss in the bullpen looking agitated, and he watched the clock impatiently for Morgan to return from his morning at the Academy with the new recruits in the fitness center.
By the time Morgan entered Hotch's office at Rossi's bequest, Hotch was sitting hunched over his paperwork, one arm hugged tight over the deep ache in his ribs. He was in his glasses, his eyes were watering and painfully irritated and he'd had no choice but to remove his contacts the right way before anything embarrassing happened.
“The Italian down the hall says you need to get out of here,” Morgan said softly, setting his duffel bag on the couch. “Threatened my life if I didn't take you home. You okay?” Hotch shrugged, had no voice left to say much and clicked the cough drop around in his mouth, biting it between his front teeth to show Morgan who just shook his head and laughed at the stupid things Hotch did. At least the other man felt well enough to be a little goofy.
“Alright. Well Garcia and I worked a little magic, pulled some strings, cleared your schedule for the afternoon and all day tomorrow and now you're coming with me. You might owe Prentiss a few favors at a later date but we won't talk about that now.” Hotch glared, displeased and wholly incapable of arguing. He stood before Morgan told him to, forced his files into his briefcase and gestured with an air of irritation toward the door. Morgan laughed. He clearly didn't feel as bad as he looked yet, still had enough energy to be irritated. Maybe it was just allergies, there was always hope. His hay fever while on a case in Ohio was the stuff of legend in the BAU, enough that they all told stories to the new recruits in order to scare them into really being careful about what they packed in their go bags.
Home was quiet, and try as he might, he couldn't be unhappy about being there. Being sick as a child, he'd never been allowed to stay home unless he was throwing up, and even still his mother often just handed him a bucket and sent him out the door. It became a tradition he carried into adulthood, no matter how he'd hated it as a child. His favorite blanket was draped over the back of the couch waiting for him, Morgan had already started the tea kettle and it took him no time to get into his sweats. The coughing was splitting him at the seams, pulling at his joints. It was almost constant, no cough drops or antihistamine seemed to touch it but he'd pumped himself full of Benadryl anyway. Laying down was the first thing he tried as Morgan busied himself with setting up his work station in Hotch's office. The coughing got worse on his back so he rolled on his side and hugged his knees to his aching chest which didn't help at all. As a last effort he sat up and wrapped himself in his heated blanket, resting his cheek against the back of the couch and was finally able to drift off to sleep to the sounds of Morgan talking on the phone in the office.
Waking to the feeling of Jess' hand against his forehead, he smiled, pressed into it. Without his contacts or glasses the room remained in soft focus, hazy late afternoon glow dipping everything in gold. “Hey,” she said, leaning down to smile at him. “I hear you're sick.” He nodded, heavy eyelids drifting shut again, the pull of the Benadryl was too strong. She just smiled and stood up, wandering over to where Jack was setting up his books for homework at the kitchen table. Morgan, still on the phone, waved at them from the office.
He woke himself with a throaty, barking cough. Pressing his face to his knee to stifle it, his eyes watered and he felt Jess put her hand on his back, rubbing so smoothly. She handed him a glass of cool water and watched him take small sips, just barely enough to wet his lips at first. He held the cool glass against his forehead and listened to Jack at the table memorizing a passage from his book to recite in class, he'd been at it for days and it was supposed to have been that morning he presented it.
“What happened?” he rasped, voice crackling in and out, embers in a dying campfire. Jack shrugged, knowing exactly what his dad meant.
“I forgot some of it so I get to try again tomorrow,” he replied and Aaron hummed miserably. Jack grunted and picked up his book, wandering back to his bedroom for privacy and Aaron stretched out on the couch, knees and hips protesting the movement. He followed Jack slowly to his bedroom, knuckles rapping on the door and waiting until he was allowed inside.
“What's wrong?” Hotch asked, leaning in the doorway, arms folded across his aching chest. Jack just shrugged again, didn't look up from the book on his bed.
“Don't worry about it, dad,” he said and he sounded on the verge of tears. Hotch wanted to go to him, wanted to pull him into a hug but he knew whatever he had was not just allergies and the last thing he needed was to get Jack sick too. He had a feeling it had to do with whatever had been so important that morning, he was out of his depths and drowning in pre-teen problems.
“Can I help?” he whispered and Jack shook his head no. “Oh. Can...” he cleared his throat painfully. “Can Derek help?” He perked up a little, glanced hopefully at his father but didn't say anything. It was Hotch's turn to nod and smile, stifling a round of coughs the best he could. Jack looked worried at the sight.
“You okay dad?”
“Just a cold,” he wheezed, figuring he had to be closer with that than allergies at that point. “I'll be fine.”
Jess and Morgan both agreed they would be staying the night after arguing over which one of them it should be. Jess wanted to run interference between Hotch and Jack, knowing that Jack had a bad day at school and Hotch was in no condition to manage the outbursts or the attitude, and Morgan just wanted to take care of his partner in distress. In truth, they knew they could both have gone home and they just didn't want to. Jess made dinner while Morgan tried to help to Jack with his problem.
“You just gotta be confident, man,” Morgan said, sitting cross legged on Jack's bed across from him. “So what if she saw you mess up today? You're gonna mess something up every day of your life, and if she's any kind of girl she knows she will too...she's not holding it against you. Just show up with confidence, know your shit, and you're golden. You gotta worry more about your grade than what that girl or anyone else thinks anyway.”
With Jack in bed and Hotch lying in a hot shower, letting the steam open up the unpleasant tightness and pressure in his chest, Morgan sat draped over a kitchen chair and played a game of poker with Jess. They fired insults at one another, betting with household chores that still needed done. There was a sink full of dishes, laundry to fold, a trail from the front door to Jack's room of the boy's things to pick up. They shower sang from Hotch's bathroom, hissing and steaming into the bedroom and they could hear his hacking cough through the closed door. In the end, Jess decided she would handle the chores if Morgan would take Hotch and they called it even.
“Honey pie, you're not dying,” Morgan said, a little sarcastically, watching Hotch struggle his way back into his sweatpants with legs not quite dry. Hotch moaned and shrugged, not entirely convinced, before falling heavily into bed, pressing his fist to his lips as another fit of coughs shook their way through him. He groaned miserably, a bit dramatically, and curled his knees up toward his chest. “C'mere,” Morgan said, patting his side of the bed. Hotch, with some reluctance, scooted toward Morgan on the bed and lay flat, ribs splayed before the other man as Morgan lifted his shirt.
From the nightstand, Morgan grabbed a small blue pot, the grease stained label long since destroyed but the moment the lid was opened and the smell of eucalyptus and camphor flooded the steamy room he knew what it was. Morgan dipped his fingertips in, coating them in the clear ointment and rubbed it between his hands to warm it before pressing his hand to Hotch's chest. He rubbed the ointment up and down over his ribs first, massaging deep circles over his lungs, fingers dancing against the hollow of his throat. Hotch closed his eyes, found he couldn't think of anything other than the way Morgan's hands felt hot against the pressure in his chest and when Morgan told him to take a deep breath, he didn't ask questions or argue, he just complied. Over and over again, Morgan pressed the flats of his hands in Vicks coated circles and ran them up and down his sternum, asking him to breathe deep, waiting out the coughing that followed until Hotch was nothing but a puddle lying in the bed beside him. The massage finished with a dollop of Vicks dabbed on the tip of his nose, just for a giggle, because Morgan remembered his mother always doing the same. Old habits die hard.
After propping Hotch up on a few pillows and making sure he had plenty of water at his bed side, he sat and read a book Reid had loaned him and waited for Hotch to fall asleep before attempting the same. The room was stuffy, humidifier pumping out enough mist to maintain what the shower had produced earlier and it seemed to help even if it made Morgan feel like he was living in a sauna.
The sound of his alarm pulled Morgan from his sleep and he licked his lips, swallowed thickly and tried to take a deep breath. The air felt hot and wet, stifling, and sometime in the night he'd removed nearly all of his clothes, a thin layer of sweat coating his exposed skin. He found himself sprawled out, taking up most of the bed, and Hotch lay curled up beside him, wrapped in his blankets and shivering. His breaths were shallow, crackling and whistling every so often before a soft burst of coughing, not hard enough to wake him but enough to make him scowl even in his sleep and groan softly. Morgan didn't want to get up, thought about calling in but he'd taken on a lot of Hotch's meetings and he couldn't just ignore that. Reluctantly he pulled himself out of bed and toward the bathroom, scratching his lower back mindlessly. He left the bathroom door open so the shower steam would trickle out into the bedroom.
He found Hotch sitting up in bed, glasses on, sipping lukewarm water and shivering when he wandered from the shower into the room with nothing but a towel around his waist. He grabbed the Vicks from his nightstand, and without getting himself dressed, he nudged Hotch back until he was leaning against his stack of pillows and slipped his ointment covered hands up under Hotch's shirt. He smiled as he rubbed it in, watched as Hotch closed his eyes, loved how he just melted into the touch, he had no defense for it. Jess brought in some tea after Morgan was dressed and packing up his work station.
“You gonna be good all by yourself?” Morgan asked and Hotch just nodded, listening to Jess and Jack walk out the door with Jack reciting his memorized passage to her over and over again. “Just sleep. Stay in bed.”
“Do you have plans tonight?” Hotch asked, all puppy dog eyes behind his glasses and croaking broken voice. He sneezed into the handkerchief balled up in his fist and wiped his nose, stifling the cough that tried to follow. Morgan grinned and shrugged.
“Depends,” he replied. “You gonna keep wearing that sexy cologne you've got on?” He leaned forward, sucking the smell of the Vicks in deep and smiling. “Because it's driving me wild.” Hotch just hummed and nodded, and Morgan thought he'd never seen anything more pathetic or sweet in his life. He pressed a kiss to Hotch's hot, clammy forehead and started for the door. “If you're good and you just rest today, I'll consider another sleepover...”