Chapter Text
It was already a two day migraine. Strong enough that even his contacts were a problem.
It was no sleep in a bed for longer. Sure, he'd found fifteen minutes to lay his head down on the desk in his hotel room, set the alarm, and doze off while the coffee pot spit out it's goods for the third time that day. That didn't amount to much more than disorientation and a new pain in his neck.
It was a victim's family living in a house that looked just like his own childhood house. The very same Southern charm, immaculate interior, plastered smiles.
It was all of these things, and still it could have been none of them when he considered his state of mind in general. This case was worse than anything he'd experienced in as long as he could remember, everything about it. The way the LEOs treated them, the way Jack had cried when he told him they were leaving, the intense heat and humidity. Hell, maybe it was the fact that the police station only had Sweet n Low and he hated Spencer using that garbage in his coffee but he wouldn't drink it unsweetened. The police were less than welcoming, had sent Derek and Dave off in the opposite direction of the dumpsites more than once just for laughs. Gotten them lost in corn fields on dead end roads. He was keeping JJ and Emily away from the station, not allowing the LEOs the chance to make their “little lady” comments to their faces, behind their backs was bad enough. The things they said to Spencer were enraging.
But that time he spent sleeping, that was the best part of his entire week. Eyes closed, riding the waves of intense pounding in his head and nausea coursing through him. The rest of the world faded away, it was just him and his pain and that was somehow comforting. He was startled by a knock at his door three minutes before his alarm was set to go off, pulled from whatever sleep he'd managed to sink into. He blinked hard a few times, felt his contacts pull at his lids, threaten not to let them open again. Against his better judgement he pressed his fingertips to his eyes, rubbed gently and felt one contact pop free, slip backward. Another frantic knock and he stood, rushed toward the door while trying to get a grip on the renegade contact, ready to rip them right out and just wear his glasses.
Spencer stood in the doorway, an awkward smile on his face. “Are you ready to head back?” he asked, as if it were a treat to get to go back to the station, to try and work with a Sheriff and his deputies that didn't want to play nice. They'd only been in their rooms for an hour, just their forced “lunch break” though Aaron hadn't eaten a bite, just drank a glass of lukewarm water followed by a pot of coffee. With any luck, his heart would explode right there in the Georgia heat. He beckoned Spencer in, told him he'd be ready in just a minute and maneuvered blindly to the bathroom to take out the offending contacts. Returning in glasses, pushing them high on the bridge of his nose, he noted Spencer's look of shock. The look he tried to hide but couldn't. Aaron smiled gently, tried to ease the tension in the room, pressed at the sore spot on his neck with his middle finger for a moment and said he was ready.
He let Spencer drive. That should have been the moment, right there, that tipped him off. Aaron slid into the passenger seat without even offering to drive, and Spencer shrugged it off easily, maybe he was just tired or maybe it had something to do with his glasses. Whatever it was, he wasn't concerned about the other man's fragile state of mind. They discussed the case, whether they honestly thought they'd catch their unsub or if they'd be heading home empty handed – neither of them had high hopes. The police and their lack of cooperation gave them more than enough cause to doubt the success of their case. The city roads gave way to crops on either side of them, a sea of bright green as far as the eye could see. Spencer regaled Aaron with whatever knowledge he could produce on each separate crop, the types of pests that liked to ransack them, the reason the dirt was good for each one, anything he could think to fill the void left by Aaron's silence.
All Aaron wanted was quiet. His head was beyond painful, and though the contacts had been hard to contend with, now he had the pressure from the glasses resting behind his ears making him feel sick. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat, humming and acknowledging Spencer's questions when appropriate. There was something about Spencer's voice, the way he jumped down the rabbit hole and never looked back that was soothing, it was why he'd kept Spencer close and sent the others out. He never looked too deep, never tried to dissect Aaron's moods, his behaviors. Just accepted them. Derek and Dave had to go, they would have had him cornered in his hotel room, chained to the bed. They looked too close, knew him too well. Derek would coddle him, Dave would scold him. Both options sounded awful, so he chose Spencer and his cautiously aloof nature.
The station was the lone building in the sea of crops. They serviced the entire rural area and they didn't care for having the FBI haunting their halls but the mayor had insisted they get a handle on things before harvest time flooded the area with migrant workers and gave their unsub a mass of fresh targets. Aaron feared that the unsub was gone, the trail was cold already and likely wouldn't heat up until it was time to harvest, he was probably hunting somewhere further south that was already starting to run their combines.
It was quiet in the station, only a few deputies hung around, chatting around the coffee pot. They hadn't seen the Sheriff for hours now, he was running double duty with another office a county over until they elected a new official.
“Hotch?” Spencer asked, pulling him from the spell of the coffee pot. He turned slowly, exhausted, on his third cup of the battery acid they were passing off as coffee already and it was doing nothing to keep his eyes from falling shut and staying that way. No rest for the weary.
“Yes?” he replied, a moment later than he should have. His brain was working on a delay, like the sound and the action weren't quite in sync. He'd watched a movie with Jack the week prior, the mouths and the words they said were a split second off and it had driven him crazy. Jack didn't seem to notice. It threw everything off, made him feel itchy and exposed. Spencer paused, or Aaron thought he did anyway, before continuing.
“Sheriff Morrison wants to speak to us in his office.”
Aaron pressed his free hand to his eyebrows, rubbed hard with the pads of his fingers and sighed. “This should be good,” he muttered. Spencer smiled. He hated this, the way they were being treated, but it brought out a sarcastic side of Aaron he wasn't often privy to and for that, at least, he was thankful.
“I can't figure out this geographical profile,” Spencer said, walking shoulder to shoulder with Aaron through the station. “I've marked everywhere on the map that victims have been found, and where they came from, and it just doesn't make sense. We're missing something.”
“I have some concerns,” Aaron said under his breath, pressing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, “about the files we've been given. I suspect they've been doctored.”
“Doctored? But why would they...”
“Not now, Reid,” Aaron whispered, approaching the Sheriff's office. He rapped twice with the backs of his knuckles, peering into the empty room. “You're sure he said to meet him here?”
“Yes, I'm sure Hotch,” and of course he was. Aaron knew better than to question Spencer's memory. They stood for a moment, figuring they should wait. It wasn't long before the Sheriff approached them with a few deputies in tow, returning from their lunch break.
“That map of yours is interesting,” one of the deputies said, his drawl exaggerated and slow. He smiled. “Looks like Kindee-garden art class was fun today.”
“Excuse me?” Aaron asked, stepping in front of Spencer just enough to put his body between his colleague and the officers. The Sheriff smiled and turned to the deputy, muttering something just under his breath.
That was it. Not even even something big, it was something so small anyone might have missed it and Aaron couldn't even tell you exactly what it was that he'd said, it wasn't meant for him. Maybe it was just a vocal inflection, the way his father had pronounced certain words struck an odd fear into him even still when he heard it from someone else's mouth. Maybe it was the look on his face or the way the room smelled like sweat and burnt coffee and stale cigarette smoke, just like his father when he would come home drunk and ready to rumble.
Maybe it was the woman's voice suddenly shouting at the booking desk behind them about them holding her boyfriend in the drunk tank overnight. The migraine had been quiet but now raged front and center, the exhaustion and days without sleep left him exposed and unable to force his way past. His vision exploded in white hot sparks and for a split second he thought he was going to be sick or pass out. It was entirely involuntary, a reaction to stimuli he couldn't control.
Any of these things on their own, he could handle. But this was a perfect storm.
He fled. Excusing himself by muttering something incoherent, he turned and walked away from the gathering as quickly as he could force his legs to move. It was undignified and he would have to explain it later to someone, he wouldn't get away unscathed but if he didn't find a dark room, a safe place, he was going to have a panic attack right there in the middle of the police station. That was the last thing he needed, any of them needed. Head down he walked out, focusing intently on the sound of his heels against the tile, echoing off of the walls. The woman's shrieking rattled through him, she sounded more like an angry raven than a human as he moved away, kept his eyes trained on the floor and focused hard on the number of steps between he and their conference room. They wouldn't follow him there.
At least he hoped they wouldn't. He sank down into a chair, folded his arms on the table and pushed his head into his arms, resting against the table like a child playing Heads Up 7up. His hands shook, chest heaved painfully and he felt the sting of tears coating his cheeks, pooling in the lenses of his glasses and slipping down to the table. His glasses pressed hard against his nose, dug into the soft places behind his ears. Mercifully, that was when his breath hitched in his throat and the sobs came, not a moment sooner, the tingling fingertips and toes, the invasive and obsessive thought that he was, in fact, having a heart attack and not a panic attack. No one could see him now.
“Morgan?” Spencer asked, pacing outside the door to the conference room. He stood between the door and the station, ready to hold anyone off that he needed to.
“Yeah, what's up kid?” Derek's voice broke in and out, crackled on the other end of the phone. They had terrible service, the call would be choppy at best.
“I know this sounds weird, but I think Hotch is having a panic attack...” he whispered into the phone, peeking through the slit in the blinds at his boss curled up in the chair with his face hidden in his arms, all folded up on himself against the table. He looked like a child and Spencer thought he could see him shaking, like he was crying. It made him feel sick. Aaron hadn't been right since coming back to work, since Foyet and his knife, since Haley, but he thought they were past the really bad parts. It had been so long now, he'd almost managed to convince himself that everything was fine. He'd taken back the leadership of the team, they'd had a lot of successes.
His own knee had long since healed, so must have all of Aaron's wounds, his grief, all neatly packaged up and put away. Realizing he was wrong never sat well with Spencer. “Is that...normal? What do I do?”
“Yeah, kid. He gets them just like the rest of us," Derek said softly.
"Nothing you can do,” he replied, putting some distance between he and Dave who was staring intently at him. If Dave knew, he'd have them on the road speeding with their lights flashing to get back and they couldn't afford that, not yet. He needed time to consider their options, if what they were doing was useful, if they should just pack up and leave.
Spencer didn't like Derek's answer and huffed his disapproval. Derek smiled and shook his head.
“I just mean you can't fix it, that's not how anxiety works man. Get him a cup of water and a wash rag or a towel soaked in cool water. If you need to talk to him, do it slowly Reid...don't ask questions, don't talk about whatever was happening when it started, just...read a police report out loud. Tell him about corn. I dunno, something boring and calm. Just don't ask him about what happened or how he feels...ask if you can do anything for him if you need to say anything at all.” Derek's voice cut in and out, he knew Spencer was only getting a portion of what he was saying, he just hoped it was the right portion. The part where he reiterated over and over not to ask him what happened, why he was feeling the way he was. Spencer loved asking why.
“Where are you?” Spencer asked, still staring at Aaron through the blinds, looking for just about any excuse not to go in there yet. Derek shook his head.
“We're like 30 miles away on the side of some dirt road corn field...I dunno. It's on you kid.”
“Hotch thinks they're doctoring the files they're giving us...”
“Yeah, Rossi mentioned the same thing. Listen, we're gonna head back but you gotta get in there and stay with him okay? Make sure he's good.”
“What if he doesn't want me there?” Spencer asked and Derek laughed, that rang through loud and clear.
“Kid, he won't. He absolutely won't want you there. Don't let him bully you into leaving. You understand me? You don't walk out of that room until he's on his game again, or I get back. You sit in there with him all day if you have to.”
The moment Derek told Dave what was going on, they were on the road. There was no hesitation, they weren't going to find anything out where they were anyway and they'd both known it. It was going to be bad back at the station, but this was his team so long as Aaron was incapacitated and one of his people was struggling and needed them. Needed him. “We're comin' back kid, just...do your best. He's not dying.”
It was helpful to remember that fact when Aaron was in the thick of it, when he was convincing himself and everyone around him that he was having a heart attack, when he knew all of the signs and symptoms and he looked at you with those eyes so full of the terror of knowing exactly what a heart attack looked like. He'd called 911, he'd watched his father fall, felt the fear when he stopped breathing, when he'd had to start CPR on a man he only barely wanted to survive. Guilt put his hands on his father's chest, guilt and shame forced his panicked counting. He'd studied all of the symptoms, knew every sign inside and out. He could manifest each and every one of them before your eyes if you let him.
Spencer grabbed the water and a towel before entering the room. Instinctively, he turned down the lights, left only one row in the back on, thought it might calm him down if it were him in the situation. He liked to feel like he could be invisible, thought maybe Aaron might feel the same.
“It's just me,” Spencer said, approaching the other man slowly, recounting everything Derek had told him. “I brought you some water, would you like it?”
Nothing. No response. He set the water down where Aaron could grab it if he wanted and hung back a moment, calculating his next move. He just needed to buy enough time for Derek and Dave to get there, they would be better, they would know what to do, how to help him. He realized as he sat himself down that he couldn't think of a time he'd ever really touched Aaron, aside from an errant handshake or a pat on the arm, and even then it was usually Aaron initiating the contact. His hand trembled a little at the idea of it, like it was crossing a line, a boundary he wasn't sure needed crossing and Aaron was just crying so softly, uncontrollably, and lost to the world beside him. He was quiet, almost silent except the sniffling sounds, the tiny gasps and Spencer wondered if Aaron was trying to hide from him too.
It was the last thing he wanted. Of course he'd never seen Aaron so vulnerable, not once and it made him wildly uncomfortable. He hadn't been there to see Aaron in the hospital after Foyet, he hadn't seen him weeping over Haley's body, he'd only known what he was told. They had gone to great lengths to keep him away and for what?
Now he was here, the only person who could help and he had no idea where to begin. This was uncharted territory, but it wasn't as awful as he'd expected. Not insurmountable. It almost made him feel better, like if Aaron had weaknesses, maybe he wasn't so bad off himself. He wasn't a child. He could do this.
“It's okay, Hotch,” he said softly, opening a police report beside the man. “I'm right here if you need me.”
He didn't move, didn't even breathe for a moment and Spencer almost reached out and touched him but thought better of it. No, Aaron wouldn't want that. Instead he began reading the report aloud, starting with the victim's name, age and height. He read as slowly, as dully as he could muster. Beside him Aaron sucked in a deep breath, followed by a multitude of smaller, shallow breaths. Itw was a painful sound, like his lungs just couldn't do their job. Like his chest was too tight to allow room for breath. He pushed his head in deeper, pressed his forehead hard against the table trying to relieve the pressure. It was breaking his heart, but it was sound, at least he seemed to be letting it run its course instead of hiding it from Spencer so he kept reading.
Derek entered the room almost silently, the only noise coming from the hallway where Dave was laying into the Sheriff and letting him know they were no longer going to be working on this case. Spencer smiled, he wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that speech. Dave was often the first person to smile, had kind twinkling eyes, but there was a flash of anger, a streak that was more than a little terrifying. When one of his own was threatened, his version of justice looked a lot like revenge.
“Hotch?” Derek asked, placing his hand gently on the small of Aaron's back, fingers delicately tracing small circles at the base of his spine. Spencer watched in awe at the effortless way Derek touched him, knew exactly what to do, what to ask, how to bring him back. With his free hand, he pulled Aaron's glasses off, set them neatly on the table beside him and let his hand rest against the other man's hair. His fingers danced there against his scalp, small circles, figure eights and zig zags sending a shiver through Aaron's spine, his racing heart beating wildly against his chest. “We're gonna pack up and get out of here. They don't want us.”
That was it, that was all Derek said. He picked up the cool, damp rag and lay it against the back of Aaron's neck before standing, motioning for Spencer to follow him.
“Let's get this room broken down, we're heading back to DC. We're done with these hillbillies here.”
“What about Hotch?” Spencer asked, peering back at the other man still face down on the table. Derek shrugged. He didn't seem worried at all, but Spencer could tell how much he cared. He wondered how Derek stayed so cool all the time. How it was so effortless for him to take care of people.
“Time,” he whispered, patting Spencer on the shoulder. “He needs time. I've got it, you just start packing up our shit okay?” Relief was what Spencer felt, knowing that Derek would manage his way through Aaron's troubled waters, bring him back to shore and Spencer could go use his skills somewhere else.
The next time Spencer came into the room, Aaron was sitting upright. He was paler than usual, slumped over but he was up. His face was puffy, eyes red, cheeks streaked with tears. Derek was sitting beside him, maybe a little closer than he'd ever seen him, and he was on his phone, firing off emails to Chief Strauss about the situation they found themselves in. The room was silent.
“Everything is packed. JJ and Prentiss are going to meet us at the airport, Rossi and I checked us out of the hotel.”
Derek nodded and set his phone down. He knew Aaron wasn't moving yet, standing him up would be a mistake, send him into a tailspin. He'd done that once, forced Aaron to move during a panic attack, and he'd ended up with the man passing out in his arms. Something about blood pressure, the EMT had told him, he didn't listen to everything they said but he did take away one key piece of advice – don't move him while he's having a panic attack unless he's in danger.
“I can walk,” Aaron whispered, turning his head just slightly until he was looking at Derek. “I'm okay.”
“You sure? We got all the time in the world.”
They walked out of there with Aaron between them, neither touching him, letting him carry off the illusion of being fine while being flanked entirely by people he trusted. Derek had managed to get him into the bathroom, help him clean up, splash cold water on his face until he looked angry, intense, but not sad. Spencer lead the way, Derek followed just behind Aaron, Dave pressed in close beside him. They kept in step easily. He thought he could feel eyes on him, mocking him. The leader of the BAU running away with his tail between his legs, this wasn't going to look good on any of their reports. Chief Strauss would have words for him.
No one bothered him on the jet, Derek had instructed everyone to leave him be. Hushed voices spoke about the case, about the LEOs and their uncooperative behavior, the fact that more people were going to die as soon as harvest season was on them. Maybe they'd catch their guy on their own, they clearly didn't want help. A game of poker opened up, kept everyone occupied and distracted.
“Morgan?” Aaron asked, waving the other man over. Derek excused himself from the card game, folded his hand and tossed it to Rossi, and sat down beside Aaron, pressed in as close as he could. He loved to invade Aaron's space. “Thank you,” he said softly, rubbing at his temples. His head felt worse, somehow. Like he'd been on a three day bender and was drying out, now he was just a dried out husk of hungover man but without the fun of the party.
“How long?” Derek asked, indicating the way he rubbed at his head. He'd seen it days ago, the way his eyelids drooped and his shoulders were stiff, but they had a job to do and pointing out that he knew Aaron was struggling wasn't going to help anyone.
“Two days.”
“Shit. You want the lights off?”
“No,” Aaron whispered, leaning back and closing his eyes. “I just wanted to thank you for your help.”
“Nah, it was all Reid. He's the superstar here.” He reached over and pulled Aaron close to him without asking permission, he never bothered with that. He pressed his palms to the other man's temples and applied pressure, like a vice, biceps flexing to maintain it. It was a flood of instant relief, and though Aaron knew all of the pain would come right back the moment Derek let up, he was glad for the few moments of complete and utter peace. All noise in his head had ceased, he was left with just a silent void “I just swooped in and took all the glory for myself.”
Aaron smiled and settled in, let Derek hold his pounding head as long as he was willing, as long as he was able. It was the best he'd felt in days.