Work Text:
In the safety of his car – because he’s driving himself now – Hotch rests his head on the steering wheel. He isn’t afraid. Upon first arriving at this complex, freshly divorced, the overflow parking spots had sent a little shiver down his spine. He’d thought it silly then, to do what he does for a living and still feel creeped out by the dark. But a couple months ago, his biggest regret was the divorce, losing Haley. Now it isn’t fear he feels at the thought of being mugged or murdered.
It’s his hips that bother him the most but tonight there’s an extra twinge on his left from stitches broken and stabbing at raw skin, unaided by the tight velcro vest he’d worn for hours today. Everything hurts, really. Isn’t made better when he stands, locking the car.
The sky departs of rain in a gentle mist and Hotch enjoys the cool, gently droplets wetting his face. It makes him smile to imagine if Derek were here. He’d pull a jacket from somewhere, maybe take off his shirt, and hold it over Hotch’s head. Whining and griping about pneumonia or bronchitis or whatever ailment he can think of at that moment.
He misses Derek.
A rock throws Hotch back to reality as his foot scuffs and his hip flares red hot and angry. White lights up behind Hotch’s pinched tight eyes, his hand touching the protective bandage over the stitches. He was lucky – in some sort of way – that Foyet had nicked nothing of ‘importance’. Nothing to give him the mercy of death, just possible nerve damage. Because Foyet doesn’t want to kill him, he just wants to cause pain. The very disturbed live wire, hot and active, in his hip makes good on Foyet’s goal.
Rain now adding to the chill of cold sweat on his back, Hotch shivers and drags himself toward the light of his apartment building. He wonders if Foyet is watching now and despite how he knows the killer would find a sick delight in watching the painful sight, Hotch continues on. Rain absorbs the trail of thin tears that slide, against his will, down his face.
He smells Newports before he sees anyone. His mother had smoked them when he was little and the smell takes him back to his grandparents screened in back porch. Comforts him in the strangest way before he really even places the smell.
There’s a girl perched on the steps of the side of the building, the side exit. Her head turns up when she hears him coming, his left shoe catching the ground, face obscured by a hood and smoke expelled out around her. A girl, Hotch assumes, based on mostly the Newports but also the fuzzy pink socks poking out of sandals.
“It’s not safe out here,” Hotch feels himself saying, surprising both of them. The hoodie tilts to the side and Hotch can imagine what must be running through her head looking at him standing in the rain, hunched over like an old man.
“I’m aware!” she shouts back, trying to keep her voice from being trampled over by the rain fall.
It’s Hotch’s turn to tilt his head. “There were two attacks out here a few weeks ago,” Hotch says, and wishes he could get a hold of his mouth.
“Again,” she shouts, this time tone dripping with annoyance, “I’m aware!”
Hotch heads towards her, body and mind in clear disagreement about what the plan is here tonight. “A young woman was raped,” he says, closer now but still unable to make out the face beneath the hoodie.
His squint must draw in some attention because she jerks back her hood to reveal a choppy short hair cut. Something that comes inspired by bathroom mirrors and kitchen scissors. Impulsive. Dark mop of hair and dark eyes glaring back at him. “Yeah,” she says, dragging her eyes up and down him and tone a little questioning as she adds, “and some guy on the second floor got stabbed.”
The girl – he sucks on the back of his teeth, mentally corrected by the Emily Prentiss in his mind – the woman observes him unamused. Both of her eyes follow him with an air of unnerved curiosity as he comes to the steps, that he can feel even in the dark. She does look like a girl, a little girl out in the dark, puffing on a Newport.
“You want one or something?” She asks, posing the cigarette in her fingers, but cocking her head a bit to the side and crossing her jaw in a way Hotch can imagine she’s only seen someone else do. Her tone betrays her fear with its mockery of annoyance. She’s trying on intimidation like her father’s dress shoes.
It's been fifteen years since Hotch quit smoking and there is no true offer in her words but his body moves without his conscious approval.
The woman holds the box up, showing Hotch the freshly peeled back foil and the box absent of the cigarette butts around her feet. His fingers reach inside and pull one out, instinctively he bites the end between his lips.
They say nothing as Hotch stoops to come close enough for her to light the cigarette. She flashes them both in butane orange, Hotch pulls the flame in and inspects the cherry red end. A grunt he can’t help escapes his lips as he delicately bends his stiff body to sit on the steps – getting back up is a problem for later.
“I’ve seen you coming and going out of here,” she says, nodding a little as she becomes certain of her memories. Her eyes rake up and down him, a shiver going down his spine as if her gaze was seeing through him into the delicate parts of his healing body. “I recognize the—” she moves her hand around her face, circling with her finger her own furrowed brows.
A chuckle escapes him, faster than he's got time to think. His own fingers come up to touch the tensed muscles in his face and sigh at the feeling. “Yeah,” he answers simply, taking a long drag and looking down at the cement steps.
“You’re fucking that hot guy?” She asks, eyebrow raised in curiosity. “The Mr. FBI guy with the sunglasses, right?”
Hotch chokes — he’d quickly throw the blame to lungs that haven’t partaken in this abuse in years but the woman’s narrowed eyes and tilted head convey how short such an excuse would fall.
“I’m gay,” she offers, casually, easily. Curiosity tilts her head to the right, watching him to see his response.
He can’t imagine confessing that to a stranger. “Mm,” he hums.
She leans forward to look at his face. “You not?” she asks.
Hotch brings his eyes up to meet her eyes, a small, easy smile he can’t help tugging his lips up. “We’re together,” he admits, not sure if his voice comes out as strangely as the words make him feel. A tender but fierce delight.
It makes her laugh and Hotch smiles bigger, it feels so easy. She can’t be older than twenty, he thinks, really just a girl but stubborn enough to commit to more. How fun it is to be twenty, Hotch thinks.
“Agh!” She smiles big, “I knew it! He’s so hot!” She reaches over to push his shoulder and he doesn’t think to stop her. “Good for you!”
It takes every ounce of his self-control and grinding his teeth tight to keep a sound from leaving his lips. The cigarette falls to the wet pavement, sizzling as smoke continues to trail up.
“I’m sorry!” She yelps quickly and the sound of blood rushing through his ears drowns out the rest. His hearing is taken over by sharp ringing but he manages to lift his head after too many seconds.
His vision is clouded in a memory of his grandparent’s backporch. The summer he broke his back – the same sharp, unforgiving pain. Except his mother isn’t here to coo softly at him, brush his hair back with fingers that are stained with the scent of Newports.
“You’re the guy that got fucking stabbed,” she accuses, standing now at the bottom of the steps and making him look up.
Her voice sounds like she’s talking under water but he can guess what she’s accusing. He gives his head a small nod, and a grunt when he isn’t sure he’s moved at all.
“Holy shit!”
Resting his head on his hands, elbows on his knee, Hotch closes his eyes. He can feel her moving in front of him but he can’t make out her muffled words. The pulsing in his hips is back and he knows sitting here on the concrete is not helping.
“– by the dumpsters, I was going to yell but–”
Hotch drags his eyes up, catching only the tone shift in her voice and not really any of the words. “Hmm?” he sits up, pushing at his weight with his stiff arms to ease his hips, unsuccessfully.
Guilt shines in her eyes and Hotch stops moving. “I saw the man,” she confesses, “he came out this door.” She points behind Hotch, to the door at his back. “He didn’t see me but I saw..” she narrows her eyes as she thinks of how to explain, “I saw him. And I – I kind of thought – I thought it looked like he was carrying a person and I–” she shakes her head a little, “but I couldn’t – I wasn’t – I was – I was scared, so I… I just.. laid there.”
Hotch’s mind is ablaze with legal proceedings, flaring red signs of danger, and –
He takes in the last of her words, pulls his head back up from where he hadn’t realized he’d been looking at the ground. “Laid there..” he repeats back. There are so many wheels turning in his mind until it seizes up, stuck.
Her mouth opens to speak but her eyes well up with tears.
Hotch knows. He knows exactly who she is. A Jane Doe reported a rape but a kit found insufficient evidence. Had he seen her? He can’t remember past the living room but his eyes wander absently to the dumpsters, he can easily imagine the situation. He’d had the mercy of being unconscious and she was mere feet from a serial killer who would have loved the detour. It makes Hotch’s throat tight and queasy.
“What’re you doing out here?” Hotch asks heavily, voice a little thicker, unconsciously scanning now for bruises, abrasions, weapons along her person.
She tries to pull herself up taller but she’s barely maybe 5’4 and all clothes. “I could’ve stopped him, you know,” she says certainly. “I’m stronger than I look, I have four older brothers.” The reality of what happened tangles in a wreck of her failed logic . Her lips perse with anger. “He – He just surprised me… that’s all.”
Hotch looks back and forth between the fire of determination in her eyes. He just surprised me. It makes his stomach ache. “So, what’s your plan?” Hotch asks, gentle and supportive. He looks around again, seeing nothing but streaks of rain still weakly peddling out. “Wait to see if he returns? Then what?”
“Kill him,” she grits.
Hotch hums.
And for a moment, her face cracks a little from its resolve. “Can you arrest me for that?”
Hotch shakes his head. “Quite an understandable feeling,” he says gently. He watches her shoulders relax a little as she feels the understanding in his eyes.
“He — He surprised me, it wasn’t fair…” The grit washes away with the rain and she comes back to the steps, sitting down heavily beside him. Her knees close to her chest, crossed arms resting on top. “Pretty stupid plan, huh?” she asks, resting her head on her arms and looking over at him.
Hotch shrugs. He looks her in her eyes and replies softly, “killing him can’t undo what’s done.”
She huffs, turning her head away and no doubt rolling her eyes. “Okay Batman,” she mutters under her breath.
Hotch chuckles a little and leans against the door behind him. His lower back is adding its voice to the chorus of his body. Normally he would have some critical thought on crime and rape and murder but… He looks again at the dumpster… “It really is dangerous to be out here,” he warns softly, trying so hard to just sound tired and not like he’s bossing her around.
She looks up at him and shrugs with the ease of youthful dismissal. “Don’t we already know the worst that can happen?”
He looks at her.
She looks at him.
They both know that she really is right. Hotch wonders if she has that funny numb feeling as well. He doesn’t need to ask.