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It's been months since his last migraine, and for some silly reason he can't quite grapple with now…he'd convinced himself he might have shaken them entirely. There isn't any logical reason for this train of thought, it was simply anchored in hope.
That isn't the case.
It hits on the jet as they head for Seattle, a city whose seedy underbelly he's intimately familiar with and not looking forward to. The flight is too long and too turbulent, and he's on the verge of throwing up before they're even in the air for twenty minutes.
No one seems to notice the way he hugs the window while doing his best to appear absorbed in a case file. They won't need to come together and talk for another hour at least. His go bag is stored away, and he can't access it without questions he doesn't want to answer, so he's going to have to manage without medication or taking out his contacts in favor of his glasses.
It's no secret he deals with migraines, they all know. They've all seen him on bad days, during bad weeks, there was even a bad month that thankfully only Gideon and Rossi were privy to. They all know, they just don't talk about it. They've learned not to ask if he's okay. He gets prickly and a little mean when people ask him stupid questions, and frankly…no matter how he tries to hide the thunderstorm in his head, he can't.
He also doesn't want to discuss it. Aside from just knocking himself out, there isn't much of anything that can be done so why make it a topic of inherently uncomfortable conversation?
When they begin their approach of Seattle's airspace, the jet being thrown around on a stream of predictable bad weather, Hotch calls them all together to make a plan. He keeps his voice low and measured, a dry monotone that sounds like more tired and less pain. He's well rehearsed in the field of making one thing seem like something else.
"Morgan and JJ, you go to the latest crime scene. Dave and Blake go to the station and talk with the families. Reid and I will go to the ME's office."
It's Derek that gives him the first slightly confused look. Not that he hadn't noticed Hotch being off, of course he did - he'd noticed first thing that morning when Hotch opted to take an extra fifteen minutes in the shower rather than going out with them on Clooney's morning walk through the neighborhood. Clooney is old and slow, and they love their morning amble.
He'd known it, so he made the coffee and he took Clooney out and he left the house lit only by a dim trail of low wattage lamps. All of the blinds remained closed. He's learned enough in years of
But he can't just overlook this now - it's worse than he thought. Hotch wakes up a little off, takes his meds, and is fine by the time they're at work. Something is different today. Hotch almost always takes the police station with JJ, but he's not only separated them but changed things up. Sometimes the case demands it but he'd anticipated this case going exactly that way - take JJ to the station, have her help manage the officers and the press from there. He doesn't mind being in the field with JJ, he just doesn't understand it. He thinks maybe the extra long shower was for something different, maybe it was something else weighing on him.
But Hotch doesn't look like he's in any mood to be questioned so Derek looks away before his confusion is clocked by anyone else. There's a storm brewing, and Derek can't tell if it's internal or external but whatever it is he's going to keep an eye on it. He glances at JJ who seems to share his concern but says nothing. No doubt they'll talk about it when they're alone.
No one else seems the least bit concerned.
Reid has had his fair share of migraines in the last year, he recognizes all of the signs while Hotch drives them through the bumper to bumper Seattle traffic. "Did you like living here?" Reid asks when the silence in the car starts to feel oppressive. Hotch makes a miserable sound and flips on his blinker, eager to get into the carpool lane.
"Yes," he says. It's true, he loved living in Seattle. Nothing but a job at the BAU was going to get him to leave.
"Was it a big adjustment?"
"What?" he asks, because his ear is popping like crazy. His hearing never really recovered after the bomb in New York, but the pain had ceased for the most part. It only reared up when his head acted up…or when other bombs went off…or occasionally during a turbulent jet ride. The pain would start as pressure that ran down the side of his face, an ache in the hinge of his jaw, a tightness in his neck. Then the ringing would start. Reid clears his throat.
"Was it a big adjustment, going from living on the East Coast to the West?"
"Yes," he replies quietly, finally merging into the carpool lane. He can hit the gas now. "People aren't as aggressive out here."
"I noticed that too."
"It's quieter, too. Even in the cities. More spread out." He's trying to speak through intense waves of nausea, it helps him focus on the car in front of him rather than the way the saliva fills his mouth. Reid nods in agreement.
"Would you live here again if you could?"
"Probably not in Seattle, but I wouldn't mind this region."
It takes them nearly an hour to get to the ME's office, a trip that should only have taken twenty minutes if not for traffic. They passed two accidents on the way.
The morgue is quiet and dark, the exact environment Hotch was looking for. His eyes adjust to the low light and for a brief moment, before the smells of the place hit him, he gets a reprieve from the pain. The thunder quiets to a muted growl, a dull ache pulsing in the back of his skull. And then the formaldehyde smell hits him and his stomach roils angrily, reminding him that he's nowhere near well. And this is nowhere near the crescendo. He's still climbing the hill.
"Excuse me," he says to Reid as he hurries out of the room, making a beeline for the bathroom. He'd clocked it when they entered the building, knowing that he'd be using it before long. He barely makes it through the door before he's stumbling into a stall and throwing up into the toilet from standing. Hoping and praying that it doesn't splash, that he doesn't get vomit and toilet water on his shoes. The stall door bangs angrily behind him, not latched, still open. It hits him in the back.
He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to be as quiet as he can, one hand against the wall for support while the other rubs at the burning in his chest. He swallows bile, he tries to breathe in and out through his mouth because the smells of the bathroom, the sickly sweet urinal cake and hand sanitizer and bleach are all swirling around him in a mad haze pressing his already very uneasy stomach hard for round two.
He vomits three times before it passes. His throat burns and his stomach is left feeling hollow. He washes his mouth out with sink water four times before the taste of vomit is barely detectable then stares hard at himself in the mirror. What a wreck. With shaking hands he straightens his tie, swipes at his shoes with a wet paper towel, and tries to stand up tall. Passable? Maybe. Just barely.
Reid recognizes the signs, it's not like he hasn't been there several times in the last year. His headaches have all but stopped, but he still lives in fear that they'll come back every day. He recognizes it but he says nothing when Hotch comes back like nothing happened. Like he'd just had to take an emergency piss. He hadn't wanted anyone asking him questions and he won't force them on Hotch. Instead, he just catches the other man up quickly on what he missed and leaves it at that.
Reid does briefly consider asking if Hotch wants him to drive, but he thinks better of it when he realizes what that entails. He doesn't know Seattle the way Hotch does which means he'll need directions, and Hotch doesn't look like he's up for that much talking or thinking if he doesn't have to do either. Helplessly, he wishes Derek were with them. Derek would take the keys without hesitation and make Hotch sit in the back, he would force Hotch to take some pain killers and go lay down. Reid can't do any of that.
Well, he could, but he would be risking a hell of a lot more than Derek. Everyone sort of relies on Derek to manhandle Hotch so they don't have to. His absence at times like this is felt intensely.
"I'll be right inside," Reid says when Hotch throws the SUV into park at the police station. Hotch doesn't even acknowledge that he'd said anything, just stalks silently into the building and Reid pulls out his phone from where he stays behind the SUV. "Morgan?"
"Yeah kid?"
"Where are you?"
"Crime scene. It's a mess. All kinds of contamination, buncha amateurs. Why?"
"Something's wrong with Hotch."
He can hear Derek sigh and the rustling on the other end of the line tells him that Derek is walking, separating himself from the people around him.
"What's wrong with him?" He asks it like he hasn't suspected it since 5am, but with Hotch sometimes you have to let things run their course. He's fiercely private in a way that makes it a challenge to help him - you have to watch for your opening.
"I think he's got a headache maybe. It might be worse than that. Does he get migraines? He's trying to hide it but we need to do something…"
"Yeah, he gets migraines sometimes. Hasn't in a while. What's this 'we' shit though? You're the one there with him. Tell him to go to the hotel and take a nap."
Reid actually laughs at that, at the idea of him marching up to Hotch and telling him what to do. As if.
"Yeah, sure. I'll get right on that. Great idea. And then I'll pack my bag and hit the road because that's the end of my job with the BAU."
Derek rolls his eyes, but he gets it. No one ever wants to take the risk of confronting Hotch, even when Derek says he's all bark and no bite. "Just do it. Tell him he looks sick and he should go lay down. You really think he's gonna fire you for that?"
"No, but…"
"He's never fired anyone for anything. Y'all are a bunch of wimps. Look I gotta go, kid. Take care of business. Or don't worry about it and let him do his thing. JJ and I are gonna be a while."
"Let him do his thing. Right."
His thing, it turned out, was peering at the evidence board Blake and Rossi had put together while standing in a room with the lights off. Reid doesn't turn on the lights when he enters. He sort of likes the low light anyway, it's soothing.
"What do they have?" Reid asks quietly, careful to keep his voice low. Hotch shrugs.
"Doesn't look like much. What did Derek say?"
"How uh…" Reid starts, frowning. "How did you know I called him?"
"A hunch," is Hotch's too-quiet reply. Reid gulps.
"The crime scene was contaminated. They're going to be a while."
Hotch hums and nods, reaching up to rub at the bridge of his nose. It doesn't provide any relief, the pain in his head is so overwhelming that there isn't anything that can touch it. Not that he can do while working, anyway. He's just hoping it stays there, that it doesn't start to move, that he will somehow skip the part where it aches all the way down his spine, the part where he's got vertigo bad enough that standing up becomes impossible. He doesn't have the comfort of his desk to rest on, or the couch that Gideon had told him to get rid of at least eight times but he liked the way it felt when his body decided to torture him for a few days. He misses his lumpy old couch right now.
"Sir?" Reid asks in a timid voice. "Do you want to to the hotel and get us all checked in to our rooms? I'll stay here and work on the geographical profile."
Hotch sighs and turns to look at Reid for a moment, overwhelmed briefly by both the other man's fear and sincerity. He considers his answer carefully, but before he has a chance to say anything they're interrupted by Derek and JJ arguing loudly as they walk down the hall. Reid turns to look at them with wide eyes.
"I thought you said it would be a while," he snaps. Derek shrugs and doesn't stop walking.
"We had to get out of there. It's useless to us, too many idiots passed through there before it was locked down. Waste of damn time."
JJ approaches Hotch, standing beside him at the board. She folds her arms over her chest, stares straight ahead, and opens her mouth without a hint of hesitation. "You look like shit."
"Thanks."
"Go take a nap, Hotch."
Her words are sharp, but kind. He imagines her using the same tone of voice when she's dealing with Henry. Maybe not the same language, necessarily, but her tone would be the same.
"Is that an order?" he chirps back with a lazy half-smirk. JJ shrugs, never looking at him.
"The way I see it, you can do this the easy way or the hard way. Your choice."
"Meaning?" he asks, clearly stalling. He's hoping she'll fold and let him get through this without any real attention but she doesn't.
"You can listen to me and make the right call, or I can get Derek involved…you know how that'll go."
He turns his head to look at Derek and feels the first strain of tension in his neck, the first pull at his shoulder blades. It's spreading. He makes a cursatory fist and his left hand feels weak, a bad sign. Derek is talking to Reid but he meets Hotch's eyes from across the room and Hotch can read that look without even trying.
"I don't think I should drive," Hotch admits when he realizes he's completely outnumbered and with JJ and Derek willing to stand up to him, even Reid won't be afraid to push a little. He needs to get out of there before Rossi gets involved. JJ nods sympathetically, her features softening into gentle concern.
"Which one of us do you want to give you a ride?"
"I'll call a taxi," he replies after only a moment of thought. "You're all too important to the case. Catch me up later."
He makes his exit brisk, head down, without making eye contact with anyone. His body is still his own and he can make it work, he can use it for one last shred of ego preservation. One last attempt to salvage what's left of his pride. That's all it is.
Reid offers Derek a helpless look. "Is he going to be okay?"
"Yeah, kid. He's going to be fine."
"I think you should go with him."
"I'll drop by in a while, once he's sleeping. Come on, we got six bodies, a contaminated crime scene and only 24 hours until our next vic goes missing if this guy keeps to his schedule…Hotch has to take care of this by himself."
They get the call about a new body while Hotch is en route to the hotel. The SAC had asked one of his assistants to drive Hotch rather than see him wait on a taxi so at least he was sitting in the passenger seat of a more comfortable ride, with someone who was a complete stranger but not one that had any interest in striking up conversation. The sunglasses he slipped on before leaving only do so much, though, and the bright afternoon light shoots spikes into his skull.
Rossi, not knowing that Hotch is headed to the hotel to rest, texts Hotch the address where the newest victim is found - it's an invitation he can't resist. That damn pride again. "Agent?" he asks in a quiet monotone. "I need you to take me to a new location."
"Not the hotel, sir? My orders are to…"
"There's a new body. I'll need you to wait at the scene. Give me ten minutes."
"Yes, sir."
Ten minutes turned into thirty, and Hotch's back had seized up on him as he poked around the crime scene. He's doing his best to ignore it, to avoid being noticed, and it isn't until Derek and Blake show up at the scene that anyone seemed to pay him any mind at all.
"You're supposed to be sleeping," Derek chastises, not waiting for an excuse. Hotch doesn't offer one.
"I was the closest to the scene."
"Aaron…" Derek whispers, invoking a kind of sacred magic between them. "Go to the hotel and sleep. You're no good to us like this."
Hotch produces a notepad with his angular scrawl all over it and hands it to Derek with a look that says he thinks he is, he thinks he's just fine to be working. It's not his first rodeo. "I took some notes while I waited for the rest of you." He says it in a vaguely accusatory way, drawing attention to the fact that he had been there first. And was the only one there for quite a while.
"I can't read this," Derek replies with a frown, obviously barely even scanning it. "Those aren't even words."
"They are too."
They are. Derek is just teasing. But the smile, quick to show that he's teasing, fades even quicker. "Aaron please go get some rest before you collapse. That's the last thing we need."
"I'm going," Hotch says, because he agrees. He can feel the vertigo creeping in, it'll hit him soon and he'd rather be lying flat on his stomach in bed with his cheek against a cool pillow when it does. The pain doesn't bother him half as much as the vertigo.
He makes it back to the hotel, and gets securely into his own room and into his underwear before the vertigo and subsequent tinnitus really hit him hard. His face rests against the cold pillow while his body shivers, his teeth chattering in response to the pain and nausea. He closes his eyes and decides to try and ride it out. If he takes something now, he risks throwing it back up, making everything worse. He's wasted more than one rescue med that way. If he can just will his body to fall asleep he might make it through to the other side without much more effort.
If, and this is a big if…if it's an isolated incident. If it's not the start of a flare that lasts days or even weeks.
He wakes up to find Derek eating takeout in his underwear while perched at the end of the bed. Noodles with vegetables from the looks of it, though he's squinting and half-blind without any contacts or glasses. His stomach churns but it isn't nausea that rises into his sternum, it's hunger.
He's starving. That's a very good sign.
"Derek?"
Derek turns around and gives him a once over, assessing his condition. Rumpled and wrinkled in his boxers and t-shirt, cheek covered in red lines from the pillow, hair an absolute mess but…otherwise no sign of anything worse. His eyes aren't red, his teeth aren't chattering, he doesn't flinch when his eyes flicker over the television. All good signs.
"How you feeling?"
"Tired…" Hotch whispers. "And hungry. What time is it?"
"Ten. We did what we could at the crime scene, gotta wait until morning on the ME's findings."
"So we're stuck?"
"Appears that way. Good time for you to get some rest huh?"
"I feel like a bum."
"Yeah, well you kind of are being a lazy bum. Look at you."
Hotch hums and closes his eyes again, accepting the truth for what it is. It's ten at night, he's hungry but he doesn't have the desire or energy to do anything about it. The only thing he has the energy for is going back to sleep, so that's what he does without any announcement. Derek, realizing it's happening, makes his move. He stands and walks toward Hotch, pulling the blankets up and tucking him in, kissing his sweaty temple, whispering I love you before he drifts off entirely. Derek finishes watching Beverly Hills Cop with his stir fry before brushing his teeth and crawling into bed beside Hotch.
They don't usually bunk together on cases and he's got his own room down the hall, but not tonight and everyone is just going to have to understand. They don't blur the lines between private and professional except in extreme circumstances, and Derek can't think of a reason not to stay tonight. Besides, Hotch is already sleeping again which was practically his silent approval of the situation. Derek would argue that.
Hotch is up before Derek, slipping out of bed at 4am to take a shower and shave his face and make his way downstairs to the continental breakfast as soon as it opens so he can get a bowl of Special K cereal and some coffee. His body is sluggish and tired, he aches all the way down to his bones, and he feels hungover. It's a hell of a lot better than the day before.
He can live with this.
It's not terribly far from what he normally feels like on what he would consider a good day. The bowl of cereal hits the spot, and the coffee floods his veins like life itself.
No one mentions Derek coming out of his room in the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before and heads for his own room to shower and change. No one asks Hotch if he's okay when they all pile into the SUV to head toward the Field Office for day two. JJ just smiles and offers him a bottle of water when she gets buckled in and he accepts it gladly.
"You look better," she says as they walk across the parking lot. "A little."
"Thanks."