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It started the way it always did with Reid, quietly and denied for as long as humanly possible.
Hotch first noticed on a Tuesday, three days after they'd closed a case in Ohio that had run long and cold and left everyone running on fumes by the end of it. Reid had been pale in the bullpen all morning, moving a little slower than usual, and when Hotch passed his desk around eleven am he caught the faint, unmistakable rasp under Reid's voice as he answered a question from JJ.
"You're not well," Hotch said, stopping beside the desk.
"I'm fine." Reid didn't look up from the file in front of him. "Just tired. The case took a lot out of everyone."
"Reid."
"I'm fine, Hotch." He said it a little too quickly, a little too brightly, the way he always did when he was determined to push through something rather than admit it existed. Hotch let it go, for the moment, though he made a note of it the way he made note of everything about his team that mattered filed away, watched, not forgotten.
By Thursday, Reid wasn't at his desk at all.
He'd texted Garcia to say he had a stomach bug and would work from home, which might have been true, except Garcia mentioned it to JJ, who mentioned it to Hotch with the particular look on her face that meant *someone should probably check on him*, and Hotch who had learned, over several years and several increasingly candid nighttime conversations, that Reid's definition of "fine" required independent verification, decided that someone would be him.
He called first. No answer. He called again an hour later. Still nothing. By six that evening, with the last of his own paperwork cleared and no response to two texts either, Hotch stopped telling himself it was probably nothing and drove over.
Reid's apartment was too quiet when Hotch let himself in with the spare key that he'd been given six months earlier for reasons neither of them had ever needed to say out loud. The living room was dim, curtains drawn, a half-empty glass of water sitting on the coffee table gone warm. Hotch moved through the apartment and eventually found him in the bedroom, buried under a comforter despite the warmth of the apartment, eyes closed, breathing too fast and too shallow, his face flushed with a fever that even from the doorway looked bad.
"Spencer."
Reid's eyes opened slowly, unfocused, and it took a beat too long for recognition to surface in them. "Hotch?" His voice came out cracked and thin, barely more than a whisper. "What are you… did I forget something? Is there a case?"
"No, no case." Hotch crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, pressing the back of his hand to Reid's forehead, and the heat of it made his stomach drop a little. "You didn't answer your phone. How long have you been like this?"
"I don't know. A while." Reid tried to push himself more upright and immediately gave up, sinking back into the pillow with a small, defeated sound. "I think it's just the flu. I took something for the fever a few hours ago, I just haven't been able to keep track of it though, everything's a little…"
"Fuzzy," Hotch finished for him, and Reid nodded, eyes already drifting shut again like even that small exchange had cost him something.
Hotch didn't waste time deliberating. He found the thermometer in the bathroom cabinet Reid, predictably, owned a proper digital one, alongside a small and slightly alarming collection of over-the-counter medications organized by symptom and came back to sit beside him again.
"Open," Hotch said, and Reid obeyed without argument, which told Hotch almost as much as the number that came back a minute later, 102.4. Not an emergency yet, but not nothing either, and combined with how disoriented Reid seemed, there was not a chance in hell that Hotch was going to be leaving him alone with it tonight. Possibly not tomorrow night either.
"Okay," Hotch said, mostly to himself, already running through the list of things that needed doing. "You're not staying here by yourself like this. I'm going to get you some water, and something for the fever that's actually on a schedule instead of whenever you remember to take it, and then I'm going to see what you have in this kitchen that isn't three years past its expiration date."
That got a weak, hoarse laugh out of Reid. "There's a box of crackers. I think."
"That's not a diet, Reid, that's a cry for help."
"I resent that," Reid mumbled, already half-asleep again, "on multiple levels."
Hotch allowed himself a small smile, brushed the damp hair back from Reid's forehead which was far too warm under his palm, but the touch seemed to settle him regardless and went to find out exactly how bad the kitchen situation actually was.
It was, as predicted, bad. Hotch made a list then made a store run, and came back forty minutes later with actual groceries; ginger ale, crackers that weren't stale, a rotisserie chicken he intended to turn into something Reid could actually keep down, more thermometer batteries just in case, and a stack of the same cold medicine his own mother had sworn by when he was young enough to be sick in her house instead of his own.
By the time he'd let himself back in, Reid had shifted onto his side, one arm curled under the pillow, breathing evening out into something closer to real sleep. Hotch didn't wake him. He busied himself instead setting a pot of water to boil, found the makings of something simple and warm, and worked quietly in the small kitchen while the apartment filled, slowly, with a smell that was less like a crime scene and more like someone was actually being looked after there.
Reid surfaced again a little after eight, drawn out of sleep by the smell or the low sounds of Hotch moving through the kitchen, and found his way unsteadily, to the doorway, wrapped in a blanket like a very tall, very disgruntled ghost.
"You didn't have to do this," he said, voice still rough, watching Hotch stir the pot.
"I know." Hotch didn't look up. "Sit down before you fall down."
Reid, wisely, sat.
The soup simple and plain, the kind that asked nothing difficult of a stomach that had spent the better part of two days rebelling went over well enough that Reid managed almost half a bowl before setting the spoon down, spent by the effort of it. Hotch didn't push him for more. He simply took the bowl away, handed over the fever medicine with a glass of water and steered Reid back toward the bedroom with a hand at his back, patient with every too-slow, unsteady step.
"I can walk," Reid muttered, without much conviction.
"I can see that," Hotch said, not moving his hand away regardless.
He got Reid settled back under the covers, propped the pillows so he could half-sit if the coughing started up again, and set a fresh glass of water and the thermometer on the nightstand within easy reach. Then, instead of leaving, he pulled the room's only chair over to the side of the bed and sat down.
"You don't have to stay," Reid said, eyes already heavy. "You've done enough. I feel bad that you're…"
"Spencer." Hotch's voice was quiet, but it stopped the sentence in its tracks in the way it always did. "I'm staying. That's not up for negotiation tonight."
Something in Reid's face eased at that as a little of the guilt, a little of the awful reflex he had toward apologising for needing anything at all and he let his eyes fall shut without finishing the argument.
The fever spiked in the early hours, the way fevers always seemed to choose the worst possible time to do so.
Hotch awoke from a light doze in the chair to the sound of Reid shifting restlessly, mumbling something too fractured to follow, one hand pushing weakly at the blanket like it had become too heavy to bear. When Hotch checked his temperature again it had climbed to 103.6, and Reid's skin was slick with sweat, his eyes glassy and only half-focused when they finally opened.
"Hey. Hey, I'm here." Hotch quickly stepped out to the bathroom wetting a washcloth in the sink with cool wate, wrung it out, and returned to press it gently to Reid's forehead, his jaw, the back of his neck, anywhere the heat seemed worst. "There, you're okay. I've got you."
"Hurts," Reid mumbled, disoriented, hardly tracking. "Everything hurts, I don't…"
"I know. I know it does." Hotch kept his voice low, steady, the same tone he'd used through every version of this over the last few months albeit in different rooms with different reasons but always the same underlying promise. "It's just the fever. It'll break soon. You're safe and I'm not going anywhere."
Reid's hand found his, gripping with more strength than Hotch expected from someone this wrung out and held on like it was the only fixed point in a room that wouldn't stay still. Hotch simply let him hold on. He kept up the slow, cool pass of the washcloth with his free hand, murmuring quiet reassurances that didn't need to make perfect sense, just needed to keep coming, steady as a heartbeat, until the worst of the disorientation started to ease.
"Don't go," Reid whispered, eyes barely open, voice cracked down to something small and unguarded in a way illness always seemed to strip out of him all of the careful adult architecture worn down to something more elemental. "Please don't go, daddy, I don't feel good."
The sentence was spoken artless and easy this time with zero hesitation in it at all, the word simply the truest one available to a mind that was too fogged with fever to reach for anything more careful. Hotch felt his chest tighten, warm and aching all at once and he leant down without a second's pause to press a kiss to Reid's damp temple.
"I'm not going anywhere kid," he murmured. "I promise. I'm right here, and daddy’s going to take care of you until you feel better. You don't have to be scared."
Reid made a small, exhausted sound of relief and turned his face toward the cool cloth, towards the hand that stayed wrapped around his and some of the tension finally started to bleed out of his fever-wracked body. Hotch stayed exactly where he was for a long time after that with the cloth in one hand, Reid's fingers curled loose but present in the other, watching the too-fast rise and fall of Reid's chest slowly, slowly begin to even out. When he checked the thermometer again, he was thankful to see the numbers slowly falling.
By four in the morning the fever had broken into a proper sweat, the worst of it passing the way bad fevers finally did, all at once and then gone, leaving Reid limp and exhausted but no longer frightening to look at. Hotch changed the damp pillowcase, brought a dry nightshirt from the dresser without comment when Reid mumbled something apologetic about the state of the sheets, and settled back into the chair once the worst was over, unwilling to fully relax his vigilance until morning proved it had actually gone.
Reid woke properly a little before ten, blinking blearily against the daylight at first, weak and hollowed out but clear-eyed in a way he hadn't been in almost two days. It took him a moment to slowly piece the night back together. The way Hotch had pulled the chair close, the damp cloth still draped over the edge of the nightstand, Hotch dozing upright with a hand loosely curled where Reid's had apparently found it again sometime before dawn.
Memories came back to him in pieces, the way it always did after a fever like that, and when it arrived at the part where he'd said, ‘please don't go, daddy’, his stomach dropped in a way that had nothing to do with the flu.
Hotch's eyes opened before Reid could decide what to do about it.
"Morning," Hotch said, voice rough with sleep but perfectly even, no hint of anything but relief in it. "How are you feeling?"
"Better," Reid said automatically, and then, because there was no version of this where he could pretend the rest of the night hadn't happened, "I said something last night and I remember it and I'm sorry, I know you've heard it before but I still feel like I should…"
"Spencer." Hotch sat forward cutting him off as he rested a hand briefly over the top of Reid's on the blanket, entirely unbothered. "You had a fever of a hundred and three and hadn't kept food down properly in two days. Whatever came out of your mouth at three in the morning under those conditions isn't something either of us needs to examine too closely. I wasn't fazed by it then, and I'm certainly not now."
"It just keeps happening," Reid said, quieter, more to himself than to Hotch. "I don't know why it's you, specifically, that my brain reaches for when everything else falls apart."
"I do," Hotch said simply. "Because I keep showing up. That's not complicated, even if it feels that way to you. People reach for the person who's proven over and over, that they'll actually be there. That's all this is."
Reid was quiet for a long moment, turning that sentence over the way he turned over everything, testing it for weaknesses and finding, apparently, none.
"Jack's lucky," he said finally, voice a little thick with emotion. "To have had you his whole life I mean. Not just the bad nights."
Something in Hotch's expression softened further and he squeezed Reid's hand once before standing to start the kettle in the next room. "You've had more of the bad nights than the good ones, historically speaking. I'd like to start balancing that out, if you'll let me."
"Yeah," Reid said, watching him go, something loosening in his chest that had been tight for much longer than just the last forty-eight hours. "I'd like that too."
The rest of the week unfolded in small, ordinary pieces. Hotch stayed through the worst of it and then some, he took the second day off entirely, working remotely from Reid's kitchen table on the third, dividing his attention between case files and the occasional check to make sure Reid was drinking water and not, as he put it, "reading epidemiology papers about the exact strain of flu currently destroying your immune system, which is not restful."
"But it's interesting," Reid protested weakly from the couch, wrapped in the soft blue blanket he'd more or less permanently relocated to the living room.
"I’m sure it is but it's not restful," Hotch repeated, and confiscated the laptop with the immovable authority of a man who had obviously done this exact negotiation successfully with an eight-year-old on multiple occasions.
Reid grumbled, but didn't fight it much too tired still, and, if he was honest with himself, not entirely opposed to being told what to do for once instead of being the one everyone else relied on to have the answers. There was something almost restful in it, in letting someone else hold the reins for a few days, the soup appearing at reasonable intervals, the temperature checks he no longer had to remember to do himself, the low murmur of Hotch's voice on the phone in the next room, checking in with the team, protecting Reid's space to just be sick without an audience.
By Saturday, the fever was long gone and most of his strength had crept back, enough that he managed a full bowl of soup and half a sandwich without needing to lie back down immediately after. He found Hotch on the couch that evening, an actual novel open on his lap for once instead of a case file, and settled in beside him without quite deciding to, close enough that their shoulders touched.
"Thank you," Reid said, into the quiet. "For all of it. The soup, and well everything."
"You know you don't have to thank me every time," Hotch said, though not unkindly, marking his page and setting the book aside to give Reid his full attention. "I meant what I told you months ago. I'd rather be the one who shows up than not be needed at all."
Reid leaned slowly into his side, and Hotch shifted to let him, an arm settling easily around his shoulders the way it had a dozen times now across a handful of bad nights in a handful of different cities.
"For what it's worth," Reid said, quiet, "I don't think it's just that you keep showing up. I think it's that you never once made me feel like there was something wrong with me for needing you to."
"There isn't," Hotch said. "There never was."
Reid closed his eyes, tucked against him, and let himself simply rest there for a while, not fevered, not frightened, just tired in the ordinary way a body got tired after fighting something off, held steady by someone who had made a quiet, unshakable habit out of being exactly what he needed, exactly when he needed it, without ever once asking him to explain why.
"Hotch?"
"Mm?"
"I think I'm going to sleep here for a bit. If that's okay."
"It's okay." Hotch reached for the throw blanket draped over the back of the couch and pulled it over both of them, resting his cheek briefly against the crown of Reid's head. "Sleep. I've got you."
And for once, Reid didn't have to wonder if that was true. He already knew.
He woke an hour later to the smell of something savoury drifting from the kitchen and the particular disorientation of having fallen fully asleep somewhere he hadn't meant to. The apartment had gone soft and gold with early evening light, and for a moment he simply lay still, listening to the quiet, ordinary sounds of someone else moving around his kitchen, a cupboard closing, water running, the low, tuneless hum Hotch sometimes fell into without seeming to notice he was doing it.
It struck him, lying there, how unremarkable all of it had become. Six months ago, the sound of someone else in his kitchen at this hour would have set every alarm in him ringing whereas now it was simply the sound of being taken care of and he found he didn't want it to be any other way.
"You're awake," Hotch said, appearing in the doorway with a dish towel over one shoulder, looking for once, entirely unlike a man who spent his days chasing serial offenders across state lines. "There's more soup, if you're hungry. And before you ask, yes, I checked the expiration date on everything myself this time."
"I would never doubt you," Reid said, pushing himself upright, voice still a little rough but steadier now, closer to himself than he'd sounded in days.
"You doubted the crackers."
"The crackers deserved it."
Hotch's mouth curved, the closest thing to a real laugh Reid had gotten out of him all week, and something about the easy, domestic ordinariness of it all, soup on the stove, a blanket still tangled around his legs, the low gold light through the window settled firmly into Reid's chest like something he wanted to keep.
He followed Hotch into the kitchen, slower than usual but steady on his feet now and let himself be fussed over one more time, a hand checking his forehead out of habit though the fever had long since broken, a bowl set in front of him with more care than strictly required. He didn't protest it. He'd stopped, somewhere over the last few months, seeing any reason to.
"Thank you," he said again, simply, meaning all of it, the week, the soup, the hand that had held his through the worst of the fever, the steady, unwavering fact of Hotch simply being there, over and over, without ever once making Reid feel like a burden for needing him to be.
"Anytime," Hotch said, and Reid believed him completely.