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Reid noticed it the way Hotch had once noticed it in him, not from anything said, but from everything that wasn't.
It was a Thursday in April, no case pulling at either of them that week, just the ordinary grind of paperwork and consults and Hotch had been off since the moment he walked into the bullpen that morning. Quieter than usual. His coffee sat untouched on his desk for two hours. When Prentiss made an offhand joke about a case file in the break room, Hotch's response came a beat too late and a shade too flat and though he recovered quickly enough that most of the team didn't seem to register it, Reid did.
He'd spent enough months on the receiving end of this exact kind of watching to recognise it now from the other side the particular, controlled stillness of someone holding something too heavy to safely set down in front of an audience.
It took him until early afternoon to place the date. He'd seen it once before, months ago, on a form Jessica had mentioned in passing about Jack's school schedule around "the anniversary," and something about today's flat grey quiet in Hotch's expression clicked the pieces together with a certainty that settled, heavy and clear, in Reid's chest. April. Haley.
He didn't say anything at the office. He simply watched, carefully, the way he'd been taught and made a decision somewhere around four o'clock that he wasn't going to let this particular day end the way he suspected Hotch intended it to alone, unmarked, pushed through by sheer force of will the same way Reid used to push through everything before someone had finally taught him not to.
He showed up at Hotch's house a little after seven, unannounced, a bag of takeout in one hand not the usual easy, established rhythm of an invited evening, but something more deliberate this time, a choice Reid was making instead of one being offered to him.
Hotch opened the door looking surprised and beneath the surprise, something heavily guarded that Reid recognised immediately, because he'd worn that exact expression himself more times than he could count.
"I wasn't expecting you," Hotch said careful and controlled.
"I know," Reid said. "I wanted to come anyway." He held up the bag. "I brought food. I wasn't going to make you cook tonight."
Something flickered across Hotch's face not quite relief, not yet, more like the quiet resistance of someone unused to being on the other side of an unrequested rescue. "You didn't have to do that."
"I know," Reid said again, gently but without backing down, stepping past him into the house with the same quiet, unshakable persistence Hotch had used on him a dozen times over the last year. "I wanted to."
Jack, it turned out, was at Jessica's for the evening a detail that told Reid, more clearly than anything else could have, exactly how deliberately Hotch had arranged this particular day to be one he faced alone.
Dinner went slowly, conversation thinner than usual, Hotch answering questions with the same flat, controlled brevity he'd carried all day, clearly working hard to hold the surface steady. Reid didn't push. He simply stayed, easy and unhurried, matching Hotch's quiet rather than trying to fill it, the way Hotch himself had done for him so many times before present without demand, patient without an agenda.
It was well past eight pm with the two of them were settled on the couch with the television playing low and unwatched, when Reid finally spoke.
"It's the anniversary today, isn't it," he said quietly. Not a question, not really, though he left it room to be answered as one.
Hotch went very still. For a long moment he didn't say anything at all, jaw tight, eyes fixed on some point on the far wall. "How did you know that."
"Jessica mentioned it once, a while back, about Jack's schedule. I didn't think much of it at the time. Today it just clicked." Reid kept his voice gentle, careful not to let it carry anything that could be mistaken for pressure. "You don't have to talk about it. I just didn't want you to spend tonight pretending it was an ordinary Thursday, if it isn't one."
Something in Hotch's controlled expression cracked, just slightly, at the same small fracture Reid had felt in himself so many times before, the moment someone finally saw through the careful performance of ‘fine’ and simply, gently, refused to accept it.
"I don't really know how to do this part," Hotch admitted, voice low, rougher than usual. "I've spent six years being the one who holds things together on days like this. I'm not sure I know how to be the one who doesn't."
"You don't have to know how," Reid said. "You just have to let me try. I've had a good teacher, in case you hadn't noticed."
That drew something close to a laugh out of Hotch, it was small, surprised, quickly swallowed but it cracked the door open regardless and after a long moment of visible internal resistance, he let it swing the rest of the way.
"I keep thinking about the last conversation we actually had," Hotch said, quiet, staring at his hands now instead of the wall. "Before Foyet. It wasn't even a real conversation. It was logistics, pickup times, some school form Jack needed signed. I didn't know it was the last one. You never do, I suppose, but I keep going back to it anyway, wishing I'd said something that actually mattered instead of just…" He stopped, throat working. "I keep thinking about all the things Jack won't remember about her. He was so young. Every year that passes, there's less of her left in what he actually remembers on his own and I can't stop it and some days that feels like losing her all over again, a little bit at a time."
Reid didn't say anything right away. He simply moved closer, the way Hotch had moved toward him so many times before and rested a hand against his back, steady and warm.
"I don't think I've ever heard you talk about her like this," Reid said softly. "Not the facts of it. The actual grief."
"I don't, usually," Hotch admitted. "It doesn't feel like something I'm allowed to set down in front of anyone. Everyone needs me to be the steady one. The team, Jack, you." His voice caught slightly on the last word, something almost apologetic in it.
"You're allowed to not be steady with me," Reid said, firm despite its gentleness, echoing back words that had once been given to him in exactly this shape, in exactly this kind of room. "You've spent the whole last year teaching me that. I don't see why it wouldn't apply to you too."
Hotch's composure, which had held through the whole day with visible, exhausting effort, finally gave way at that not dramatically, but quietly, a slow crumbling rather than a collapse, his breath going unsteady, eyes bright with tears he'd clearly been holding back since morning. Reid drew him in without hesitation, arms coming around him the way Hotch's had come around him so many times and simply held on.
"I've got you," Reid murmured, the words arriving with an ease that surprised him a little, like he'd been saving them up without realising it, waiting for the moment they'd finally be needed in this direction. "You don't have to hold it together for me tonight. That's not what I came here for."
Hotch's breath hitched and for a long moment he simply let himself be held, shoulders shaking with a grief he'd clearly been carrying alone for longer than one day, six years of anniversaries faced with the same controlled, solitary discipline, until tonight.
"I'm supposed to be the one who does this," Hotch said eventually, voice thick, half a laugh and half something closer to embarrassment. "Not you."
"Why?" Reid asked, simply. "You've never once made me feel like there was a rule about who's allowed to need this. I don't see why you'd get to be the exception to something you built for both of us."
That seemed to land somewhere Hotch couldn't argue with and he let out a long, unsteady breath, some of the rigid control finally, fully draining out of him. "I miss her," he said quietly, the plain admission costing him something Reid could feel in the way his voice shook around it. "Not just today. All the time. I don't usually let myself say that out loud."
"Then say it," Reid said. "I'm not going anywhere. You can say all of it."
So, Hotch did haltingly at first, then more freely, memories spilling out that he'd clearly kept carefully boxed away for years like the way Haley used to hum while she cooked, badly, off-key and refuse to admit it; the specific, aching guilt of every choice that had led to Foyet finding her; the terror, still unresolved even six years on, of somehow failing Jack the same irreversible way. Reid listened to all of it without flinching, without trying to fix any of it, simply staying present the way he'd been taught presence could matter more than any solution.
"Thank you," Hotch said, eventually, once the worst of it had passed, voice raw but lighter than it had been all day. "For not letting me do this alone. I don't think I realised how much I needed someone to actually ask."
"I didn't ask," Reid pointed out gently. "I just showed up."
"I know," Hotch said, something almost wondering in his voice. "That might be exactly why it worked."
They stayed on the couch a long while after that, Hotch's head resting against Reid's shoulder now instead of the other way around, the roles so plainly, comfortably reversed that neither of them felt any need to remark on it further. Reid kept a hand moving slow and steady against his back, the same calming rhythm Hotch had used on him more times than either of them could count and felt something settle deep in his own chest at finally, actually getting to offer it back.
"I want you to know," Reid said quietly, into the stillness, "that this doesn't change anything about what you are to me. You're still the person I call at three in the morning. You're still the one who checks the boards on the bridge every night. But I'd like it to also be true that I check them sometimes too. That this only ever went one direction because you never gave me the chance to prove otherwise, not because I couldn't."
Hotch was quiet for a moment, and when he finally spoke his voice was warm, unguarded, entirely different from the flat control of that morning. "I think you just proved it rather thoroughly."
Reid smiled, something quietly proud settling into his chest alongside the tenderness. "Good," he said. "I'd like to keep proving it. Whenever you need it. You don't have to save the hard days just for me."
"I'll try to remember that." Hotch said and Reid could hear in the honesty of it, that he actually meant to.
They sat together as the evening deepened outside the windows, the television still playing low and unwatched and for the first time in longer than either of them had counted, the quiet in the room held nothing anyone needed to hide.
"Stay tonight," Hotch said eventually, not quite a question, though he left it room to be one anyway. "If you want to. I don't think I want the house to be quiet again just yet."
"I was already planning on it," Reid said, and settled more comfortably against him, in no hurry at all to leave.
Later, once the anniversary had finally, fully passed into the small hours of an ordinary Friday, Hotch murmured something low and half-asleep against the crown of Reid's head, thank you, or something close to it, the words too soft to quite catch and Reid, wide awake and steady, simply held on, thinking about all the nights this exact stillness had been offered to him and how good, how right, it finally felt to be the one keeping watch instead.