A/N: Written quickly to Band of Horses 'The Funeral' (like most of my stuff is). Depressing, but I kinda like it.
"Hotch..."
"What is it?" His voice doesn't betray that he had almost certainly been asleep seconds before answering the phone.
"I... fuck, Aaron—I'm so sorry..." His own voice is quiet and too steady, not the natural voice of someone that has tears pressing hotly against their closed eyes.
"Derek, what happened?"
"It's Spencer," he says, and the tears begin to rise in earnest, spilling out from under his eyelids, coursing burning tracks down his cheeks. He neither notices nor cares.
"What happened?" There is the sting of fear in Hotch's voice, but not enough to tell Morgan that he knows.
"Mitchell shot him," and he braces himself, unable to speak the next words that lurk in his throat, about to rise up, to choke him—
"Is he in the hospital?" He can hear Hotch moving around, dresser drawers slamming, even his footsteps, hard, heavy, quick footsteps.
"No," Morgan says, very softly, and realizes that he's trembling. "Aaron—he—he died on the scene, I'm so sorry—"
The other end of the phone is very silent; Hotch has stopped moving, stopped speaking, stopped breathing. And finally Morgan hears him speak, unfamiliar emotions in his voice, like a wounded animal—despair and pain and deep, terrible fear.
"Oh, God, no..."