A/N – My first ever slash. I very rarely write romance, so this was something of a learning curve…The prompt was Reid and the song 'Sleeping Sun' by Nightwish.

Disclaimer – I wish I owned it. I really do. As it is, all I have are DVDs and my imagination. Lyrics belong to Nightwish.

For my dreams I hold my life,
For wishes I behold my nights,
The truth at the end of time,
Losing faith makes a crime
-Sleeping Sun-

The door to Hotch's hospital room clicked open softly, and the nurse pushing Spencer's wheelchair rolled him into the room with a furtive glance around her.

"Ten minutes, Doctor Reid. I need to have you back before the others notice you're gone. I'll be right over there by the station."

"Thank you," Spencer smiled, waiting until the door closed before he rolled himself closer to the bed. Aaron was sleeping, the hour still being early, and Spencer allowed himself a few seconds to compose his features should the other man awake and see the look on his face. He'd never seen Aaron in a hospital bed before, having been safe in Virginia in the aftermath of the Boston bombing, and the last one to arrive at the hospital in New York when Aaron was already up and dressed. It was all a matter of perception, he knew, but Aaron looked smaller and more vulnerable than usual. One thing hadn't changed; Aaron's brow was furrowed even in slumber, and it even looked like he was clenching his jaw.

Spencer took a glance out of the window to check that no one was watching, and reached out tentatively. He brushed his fingers down Aaron's face, wanting desperately to not wake him but also needing to feel the familiar features beneath his fingertips; the slightest shadow of stubble, the sweep of the cheekbone, the surprising softness of the lips that had struck him the first time they had hesitantly kissed one another. It had been a special kind of horror that he had been experiencing since Prentiss had phoned him the day before to tell him that something had happened to Aaron, and a special kind of perseverance that had kept his mind on the case and stopped him dropping everything and joining in the search. With no one else on the team aware of his and Aaron's dalliance, the two of them being unsure themselves of what to call their blossoming relationship, he'd been forced to keep his panic under wraps and act as similarly to the others as he could. But here and now, free from restraints and the eyes of others, he was willing to let himself go just a little.

He noticed that he was trembling when he pulled away from Aaron's face and laid his hand on top of the older man's, although he wasn't sure how much of that was emotional and how much was to do with the stabbing pain in his knee. Having denied himself all but the mildest painkillers for the injury, his only respite had been the mild sedative that the nurses gave him the night before to help him sleep. JJ and Morgan, attempting to camp out in his hospital room before the nurses had kicked them out, had proved a welcome distraction if only for a while but their presence had meant that he had no time to think about how close they had come to losing Aaron except for just a few moments before they put him to sleep. Now he was awake, those feelings were all demanding his attention at once. The pain in his leg and the shock of seeing Aaron in such a way combined and he felt tears gather in the corners of his eyes and work their way out, until they were running down his face and dripping onto the clean white sheets.

He was ridiculously glad that Aaron wasn't awake to see him in such a state; between that and the fact that Hayley and Jack had been taken into protective custody, he was sure that the older man would break. Spencer had done the math without needing prompting; the last time Foyet had been playing games, he'd stayed away for years just to watch his pursuer sweat. What would it do to Aaron if he had to wait that long to see Jack again? The little boy was sometimes the only thing that kept him going and Aaron was honest enough to tell Spencer that. Not that Spencer was under any illusions; he knew that what he had with Aaron was nowhere near adequate enough yet to replace the relationship that the man had with his son, and quite possibly never would be. Until the day before, he'd been happy to accept that Jack would always come first, even if the margin became smaller every day that he and Aaron were together. Now that the little boy was gone, Spencer was left to deal with the aftermath; he knew that the team would be there for Aaron every difficult step of the way, hunting Foyet as well as they could do with limited resources, but he would be the one that had to try and deal with the emotional fallout. He'd be the one to lay close to Aaron in the dark and listen to him toss and turn as his dreams spiralled out of control again and again. He'd be the one to hold Aaron close and try to soothe his ache away with words that somehow never seemed enough. He'd be the one to taste the tears and he'd be the one to cry them as well. And if he didn't already know that he loved Aaron Hotchner, he knew that he'd be out of the door so fast that they wouldn't even see him leave.

Aaron groaned suddenly in his sleep and shifted slightly, a grimace shooting across his features and settling heavily on his lips. The rhythm of his breathing seemed to become shallower in that moment and Spencer calculated it wouldn't be long before he woke up. He wasn't sure if he wanted to be there when that happened or not and contemplated calling the nurse, but he couldn't quite find the will. Aaron had been told about his injury, according to Garcia, and so it wouldn't come as a shock at least if he did wake up and find Spencer wheelchair bound although he suspected that it wouldn't help ease the guilt that Aaron tended to associate with members of his team getting hurt.

That depth of feeling, such an odd thing to associate with a stone wall like Aaron, was one of the things that Spencer loved about him. The man was an enigma, a riddle inside a puzzle, and Spencer had enjoyed trying to decipher him long before he realised he was in love. The contradictions of Aaron's character – tough yet gentle, untouchable yet compassionate, driven yet wearied – were intriguing, and had remained so until the day that Spencer realised he and the others had already been allowed to scale Aaron's defences without even realising it and that was why they knew him from the inside as well as out. It had been a revelation, one that had prompted him into nervously asking if the older man would care to join him for dinner one night.

And it was at those dinners, dinners that eventually became dates, that Spencer was allowed more than a passing glimpse at the side of the man increasingly kept under wraps. The Aaron who could tell a joke, who had a plethora of fantastic stories, who was hopelessly romantic and soft hearted. The Aaron who lived in a world that would sometimes cut him a break. The Aaron who had a smile that could turn heads in a crowded room, if only he would let it out of the cage sometimes. The side that had come to mean as much to Spencer as the rest of the man, because if nothing else it proved that one day, perhaps, Aaron could be truly happy.

And just maybe, if Spencer was very lucky, that happiness would have room for him.