AN: Bingo bango bongo fill for the squares 'wildcard (cowboy AU)', 'rope kink', 'romantic forehead kissing', 'death-defying (smutty) act', 'sickfic', 'soup', and 'mutual pining'.

Very important question: since everyone in this fic is in cowboy clothes, does that mean they're ranch dressing?

Chapter One: A Man Upon A Borrowed Horse

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He's three years out of the Capital, planning to ride West on a borrowed horse and followed by the ghost of George Foyet. The road he's travelling is kinder than the one he's fleeing despite the fact that the further he gets away from any kind of civilisation, the less road he actually finds. But that suits him just fine.

Hotch has always been the kind of man to forge his own path in life, even if he doesn't know where that path is eventually taking him. For tonight, he knows it's leading him to a somewhat comfortable bed and a hot meal served by a pretty barmaid that's going to remind him of Haley in all the most painful ways, bought and paid for by money he's earned working with his hands like his father always tried to beat into him. Maybe the barmaid will flirt and wink, maybe she'll offer him a bath for no extra cost and a bed warmer for just a smile; he doesn't know for sure, but he knows how he'll answer if she does. Accept the bath, because he's in a tired suit that doesn't match his dusty demeanour and decline the warming. He likes his bed cold, likes it alone. It'd take something damn strange to change that.

And it's as simple as this: "Sorry, ma'am," he'll say with a shadow of his former smile under the beard he only sometimes thinks of shaving. "I'm a happily married man."

It's not really a lie, except in all the ways it could be argued that it is, if one had a mind to argue. Hotch doesn't have the mind. What's the good of arguing specifics? Words haven't helped him since the night Foyet took everything from him, slashing a knife right through the gilded life of the educated government man, Aaron Hotchner, with his pretty wife and his sharp-as-a-tack son and their little house on the corner.

Now he's just Hotch. Just Hotch, and that's how he introduces himself, hiding the Aaron that he used to be behind a beard that protects him as he keeps on riding this borrowed horse. It probably had a name, once. Rossi's the kind of man to name his animals. Hotch isn't. It gets him from point A to point wherever he's going and he's kind to it in return. That's life now.

If they press, and sometimes they do when his pouch of coins is getting light and he needs to money to feed the mare or himself, he tells them he's an ex-lawman. That gets him some grudging respect in the quarters he needs it, though he suspects that respect may fade the further West he goes. Out there, the law isn't what it is in DC. His college degrees and lawyer's words won't help him there, but that's tomorrow's problem.

Today, he's just a tired man on a borrowed horse, needing feeding and a bath. There's no point thinking about tomorrow, or yesterday. Neither have ever done anything for him.

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He has three guns because his mama was the suspicious sort, always telling him that anything designed to keep him alive needs to come in parts of three. If it's rigging, check it thrice. If it's a horse, don't go riding for your life on it until you've had three years of wearing in that saddle. If it's a gun, carry three: the Winchester rifle slung across his back is both an open warning that he's carrying and the gun he checks in with the law in the towns who don't want armed strangers on their streets; the Colt under his shirt is what he uses if pushed and gives up if people, correctly, assume he's the kind of man to carry insurance; and the derringer in his pocket has never been aimed at a human and he figures is the one most likely to save his life because of that.

All three are cleaned, maintained, loaded, and he knows all their quirks. He's a ready man, a careful man, and a silent one. This comes as a surprise to no one; the one thing Hotch is, besides reliable, is silent.

When he takes the job with the stagecoach taking a load of rich passengers from Connecticut up to the Nevada boomtowns, he's using those three parts of himself. That's what the driver wants beside him, he figures, since the horses pulling the coach are strong and well-bred, the coach itself made of a fine oak, the people inside dressed pretty with nice faces. Ripe for banditry, and there's a part of him that bites down at that idea as he applies for the position of ride-along guard-for-hire, his eyes on the small boy in a fine suit watching the horses longingly. They need help. He's got all the time in the world to give it.

"Wouldn't mind another hand on the road," he says absently when asked his opinion on how many guards they should take along, the driver new to this long road and nervous. The railroad doesn't go that far, not yet, and Hotch hears the father scorn the idea anyway as newfangled and dangerous. "Any more than that and you'll be paying out more than you're earning."

Guns aren't cheap, and neither are trustworthy men. Hotch hopes this driver knows that.

In the end, he guesses he'll find it out because he leaves Connecticut the sole man left to keep this family safe, riding behind their coach on his borrowed horse and eyes sweeping the surroundings. But he's sure he can manage it. After all, bandits are no George Foyet and he won't lose another boy.

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It's a planned five months on the road with stops at homesteads that the family know. They're relocating for a better life, a monumental undertaking across this vast land, and Hotch appreciates that they understand that sometimes home isn't where you started. For the first three weeks of their travels, they invite him to dine with them on most noon meals and he can't shake his manners well enough to decline them. The invitations cease after that, Hotch suspects because, when he can be pressed into talking by shows of kindness and glimpses of the life he used to have, he's a soft-spoken, clearly educated man with the same eyes that lured Haley in—and this family has a daughter of flirting age with the whims of an unbroken yearling. Her seat around the fire inches closer with every night that passes until he's pretty sure she's planning to lasso and break him like a steer, serving him up to her father with a jaunty smile and a, "This one please, Papa."

After that, he keeps his distance when she's making eyes, only breaking that rule when the boy—he's five and Hotch wishes he could learn what Jack would be at that age—asks to be put upon the borrowed horse and led around the campsite, or taught how to skin an apple with the little knife his grandpa gave him before they left Connecticut. At night, when the family prays, Hotch keeps watch over them and doesn't close his eyes, but in his mind he follows along with every hymn. Someone has to be watching out here, it just doesn't feel right that the world could be so empty.

Five weeks in, two men surprise the daughter as she chases a rabbit, too silly to realise the danger she's putting herself in. Hotch runs them off, but it's a close thing and she's lucky he was near to hear her scream. If he wasn't alone, he'd have kept on chasing them—no man bold enough to stalk a girl on the outskirts of her family's fire is one that deserves to be outside a lawman's grasp—but he is alone and so he stays.

"You'll get a bonus at the end," says the shaken father to Hotch once assured of his daughter's intact virtues. "Horses, gold, a property. Whatever you want for saving my girl."

"How about another hand on the road?" is all Hotch asks, avoiding acknowledging the way the girl now stares at him like he's no longer a fancy cut of meat: now there are stars in her eyes and the giggles have been replaced by deep-seated blushes. Despite the trouble he knows is coming there, he never begrudges her her life.

And the father sees to it that another man is found, although the quality of that man has much to be assured.

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They're staying at a ranch perched on the edge of a sparely scrubbed plain, dotted with cattle that Hotch has no idea what to do with. He spends a couple of hours trying to help the ranchers because he doesn't like sitting on his ass waiting for things to happen, before admitting defeat when it comes to livestock and riding back to see if there's anything that needs done around the house. Fixing houses he's good at, despite how much it kicks to remember how him and Haley had worked so hard to turn their shabby house into a home. Gutters and piping and digging gardens any minute he wasn't reciting law…

A lump in his throat, he walks into the busy kitchens to find a boy already sitting there being fussed over by the help, an awkward silence falling when they turn and note him there. The boy is whipcord slim wearing a stained single-breasted vest with a narrow necktie and trousers that had once been fine but are now creased to high hell and marked by things unmentionable. Hotch slings his hands into his pockets and eyes the stranger, noting his shoes that are clearly too big and his eyes that are the same shape as a rabbit's when it sees the fox despite being hidden behind crooked glasses and an overlong wave of shabby curls. All of that culminates in a sharp face and bow-shaped lips that immediately draw the eye, and Hotch would suspect a boy this pretty is here for carnal reasons with the staff if it wasn't for the fact that he's clearly been beaten to high hell.

"He needing a quack?" Hotch asks, nodding to the boy who's seventeen if he's a day. "I'll ride into town for one."

"I don't have money for a doctor," the boy lisps out around those sinful lips all split and swollen, rabbit eyes narrowing warily. "If I could please beg some food, I promise I can work the cost back. That's all I need."

He doesn't look the begging type, unless that once-nice waistcoat he's wearing is stolen or he's a once-privileged man fallen on contemporary hard times.

"He really can't be here," someone whispers, eyes nervously glancing to the inner door. "We could all get fired…"

The boy visibly deflates, one shoulder folding in as the other sits stiffly in its socket. "I'll go," he says thickly. "I'm sorry to have been a bother. Thank you for the water and the care." And, with a white hankie pressed to the worst of the cuts above his eyes, he gets up—surprisingly tall, he's within an inch of Hotch's six feet—and limps determinedly past Hotch and out into the yard.

He's a boy in need of help, and Hotch has never been good at saying no. Of course, he follows.

"What's your name?" he asks, catching the boy easily before he even makes it to the side gate where there's a cold-eyed mule hitched to a post and watching them both approach with its teeth bared. Hotch eyes it carefully, noting the upper length of the tail where the fur has been previously shaved and is now growing back. "That's not your animal."

"Yes, he is." The boy turns on him, trying to look stern despite swaying on his feet. "He's not stolen. I have his deed—and if you try take him from me, he'll buck you. Won't you, Jack?"

The mule makes a whimpering noise, baring its teeth again and blowing air in Hotch's general direction.

"I don't doubt that thing bites," Hotch says. "But he's a military animal, and you're no army brat. Not with that limp." He's been beaten to hell, but the limp is deep-set. It's learned, not new, and the boy moves like he's used to having one leg gammy.

The boy doesn't wince, just leans against the fence with his shoulder alarmingly close to those yellowed teeth. The mule seems to consider biting him, although it finally just settles on wiping more gunk onto the sleeve of his shirt instead. There's so much dirt on it already, Hotch doubts it even really matters. "Won him playing cards," he says finally, his voice low. "Are we going to have a problem? I should warn you, I'm armed and a very good shot."

That's clearly a lie, on both parts. He's a dog with no bite trying to bark away the boot, and it should be amusing but instead it just pisses Hotch off. Not angry with the kid—but angry that he's here begging food with a mule he got by chance, in boots ill-fitting enough that his feet are definitely bleeding. He's used to life being cruel to him; he still gets angry when it's cruel to others.

"You're dead on your feet," he says finally, not calling the man out on his unarmed status. "I have dried meat, some rations. A warm fire you can sleep by for a night, at least."

"What do you want in return?"

"Just your name, and your age."

The boy looks at him, suspicion giving way to disbelief. "Why my age?" he asks.

And Hotch, with a single moment of noting to himself that this is the last thing he needs if he's genuinely sure a friendly and competent gun at his back is all that's going to get them West, ignores all his good sense and says, "Well, I figure if you're not a runaway kid with a father looking to drag him home, then you're probably in need of a job. It just so happens I know someone hiring."

The boy, after a moment of thought as he realises that this is a genuine offer that he's too hungry to pass up, answers, "Spencer Reid. My name is Spencer Reid, and, to answer your second question, I'm twenty-two. And I'd be very grateful for your help, as would Jack."

Hotch wishes the mule wasn't called that.

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The driver doesn't want a bar of Reid on his payroll, but the father hears Hotch's quiet, "He can do it," and immediately hires him out of his own pocket, helped along by a gasped, "Daddy, you must," from the daughter as soon as she spots Reid's sad eyes and his pretty mouth. Hotch smiles inwardly at that; he doubts she's going to be mooning after him anymore now that this young buck is here and needing fussing over. Seventeen is a prime age for falling in love, since Hotch still doesn't believe Reid is twenty-two. But as far as lies go it's a small one, so he allows it.

Three days later than planned, since the wife then gets involved and orders a doctor to begin the fussing, they leave the homestead and are on their way again, except this time Hotch and his borrowed horse have a recalcitrant mule and his over-friendly rider on their tail. With a neatly stitched brow he's been warned not to split again if he doesn't want scarring and a freshly un-dislocated shoulder, Reid's surly mood improves so dramatically as soon as they're moving and he has food in his belly that Hotch is beginning to understand why someone beat him up. He talks constantly but says very little of importance, just rambles about plants and mules and types of dirt until Hotch's ears are ringing and he's wishing for bandits to shut the man up. And the entire time the boy is talking, he's watching Hotch with hopeful eyes, like he wants a pat on the head and a 'good boy' for knowing exactly how many tines the type of salt bush they're riding past has.

When he's not talking, he's slouching so dangerously in the saddle with a book in his hand and his eyes off the road that Hotch has to grit his teeth against scolding him for riding stupidly. All knees and soft hands, the boy is lucky that Jack seems to have taken a liking to Hotch's borrowed horse because the only thing keeping him on track is the mule following his mare. Unfortunately, it also means that Reid barely has control over it, which gets Hotch bitten by the horrible creature more often than it does Reid.

A week into this, Hotch snaps.

"Get off my ass and do your job to earn the food we're wasting on you," he growls, Reid jolting out of a daydream and nodding quickly, yanking the reins and pissing the mule off as he looks around trying to see what he should be doing. Finally, he seems to realise that, since their job currently solely consists of being there and watching for trouble, what Hotch actually means is 'please go away'.

He does, riding awkwardly to the other side of the coach and following behind the wheels, in danger of his mule getting rocks flicked into his face but seemingly unaware of this. Hotch only wonders for a minute why he chose there to ride, right up until he sees a head poking out the back window and realises the daughter has taken advantage of Reid's willingness to communicate. It's what Hotch expected but he finds that it pisses him off too, riding West with his mood declining with every new smile Reid manages. He's not sure he likes this boy, even if he doesn't regret taking the chance with him.

And he's sure Reid will move on soon enough.

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At night, they share a campfire. Despite being terrible at riding with his janky leg giving all kinds of wrong signals to the stubborn mule and still having failed to produce the gun that he swears he carries, Reid is decent enough at making a fire so the job of that falls to him. On the night that Hotch bags two rabbits with his Colt, Reid also skins and prepares them without a word, Hotch returning from sharpening his knife to find the job done and the rabbits already cooking. Reid's such a strange mix of abilities and inabilities that Hotch simply doesn't know what to do with him especially as, ever since his outburst, the boy has stopped talking about things that don't matter and Hotch kind of misses that.

"What are you looking at?" he asks him on this night, unable to sleep and with Reid keeping watch over the camp. The tents that hold the driver and the father and his son circle the coach where the women sleep in relative comfort, Hotch and Reid positioned so they can see anyone approaching their charges.

Reid's head is tilted back, the firelight casting strange shadows on his skinny face. Glasses glinting in such a way that his eyes are obscured, making a curious figure beside the fire on the single blanket that's all he owns besides the one he uses on his mule. He sleeps on that blanket, declining Hotch's spare, and Hotch wonders what he'll do now the weather is turning cold—he doubts the man will take the mule's blanket, he seems too fond of the animal.

"The stars haven't changed," Reid replies finally, his voice muted. "No matter how far from home I ride, they never change. That's a comfort." With a rustle of movement, he sits up and grabs for the tattered leather saddlebag that's all he carries, digging through it until he pulls forth an instrument made of gleaming metal. "Look through this." He hands it over after peering through the end for a moment and fiddling with the contraption. Hotch does as he says and looks up to where the stars are suddenly so much closer. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Very," Hotch says, fascinating with the magnifying properties of the small hand-held telescope, of which he's read about but never handled before. His fingers brush a small engraving on the smooth surface of the metal, lowering it from his eye and examining it in the firelight: To my beloved Doctor, with which he may always know the stars we love ~E. "Is this an heirloom?"

"Hmm?" Reid is looking away now, down towards the camp, and his demeanour is distracted. "No, it was a gift from a friend, some time ago. Do you see movement?"

Telescope forgotten, Hotch follows his eyeline and sees the shadows approaching just as Reid has, their campfire illuminating them. He stands, straining his ears for the hoofbeats he should be hearing—but he's not. Which means, they're muffling them.

"Take this," he says, passing his revolver to Reid as shoulders his rifle. "Stay behind me and don't let them see that you don't know which ends goes bang. But, I'm begging you—if I start shooting, shoot too. We'll have seconds to surprise them before we're gunned down."

Reid shoots him a hurt look but doesn't argue. Together, they walk down there, armed against the dark. Despite having a friendly gun behind him, Hotch doesn't feel safe: friendly fire still kills, even if it's shot with the best of intentions.

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As it turns out, Reid can shoot well enough that he doesn't shoot Hotch in the back.

That doesn't stop Hotch getting shot.

It's a split-second hesitation that causes it. Hotch starts shooting when he realises the men are masked and refusing to answer to the queries he's throwing at them. Reid, however, doesn't. He vacillates, and in that split second one comes from the left and rips a bullet through Hotch's gun arm. Likely thinking they'll take out the hand he shoots with, which would have worked if Hotch hadn't long ago taught himself to shoot with both. Before they can follow up with a bullet to the head before Hotch can swap to his non-dominant right, Reid nails the one who'd shot him. The red hole in the man's head appears neatly, Reid following up by taking out another two and looking unhappy to be doing so.

Seven bandits in all, three to Reid and the other four to Hotch. When he's searching the bodies after, a rough bandage made of his sleeve wrapped around his arm, Hotch finds why they'd gone down shooting: they're carrying the type of guns only lawmen tend to carry, likely taken from the bodies of said men, and they're skinny and wasted under that. Starved and desperate, like dogs turned wolfish. Hotch knows that feeling and mourns them despite being the one to put them to their graves.

"Is there a township nearby?" he asks their team when he walks back to where the coach has moved while they wait for him to deal with the bodies. Judging from the stares he gets from the girl and boy, he looks a terrible sight. Likely splattered with blood with his hands all dirty and sweat drawing lines through the filth on his face as one of the last warm suns of the year rises overhead. "We should report their deaths. Bandits or not, men deserve burying and they likely have hungry families they were poaching for."

"You're bleeding too," the father says, pointing to Hotch's arm where he's bled through the bandage with red dripping from his elbow. Hotch shrugs that off. He'll either stop bleeding or he'll die, that's the long and short of it. "We should find a doctor."

"Good luck out here," the wife says coldly from where she's been crying inside the stagecoach. "Animals, all of them."

She doesn't speak again, which is good because otherwise Hotch would likely have pointed out that the men they killed for them are definitely human, and he has the bodies to prove it. No matter how broken, still human.

"I have maps," Reid says suddenly, vanishing to his bag. When he returns with maps that are indeed more updated than the ones they're already carrying, it's found they're a half a day's ride from a town nearby. A full day before someone can be sent back for the bodies, which will no doubt be coyote meat long before then.

"I'll stay with them," Hotch declares, letting no argument be brooked in the tone of his voice. He shakes his hand free of blood on his fingers, disliking how it's pooled around his wedding ring, before nodding to the group. "Take your wife and children away from here with Reid on watch—send a group back with a cart for this lot and I'll meet you there." He might be the employee here, a nameless hire, but people listen to him. They agree, Reid silent and still armed with Hotch's revolver. "Take my horse and gun," Hotch tells him firmly, letting him know with his stare that he's still pissed about Reid flinching. "And Reid?"

"Yeah?" Reid looks at him, eyes flickering to Hotch's arm guiltily.

"If you're attacked without me there and you hesitate again, those children will die. Remember that."

Maybe it's cruel, but it's effective. Hotch reminds himself of that as Reid's eyes widen with horror. After all, Hotch of all people knows the cost of hesitation.

They ride away, and then he's alone.

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He opens his eyes with no memory of having closed them, finding himself laid out on his bedroll with his shirt sleeve rolled right up and a cold compass on his forehead. When he tries to struggle up onto his elbows to look around, the world spins wildly and almost throws him back down to the ground. All he sees is Jack and the mare staring at him curiously from where they're grazing, loud claps of thunder nearby startling him to his shaken bones.

"Did I die?" he asks the horses wildly, letting his head fall back as everything spins some more. His arm hurts dully, and he looks at it and blinks to find that it's neatly bandaged.

"Almost," says Reid. He appears overhead, looking down at Hotch with his mouth in a thin line. "Found you almost face down in the river, out cold. You didn't even stop the bleeding." There's a betrayed kind of snap to his voice, like he can't believe that Hotch would be so careless. "You could have bled out before we returned—you would have, if I hadn't ridden back."

"Why did you ride back?" Hotch rasps, his throat dry. Reid just eyes him with that same hurt stare before vanishing and reappearing with a canteen of water and crouching to hold it to Hotch's mouth. Hotch is so weak that, embarrassingly, he can't even tilt his head to accept the water without choking, both gratified and shamed by the hand that Reid curls behind his head to assist.

"Was worried," Reid murmurs, lowering the canteen but leaving his hand where it is, fingers threaded through Hotch's hair. He's clean-shaved, Hotch notes dazedly, despite having never seen the man take a knife to his cheeks. He's always been clean-shaven… "Turns out I was right to be worried. I have stew cooking, and you should eat even if you don't feel like it. Your body needs to replace what you lost."

"You some kind of doctor?" Hotch mumbles, beginning to drift again as his arm sends louder thumps of pain slamming through his body. Remembering, suddenly, the etching on that telescope and thinking of Reid making love to his pretty wife under the stars as he teaches her the names of all the plants and animals he knows…

"I suppose," is the soft reply as Hotch's eyes close. "I'm good enough for what you need, anyway." There's a long beat of silence, then the hand slips away from Hotch's hair and leaves him cold, coming back to tweak at his blanket. No, not his blanket… Hotch cracks open his eyes and realises he's under Reid's blanket too. "Hotch?"

"Hmm?" Hotch hums, still staring at the blanket and wondering what it means.

"I'm sorry I got you shot. I've never been much of a killer."

"Then why are you out here?" Hotch asks him, fighting his body with stubborn determination until he can turn his head to stare Reid in his hazel, changeable eyes, a shade that Hotch is sure he hasn't seen before and which catches him completely now. "Place will only get you killed."

"Looking for something, same as you are," Reid answers, sitting down beside him and looking west to where the sun sets. Hotch looks too, seeing nothing. "My luck is out there somewhere."

"Oh, yeah?" Hotch coughs, closing his eyes again and feeling sleep pulling. Maybe he should have stopped the bleeding… "Does your luck have a name?"

As he asks this, he thinks again of that engraved E.

But he doesn't clearly hear Reid's answer, sure that his brain is feverishly making it up as he drifts into a dream of two lovers beneath a starry sky—because surely the boy didn't just answer that he's out here risking his life looking for something called, "Rabbit."