Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds or any of its characters. Wishful thinking aside.

Warnings: This is mainly a general fic or team fic (omg me writing general!? The world is probably coming to an end or something I am sure). However there are clear references of Emily/Rossi and BLANTANTLY obviously schmoop and etc for Reid/Hotch. Nothing huge though, this could be considered to be mainly a general team ficlet (if you squint). In the first chapter anyway...

Authors Note: Please read and review. I am excited to see what you all think. I am open to comments, advice, and constructive criticism. This is my first Criminal Minds story so I am especially looking for constructive feedback.

*Okay, so I might have fibbed just a titch. I realized, as I was writing this chapter that it was going to be faaaaar too long. So, lets say it is now going to be a 3 parter. Thanks for all your comments and review! You guys are awesome!

Also a big thanks to my anonymous reviewers: Natalie, M, and anyone else that had reviewed incognito thus far, I like to personally respond to all my reviews as a rule, and since I cannot do that for you, here's a big thank you from me here! I appreciate all your kind comments, encouragement, and advice.

-I would recommend listening to "Do it alone" by Sugarcult as you read, I wrote this chapter while I had this song, (my new guilty pleasure) on replay, and it provided me with a tone or mood in which to write.

Cause you know that I'm always all for you - Chapter 2

'I don't wanna do it alone, I'm beggin' you, I don't wanna do it alone...'

"When fire is applied to a stone, it cracks ." - Irish proverb

Reid had never slept well. Since his childhood he had always slept with one ear perpetually attuned for any strange noises, or words, always aware that his mother's demons knew no sense of time or common decency. So even in his sleep, as early as he could remember, some part of his brain had always remained alert, half-poised to go to her when she cried out, not simply just to bring her her pills, but more importantly to just be there, often falling asleep at her side, curled up around her, as if his thin, boney little frame could hold back the monsters the only she could see, and the people only she could hear.

During his first year of university, he had once attended a special guest lecture from a visiting Crime Psychologist in the FBI. The man had been young, or at least young for the FBI, likely in his early thirties, the gold band on his ring finger looking far too shiny and new to be any more then a few weeks old at best, and yet he was already prematurely balding, something that could still be clearly seen despite the man having obviously opted to shave his head then to keep up the facade of a full head of hair.

However, it was his words that had truly captured him, his tone, his body language and his way of speaking had all belayed a steady confidence that he, as a skinny little whip of a child admits a sea of young adults had immediately admired. Throughout the core of his lecture the man had stated that a child should never have to bear the responsibility of protecting their parents. And to his day, he found himself torn on the issue, certainly a child should not be forced to accept the responsibility of adulthood before their due time, but regardless, as he had discovered not only throughout his own adolescent and teenage years with his mother, but indeed in his years with the BAU, life was rarely that black and white, he had seen children lie, maim, and even kill to protect their mothers and fathers, whether they were innocent, guilty or otherwise.

Loyalty, devotion, and love were powerful emotions, regardless of the age or circumstance.

And so, even in sleep, he had tried to protect his mother, only at the time, he didn't yet fully understand that what he was trying to protect her from was akin to a segueing army battering down the walls of quivering fortress stronghold, the attacking army could certainly be held at bay, but in all likelihood, they would never completely leave.

But since...since Tobias Hankle, sometimes he didn't sleep at all. As the months and years had passed, he had gotten better, and most nights he could even say the next morning that he had slept soundly, able to put aside the nightmares in favour of other things. It was something that he had hardly dared to hope for, and it was steadily getting better as the years passed and the emotional scars slowly began to heal. Yet another thing that the BAU appointed therapist had insisted would happen if given enough time, and properly addressed. Perhaps he owed the entire counselling profession an apology after all.

But sometimes, sometimes he still had those nights. Nights where he was half afraid that if he closed his eyes he would be back there, back in that chair, back to the splintering pain in his feet, and the drug-educed haze of his mind. That he would be still there, handcuffs sinking, and biting into the delicate flesh of his wrists as his face throbbed out a dull, pain-deafening tempo from the blows, his own blood crusting and flaking along his skin, forming taunt, disgusting layers as fresh crimson streaked his pale skin, masking what had flowed down before.

He was afraid that he would be back to the moment where he had been covered in dirt, blood, and sweat, with mud smeared so deeply into his skin that it appeared to be coming out of his own pores....

Back to the moment where his pained, and exhausted muscles had bunched and released...bunched and released..again, and again in a horrific, and pounding rhythm as he dug out his own grave. Smelling the stench of his own body as it melded together with the scent of freshly turned earth and the biting metallic scent of his own fear, where with each moment that passed, and each painstakingly unsteady shovelful that he raised up, he fully expected it to be his last, to be dead before his ears even registered the telltale sound of the bullet leaving the barrel, being dead before his neurons stopped firing, a neat hole drilled through his temple, leaving him mangled and maimed for the others to see when the stumbled upon him too late. He remembered how he had thought, even then, as he had thrown up yet another shovelful, before his sagging eyes had picked up the growing pin picks of light in the forests behind them, before he had seen his team...his family coming for him..he had remembered hoping that they would have found some comfort in knowing that he would have felt little pain...

It was a small comfort, but at the time it had been all he had had to offer them..

But that bullet never came; instead he had used the bullet that in all rights had his own name on it from the beginning, to end the torment of his own captor, a man who in his own strange, unfortunate way, had been just as much a captive and a victim as he had been.

And it was on those nights where the only thing that stopped him from just curling up into himself and silently howling out his fear and horror was the smell of the man, the man who he had reached for him in those first, relieving, terrible, and exhilarating moments. The smell grounding him, reminded him, and reassured him.

Even without an eidetic memory he knew he would remember that smell for the rest of his life. Hotch had smelt like the deodorant the man kept in his to-go bag, the label being some bastardized combination of Old spice and Endurance, he knew because he had once furtively read the entire ingredient list as he waited for a free shower stall after a training session. There had been the hint of sweat, starched collars, dryer sheets and worry. There had also been the hint of steel and metal from the bullet proof vest, the scent of wet moss and the thick must of the forest that clung to the edges of his shirt sleeves. But mostly the man had smelt like strength… like..safety, and completion.

He had never known that such things had a smell, but those days had taught him many things, that fear and fresh blood smelled eerily alike, that evil had many faces, some of which that were even the same, but that it was the eyes that always gave them away. He had learned that acts of strength and desperation could be mistaken for each other, and that he was both stronger and weaker then he had ever realized. He had learned once again, in a most brutal, and vicious fashion, that to read about the effects of emotional and physical torture was all fine and good, but to experience them was something very different entirely.

He had learned what true numbness and release felt like, he had experienced the act of fully, and completely letting go, feeling his mind and body surrender itself into the power of a drug that for the first time in his life had soothed his ever thrumming mind to a halt, and for a little while...every had been so quiet..

In only two days he had been witness to both the worst and the best examples of humanity, and while in that moment, as he had looked down at Tobias's empty eyes, while he should have been overwhelmed by the evil, focusing on the horror and the pain, instead in that moment... he had felt so utterly and entirely alive...so human in that moment, that he still truly didn't know if the emotion could ever be accurately quantified.

But also, and maybe even more importantly, he had learned that a man, a strong, hard man that hardly smiled, and rarely laughed, a man so stoic and still could also give, and embrace him back. That his face, all hard lines and fierce eyes could soften and for a moment, press intimately into his neck, his hands gentle but steady against his filth-caked back as his fingers pressed into the red wool of his sweater, his arms seeming to envelop him so fully, and so completely, that for that moment it had felt as though he had belonged there, fit there, and had been meant to always be there.

But despite the fact that he might have strayed from the original point of these musings, his brain unsurprisingly jumbled and confused with the exhaustion of the past few days, with a kidnapped toddler and a set of devastated parents, the point that he had been attempting to dwell on from the very beginning, as he was just regaining awareness, still half-wrapped in the comforting weight of the hotel sheets and the over washed comforters, was one simple fact...he still didn't sleep well...

So that's why he was caught by surprise when for no reason at all, he startled wide awake with the acidic taste of burning on his lips, and the strangest realization that the red haze he was seeing cast against the white washed walls, was actually the flickering, metallic reflection of a fire burning inside the Hotel walls through the air vent beside his bed.

It was only a few seconds after that realization, as he blinked owlishly through the darkening gloom and the eerily growing red haze, that he realized that his room was half filled with smoke.

Fire!

Statistics and relevant portions of medical journals flickered through his brain like microfilm. Fire. So he knew immediately that the fog that was steadily pressing against his brain like a deceptively comfortable blanket wasn't simply just the confused remnants of sleep, or the trailing vestiges of days of exhaustion, it was something far more serious and sinister, like the irresistible sound of a siren song, the beautiful and murderous melody that came from the throats of half woman, half bird like temptresses that lured their victims into a willing, and accepting death.

He was out and tripping over the comforter and bed clothes before his brain even had a chance to catch up to his body, an arm snatching up his tan satchel without even thinking about it, thoughts rushing through his brain about the paper work it contained as he by-passed the bay windows to peek out his doors peep-hole. He didn't have much time.

'Move Spencer...Move!'

And without much thought he tripped to the bathroom, his long arms sending the tiny little bottles of complimentary shampoo and individually wrapped bars of soap clattering noisy onto the cheap bathroom title as he soaked a handful of towels in the shower tub. Tying one around his mouth and draping the others over his arms and head as he ran for the door, mindless of his faded t-shirt and his thin, threadbare plaid pj pants, or the awkward way his stupid satchel banged across his right hip as he moved.

It had been worse then he'd thought when he opened the door, the knob already hot under his delicate palms, the hallway thick with smoke, and a fire and he didn't need to be a genius to know burned right underneath his fingertips, beneath a thin mask of wallpaper and plaster, the fire had moved into the walls as well, ready to explode outwards at any moment.

They were out of time.

He didn't yell for the others, he couldn't find his voice amidst all the smoke and flame. He could hardly breathe let alone call out, the smoke and fire being worse on his side of the hallway then were the other were.

'The fire must be worse on the floor below then..the main intake vent was on this side...that's how it was climbing so fast..more oxygen.' His mind raced, flickering eyes taking in the white pained vents build into the wall by the window. They had to evacuate the building..It was going all the way up!

The others! Where were they!?

But before he could move, the tightness in his chest lifted a bit as Rossi came crashing out of his door, inexplicably fully dressed in his suit and trousers, tie hanging loose, and half flung around in neck, but still looking larger then life in the wreathing smoke, a handkerchief pressed over his mouth as he surveyed the scene, not seeing or hearing Reid's yells in the gloom and crackle of the flames as he crossed to Emily's door, his face morphing into an expression he had never seen on the senior agent before as his door shaking knocks produced nothing. But before he could move to help him, a wordless yell ripped from the mans lips as he flung himself forward, his foot and shoulders meeting with the door in a vicious crunch, sending it splintering inward as he disappeared inside and out of view.

It seemed like only seconds later that Morgan shot out of his room, voice echoing eerily in the gloom and he called out, his jeans not even fully done up, obviously having been woken like him from a dead sleep. And as he watched the man look back and forth, body tilting towards Garcia's room to his...it was right then that he realized just why he was still standing there, why he hadn't been able to move from the smoking carpet towards the others, standing smack the midst of the choking smoke and encroaching flames. Hotch.

Hotch's room wasn't on this floor...he was on the one below...

His eyes swung from the stairwell right beside him, and the flames that were already thick behind it, easily seen through the tiny window of glass, over to the others down the hall before he made his own decision and ran for the stairs. For once ignoring his brain which was telling him that this was definitely going down on the list of one of the more stupid things he had ever done, before he swung the remaining dripping wet towels over himself and hit the door at a dead run.

The flames had been hot, the towels sizzling and smoking fire as nipped quite literally at his heels, the soles of his shoes sticking strangely to the ash strewn carpet, and then the linoleum tipped stairs as he raced down them, trying to avoid the falling embers, and staying as far away from the walls as possible as they burned in a strange patchwork of fire and gaping black holes around him, the roaring flames seeming to pull the very oxygen from his lungs as he struggled in vain to breathe.

But then suddenly he was out, the red glow of the exit sign blinding him for a brief second as he fumbled with the hot door handle, his long limbs flying as he emerged into an even more chaotic version of the floor above.

There were flames enveloping rooms here, a few of them already fully engulfed, doors still swinging crazily as if their occupants had only just vacated them. He could hear yelling, people panicking, disappearing and reappearing throughout the gloom, pushing past him, yelling at him as they fled from the encroaching fire. There was so much smoke that even through the sopping towel around his face; he found he couldn't catch his breath.

But then he was finally there, at Hotch's door, the flames so god damn close down the hall that he could feel the hair on the top of his arms prick up with the heat. And his heart sank, the door was closed and locked.

The man must still be inside..

But he couldn't let himself dwell on that...he couldn't. Because there were only a few reasons why Hotch would still be in his room at a time like this, and none of them were good.

There was no answer to his panicked shouts, or knocks, and he threw his shoulders against the door in vain, feeling it rattle and buckle but not break. But he didn't have the breath to curse, because right then his eyes spied the fire axe across the hall, and before he could fully think the action through, his bad leg twinging warningly as it met with the safety glass.

He went after the door with the axe, his inexperience with the tool and his panic making his strokes awkward, the angle and speed all wrong, taking chunks out of the door instead until he got ridiculously lucky and the knob broke off, the axe and knob seeming to hit the carpet at the same time, as he wrenched the door open and rushed through.

"Hotch!... Hotch!" He yelled, half falling into the room in his haste, momentarily floored as a quick sweep of the room revealed nothing, only just realizing that the man could have already made it outside before he had gotten there, after all, the doors locked automatically...

Stupid, stupid, stupid! His mind chanted as he coughed, desperately trying to breathe through the smoky air as his hands scrabbled against the walls, mind registering there heat, and the growing structural weakness of the plaster and wood beneath them as his body sought to regain its equilibrium, his brain finding it much harder to make full sense of his surroundings then it normally should have.

'Smoke inhalation!' It screamed, the words jumbled but echoing in his brain, only to be drowned out by an equally as fierce shout that actually left his lips, his throat expelling Hotch's name to the four surrounding walls that only threw back his words in a mocking, smoke muted echo.

He sagged against the wall, not even noticing when one of the sodden towels slipped off his shoulders and fell onto the floor with a wet splat. Instead he forced his mind to focus, he was missing something...he could feel it. He knew it, knew it like he had simply known that the man would be here. There had to be something..

He let his mind work, ignoring the acrid tang of the encroaching fire and the dangerous heat, the bubbling wallpaper under his palms, the thickness of the air, and the panicked tension in his limbs in favour of letting his eyes rove the room, not missing a single detail of the space that was nearly as identical to his own room nearly a floor above.

160 bathroom tiles, chipped plaster, a half-used bar of hotel soap, one towel used, lying on the bathroom counter...Hotch's discarded suit jacket slung over the bolted down loveseat, one sleeve inside out, the left cuff torn slightly, snagged on a tree perhaps?...

His holstered gun and badge were still on the bedside table, his cell phone resting on top if the precarious metallic pile, the steady vibration and the colourful, flickering glow of the cell phone echoing strangely through the room, the display lighting up again and again with the name Rossi, and then Morgan, and then Garcia..But he didn't have time to answer..

Peeling wall paper on the baseboard below the phone jack, a weird orange stain on the base of the radiator...a pair of black boxer shorts hanging limply from the arm of the chair, black socks on the floor by the bed..

..Unshampooed carpet, littered with sock lint, Hotch's patented leather shoes, laces neatly tucked in, lined up perfectly straight against the wall... Suitcase half open, little Jillian Griffith's case file still open across a layer of clothes, a suit and trousers already selected and brushed out across the beside chair, ready for a tomorrow that it would never see, but weirdly no tie in sight...

Bed unmade, covers thrown to the right side...pulled down at an odd angle...and...OH!

And that was when he spied an all too familiar arm protruding out from the floor beneath the other side of the bed.

Hotch!

Dressed in only a pair of black BAU sweats and strangely, his Rolex, the man was splayed out across the floor, the sheets hanging half off the bed with him, one leg cocked out as if he had hit the ground in mid step, his tussled, dark haired head resting in the crook of one arm, looking for all the world as he had simply fallen asleep like that.

He knew without having to ask what had happened, with the density of the smoke being thicker on this lower floor, and having likely been sleeping, Hotch had woken up far too late, having only been able to stumble out of bed before collapsing, oxygen depravation setting in, stealing consciousness from him at the worst possible moment. Leaving him unable to escape, unable to wake up, ...eventually falling into a sleep that you will never wake up from.. But not today. Not now!

He was across the room and at the man's side in seconds, nearly falling in his haste as he threw himself down to the carpet beside him. Come on Hotch, come on!

He shook him, grunting with effort as he pulled the man into him, letting the mans naked back rest against his chest as he shook him again, feeling the greater warmth of a man skin sinking into his own through the thin cotton of his shirt even as he yelled at him, his fingers pressing into the firm skin of his neck to check his pulse.

And his throat unclenched the slightest of bits when he found it still strong, pulsing a bit unsteady, but strong under his long, desperate fingers. His chest still rising and falling in a slow rhythm, making the few puffed, and still angry looking scars that dotted the mans flesh stand out stark amidst the pale tanned skin, looking more like living anchors of life then the indications of a life almost lost.

They had to get out, and get out now, the fire was too close, the building too fire damaged. Yet at the same time he knew the man easily had sixty pounds of bone and muscle on him, if not more..there was no way he would be able to get them out in time by dragging his dead weight.

Not knowing what else to do, sitting there with the man half in his lap, one arm braced across his naked chest, he did the only thing he could. He hauled off and struck the man across the face as hard as he could, the force of slap seeming to reverberate up his entire arm, the cracking sound of flesh meeting flesh shocking even his own ears as his palm began to smart.

The mans dark eye lashes fluttered encouragingly, but he didn't have time for the man to flounder around half-conscious so he backhanded him again, feeling the heated tingle spread through his palm and into the mans face, flushing it an immediate irritated pink, the color looking strange against the mans dark haired head.

He was about to do it again when suddenly with a speed that seemed impossible, the man captured his hand just inches from his abused cheek, fingers tangling with his own, eyes alert and clear even as he struggled for breath.

"Reid..what?" Hotch gasped, the man's hand still strong around his smaller one as his back shifted along his chest until he swore he could feel every individual muscle along the mans spine collectively clench, and then relax. But the confusion in the mans eyes lasted for only a few seconds, because suddenly he saw awareness return, he saw Hotch's gaze sharpen as his eyes flickered around, taking in everything in a matter of a split second, his hand tightening around his, heat radiating between their pressed palms, traveling and sparking up through their fingertips.

And it was in one blink of those steady, dark eyes, as they finally refastened on his face, that he finally knew they were going to be all right.

"When a heart is on fire, sparks always fly out of the mouth".~ Traditional Proverb