A/N slight fluff alert – PbTin, you might need your bucket!!

Cast Off
Chapter 12
In Hospital

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the and the blind can see" – Mark Twain

A fortnight passed. The two men recovered slowly from their ordeal. Strauss had given the team leave unless something came up for them to work, and Reid and Hotch were blessed with constant visitors.

And they had a lot of time to talk too.

Hotch was still blind.

Some of the time Reid spent lying on his side watching Hotch sleep. He longed to see the life back in his eyes again. To Reid he looked like a frightened little boy, and he had slipped into a terrible depression.

'I'm finished at the BAU.' he had said. 'Finished with the FBI.'

'It might still come back!' Reid had countered. 'And even if it doesn't, you will be invaluable as an instructor.'

'My place is in the field with you. I won't survive without that.'

Reid hadn't said anymore. He knew Hotch was right.

He was asleep right now. He was sleeping too much, the doctor had said. When he was asleep he felt no pain, but the distress of the night mares still gripped him. Reid hadn't been out of bed alone yet. He made a decision. Since the nurses had separated their beds, Reid hadn't been able to touch him, and that human contact was what was going to save his sanity. He pushed back the covers on his bed, and carefully turned sideways on the bed. He slipped off the mattress and slowly took his weight on his feet. Pain shot through his body like an electric shock, and he gasped and gripped the bed. The beds were three feet apart; Reid looked at the space as if it were the Grand Canyon separating them.

Hotch was murmuring in his sleep, sounds that Reid recognised as a prelude to a night mare. He tentatively released his grip on the bed and reached out towards Hotch. With great deliberation, he took a step towards the other man.

Hotch was starting to cry out. Reid felt dizzy and shaky with nothing to cling onto. He took another step across the gap, and he was close enough now to touch Hotch's bed. He reached out for it, and missed.

On the way down he grabbed for anything he could, but he fell all the same, cracking his head on the bed frame, he was unconscious before he hit the floor.

-0-0-0-

'I'll call by and say good night before I go back to the hotel.' Garcia said. The others said they would wait in the restaurant, and Garcia went up the two floors to where her friends were. The first thing she saw was Reid's empty bed, then she saw him lying on the floor between the two beds. She ran to him and checked his pulse. He groaned when she touched him.

'What are you doing, Crazy Bunny?' she scolded as he woke up in her arms. 'Trying to kill yourself?'

'Aaron needs me, Garcia. Help me go to him.'

Garcia looked at her boss. He was sleeping but every now and again, a cry escaped his lips and his body twitched. He was in the depths of a night mare.

'Ok.' she said reluctantly. 'Lean on me and I will get you up onto his bed.'

Reid put an arm around Garcia's neck, and held on as she stood. It was only inches to go, and she turned him and he sat on the edge of Hotch's bed. That was when Garcia saw the bruise on Reid's forehead.

'Have you just done this?' she asked, touching it gently.

'I think I might have hit my head when I fell.' he said. 'I'm ok though.'

'Promise me you'll tell the nurse when she comes in.' Garcia said.

Reid promised. Garcia kissed him on the forehead and left.

Reid looked down at Aaron, and a surge of love for the man welled up from his heart. He had been prepared to die to make sure of his escape, and had lost his sight as a result. He felt a little sick from the head injury, and dizzy with effort. He lay down next to Aaron and gently put his arm around him without waking him. He could feel the rhythm of his chest rising and falling, and the soothing beat of his heart.

He had loved Aaron for a long time, but had never expressed his feelings. All the time Hotch was in love with Haley, it was not his place to usurp those feelings. But now, Hotch needed someone to love him and maybe one day, to love in return.

Reid kissed him softly on the neck, and Aaron stirred in his sleep. He was not gripped in a night mare now, his sleep was peaceful and healthy. Reid breathed in his scent and smiled as he fell asleep holding the man he loved in his arms.

-0-0-0-

He could sense Aaron at the periphery of his vision, but as he turned to see him, the world turned with him, and he was still out of reach.

He was wandering, eyes glazed and dark, unseeing, arms outstretched, walking towards danger.

He called to him, tried to warn him, but still the world turned, Aaron didn't hear, and he turned his head towards Reid, and blinked his eyes, and stepped off into nothing.

Reid lunged forwards to get to him, but he was gone now, there was nothing left......

-0-0-0-

Reid woke up with a jump. He was hanging onto Aaron. Aaron was awake, rigid with shock, eyes wide open.

'Aaron, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to waken you.' Reid said, loosening his tight hold. But instead of pulling away, Hotch moved closer, and rested his broken arm across Reid.

'Spencer?'

Reid touched Aaron's face.

'I'm here for you, Aaron. I always will be.'

Reid couldn't prevent tears of empathy from rolling down his face. He had no idea of the trauma Hotch had been through, nor indeed what he was going through now, but he was willing to give everything he had, including his life, to the man who was willing to die a horrible death for him.

Without getting beneath the cover, Reid curled his body around Aaron , and held him close. Aaron turned onto his side and hugged Reid's arms that were around him.

'Thank you.' he whispered hoarsely, Feeling that he was going to cry, he blinked away the tears, and held on tighter.

And that was how the nurse found them later on that night.

She didn't wake them, she simply raised the side of the bed at Reid's back so that he wouldn't fall, and left them to sleep.

They obviously needed each other. She made a mental note to push their beds back together in the morning.

-0-0-0-

That night David Rossi got a telephone call. There was a new case and the team was called back to Quantico. Their leave had ended, they needed to get back to work.

Dave woke Morgan, and called through to Emily and Garcia's room, to rouse them. The jet was going to pick them up in sixty minutes, and they had that long to get out onto the tarmac.

Dave showered and dressed, and while Morgan got ready, Dave ordered food for the four of them on the journey.

Then he put a call through to the hospital and left a message with the night staff to let Reid and Hotch know that they would not be visiting for a while.

Much as they all wanted to stay and be with Hotch and Reid, their work took precedent, and no one would understand that better than Hotch.

-0-0-0-

Aaron woke first the next morning. It took him a second or two to remember where he was, and what had happened the night before. When he remembered, his mouth flickered a tiny smile, and he released Reid's hands that he had been holding close with his forearms.

He tested his eyes as a matter of routine. There was no change, but he had got used to this happening, and as more days passed, he was expecting to see less and less. He had resigned himself to blindness, but there was the hope in the back of his mind that one day, his sight would return.

His work was his life. He had sacrificed his marriage to his work, and now Haley was dead because of it. He had lost much to stay loyal to his work, and now when he needed it, it had deserted him. He was on the scrap heap, but not before it had stripped him of everything else that could have given meaning to his miserable life.

Whatever happened now, he would be haunted by what had happened. He was useless to the FBI, and useless as a father to Jacky.

He hugged Reid harder. He was a life line.......

-0-0-0-

When Reid finally woke up, he was unsure if Hotch was still asleep.

'Aaron.' he whispered close to his ear. 'Are you awake?'

Hotch turned onto his back, still clinging onto Reid.

'Yes.' he answered, 'and thank you for being with me.'

'Always, Aaron.'

'Ok, Dr Reid, time for you to get back in your own bed.'

The nurse had been watching them through the window for a few minutes. But she thought it best that they were in their own beds when the doctor came.

'Your friends have had to go back to work.' she said, as she pushed the beds together. 'Now, Dr Reid, roll across into your bed. I will leave them together if I can.'

Reid did as she asked him, but he didn't let go of Hotch.

Hotch tried to sit up.

'I need to speak to Dave.' he said.

He could remember so clearly how quickly they had managed to work without Gideon. No one was indispensible. And Gideon was among the best. So how long would it be before he was not needed? Dave would be promoted to Unit Chief, and they would recruit at the bottom. There was no shortage of Agents longing for a chance to profile.

He gave a shuddering sigh, and realised that Dave would manage quite well without him.

Reid knew what he was thinking, and knowing that soon he would be back working at the BAU without Hotch, he understood how devastated Hotch must feel. He leaned over and gently took his bandaged hand.

'I won't go back without you.' he said. 'I will help you until you are ready to go back to work.'

'The team need you, Reid.' Hotch said, a little overwhelmed by what Reid was proposing – to give up his career to look after and rehabilitate a useless blind man.

'The team would do just as well with a computer as me.' Reid said depreciatively. 'You need me more.'

Hotch didn't know what to say. Words in situations like this he found difficult. He let Reid's words rest in the silence.

-0-0-0-

The doctor had said Reid could go home. And so could Hotch provided he had someone at home to care for him while he got used to his "new situation" as he called it.

'There is no one.' Hotch said, shocked at the meaning of his own words. There really was no one.

'There is a nice place, I have a brochure for it here, who would be willing to take you on a semi permanent basis.'

'I will take him home to my place.' Reid jumped in.

The doctor said that if Hotch was to go home, it should be his own home that he was used to so Reid asked Hotch if he could come and stay at his house for a while.

'I don't want to be alone.' Reid said. Hotch knew the real reason, and that Reid was sparing his feelings. It was a huge sacrifice from a man as private as Reid to make, and Hotch couldn't think of an alternative other than the offer of a place in an institution for the blind. He would die in there. He couldn't face it.

But at the sacrifice of Reid's career? he couldn't do it.

'I'll go to the institution.' he said.