As soon as Garcia had called him, the other night, he'd started packing his bag immediately – he'd packed some of the books he'd bought for Reid already, and mostly packed a few changes of clothes and gotten ready immediately as Garcia had booked his flight.
He'd been anxious, irritable, the whole flight over from L.A., so much so that one of the stewardesses had asked gently if there was anything extra she could get him, and asked if it was a family emergency.
He hadn't known what to say: he'd asked to be left alone.
He'd arrived at a little past three in the morning in L.A., and Reid had just fallen asleep for the night, with Hotch preparing to leave and sleep fitfully in the motel across the street from the hospital.
He hadn't been able to make himself believe that Reid was still alive until he was in his hospital room, looking down at his sleeping face and his peaceful expression, and even that peace had been crumbled into dust as he'd looked around at the instruments and sensors he was attached to, all that beeping and noise, all the bright lights that were barely dimmed for the evening.
The scent was the most overpowering thing, antiseptic and bleach and talcum powder heavy in his nostrils, making him have to resist coughing, but he wanted to stay with Reid, wanted to ensure he was…
"We thought the family was just witnesses," Hotch had said to him, whispered it, and Gideon had understood in the moment that he hadn't been able to talk to the rest of the team about it just yet, not even Rossi. It was like that, when you led the team – it wasn't easy to talk about what you'd done wrong, how you'd done it, even if you know that wrong-doing was irrational. Gideon had been at this decades longer than Hotch, and he never learned to do it himself. "They had an adopted brother, Canadian, no paper trail, and he just…"
"It's not your fault," Gideon had said.
"That's not the point," Hotch had said, and Gideon had known exactly what he meant.
How could he not think of every other time he'd seen Reid sick, or injured, at a time like this? How could he not think of Reid with anthrax poisoning, or Reid shaking after a bad case – how could he not think of Tobias Hankel?
How could he not think of Stephen, dead in his coffin?
"Jason?"
Gideon looked up from the book he hadn't really been reading, and immediately he marked his page and set it aside, getting to his feet. Reid was rubbing sleepily at one eye, looking dazed and out of it, and Gideon touched the top of his hair, gently smoothing it back from his face.
"What time is it?"
"A little past one," Gideon murmured. "You've been in and out of it."
"I need to lower my dose of something," Reid said. "Could I have some water?"
"Sure," Gideon murmured, pouring Reid some from the jug on the side, and Reid took a few sips from the glass, coughing. "You know, a lot of the confusion is because of how much pain you're in, and how impossible it's making for you to get some deep sleep."
"Unlike morphine," Reid said. "Which would make me sleep really well."
"I'm not suggesting morphine."
"Dilaudid?" Reid asked, tone nothing short of catty.
"You want me to slap you, Spencer? It'd make me very unpopular with the nurses, but I'll do it."
Reid shook his head. "I wouldn't say no to a hug, though," he said in a barely comprehensible mumble, staring down at his knees, and Gideon hesitated. The way he said it was full of shame, as if it was the worst thing in the world he could possibly ask for, as though he were expecting Gideon to say no, and Gideon stepped forward, leaning in.
"You choose the angle, I don't want to hurt your shoulder," Gideon said softly, and Reid leaned in, leaning his forehead against the crook of Gideon's shoulder as Gideon gently wrapped his arms around him. He was careful about it, not pressing on the bandages, and Reid felt heavy in his arms.
Reid would normally want to be squeezed more tightly than this – so would Gideon.
Maybe that was why Reid gripped loosely at the side of Gideon's shirt to stop him from pulling away too soon, and Gideon kept close, listening to Reid's breathing, feeling his heartbeat. "Bad dreams?" he asked, and Reid nodded his head, leaning heavily on him.
"You ready to give your mom a call?"
"Yeah," Reid whispered as he pulled away. "Thank you."
He walked across the street to get sandwiches for their lunch – Reid didn't have much of a sense of taste at the moment, but it was far better than it had been the past few days, and he hoped that bringing him something from outside the hospital might mean Reid ate something more substantial than jello and cold toast.
Because of the damage done to his leg, and how long it'd take the different sets of stitches to heal, let alone actually having the space to stretch his lanky legs out, Reid was banned from air travel for a while – once he was cleared to travel at all, Gideon and Hotch had already decided they'd get a car and drive straight to D.C.
"Uh, it's hard," Reid was saying as Gideon came back into the room, pulling the door closed behind him. "The pain isn't worse than that would be, Mom. Um, yeah, Aaron is okay – he feels guilty, and he's worried, obviously, but I'm gonna be okay. They don't think I'll need any more surgeries on my leg, but it depends how it heals. A lot of physical therapy, and no field work for a while. Yeah, I am. Thanks, Mom, but— No, I told him not to, that he shouldn't call you unless he knew for certain that I was… Well, that's not fair. Four months. I know it's not the same, but four months isn't that long of a time, and we weren't even— Sure, I can ask him. I love you too. Bye."
"How is she?"
"She's okay," Reid said. "Was worried about the government tracking whatever implants they put in my leg, making sure I didn't let any rod they needed to put in place had a serial number or anything like that."
"She wants Hotch to call her?"
"She wants us both to call together," Reid murmured. "Wants to make sure he's looking after me."
"Sandwich for you," Gideon said. "A lot of salad, a lot of spinach, a lot of tomato, goat's cheese. Disgusting, but right up your street."
"Thanks," Reid murmured.
"You want me to read to you?" Gideon asked.
Reid was quiet, touching his fingers loosely against his sandwich, pressing down on the bread slightly in order to fee the rebound of it, fresh, white.
"Putting your glasses on must be uncomfortable, with those bandages around your head." He'd only seen Reid wear the glasses once, since he'd been here – when Hotch had come to sit with him, and Reid had put them on so he could look at his face.
"The glare of the lights is worse when I have them on," Reid said. "It's better when things are blurry."
A lot of the team forgot how bad Reid's vision was, when he didn't have his contacts or his glasses on him. He could still move around, could see stuff a ways away, but as long-sighted as he was pages and screens just became blurs of black on white in front of him, and the closer people got, the less clear their faces were.
"The pain can't make it easy to concentrate, either," Gideon said.
"It's why I didn't ask you to read to me before," Reid said quietly. "It's hard to follow. Rossi told me that story about that girl earlier – Carmilla? I'm still not really sure what happened to her. Or what the point of it was."
"Well," Gideon murmured, "I think the point of that one was just that he found her very attractive. But I wasn't really listening either."
"They want to yell at me for keeping it secret," Reid said lowly. "How can they when I can't even follow more than a few sentences strung together?"
"No one wants to yell at you."
"Derek does."
"Derek Morgan does not want to yell at you," Gideon replied. "He wants to wrap you in bubble wrap and make sure nothing hurts you – failing that, he wants to give every man that comes within six feet of you a pat-down and a background check before they're allowed to shake your hand."
"I wanted to tell him," Reid said, but his eyes had defocused again. "I was gonna sit him down and tell him, and he wasn't going to see Hotch until after we'd talked, and I was gonna make him… make him understand…"
"Son, I need you to eat that, not just poke it," Gideon said, and Reid obeyed automatically, brought the sandwich up to his mouth, took a few bites, chewed them, swallowed them.
"I don't want him to hate Hotch because of me," Reid mumbled. "He doesn't deserve it. And what if he hates him and then we break up and it was all for no reason?"
"You think you're going to break up?" Gideon asked softly.
"I'm not what he wants," Reid said. He'd taken a slice of tomato out of the sandwich, was eating it in small, delicate bites, the rest of the sandwich barely two thirds eaten in his lap. "And now he can't tell me that, 'cause he'll feel guilty."
It was, as far as Gideon could tell, nonsense. Hotch loved Reid to pieces, from what Gideon could see, and the feeling was more than mutual – he knew that commitment wasn't something that Reid excelled at, knew that Reid had the same problems with change and commitment that Gideon had himself.
"That what you had a bad dream about?" Gideon asked.
"He's gonna realise," Reid said, pushing the sandwich away, and Gideon took the box away, wrapping the sandwich back up and putting the box aside.
"Realise what?" Gideon asked. "What do you think is wrong with you that Aaron could possibly have issue with?"
"No one wants to stay with me," Reid said, his eyes closing again. "Even when I'm doing everything right. Gideon left and he cared about me way more than Hotch does, and I could walk then." He groaned, reaching up and touching his head, pressing the heel of his hand against one of his eyes. "I need to lower my dose of something," he said. "Could I have some water?"
"Yeah," Gideon murmured, reaching for the glass and pressing it into Reid's hand. "You drink this."
"Thanks, Dad," Reid mumbled, sipping at it slowly.
"You sound upset," Hotch said.
"He's in agony, and he won't admit it," Gideon said. "He hasn't slept since he came out of that coma – he's hurting, and he's confused, Aaron. Didn't even realise it was me he was talking to a second ago, because believe it or not, being blind as a damn bat paired with a cocktail of barely effective pain medication isn't great for one's sense of recognition."
Hotch was silent, obviously didn't know what to say.
"He seems pretty convinced you'll leave him," Gideon said.
What he wanted Hotch to say was, "Whose fault is that?"
Instead, Hotch said, in a very gentle and reasonable voice, "No force on earth could compel me to."
"I told him that."
"Thank you," Hotch said. "That can't have been easy when you don't approve."
"He thinks Derek hates him."
Hotch was quiet again, and Gideon knew that he was looking directly at him – Rossi had said Morgan had barely spoken a word to Hotch, that he was angry with him, pissed as all Hell. He hadn't snapped at him, just yet, hadn't shouted, but they all knew it was probably coming – and Gideon couldn't fault it, because in Morgan's position, he would have responded in exactly the same way.
"What shift did you draw?" Gideon asked.
"I didn't," Hotch murmured. "I'm gonna stay with him after hours, until he falls asleep. Next up during business hours is Garcia."
"I wish we could just take him home," Gideon said.
"Yes," Hotch said softly. "Me too. I'll talk with you later."
"See you later, Aaron," Gideon murmured, and looked back to Reid, fitfully asleep again. He hoped he wouldn't remember this later, in a few weeks – he really hoped these confused days would fade into nothing for Reid, because problems with his memory, with his lucidity, were the sorts of things that really terrified him. None of the others had really noticed anything out of the ordinary, at least - Reid kept falling asleep, and was quieter with the others, let them do the talking, so hopefully they'd never realise how confused he was, half the time.
Gideon stepped back inside, and picked up one of his library books.
Reid woke up every few minutes, stirred, shifted. Once or twice, he made sounds of pain in his sleep.
Gideon's heart ached. It wasn't going to ease off any time soon, he knew.