Morgan barely slept the night Reid was put in hospital.

They'd been organised two to a room, and lying on the single across from Rossi, he realised that it had been him who'd insisted that Reid and Hotch room together – he'd jokingly complained he didn't want to be kept up by Reid's reading light or the flicker of the TV as he watched one of his shows on mute with captions on, said it was Hotch's term to have to deal with him. Reid had grinned, had laughed softly, but hadn't said a damn thing.

Lying there, he grit his teeth and stared up at the ceiling, wondered how long it'd be before they got word if Reid was out of surgery yet – he had to get stitches in the back of his head from how hard the sonuvabitch had hit him, and a few of the cuts over his shoulders and his upper arms had been long and deep enough that they'd needed stitches too. There were cuts over Reid's thighs, small stabs, but when he'd heard the FBI upstairs, he'd driven the blade deep into Reid's thigh, had done his best to puncture the femoral artery and then fled, left him to bleed out.

There was a sadism in that, wanting it to be slow, wanting…

There'd been blood all over him when Hotch had descended on him, had wrapped his belt tightly around Reid's leg in a tourniquet, but Reid had been in and out of consciousness – and on the stretcher, when he'd kissed Hotch, leaving a bloody handprint on the side of Hotch's face, Morgan had…

What did it mean, to learn a secret like that?

It meant that a basic thing you thought about the world wasn't what you thought it was. It meant lying there on your back in the dark, trying to rack your brains for every time Hotch and Reid were within six feet of each other the past few months. He wanted to tell himself that he should have known, but how could he have known – how could he have known that Reid carpooling with Hotch meant they were fucking?

He couldn't stop thinking about how many times Hotch had snapped at Reid, in the beginning, and the way that Reid had lied to him – it's possible that Hotch doesn't approve? Different personalities? He'd lied to him. He'd lied to Morgan's face, again and again, had told these little half-truths and lies, had told Morgan not to worry – had told Morgan he didn't want him to attack his boyfriend, and the whole time, it was Hotch.

The biggest crock of bullshit Morgan could think of, and the marks on Reid's back, the bites, the bruises…

Hotch was a big guy. The only person on the team bigger than him was Morgan himself, and Morgan couldn't get the thought out of his head, of Hotch smacking Reid around, throwing him down, bruising him, hurting him. It was sickening, the idea of it, disgusting to think of Reid getting hurt at work and then going back to that – and Morgan had had some rough sex in his lifetime, but it still rankled. He'd never left bruises on a girl like Hotch had left on Reid, not in all his life – and it'd been one thing, thinking of some cute little secretary built as skinny as Reid was, but not Hotch.

When had Hotch first met Reid? How old had he been?

Morgan knew Gideon had taken Reid under his wing when he'd still been a teenager. He'd met Reid a few times before he joined the BAU, seen this shy kid in glasses with a pocket square who lit right up when Gideon turned to teach him things, and the way they'd talk sometimes… Gideon had always had time for Morgan, had always taught him, but Morgan had felt so much like he had to run to catch up in the beginning, like there were a million things to learn and he'd never learn more than a couple of them – Reid had seemed like an encyclopaedia even then, and yet he'd never seemed confident at all, not until he'd spent years in the BAU.

Was that when he'd first met Hotch? Reid, sixteen and even ganglier than he was now, meeting Hotch at twenty-six years old, still new to the Bureau, still— Well, not that Hotch was old now, because there were only two years between Morgan and Hotch, but he seemed old, sometimes.

How did they talk about the job? How could you treat your job as normal, when you were sleeping with your boss, when that boss was ten years older than you, when—

"Kid," Rossi said from the other bed, "I can hear those wheels creaking as they turn. Put a pillow over your head, or something."

"Easy for you to say," Morgan said, turning onto his side and glancing at the hour of the clock, now approaching the early morning. "You knew."

"I knew," Rossi admitted. He had his stupid little silk eye mask on, with moisturiser Garcia had bought him for his last birthday underneath, and silky, expensive pyjamas – the rest of Rossi didn't really match up with the cheap hotel sheets.

"Since?"

"Since a month in," Rossi said. "Hotch forgot his cell and wasn't answering his landline – I went over to check out if he was okay, and Reid was passed out on the couch. It was dark, he was lying on his belly – I thought it was some girl, 'til I saw the sweater vest folded up on the chair."

"It doesn't bother you?" Morgan demanded, sitting up. "How can it not?"

"I think we had this conversation," Rossi said mildly. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but—"

"I know, I know," Morgan muttered. "Reid's no baby. But the amount of power you can have over somebody who's your subordinate, who looks up to you, and for Reid to—"

"He initiated it," Rossi said, pushing his mask up and looking at Morgan with his lips pressed together. "You know that, right? He's been pushing Hotch every step of the way for this – and Reid isn't his student, Reid isn't a kid. Reid and Hotch have been working alongside each other for just as long as you and he have, and Hotch isn't exactly a drill sergeant – what, you think Reid is scared of him, that Hotch could tell Reid to so much as jump without Reid demanding why?"

Morgan grit his teeth.

"Reid is vulnerable," Morgan said. "You know that, Rossi, you know damn well, and Hotch knows exactly the same things, he knows about Hankel, he knows about Gideon, he knows what it was like for Reid growing up, and—"

"And Reid is a grown man," Rossi said, "who is fighting for his life on a goddamn OR table. You know what I think? I think you're taking something personally that hasn't got shit to do with you – and I also think that you're letting yourself rile yourself up over it because you don't want to think about how Reid could have died tonight, or how they're working on him right now. And you know what Aaron's doing right now?"

Morgan met Rossi's gaze, his serious expression.

"He's sitting there with his head in his hands, can sleep about as much as you can," Rossi said.

"He lied to me, Dave," Morgan said. "For months. He didn't trust me."

"He loves you, Derek. Your approval means the world to him – and what he didn't want, I'm pretty sure, was for you to blame Hotch for this whole thing, or treat him like he was some child who didn't know what he wanted."

Morgan lay down again, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "How can you be okay with this?"

"I've been with younger women," Rossi said. "So have you."

"This is different."

"Because Reid's a man? Because Hotch is a man too?"

"Don't make it like that. We work together."

"Kid, I hate to point this out to you, but a lot of our fraternisation guidelines originally had one intended audience, and that audience was not Jason Gideon. I used to date a lot of girls within the Bureau. That bother you?"

"That's not the same thing," Morgan said.

"Look," Rossi said softly. "What Buford did to you—"

"This is not about that," Morgan snapped. "Hotch isn't anything like…" He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, letting his head fall back onto the pillow. "It's not about that," he said quietly.

"Okay," Rossi said. "Try to sleep, okay?"

Morgan said nothing, and turned onto his other side.

"Derek," Hotch said quietly, and Morgan stopped short as he slid on his jacket. Hotch didn't flinch away from him, no matter that Morgan knew he'd been stunted with him all day, doing his best to avoid Hotch where possible, and getting irritable when Hotch tried to talk to him, tried to justify it, tried any of it.

"What?" Morgan asked.

"Spencer is pretty severely concussed," Hotch said softly, "and—"

"Prentiss told me."

"He's going to be gearing for a fight," Hotch said, slightly louder. "You know what he's like – he can't handle the threat of a confrontation, he needs to try to have it in the here and now."

"So?"

"So he's going to try to start a fight with you, forget it, and started the same fight again two minutes later, but—"

"Thanks for the advice," Morgan said sharply. "I'll try not to fight with the kid in the hospital bed. Would you advise I try to fuck him instead?"

It said a lot about Hotch that the man didn't even blink. His expression remained neutral – it wasn't that he wasn't angry, that he wasn't furious, because Morgan knew that he was, but he had a way of bracing himself before he went at subjects he knew would be argumentative or insulting, and right now, Morgan was definitely that. Logically, he knew Hotch wouldn't hurt Reid – except that he'd left bruises on him, marks, and why wouldn't he…?

"But he can't wear his contacts at the moment," Hotch went on, so reasonably that Morgan wanted to punch him, "and wearing his glasses hurts, too. The concussion is probably making his blurred vision even worse – Reid is going to be relying mostly on your voice when you talk to him, not the faces you make. He's probably going to be a lot more sensitive about your tone than he normally would be."

"Kid's basically blind until something's more than six feet away from him," Morgan said softly. "He's seriously sat in that hospital bed and he can't even see? What, Gideon's reading his books out loud?"

"He's struggling to concentrate at the moment, actually," Hotch said quietly. "They haven't been able to pick up any books yet."

Morgan clenched his jaw.

"We'll see you in a few hours," Hotch said. "As soon as we finish up here."

Morgan looked at Hotch, at his unmoving facial features, the way he held his chin up, squared his shoulders.

Reid slept for almost two hours.

To pass the time, Gideon and Morgan played cards, and for just a while it was like old times, except that whenever he glanced over, he saw Reid's bandages, saw Reid's heartbeat on the monitor, saw Reid's pale, pale face.

"It's the longest he's slept all day," Gideon said quietly. "I'll have to tell Garcia how good those kittens were."

"Tell me this bothers you," Morgan said. "Him. Hotch."

"It does," Gideon said. "It bothers me a lot. I used to try to find boys that'd be okay for him. Academics. Normally, all the guys he went out with – and the women – approached him. With the ones I pushed his way, he could take the lead."

"Rossi said he took the lead with Hotch," Morgan said.

"Yeah," Gideon murmured. "That helps."

Morgan looked back to Reid, couldn't help the way he felt sick just to look at him, to see Reid pale and drawn out – he thought again and again of the Reid they'd pulled out of that basement, sticky with blood with Hotch's belt around his thigh, and then Reid, kissing him—

"Does he remember?"

"Not much," Gideon murmured. "Once the concussion's healed up, he'll probably insist on a cognitive interview, but he got upset earlier, couldn't remember if Cummings had hit him outside or down in the basement."

"The torture?"

"I don't think so," Gideon murmured. "The thing he mostly remembers is thinking he was about to die, and trying to kiss Hotch before he did."

"He needed to know," Reid mumbled, not opening his eyes, but shifting slightly on the pillow. "That I love him, didn't want to… let him think something else."

"You love him?" Morgan repeated.

"I don't want it to just be sex," Reid said. He opened his eyes, half-lidded, staring forward, and when he tried to focus on Morgan, he couldn't help but wonder how much of him he was seeing. "Derek?"

"Yeah, kid, I'm here," Morgan said softly.

"I had a speech," Reid said. "I don't remember it."

"A speech?" Morgan repeated, tilting his head.

"I didn't know if I wanted it," Reid mumbled, reaching up and rubbing at his eye. "That's why I didn't want to tell you – I knew if I told you it'd be real, and I didn't know if I… I wanted it… He's scared to leave socks at my house."

Morgan glanced at Gideon, but Gideon looked as baffled as he was.

"Socks?" Morgan repeated.

"He thinks if he leaves stuff he'll be intruding," Reid mumbled. "Like I don't have space for him – I can… I can make space…" He opened his eyes wider, set his jaw, glared at Morgan – almost at him, almost. "It's none of your business. Why do you always think my life is your business? You wouldn't pick anyone else's life apart like this – why am I the only one that you think can't make—" Morgan didn't say anything, waiting, but Reid let out a noise of frustration, clenching his hand beside his head and squeezing his eyes shut. "I can't… I can't remember—"

"It's okay," Morgan said softly, reaching out and gently touching Reid's knee.

"I can make space," Reid said sharply, still defensive, but Morgan didn't think it was directed at him anymore. "I want to."

"You can," Gideon said. "As much as you want."

"Where is he?" Reid asked. "Have they caught Cummings yet?"

It hurt, seeing Reid confused, watch him forget things in real time – Morgan wondered if he'd remember being like this when the concussion healed up, if he'd think of himself like his mom, if that would stick with him.

"Yes," Hotch said as he entered, the team filtering in behind him. "We caught him."

"Aaron," Reid said, and he reached out immediately: Morgan expected Hotch to lean in to kiss him, or to hug him, but he just took the hand that Reid reached out to him, holding it loosely in his own. "Can you get them to turn those lights down?"

"They're already turned down as far as they can go, Spence," Hotch said softly.

"We could get you an eye mask," Morgan said.

"I can't wear one," Reid said. "I'll throw up."

He said it so casually, so evenly, like it was something he said all the time, and Morgan glanced away from Reid and Hotch to JJ and Prentiss, and to Rossi, who'd moved to lean against the wall behind Gideon.

Reid's eyes were closed when he tipped his head forward, and Hotch put his hand up like he was going to put his hand in Reid's hair, but then he glanced at Morgan and Gideon, and didn't, brushing his fingers over Reid's cheek in a fleeting shift of his hand before pulling away.

The way Reid looked at Hotch made his blood boil, the complete trust there, the eagerness – except that Hotch didn't look smug about it, didn't look pleased, just looked… worried. Worried about Reid – not pleased to have power over him.

"I want to go home," Reid said in the smallest voice Morgan could imagine.

Hotch opened his mouth, looking at a loss, and Morgan said, "In a little while, kid. You gotta play a game with us, first."

"A game?" Reid repeated.

"Uh huh."

"What game?"

"Guess what colour underwear your boyfriend's wearing. You get it right, I'll get you some jello."

"Morgan," Hotch said, the tiniest tinge of pink appearing in his square cheeks as everybody laughed, but Reid was just blinking at him.

"How many days have we been in town?"

"Three."

"Navy blue," Reid said. "With anchors on the waistband."

Morgan looked up at Hotch. Hotch was looking at Morgan, his lips held tight together, and Morgan felt like he could see every piece of stress in his face – he knew this wasn't it, that later, he and Reid would really have to talk about it, when Reid could talk about it, and Hotch… Hotch.

"Well," Hotch said. "Get the man his jello."

The team laughed, a few of them clapping, but Hotch kept his gaze on Morgan, and gave the smallest nod of his head – thanks, acknowledgement, what, it didn't matter.

"I'll be right back," he murmured.

"So," he heard JJ say as he stepped out. "Garcia said she sent kittens."

He was still in line in the canteen when Hotch came up, readying cups of coffee on a tray to bring back to the room.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

"It really messes me up to see him like that," Morgan said.

"Me too."

"Rossi said that it's about Buford, and it isn't, it's… I don't like that I didn't see it. That I couldn't see it. All those years he didn't tell me he liked boys, let alone you, and I didn't… How can I not see something right in front of my face, Hotch?"

"He didn't want to hurt you, and he really cares how you think of him," Hotch said softly. "He's been rehearsing how he was going to tell you for the past week. Kept practising it on me, then saying he had to redraft. He told me the last time he was so anxious about a speech like this, he was presenting his first PhD thesis at fifteen years old."

Morgan nodded, slowly. "He said he loves you."

Hotch's expression was open, honest, grave. "I love him too."

Morgan opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. "I'll take him his jello," he said, and walked away.