Sleeping in Reid's bed, Hotch woke – for the third day in a row – to the sound of Reid retching. It wasn't something he'd noticed Reid dealing with as they'd made the drive from California, the three of them and Gideon's new calico, Brisket, but they'd only really gotten out of the car to eat and get some fresh air, and lying in the back, Reid had never really slept for more than two or three hours at a time.

The first day, Hotch had put it down to his first nightmare coming up – the second day, he'd been concerned, but not enough to mention it before Reid did himself, which he didn't.

But today, after three days?

Hotch pulled himself to the edge of the bed, and he padded toward the bathroom, gently pushing open the slightly ajar door: he looked down at Reid, whose elbows were resting on the seat of the toilet, his hands fisted in his hair, his head bowed slightly over the bowl with his eyes tightly shut.

He was sitting awkwardly – he couldn't kneel, not with the state his leg was in, and so he sat leaning on his good thigh, his other leg extended on the bathroom mat. He was trembling visibly, and on his chalky-pale skin, Hotch could see the beads of sweat shine under the light.

First, he filled a glass of water from the sink. Stepping carefully over Reid's bad leg, he lowered himself to the ground behind him, and wrapped his arms around Reid's waist after setting the glass down in front of him. He didn't say anything, just squeezed tightly around Reid's abdomen and leaned his chin against Reid's shoulder.

Reid stayed in place for a little while, and then he leaned back against Hotch, put one shaking hand back on Hotch's thigh.

"Nightmare?" Hotch asked.

Nod.

"You take your meds yet?"

Shake of the head.

"That's good, at least," Hotch murmured against the back of Reid's neck. "Means you don't have to take two doses."

Nod.

"You want to shower first, or have breakfast?"

Silence as Reid picked up the glass, taking a sip, and then Reid said, "Shower with me." He said it so quietly Hotch could barely hear him, no matter that Hotch's face was barely inches away from Reid's own. Hotch thought about the shower chair in Reid's bathroom, so that he could sit down – Reid's shower was roomy enough for both of them, normally, but with the chair, it was a little harder, not that Hotch was going to say that.

"Okay," he said quietly, and as he got to his feet, he gently pulled Reid up with him, let Reid as heavily on him as he wanted, and brought him over to the shower, letting Reid lean back against the wall as Hotch helped him undress.

Hotch had applied for four weeks of leave – they had given him two. Reid was going to be out of the Bureau for at least two months, if not longer, and even when he came back, there'd be another few months of being out of the field while he continued to recover – they couldn't exactly put him into the field on crutches or even with a cane, and he wouldn't be able to handle the recoil on his gun until his shoulder was entirely healed.

They'd both been staying at Reid's place – Reid felt safer here, with the security, the soundproofing, knowing where everything was, and that aside, Hotch couldn't deny that it was simply more accessible than his house was. Just coming down the driveway was difficult for Reid on his crutches, let alone wanting to go upstairs in the house, but here, there were ramps, lifts…

"I don't have to stay here if you don't want me to," Hotch had said softly. "If you—"

"No, no, please, please," Reid had said, all but begging him. "Please don't go."

Hotch had thought, at first, it was to do with the anxieties he knew Reid had about being abandoned – that he thought if Hotch would leave, he wouldn't come back, but it wasn't that. If Reid didn't know what room Hotch was in, he become anxious, irritable, and Hotch had noticed the subtle way he'd changed things around, asking Hotch to move his desk so his back no longer faced the door, or pushing the sofas up against the wall shelves, blocked books be damned, so that he wasn't reachable from behind.

They'd need to talk about it.

He knew they would.

Supporting Reid by the waist so he could pull off his pyjama shirt and the undershirt he wore underneath, Hotch could see the myriad new scars he had, the cuts and small stabs that Cummings had left over his shoulders and his upper arms, experimenting, playing. Reid's hair, at least, hid most of the new scar on the back of his head, but sometimes Hotch could see it because of how his hair fell, still puckered from the healed stitches.

Reid put his hands on Hotch's shoulders as Hotch leaned to pull down his pyjama bottoms, so that Reid could step out of them: bent over as he was, Hotch was barely inches away from the gnarled mess the Cummings' knife had left in Reid's thigh, could see where he'd twisted the blade and see the heavy puckering of this wound, too, where it had been stapled and then sewn shut. The stitches had been removed, but Hotch knew that inside the muscle was still tender and still slowly repairing itself, and around the biggest wound were the others, shallower stabs and cuts, more experimentation.

The women Cummings had killed had been hallowed, sacred: Reid had been an unexpected windfall, a tool for potential experimentation.

He stayed crouched down, looking up at Reid's pale, drawn face, the complete focus Reid had down on him, the gravity in his expression. Reid's hand cupped Hotch's cheek, his thumb trailing a featherlight touch over Hotch's skin.

For the past three days, it had been Hotch and Reid alone in Reid's little apartment. Initially, Hotch had tried his best to give Reid his space, to let Reid settle with his books or his TV in peace, to at least make him feel like Hotch wasn't intruding on him even if he was intruding in Reid's home, but every time he worked in the bedroom to leave Reid in the living room, or vice versa, Reid would limp in with his book in hand and sit beside Hotch instead.

He never said anything about it. It wasn't subtle, but it wasn't explicit either – the two of them were on a delicate knife edge in terms of need at the moment, each of them trying to see what the other man needed without voicing what they needed themselves.

"Get in," Hotch said softly, and Reid nodded, leaning heavily on the shower's wall as he stepped inside and sank down into the chair, turning the dial to begin the spray of hot water.

He watched Hotch as he undressed. Hotch did it slowly, carefully drew his shirt up over his head, bit by bit, and when he saw Reid's gaze, rapt on him, and Hotch teased as he put his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers, sliding them slowly down his thighs.

It was Hell on his knees, sucking Reid's cock in the shower. Reid had bought a well padded mat with a lot of grip on it, but the position was awkward and the ground was still hard, the little gripped surface of the mat digging into his skin, but it was, Hotch knew, the first time Reid had come in months.

It barely took two minutes, sucking Reid's cock into his mouth and swallowing him down – no condom. Every time he'd fantasised about this, he'd wanted to draw it out, to pin Reid back against the shower wall and make sure he was well and truly sobbing before Hotch let him come – but this, this was a release of tension, a need…

"No, no, don't," Hotch murmured when Reid wrapped his hand around Hotch's cock, although he groaned when Reid squeezed. "I'll put on a show for you. After."

"You don't have to."

"I want to. I want to see you watch."

Reid nodded, and like this in the chair, the hot water a spray over both of them, he looked small, vulnerable.

"Tell me about it," Hotch murmured as he took up the soap and began to scrub at Reid's chest, his shoulders – gently, not pressing too hard on his still healing shoulder or the new scars that dappled them. "The nightmare."

"It's a nightmare," Reid said, fidgeting when Hotch slid his hands over his belly, almost laughing but keeping his face serious. "You don't have to do that."

"I know."

"You don't have to take care of me."

"I know."

"I can do it myself."

"Do you want to?" Hotch gripped Reid by the jaw, squeezed tightly as he pushed Reid back in the chair, forced Reid to look up at him while leaning in to make sure the spray of water didn't get in his eyes. "Or do you want to let me?"

Reid gulped, audibly, the apple of his throat bobbing.

"You want me to choke you?" Hotch asked softly.

"Yes," Reid said. "But not— right now. After."

"Okay," Hotch murmured, and leaned back, beginning to scrub gently over Reid's good thigh, and then each calf. He went slowly over Reid's injured thigh, barely pressed on the flesh and focused on the skin, and Reid breathed heavily as he worked, then grabbed for the shampoo.

He pressed it into Hotch's hand, insistent, and Hotch went obediently, tangled his hands in Reid's hair and began to work it in, lathering it into place.

"It starts off here," Reid said softly. "And I move around the apartment, and my leg is injured and it's hard to move, and I try to find you, but you're not here. And I… And Jack is supposed to be here too, and Gideon, Emily, everyone is meant to be here, but I keep going between the rooms and I'm shouting everybody's names but no one is can hear me."

Hotch tipped Reid's head back, dragging the shower head to rush directly over the back of his hair, and Reid stopped talking until Hotch had rinsed the lather away.

"Sponge."

Hotch handed it over, and when Reid dragged Hotch in front of him, so that he could start running the sponge over Hotch's belly, his sides, Hotch let him, let Reid position him as he wanted.

"And then Cummings gets in, and I can't move," Reid whispered. "And I'm on the floor, and I can't stand up or run away, and he cuts my thigh open again, and he keeps going and going, and I don't die."

"That won't happen," Hotch said softly, crouching when Reid tugged him to do so.

"But it isn't just Cummings," Reid said. "It's— It's just someone, then, more than one, it's, it's people, in my…" Reid was breathing heavily, seemed to struggle to even verbalise it, and Hotch put his hands out, touched Reid's knees.

"No one is going to come in here," Hotch said softly. "This is why you don't want to let anyone in the house?"

Reid's response had been visceral, when his physical therapist had asked for his address instead of his PO box. Hotch had been almost asleep on the couch, dozing, when he'd heard Reid suddenly snap, voice cracking, as he spoke on the phone: "None of your staff will be in my home – there's no need for any of you to have my address. No, I don't want home visits, I only want to visit the facility myself. Frankly, I really don't care what your forms require, I—"

He'd gentled, when Hotch had reached out and touched him, when Reid had realised how loudly he was shouting, how nasty he was being with whatever poor intern was answering the phone.

Hotch turned off the water.

"You think Gideon will hurt you?" Hotch asked.

"No."

"Emily, Dave, JJ?"

"Of course not."

"You don't want any of them here, either."

"I don't want them to know where I live," Reid said softly. "It's… private. No one knows where I live, how to get in, and it means that that no one could— could make them."

"That's not going to happen."

"I know. I know. Just…"

"I'll get you a towel."

Reid shook his head when Hotch offered to help him get dressed, and Hotch stepped into the kitchen, was chopping peppers on Reid's kitchen counter when Reid came in on his crutches. Gideon had been right – Reid's kitchen was a thing of beauty, really, well-ventilated and with a lot of counter space to work on, and the only things Reid really used in here, before Hotch had started coming around, were the microwave and the sink.

He had his own washer/dryer in the kitchen – there'd been a dishwasher there when he'd moved in, but Reid had done his own studies into the efficacy of dishwashers when he'd been studying for his engineering PhD, and preferred to wash his dishes himself. That was why Reid said he had made the change, anyway.

When Hotch had mentioned it to Gideon, Gideon had quietly said, with a small shrug of his shoulders, that the breaker had flipped while he was washing his clothes in the basement a few days after moving into the building, and Reid had been left to try to feel his way out of the dark with only the emergency lights to see by – that had been relatively soon after Hankel.

"Omelette?"

"Please. Thank you. Aren't you going to do anything while you're on leave?"

"You know why I took leave?"

"Because you think I need you to look after me?"

"Yes," Hotch said, turning to look at Reid, awkwardly perched as he was on one of the dining table chairs, his jaw clenched, his expression defiant as he looked at Hotch. "But that's… not the only reason."

"Why then?"

"It was advised I take time off."

"By?"

"Strauss."

"You don't care about her advice."

"It was advice that arose from my psychological assessment," Hotch said. "I was advised to spend time with you, and with my son, and it was very firmly suggested I not work on Bureau paperwork or profiling in the meantime."

Reid stared at the tile of the kitchen floor, and Hotch turned back to pour eggs into the frying pan, listening to their loud sizzle.

"But then, you knew that," he said. "You just needed me to say it out loud."

"Sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry. I know you don't like feeling like you have to rely on other people. I don't either. I'm a very private person, too." His throat was thick as he said it: his tongue felt too big for his mouth. He'd already said more than he really wanted to, and he thought back on a thousand conversations with Haley just like this one, his back to her, her needling him with questions about his feelings, trying to get him to just open up, when half the time it was something he knew she'd be horrified at if he voiced it.

"I still want to have sex," Reid said. "I don't want you to think that I don't want to, because my leg is… And if it turns you off, then—"

"It doesn't turn me off. You don't turn me off."

"It turns me off," Reid said lowly.

Hotch didn't have anything to say to that, pushing the spatula under the omelette, listening to the loud sizzle of it. He and Haley had gone through periods of little to no sex – usually months after a particular rough case, where Hotch got caught up in it in his head, couldn't get out of it, and into the mood.

He had a low sex drive, he thought. Not unnaturally low, not low enough to be something of concern to his doctor, but low enough that Haley had commented on it. Not a complaint, he remembered. Just…

"I was talking to Sally Henderson," she'd said, while they were both stood at opposite ends of the kitchen table, him slicing potatoes for dinner (fries), her slicing apples for dessert (apple cobbler). "And she said – you can't tell anybody she said this – she was talking about Rudy."

"Rudy, her husband Rudy?"

"We don't know another Rudy."

"I'm just checking."

"About her husband Rudy," Haley had said, smiling slightly, "and how he always wants sex when she's tired, and she has to fake a headache to get him to leave her alone."

"I don't like Rudy Henderson. He—"

"Please don't profile him," Haley had said, and Hotch had closed his mouth. "But then we were talking with a few other… Well, the point is, they all said their husband mostly initiates things in the bedroom, and I realised that you don't."

"I initiate things," Hotch had said, surprised by how defensive it had made him.

"Not as much as I do."

"You don't think I initiate things enough?"

"I think we're fine, actually," Haley had said. "I like it this way. I just thought it was interesting."

Things had changed, when they had Jack. Then, Hotch initiating things meant that he found Haley unattractive, not that he was letting her take the lead – and then, Hotch was being too demanding, not respecting that she was tired. It hadn't really been about wanting sex for him, and it hadn't really been about not wanting sex for Haley – just one of those things.

Hotch flipped the omelette onto the plate, and put it down in front of Reid.

"I don't want you to choke me," Reid said. "Today."

"That's okay."

"I want you— I want you on your knees. For me. And I want to be… I want to tell you what to do."

Hotch raised his eyebrows, looking down at Reid, whose expression was cultivatedly neutral. They both had the same train of thought running through their minds, Hotch knew – they were both thinking about how after a traumatic experience, a different sexual experience in a safe environment could provide catharsis, either re-enacting one's role as a victim, or assuring oneself of one's power and autonomy by acting as the one with power. Funny, Hotch thought – to Haley, to most people, it wouldn't be a sexy set of thoughts: it would have been clinical, uncomfortable, but they were profilers, this was natural for both of them.

Hotch saw the want in Reid's expression, the hunger, felt the way Reid looked down his body and felt a shiver run down his spine.

"Whatever you want," Hotch said softly. "After breakfast."

An hour later, after Reid had taken his meds, saw Hotch kneeling on the bed with Reid behind him, hissing as Reid drew the ropes tighter, so that the ropes were tight over the soft flesh above his elbows and in the midst of his forearms, then tightening finally around his wrists.

"This is called an armbinder," Reid murmured in his ear.

"Makes sense," Hotch said, trying to move his arms, even to raise them slightly, and finding that he barely could – the position made it too awkward to do so. "Who taught you this?"

"Books," Reid said. "I can see you like it."

He leaned in closer, his chest resting on Hotch's shoulder, and he slid his hands slowly down over Hotch's bare chest, his belly, his fingertips barely glancing over the flesh, making Hotch grunt as his cock gave a twitch between his legs.

Reid was right. Hotch was half-hard, his cock starting to stand up straight against his belly, and Reid had barely said anything as he'd worked with the rope, sitting on the bed behind Hotch to tie him tightly in place – it had been the confident movements of his hands that had made Hotch's skin light up, that had made his libido come flaring to life.

"Forward," Reid said. "Ass up."

Hotch swallowed, but when he hesitated, Reid shoved him in the back of the head and forced him to fall forward, his face pressed into the pillows, his arms behind his back. The position felt impossibly vulnerable, and to Hotch's genuine surprise, there was a liberation in that, in the fact that he couldn't really get up if he tried.

"Colour?"

"Green," Hotch breathed out.

"Good," Reid said, and slid two fingers inside him.

The lube on Reid's fingers was warm, but two fingers was more than Hotch was able to take without warning, and he clenched his hands tightly into fists against the small of his back, trying to hold back the sharp grunts that wanted to eke out of his throat as Reid slid his fingers deeper, pressed down—

"Spencer," Hotch choked out.

"Would you like to tie me up like this?" Reid asked softly, almost conversationally: with his other hand, he dragged hypnotising patterns over Hotch's flank, just hard enough not to be ticklish, and Hotch had to squeeze his eyes tightly shut, already seeing stars.

"If you wanted me to," Hotch said: two fingers became three, and he cried out, wishing he had something to bite down on, something that could muffle the sound.

"I think you'd like it," Reid said. "I think you'd like to tie me up and bend me over someone's desk in the main bullpen at the Bureau, where everybody could see me. Write your name on my ass and make it clear that you were the only one who could touch me—" Reid's fingers were pressing down and rubbing, and it made Hotch see stars, so much stimulation it was almost painful, his cock dripping on the sheets, "—but everyone else could still look."

"Fuck, Reid," Hotch said: the idea felt like it was being branded on the inside of his skull, the idea of Reid prone in place, seeing people look at him, men, women, and then looking at Hotch and averting their eyes, knowing precisely, precisely who had put him there.

"They'd see every mark you'd left on me," Reid said, almost conversationally – he didn't sound like he was struggling at all, and Hotch wished he could look at him, wished he could see him, Reid calm and collected as he thrust his fingers in Hotch's ass and took the opportunity to ruin him. "You know what I'd say if someone asked if they could touch me?"

"I really can't— I can't take this, I can't take it, Reid, you need to— Aah—"

"You think you're going to come?"

"I can't come while you're doing that, it's too much."

"Does it hurt?"

"Yes."

"Do you like it?"

That was a complicated question. The sensation was searing, intense, inescapable, made him feel like Reid was wringing him out like a sponge, and Hotch couldn't concentrate enough to reply, breathing heavily between his teeth – when Reid stopped, Hotch felt like he was floating somewhere indistinct, his head ringing with it.

"Yes," he grunted, trying to grasp hold of his faculties. "I think— I think so."

"Good," Reid said. He reached forward, hooking his hands around Hotch's shoulders and pulling him back, and Hotch took in some shaky breaths as Reid held him steady, one hand splayed over the front of his chest. "Do you think you can, um— do you think you can fuck yourself on me without putting all your weight on my leg?"

"Yeah," Hotch said, aware of how heavily he was breathing. "Yeah, I can."

The last time Hotch had done this, he'd taken what he'd wanted – he'd pinned Reid's hands in place and pushed Reid down under his weight, had moved fast.

This? This was different.

His hands behind his back, his thighs spread to let him lower himself down onto Reid, Reid forced him to go slowly, made Hotch's thighs ache, but it was worth it for the way Reid looked at his body, for the way Reid licked his lips every few minutes as he slid his hands over the muscle on Hotch's body, admiring it, pressing on it.

It took him a while – Hotch knew he was constantly in pain no matter what he did, but there was something astonishingly assuring in seeing Reid come, in feeling it, even with that pain taken into account.

Reid reached into his drawer, and pulled out the biggest of the dildos in there – it wasn't a huge thing by any means, only a little wider than Hotch himself, but Hotch swallowed as he stared at it.

It was easier to take then he expected.

On his back, his arms still pinned underneath him, Reid lay beside him, propped up on one elbow as he kept the toy moving at the right angle – Hotch hadn't been able to get Reid all that deep, but like this, like this—

"You can't even string two words together right now, can you?" Reid asked, smiling in a condescending way that for some reason made Hotch come on the spot. He saw white, his head tipping back, and the noise he made was humiliating, desperate and sharp and keening, but Reid hushed him gently, eased the toy away.

"I didn't know you liked dirty talk so much," Hotch gasped out.

"Didn't know it worked so well," Reid replied. He was still looking down at Hotch in that slightly detached, clinical way that made Hotch feel like a sample mounted on a slide, and something about it made him shudder even though there was no way his cock would be flaring back to life any time soon.

And then Reid softened, smiled, and said, "Turn over. I'll untie you."

"Do you prefer it?" Reid asked later, when he was laid in Hotch's lap. He'd been asleep, for a while, but now he was looking up at Hotch, and Hotch put his book slightly aside, glancing down at him.

"Prefer what?"

"When I give the orders?"

"I like it both ways," Hotch murmured, reaching down and stroking Reid's jaw, drawing two fingers down the centre of Reid's throat and watching him shiver. "They're different experiences – I don't know if I could really rank them. Why, you prefer it like that?"

"No," Reid said. "I like watching you when you're relying on me. The way you look at me like I'm the only thing in the world, like you're— you're completely reliant on me. But if I had that all the time, I think I'd hate it. Not you," he added immediately. "Just— I don't really like being in command of other people. It's too much responsibility."

"I'll keep that in mind," Hotch said softly. "I'm going to ask you a question, now, and I want you to answer it honestly."

Reid met his gaze.

"You haven't mentioned meetings. Do you want me to take you to one?"

Reid blinked.

"I'm not nagging," Hotch said. "Just— you haven't mentioned it, and I don't want you to feel you can't ask—"

"No, no, it's okay," Reid said. "I'm… I'm okay, I think. Thank you. I thought about it this morning, but the second I had the thought that dilaudid would make the main better, I realised the dreams would be worse, too. About Cummings – but about Hankel, too. Do you ever have nightmares?"

"Every night," Hotch said.

Reid stared up at him. "Oh," he said.

"Sorry."

"No, it's… it's okay," Reid murmured, and he turned awkwardly onto his side, wincing as he did, curling into Hotch's side. "Will you tell me about them?"

"I'd rather not."

"Did you ever talk to Haley about them?"

"Never."

"They're different every night?"

"Yes."

"About your dad?"

"Sometimes."

"Unsubs?"

"Sometimes."

"Me… getting hurt?"

"Yes." He knew that he was doing it. Every time they fell into one of these conversations, where Reid asked questions and Hotch's answers were all one word a piece, he knew he was doing it, but couldn't stop, couldn't force himself to go on.

Reid reached up for Hotch's hand, interlinking their fingers, stroking his thumb against Hotch's own. "I'm sorry," he said softly, sleepily. "I wish it was easier for you."

Hotch kept hold of Reid's hand even as Reid fell back asleep.