Reid came to slung over Cummings' shoulder, and he remembered the way that he'd swung slightly, limp in his place as he stared down at the dark grey colour of Cummings' jeans, the wooden steps of the basement's stairs, and he noticed the dark soil stains on the heels of his boots from the yard. His vision was blurring and difficult to focus, coming in and out of play.

Cummings dropped him heavily onto the hard, concrete floor, and he landed hard on one side, his shoulder popping out of place: the pain was excruciating, cutting through the hazed confusion for a moment, and he cried out, but couldn't quite co-ordinate himself to reach for it.

When he shifted his head, the act of vomiting was something that happened all at once – a natural thing to come from a head injury.

Talk – Cummings asked his name, Reid told him… Something else.

And then the knife was in his thigh, a slow slide, shallow, this one.

Things became so very blurry, after that, one experience, one agony, fading into the next, crossing over one another – it became a mish-mash of pain and tears and begging to be let go, to let him free, to please, please, let him go back, he wanted Hotch—

"Spencer," Hotch said.

Reid looked at him. His thigh ached, badly: his shoulder twinged.

"I said your name four times," Hotch said gently: his expression was full of concern, and Reid felt a distant sense of guilt. "You okay?"

Reid looked down at his fingers, which were beginning to wrinkle from the water in the sink, running over his hands: he'd been washing the same plate for… for a while. Cummings breathed in his ear, laughed and made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

"Yeah," Reid said, putting the plate on the rack. "I'm fine."

"You could almost be pretty," Cummings said as he slid the knife over Reid's shoulder again, and Reid sobbed, trying to reach for him with hands that wouldn't work, that were shaking, fingers that wouldn't grip: the world was spinning and he felt like he was at sea, couldn't get up even though Cummings wasn't even holding him there. The knife pierced the top of his chest, until it tapped a rib, and Reid's cry was ragged, full of plea.

He was meant to have a strategy. That was how you dealt with men like this – you had a strategy, but his brain wouldn't work, his mind couldn't think, he didn't know, he didn't know, he didn't know—

"You bleed so well," Cummings said, and put two of his fingers, soaked with Reid's blood, in Reid's mouth. Cummings had thick fingers, too thick, and the coppery-iron taste, too thick, blended with the taste of bile already on Reid's tongue, and when he gagged on it, Cummings laughed at him.

"Tell him no," Reid said.

"No?" Hotch repeated. "Spencer, you haven't seen anybody except me and your PT in a week."

"I don't want him in my home," Reid said, sharply, aware that he sounded angrier than he meant to, more defensive. Hotch was looking at him as though he were crazy and Hotch didn't want to say so, gently concerned, and Reid hated it, he hated it. "Tell him no."

"Okay," Hotch said softly. "Can I ask why not?"

"I don't want him here," Reid said. His thigh felt like someone had lit a small fire on his femur, and it had been burning all day.

"I thought you and Gideon were getting on," Hotch said. Cummings had his hand fisted through Reid's hair, his fingers sticky and wet from congealing blood – blood that was cold, by now, where it clung to his skin, and Reid was starting to feel cold too, no matter how much he shivered.

"It's not— it's not about that."

"You just don't want him here?"

"Is that so hard to understand? Do you want me to write it down, will you understand it then? You want me to draw you a picture of Gideon not being in my apartment?"

That pissed Hotch off. Reid saw the tightening in his shoulders, the way his lips thinned, but he didn't say anything, didn't want to say anything when Reid was so injured, in so much pain, so traumatised.

"I'll tell him," Hotch said, slowly, in a dangerous tone that ordinarily would have made Reid excited, but at the moment made him want to rip out the other man's throat. He thought of Cummings, with the knife in his hand, had to restrain himself from putting his hand up to his mouth as he walked past Hotch, toward the bathroom.

"Thank you."

He gagged as he crossed the threshold, and slammed the door behind him.

"Please, don't, don't, please, please—" And then Reid screamed, loud and high and slurred, somehow, as Cummings pressed hard on Reid's dislocated shoulder and cut the skin around it at the same time.

"Bet all the serial killers go wild over you," he'd said, breath hot and tea-scented, and Reid couldn't think, blood-covered with tears on his cheeks and vomit down his front, shaking, and he was already dizzy – he'd die, soon. He would die in Cummings' arms, like this, being tortured, and he couldn't, he couldn't—

"Please," Reid said. "Please let me go."

"You're lucky I'm not gay or something," Cummings said. "Bet the Jeffrey Dahmers of this world are desperate to fuck you when they see you. Me, I'm content with this." And then the knife was in his thigh again, another shallow stab, agonising, agonising—

"Why are you doing this, please, let me go—"

"Probably going to get caught," Cummings said. "Might as well play with you as much as I want – and kill you before they get here."

"Morgan?"

Reid's head hurt. "No."

"JJ?"

His shoulder too. "No."

"Prentiss?"

His thigh was the worst. "No, no, I don't want any of them here," Reid snapped, and he was shouting, he knew he was shouting, shouting loudly enough that it hurt his throat, but he didn't care. "I don't want any of them to know where I live and I don't want them in my home, I don't want them there!"

"You have to talk to somebody other than me," Hotch said. "You have to see people – I'm going back to work tomorrow, Spencer, and you can't just lock yourself in here with nobody."

"Yes, I can," Reid snapped, sharply. "And you can come in here and claim ownership all you want, but this is my apartment and I don't have to let anybody in."

"Claim ownership," Hotch repeated, tone rising. "That's what you think? Me spending two weeks here with you, you think it's because I want to—"

"Don't twist what I said."

"I'm not twisting it, you just said it—"

"Well, you have, you've been here, you've moved stuff, you've—"

"You told me you wanted me to!"

"Well, I was wrong! Me getting stabbed doesn't mean I want you to move in with me!"

Hotch's nostrils flared as he inhaled, as he stared Reid down, clenching his hands tightly into fists. Reid almost wished he'd shout something, almost wished he'd do something that made Reid feel less disgusting about shouting at him in the first place, that made him feel like he was justified in treating Hotch like this, because he knew he wasn't, he knew he was being crazy, being insane, and he couldn't, he couldn't—

Something… snapped.

When it unsnapped, awareness coming back to him like a jagged piece of mirror being slid back into the smashed mess it had come from, he was shaking violently, wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the kitchen floor with his bad leg straight around him. Hotch was with him, his knees pressed tightly either side of Reid's body, his arms wrapped so tightly around Reid's chest that it made his bad shoulder ache. Hotch's body was warm, strong, solid: his heartbeat was faster than usual, but steady.

"You shouldn't be here," Reid said, feeling so ashamed he could drown in it. "This isn't good for you."

Hotch said nothing for a moment, his nose pressed into Reid's hair, so that Reid could feel every breath he took – it was comforting, somehow. Hotch's voice was low, full of gravel, as he asked, "Was it like this after Hankel?"

"I guess. For a while. Gideon came and checked on me every few days, to make sure I was…" He didn't know how he wanted to finish that sentence. Still alive, not strung out, not completely out of it. "Okay" didn't really fit.

"I should be here," Hotch said. "I should have been here then, too."

Cummings' hand was a sticky shadow on his back, and Reid flinched away as Hotch came into the kitchen. "Stop touching me," Reid snapped, and Hotch, nearly two feet away from him, stared.

"Spencer?"

"Not— Stop, don't, don't look at me like that."

"I wasn't touching you."

"I know that, I know that, I'm not an idiot, if anyone is the idiot between us—"

"Calm down."

"I'm calm, I'm calm."

Hotch moved back to the kitchen table, picking up his phone. It was a little past five in the morning, and Hotch had risen with Spencer – he'd started doing that, these past two weeks.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling the Bureau," Hotch said. "Telling them I'm not ready to—"

"No, no, no," Reid said, taking a step forward. "No, you don't have to do that, you don't—"

"Reid, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but we're going to get a call, and the team is going to be out of state for days, a week. What happens to you when I'm not here?"

"If I get groceries delivered the desk team will bring them up," Reid said.

"I couldn't care less about groceries."

"I don't want anyone—"

"Sit down," Hotch said. He didn't say it all that loudly, but he said it with such loaded force that Reid, staring at him, slowly sank down into one of the dining chairs anyway, his jaw set. "I'm going to give you two choices," he said quietly. "Either you stay here, and you let Gideon come visit, or we move you to my house, and you let Gideon visit you there."

"I'm not a fucking child."

"I didn't call you a fucking child."

"You're treating me like one."

"If I was treating you like a child, Reid, you'd fucking know it," Hotch's voice dropped an octave as he said it, leaning over Reid and almost snarling, and as Reid stared up at him, he saw the way Hotch regretted it almost instantly. His eyes closed, and he leaned back almost entirely, away from Reid, taking a step back. "I'm—"

"Don't say sorry. You really think I'll hurt myself? You really think I can't—"

"It isn't about that," Hotch said, beseechingly. "It's not that I think you'll hurt yourself, Reid – I don't want you to be alone. You keep saying you don't want anyone here, but you're terrified whenever I leave for five minutes to pick up a take-out delivery, how the Hell are you going to cope if I'm somewhere in Kentucky?"

"I can call."

"You can call," Hotch repeated, all but scoffing. "That's right, Reid, you can call. Would you? Or would you worry too much about disrupting the case I was on?"

"I would be disrupting—"

"I know!" Hotch snapped, and then turned slightly away from Reid, putting his hands over his face. "But if you're so focused on seeing it from my perspective," he said slowly, "then if I'm worrying about you alone for three days, you'd be disrupting the case then, too."

"I can't help it if you—"

"Reid, I swear to God." Reid's jaw clicked as he closed his mouth, and Hotch came closer, dropping slowly to his knees in front of him. "I know your autonomy means a lot to you. I know you're scared. But I can't just leave you to stew in this apartment."

"I did it with Hankel."

"No, you didn't," Hotch said. "You just told me Gideon came in to check on you after Hankel, and this time, you won't let Gideon in. If not Gideon, I'll hire someone to—"

"You want to hire me a babysitter?"

"Would you stop twisting everything into me wanting to infantalise you?"

"Yeah, when you stop doing it!"

"You know what? I'm done."

The terror Reid felt as Hotch got to his feet made him feel like he was dying, and tears burned in the corners of his eyes as Hotch strode toward the table, picking up his phone. "No, Hotch, please, please, don't leave, please, I—"

"Hi, Jason," Hotch said, evenly. "I just— I need you to talk to him. Yeah."

Reid stared at the phone, numb.

"I'm not going," Hotch said softly, reaching out and touching Reid's face. "I'm not going to leave. But I can't be— I can't be everything. You need other people."

"You there?" Gideon asked when Reid held the phone to his ear.

"Yeah."

"You okay?"

"No."

"Okay. What do you say I take you to Kenilworth Park?"

"I've never been."

"Thought you hadn't."

"Okay," Reid said quietly.

"I'll come by at nine."

"Thanks," Reid said, and hung up. "I know I'm being crazy," he said softly, holding Hotch's phone in his hand. "But you don't understand, I keep remembering, and it's so vivid, and it won't…"

"I know," Hotch said. "I know."

"I love you."

"I love you too," Hotch murmured, and leaned in, kissed him not on the mouth, but on the nose: Reid laughed, weakly, softly.

"I don't want you to go," Reid whispered.

"But you're also sick of having me in your space," Hotch pointed out, and Reid leaned his head forward against Hotch's belly, closed his eyes when Hotch put his hands in Reid's hair. "Don't take this as an insult, Spence, but we're both a little too cold to live codependently."

"Codependence implies you don't want to leave as much as I don't want you to go."

Hotch said nothing, but held him tighter.

"Oh," said Reid.

He didn't know how much blood he had left in him, now – he was trying to calculate his odds of survival but he couldn't tell and the numbers were blurring in his head and they weren't working, and Cummings was laughing as he slid the knife deeply, this time, pulled it out, and said, "Look at all that blood."

Reid couldn't scream, couldn't think, could only—

"Ow!"

"Five things you can see," Gideon said, not letting go of the painful pinch he had on Reid's earlobe. "Go."

"Let go of my—"

"Five things you can see," Gideon repeated, not pulling away as Reid put his hand around his wrist, trying to lean away.

"Um, gr— a mallard, grass, the path, cattails, ow, Jason, that hurts—"

"One more!"

"You."

Gideon let go, and Reid groaned, reaching up and rubbing the lobe of his ear. The pain faded very quickly, because Gideon really hadn't pressed all that hard, and Gideon was looking at him seriously, leaning against the back of the bench.

"You want to talk about it?"

Reid shook his head. "It wasn't, um. I couldn't really remember much of it," he murmured. "And then I said I'd do a cognitive interview, and I insisted on it, to make sure everything in my statement was right. And after that it was just really… vivid."

"Well," Gideon said. "We should talk about something."

"Like what?"

"I don't know."

"How's Brisket?"

"He's good. I'm building him an enclosure."

"Like a tiger?"

"Exactly like a tiger," Gideon said. "Wood frame, wire mesh over the fencing and the top – keeps birds from diving at him, keeps out coyotes, bobcats, you know. It's a pretty big project, and I'm gonna lay out a lot more vegetable patches, too. Could use some help."

"I'm not exactly good at landscaping when I can walk."

"The fresh air will do you good, you know. And I'm not saying you should come live with me – just come work with me a little when Hotch is out of town with the BAU."

"Why, because if I'm alone I'm going to hurt myself? Or get high?"

"That's part of it," Gideon said, reasonably, evenly, not rising to the bait. "I don't want you to be alone. But I also think physical work, even light in labour, will help, and you'll be able to see us make progress in real time."

"I'll think about it."

"That's all I ask. What's that?"

Reid looked forward, scanning the water's edge ahead of them, watching the little bird pad along the wet mud, its feet patting down hard into the mulch. "Um— A Least Sandpiper, calidris minutilla."

"Nope."

"No?"

Gideon handed him the binoculars, wordlessly, and Reid looked through them. "Oh," he said. "Solitary Sandpiper, tringa solitaria."

"Good," Gideon said, and Reid looked at him, at the way he looked out over the flowers on the surface of the water, the sense of satisfaction on his face.

Reid smiled.

"You want to go get lunch?" Reid asked.

"Sure," Gideon said. "Let's do that."