"Where's Gideon?" JJ asked, pushing her glass forward as Emily poured her some more wine.

"He's picking up a few things, but he had a list, um, I think maybe Reid wrote some of them down," Emily said quietly, watching her wine glass as she poured the rest of the bottle into her own. They were done here, in California, and they'd all be flying back to Virginia tomorrow morning – Hotch included. "And to be honest, I think he probably wants to leave Hotch and Reid alone. Given…"

She didn't know if was worse that Reid's concussion had healed, because it meant he was way more aware and lucid of the fact that Hotch had been called back to the Bureau. They had follow-up work that needed to be done back at Quantico, on top of incident reports and explanations, and he'd already booked leave to coincide with Reid's release from the hospital.

"Do you think it's weird that in a week, none of us have really talked about it?" JJ asked quietly. "I mean… I know we've talked a little about it, one on one, but as a group—"

"It feels strange to talk about it without Hotch and Reid," Emily said. "Even though they're what we want to talk about."

Derek and Dave were picking up take-out to bring back to the hotel – they'd swing by the hospital one last time tomorrow morning to say goodbye to Reid and pick up Hotch, and Gideon would stay in California with him until he could be moved.

"Penelope asked if his boyfriend was jacked," JJ said. "And he said— He said, yeah, he can pick me up. Said his boyfriend really likes sex in the shower."

"He told me he was an alpha male," Emily murmured. "And then he said he was, uh… top of the food chain any room he goes into."

"Oh my God," JJ whispered, putting her cheek on her hand and staring, wide-eyed, her eyebrows up to her airline, into the red pool of her wine glass. "He's— right."

They laughed, both of them, a kind of disbelieving laugh – it was hard to laugh, for Emily, when she kept thinking about how when the call came, she didn't realise that Reid had disappeared from sight, didn't realise Reid was gone, and they looked over that orchard for nearly an hour before they found him in the basement of one of the out-buildings, and all the blood, all the…

"I know," Emily said. "As soon as I realised, him saying that to me just repeated in my head, constantly."

"When did you know?" JJ asked.

"I started to really suspect after Hotch told us the story about Danny O'Brien, but then I watched them together, when they weren't near the rest of us – I saw them getting into Hotch's car once, and just… I don't know, I guess it was an instinctive understanding as much as anything else."

"I thought it was weird, the way he told us that story on the plane," JJ murmured. "The way he made eye contact with Reid – but I misinterpreted it, I thought it was, um… We all knew it was for Reid. But I thought he was expressing solidarity, telling Reid he wasn't alone, not that he was trying to comfort him personally."

"But you suspected?"

"Not really," JJ said, her voice even softer this time. "I thought something was up, but I thought… I thought it could be something about his mother, or his degree – I thought he and Hotch were closer, somehow, but I didn't ever think of anything like that. I remember thinking how weird it was that Hotch saw that, um, that sundae on the dessert menu? And immediately went out to tell Spence, but… Hotch has always…"

Emily watched JJ's face, at the way she looked into the middle distance for a moment.

"You know, I used to think it was weird," she said, "how much Spence trusted Hotch."

"Why?"

"Because Gideon… I don't pretend to understand it," JJ said. "But Gideon had known Spencer for years before he joined the BAU, and Gideon always treated Spence as special. Spencer never talked about it, not to any of us, and Gideon never mentioned it, really, but he was always teaching Reid stuff. He treated Reid like a student, but not just like a student, like a mentee. An apprentice, I guess. The rest of us weren't important like he was." JJ looked up, meeting Emily's gaze, and must have seen something in her face, because she sighed and put her head in her hands. "I'm sorry, it sounds so bad when I say it like that. It never bothered me – I don't think it bothered any of us. It just seemed normal. It was normal, he… We all loved Spence, we all treated him like a little brother."

"He's not much younger than you are," Emily said.

"You never met him back then," JJ said softly. "He's so confident, now, and so much… so much smoother. He used to be a lot worse at hiding it."

"Hiding it?"

"That he was scared," JJ said. "But back then, he… Hm. I'm not speaking ill of Gideon, but we all knew what tunnel vision he could get sometimes, and he'd sometimes get so angry, when things went wrong. And Reid was better with him when he got like that than anybody else, but Gideon would snap at him too, sometimes, and Spence would just kind of go quiet and take it.

"Two times, I saw Hotch get at him for that. He wouldn't be aggressive about it – it would just be subtle reminders, nudges. He'd do it for all of us, if Gideon was being like that, because Gideon didn't even realise he was doing it, most of the time, he was focused and hated being interrupted. But Reid always looked surprised."

JJ linked her fingers together, her hands resting on the bar beside her wine glass. JJ adored Spencer, Emily knew – they all had different relationships, shared different things in common, but JJ's dynamic with Spencer was affectionate, full of emotional understanding. JJ was a naturally empathetic person – she wasn't as distant and based in logic as Emily was, or as Spencer was himself, and she filled in the gaps he struggled with – and on the other side, he helped her pick things apart like they were problems, see them from a distance.

"He always trusted Hotch more than any of us," JJ said. "Hotch is so… I love Hotch, but he's so wooden sometimes. We thought of him as a kind of stern dad, sometimes, but it took me a long time to realise I could tell him things, that he wasn't as scary as he looked."

"Me too," Emily said, and JJ laughed.

"Yeah," she murmured. "He and Gideon are opposites like that, you know? Gideon looks so soft and cuddly, and he is, but sometimes you talk to him and you realise he can be so, so cold, and Hotch…" JJ inhaled. "He's got the worst scars, you know. On— on his back, he never takes his shirt off in front of any of us because you can see the belt marks there. And there's a, um… There's a note in his medical report. He isn't supposed to be on his knees for too long at a time because his knees are already pretty damaged from…"

"He told you this?" Emily asked softly.

"God no, never. But we had a case a few years ago where the suspect made the victims kneel in rice – it's not an uncommon corporal punishment, but when he talked about it, he sounded like he had experience with it. He comes off like he's made of steel, but now I've worked with him for so long, I know he isn't really like that."

"What, and Reid always knew?"

"Reid always trusted Hotch," JJ said. "More than any of us. Not just, he trusted Hotch more than a lot of us did, but more than he trusted any of the rest of us, even Gideon. You saw him do it with Hankel, when he gave Hotch that code, but they could always do that with each other, say things that the other one understood that the rest of us couldn't follow. Hotch understood how Reid thought. I mean, I don't think I understand how he thinks now."

JJ shook her head. "I don't know, just… I suppose it just made me wonder if it only started a few months ago, but then Gideon said, um… Something about Reid taking promises seriously, that marriage was included in that, even if it wasn't his."

"Hotch is big on promises too," Emily murmured. "I don't think they did anything before this."

"I don't know," JJ said. "Don't you think that makes it worse?"

"Worse?"

"An injury like this, four months into a romantic relationship," JJ said softly. "Long enough to feel committed to one another, but not long enough to withstand a lot of, um, a lot of outside stressors?"

"I don't know," Emily murmured. "I think that they're committed, but there's… Gideon and Spencer were talking about something Hotch had said to Spencer, a few days ago. From what I could tell, Hotch was almost challenging him to make himself home in Hotch's house, asking why he hadn't reorganised Hotch's bookshelves the way that he liked them. I mean, I don't know about Hotch, but Spencer is so particular about his territory. You know he told Garcia not to give anyone his address, even one of us?"

"No," JJ said, tilting her head slightly. "I know he moved, after Hankel, but I didn't find out until this year. He never told me. I just… This is going to sound so terrible."

"No," Emily murmured.

"Did you read the Fisher King file?"

"Of course."

"I felt so bad after that case," JJ whispered, "because he said none of us really liked him. You know that he learned about things from the letters Spence wrote to his mom? Not— not in so many words, but he said that the reason we all told him our secrets was that he had no one to tell them to, and I just felt so, so… I felt so bad. I realised I'd told him so many things and I knew next to nothing about him. None of us did, except maybe Gideon, and even he didn't know a lot of it.

"You know I don't know anything about Spencer's life. Anything. We all have little clues into each other's life, but if you asked me what he does, except study and do magic tricks, I couldn't tell you, but I know that he does so much, and it isn't just reading."

"And all at once, we find out about his sexuality, about Hotch…"

"It's a lot at once," JJ murmured. "What do you think it will be like, once he comes back to work?"

"I don't know," Emily said softly. "If they'd been able to talk to H.R. first, it would have been different, but given that Reid was tortured in the field, I don't know it that will change things."

"You think they won't let him come back to the team?"

"Actually, I think it might make them more likely to allow it," Emily said. "I mean… You and I, we're both very aware of how these things look on paper, and Hotch's efficacy in this situation hasn't been impacted at all – he's still been cool, calm, collected with everyone in the station, a consummate professional, and he's agreed to do all these weeks of paperwork before coming back to Reid. He's applied for leave, once Reid is out, but he hasn't been unreasonable or irrational about it.

"They'll look into our other cases, but Reid and Hotch have never shared a hotel room alone, and we've never suspected them of doing anything in private since they'd been together – the worst of it was the few weeks of reverse favouritism we all noted in Hotch, and he's moved past that now."

"That's a relief."

"It's not a promise. Just… a suspicion. He's worried about it, but I think the worry is really more about Hotch deciding he's not worth it anymore than it is about feeling the Bureau will split them up on the job."

"He's been so devoted the past few days," JJ said quietly. "He used to be like that with Haley."

"Out of one long-term relationship, straight into another one, moving to a divorce following the birth of a child," Emily said softly. "Immediate replacement of the wife with someone comparatively inexperienced in relationships, significantly younger, with fewer real life commitments—"

"Who saw him as a mentor in his field, had a long-term crush on him, and might not criticize similar issues within a relationship due to novelty, insecurity, and obviously, the age difference," JJ finished, shaking her head.

"It's kind of textbook when we put it like that, isn't it?"

"A little."

"Imagine if it was you," Emily said, leaning her elbows on the bar. JJ wrinkled her nose, and Emily laughed, and added, "Well, not you, but… Someone we didn't know. If Hotch suddenly told us he had a girlfriend ten years younger than him, and she worked here at Quantico, called him sir like anyone else…"

It was different with Reid. She knew that it was – and yet it was hard to justify in her head, with what she knew, logically.

The door opened, and they turned to Dave and Derek as they came in.

"Talking about Reid?" Derek asked, hovering at the doorway as the two of them came inside, holding takeout bags,

"We're that obvious?" Emily asked, and then she smiled wryly as Derek and Dave shared a look.

"Not exactly," Dave murmured. "Just… You know."

"We saw Gideon walking back to the hospital," Derek said. "I hope you two don't mind, but we… we invited him to come over here once he drops off the stuff for the kid."

"Of course," JJ said.

"He doesn't want to intrude," Emily murmurs. "I wouldn't either."

"Jason was pretty worked up," Dave said. "Said he wanted to try to discharge himself."

"He can't even walk."

"Yeah, that's what Jason said, thought he was going to slap him," Dave muttered, dragging out the big table as he and Derek started to unpack boxes. "Kid's real smart, but damn, if he isn't stupid."

"He hates hospitals," JJ said softly.

"Yeah, well, he's gonna be in that one at least another few weeks," Dave said, "so he'd better get used to it."

"You two think they're gonna last?" Derek asked, looking at Emily and JJ.

"I think they care about each other," Emily said.

"That's not always enough," Dave murmured, and started handing out forks. "Come on, si mangia. Jason will catch up."

Emily took her fork, and moved to sit down.

They were on the plane the next morning, had been in the plane an hour, when Hotch's phone rang, and Emily watched the way he glanced at the caller ID and then immediately pulled it up to his ear.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked.

Emily saw the concern on his face, the scowl twisting his mouth and the furrow of those big black eyebrows, and then she saw, like a rising sun, his expression soften, saw his lips shift into a small smile, and then a wider one, saw him relax, grin, huff out a small laugh.

"I, uh," he said, aware of all their eyes on him, and she watched as he got to his feet, walking a little away from them. "You really didn't have to call me for that. No, I will not. I'm sure they would, but— Is that so? And how would you enforce that? … Doctor Reid, you wound me."

It was weird, hearing Hotch flirt. It was weirder still, knowing that Reid was on the other end of the line. Emily looked to JJ, who had her hand over her mouth as she tried not to laugh, and Derek, who looked somewhere between wanting to crawl under the seats and die there and wanting to cry with laughter.

"We've already had this conversation once today," Hotch said. "I— Yes. Yes." Hotch turned slowly to face the rest of them. His cheeks slightly pink, he said, "I love you too."

Emily and JJ shared another look. Was that a good sign? Emily supposed so, maybe.

"I'll talk to you tomorrow."

Hotch hung up the phone, and Dave said, "So."

"So," Derek said.

"So," Emily and JJ said together.

"I have paperwork to do," Hotch announced, sinking to sit down. He smiled, though, smiled as he picked his pen back up, looked back to his files – a small smile, a private one, but genuine.

It was a good sign.