Aaron's breaths were shaky as he took them in, shuddering as he did so, waiting for the pain that inevitably came where his lungs were too inflated, because the broken rib from a few weeks ago was still healing, still healing. At the moment, the rib wasn't his greatest priority – his back was a mess of small agonies, the skin splitting in places over new scars, and his knees were bleeding again, the red flow staining the rice he was kneeling in.

Head slumped forward, Aaron was aware of the sweat beading on his cheeks, his forehead, sliding down his neck and his chest, dripping down to the floor: his hair was soaked with it.

He didn't know how long he'd been down here for – long enough that his father had entered and left three times already, but not long enough that the page was starting to blur in front of him.

He did not know how long it had been since he'd cried. His mother had used to say, when he was a very small boy, that there was no big problem a cleansing tear couldn't fix – as far as he knew, she didn't say that sort of thing anymore.

Crying couldn't help him anymore.

Down here, in the basement of the Hotchner family home – something of an oxymoron in itself – crying had never helped anyone down here, but as far as Aaron knew, Sean didn't come down here, and that was important, he supposed.

Every time Nathan Hotchner hit him, perhaps it was a time he didn't hit Sean – Aaron could only hope.

It was a Sunday, and he was back in town for the weekend – Sean and Mom were somewhere for Sean's birthday, and he hadn't known. At seventeen years old, Aaron Hotchner felt he had a fairly accurate view of the world, but it wasn't the world that left the coppery tang of blood in the back of his mouth.

"The purposes of a person's heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out," he whispered softly, trying to focus on the words instead of the dizzy sway of his own head, of the pain in his knees, the thirst that made itself known in the back of his throat. "Many claim to have unfailing love, but a faithful person who can find? The righteous lead blameless lives; blessed are their children after them. When a king sits on his throne to judge, he—"

The belt hit the centre of his back, a straight crack over his shoulder blades, and he didn't flinch, didn't cry out, only stumbled slightly in his reading, but his father didn't really care if he read or not.

"—winnows out all evil with his eyes. Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"?"

"Not you," his father said, and the belt came down again, against the soles of his bare feet: it shoved him forward on the rice and the salt, forcing it into the cuts on his knees, and he grit his teeth.

"You think you are?" Aaron replied.

He caught the belt before it hit him, this time.

"He put his dad in the hospital," JJ said softly. Talk about the unsub had been going on around him for the past few minutes, but it was brainstorming, everyone bouncing off one another as they worked things through. "Talk about a trigger."

"His father had hit him a hundred times before," Rossi murmured. "What made this time different?"

"Sometimes," Hotch said, "the levee just breaks."

His phone vibrated in his hand, and he glanced down at it.

AARON HOTCHNER [16:32]

Did you do your PT exercises yet today?

SPENCER REID [16:49]

Unsub attended Club Mix on May 12th of last year; first began association with Christina Habberly. Check timelines. Heroin habit started then.

Hotch pressed his lips together, looking down at his phone.

"Garcia," he said.

"Yes, sir?" Garcia asked.

"Stop telling Reid about our cases."

On the other end of the line, Garcia was sheepishly silent, and everybody on the team glanced at one another, and then then looked to Hotch, and of course, to Hotch's phone.

"He say anything useful?"

"Unsub started taking heroin in May. Add that to the timeline."

AARON HOTCHNER [16:51]

Should I take that as a no?

He watched the small check underneath his message change colour, and then waited for a response.

None came.

Celia Hotchner, née Armistead, had tried to commit suicide once, and only once, when Aaron was nine years old, and it had been on the day he was first going to attend boarding school – the bus had been delayed by several hours, and he'd come back to the house unexpectedly, to hear his mother running a bath even though it was only just past noon.

When he'd knocked, she hadn't heard it over the running water – when he'd dipped his head inside, he'd seen the start of the blood in the water as she'd drawn the razorblade over her wrist. A shallow cut, full of hesitation, not quite ready to commit – she'd been fully clothed, and ready to…

He'd dragged her out of the bath, hazy from the number of aspirin she'd taken, and she'd sobbed and told him he couldn't tell his father, that he couldn't know.

Sean had been born that year.

It was a pattern Hotch noticed at the time, even at that age, and one that he had never voiced to anybody. His mother had not, that he was aware of, ever made another attempt at suicide after that – not that he knew of.

He hated to think of that moment.

As he'd put iodine on the wound and bandaged it, like she'd done for so many splitting wounds and cuts on him, he had quoted scripture at her. Even thinking about it now, his gut clenched with regret, with guilt, with distant, painful memory.

"Sir?" Garcia asked, and Hotch looked up from where he was stacking paperwork to go home. She was standing with her hands loosely clasped in front of her belly, biting the inside of her lip. "I just wanted to say— to say sorry, I just mentioned it to him, you know, when we were talking, I wasn't asking him for help."

"Don't worry about it, Garcia," Hotch said quietly: he chose not to tell her that he'd only found out because Reid had decided to use it to jab at him, however indirectly. "He's frustrated, without being able to work. You didn't do anything wrong."

"Are you two fighting?" She asked the question softly, leaning forward on her toes. Her gaze was concentrated on Hotch's face, looking him over for any sign, perhaps, that he would burst into tears, lay his head on her breast, and tell her everything.

"No," Hotch said. "He's frustrated, but I'm afraid that frustration isn't aimed at me alone."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Keep being yourself," Hotch murmured, and when she rushed toward him, he opened his arms and let her hug him tightly, even though he didn't want to be touched, not really. It would be different, once he got home to Reid, after they could talk, when they'd be in bed together – that would be different.

He felt nothing about this situation, really. Nothing except a desire to go home.

"He just seems so down whenever I talk to him," Garcia whispered.

"He's bored, that's all."

"He's not just bored, sir."

"He won't admit to anything more."

Garcia sighed, then nodded, toddling away, and Hotch picked up his briefcase.

He called Reid from the car, and when Reid answered it, saying nothing, Hotch said, "Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city."

After a moment of pause, Reid said, softly, "I'm sorry."

"I didn't mean to nag you," Hotch said quietly. "I appreciate if that's what made you angry, but that wasn't my intention – I only wanted to ask."

"I know," Reid said quietly. "I did do them, after you texted me."

"I know it's hard." Reid was quiet again, and Hotch asked, quietly, "You want me to pick you up anything before I come home?"

"I'd just like for you to come home quickly," Reid said. "I'd like to give you a massage, if you don't mind. To— to apologise."

"You don't have to."

"I know."

"I'll be around forty-five minutes."

"Okay. Love you."

"Love you too."

That night, Hotch pulled Reid gently to lie on top of him, and Reid did, sprawled out with his head resting on Hotch's chest, curled into him as best he could manage without uncomfortably twisting his legs. Hotch lay with his eyes closed, tasting Proverbs on his tongue: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be lowly in spirit along with the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud. Whoever gives heed—

"Your lips move when you recite verses, you know," Reid said quietly, and Hotch opened his eyes, looking at Reid's sleepy expression, his own eyes heavily lidded. "You can do it out loud, if you want."

"I don't need to."

"You didn't used to do this," Reid said. "But now you're doing it regularly – does it help?"

"As much as counting the rosary does."

"Do you have a rosary?"

"Not here."

"You can hang a crucifix, you know. If it makes you feel better."

The invitation was not really one made for Catholicism's benefit – like so many of the invitations Reid proffered to Hotch, it was an invitation for Hotch to make himself more at home in Reid's apartment, to plant his roots here more firmly, to lay ownership to the space – it was something Reid wanted and hated the idea of in terms.

"No," Hotch said, stroking Reid's throat. "But thank you."

After Rossi dipped his fingers into the font, crossing himself with the cool water there, Hotch's hand followed soon after, and although Rossi only glanced at him, showing the barest hint of surprise, behind him, Hotch heard Morgan ask, "You religious, Hotch?"

"Catholic."

"I never knew that about you."

"It's not something I feel the need to talk about."

"Oh," Morgan said. He had said it too coldly, Hotch supposed: he didn't know a better way to say it. He didn't feel like trying for one.

The first time his father hit him, he was six years old.

It hadn't at all been a ritualised event, on that occasion: he remembered that even decades later, remembered it in vivid flashes with distant, wooden detail stitching them neatly together.

He remembered laughing in the kitchen, dropping the hold on his mother's hand; he remembered stepping across the kitchen tile, the way the cool linoleum had felt on his bare feet; he remembered the heat of the porridge's bowl as he picked up the bowl, the sudden burn when it was too much. He remembered the sound of the ceramic smashing when it hit the floor, muffled by the oats inside; he remembered his father's roar of frustration, anger; he remembered the sudden, cracking pain over his backside. He remembered crying out.

As a prosecutor, the first time someone told him he should be trying to get in his suspect's head, it had stuck with him. Moving through the exercises to get in someone's head, his first suspect had always been his father, ever and always.

His father had never been a complicated man.

It made it worse, that there wasn't that much to understand.

"Hi there, Aaron," Henry said as he came down the corridor, and Hotch gave him a neat nod as he stepped out of the elevator, moving aside to allow Henry to step in.

"How's Maya's ankle?"

"Better," Henry said quietly. "Thanks for asking."

He didn't ask about Reid, but Hotch didn't press the point, moving down the corridor and turning the key in the lock to Reid's apartment. Stepping inside, he stood on the mat and unbuttoned his jacket, hanging it on the stand before he bent to unlace his shoes.

His father had had strict rules about what you did coming home – taking off jackets or hats; wiping feet firmly and cleanly on the mats and putting aside boots outside on the step, not inside; bags to be set aside on shelves or stands, but never on the floor.

He'd tracked earth into the house once, that had clung to the cuffs of his jeans instead of his shoes, and that had been the first time his father had mixed salt into the rice – it was the first time he'd dragged a razorblade over the skin.

"Spencer?" Hotch called, but got no response, and he stepped further into the apartment, glancing around. Reid's cell phone, keys, and wallet were in the bowl at the entrance to the apartment, but the chains and extra locks hadn't been done up – he'd known Hotch was on his way home.

He wasn't in the bedroom, the ensuite, or in the office, and it was desperation more than anything else that made him check the guest bathroom, which was where he found Reid.

The light had been turned down to its lowest option on the dimmer, and the light was dim and darkly orange, the bathroom full of scented steam. Through it, all Hotch saw was Reid laid out in the bath, his head rested back on a rolled up towel, and through the steam Hotch saw the deep red of the bathwater.

"Spencer," Hotch said, loudly: Reid didn't stir, and Hotch couldn't let himself think about how his blood was cold in his veins, how he could feel his heartbeat in his throat. Lunging forward, he grabbed Reid's wrist and pulled him up in one smooth motion, supporting Reid's weight under his lower back to pull him out of the bath – needed to wrap the wounds, needed to get him out of the hot water and—

"Hotch, Hotch, fuck, let me go, let me go!"

Pink stained water and rose petals sloshed over the edge of the bath as Reid's shout of pain rang off the tiled walls, and Hotch grunted as Reid shoved him hard in the neck to force him to loosen his grip, dropping Reid back in the bath. Reid was breathing heavily through gritted teeth, and he glared up at Hotch: Hotch didn't think he'd ever seen him look so furious.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Hotch tried to take in a breath, couldn't force his lungs to work as he watched Reid press his hands against his scarred leg, couldn't breathe, felt like the room was tightly enclosed.

"I called your name several times, you weren't moving—"

"I was asleep!"

"The water, the red, the red—"

"It's a bath bomb, Garcia sent it over. Get out. Don't touch me, don't fucking touch me. Get out, Hotch, now."

He slammed the door as he scrambled out of the bathroom, half-crawled down the corridor into the living room with his suit wet with rose-scented bathwater, and he tried to force himself to breathe, tried to ground himself and couldn't manage it, his lungs aching – it was exactly what it had been like, having broken ribs when he was a little boy, and he couldn't, he couldn't…

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." He pressed his head back against the wall as hard as he could, his head in his hands, tried to push the invented details out of his mind, the images now inscribed within him of Reid's wrists slit open, Reid limp in bathwater and blood, Reid dead or dying— "There is no fear in love," he repeated: it sounded like prayer, but it tasted like ashes on his tongue.

It was some time before Reid limped down the corridor, wearing only his robe, leaning heavily on the wall. He stared down at Hotch where he sat.

"You shouldn't fall asleep in the bath," Hotch said quietly, rumbled the words against his folded fists: he was still sat on the floor, his back up against one of the bookshelves, his knees up, too, and like this, his knees ached – he'd landed too hard on his knees, trying to pull Reid out of the water. "You could have drowned."

"You're not going to explain, then," Reid said. "You're not going to explain what the Hell that was."

"You were limp, unresponsive, I've never known you to take a bath before, I saw that the water was red—"

"I haven't given you a single reason to think I might be suicidal," Reid said.

"I'm sorry. Is your leg alright?"

"You undid any good the bath did," Reid said, sounding jagged, but not as sharp as Hotch would expect. "But I'm not in agony or anything."

"Good. I'm… I should go."

"Go? You drag me out of my bath, and now you want to run away?"

"Spencer—"

"Tell me."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't talk about it."

"Your childhood?"

"Yes."

"Your father?"

"I don't talk about it."

"Did you talk about it with Haley?"

"No, actually."

Reid was silent, his lips together, and he stared down at Hotch with his eyes wide. "Will you— Will you come to bed?"

"I haven't eaten."

"Not for the night through. Just until I fall asleep. Please."

"Okay."

"Do I remind you of it?" Reid asked quietly. He was curled up behind Hotch's back, his mouth pressed against the back of Hotch's neck, and he held Hotch tightly, his thighs warm against Hotch's ass. "Your childhood?"

"Not particularly."

"You just think about it constantly anyway."

"Yes."

"Always?"

"Always."

"He used to hit you with his belt," Reid whispered. "And he broke your arm once, and split the skin a few times on his arms. Is that all?"

"I don't want to discuss it with you, Spencer."

"You think I'll think less of you?"

"It doesn't matter why. This is a firm boundary, Spencer: I need you to stop pressing on it."

Reid was silent, but Hotch felt him tense, and then felt Reid press closer.

"I'll answer your questions if you answer mine."

"No, Spence."

"If you won't trust me, how can you expect me to—"

"I don't expect anything of you," Hotch said. "But I do trust you."

"You just won't tell me about your family."

"You don't want to discuss your childhood either."

"You never ask about it."

"Because I know you don't want to. Perhaps you might try that."

Reid let go of him, and turned to the other side of the bed, lying on his side at the other edge, and Hotch turned.

"Spencer, I—"

"You said you hadn't eaten yet," Reid said crisply. "Go. Eat."

"You expect me to eat when I know you're in here, fuming?"

"Why? Worried I'll kill myself?"

"What are you hoping you'll accomplish, trying to get me angry? Want me to hit you? Too much of a coward to ask me to do it?"

"Yeah, I'm terrified of you," Reid said woodenly. "I just lie here all day frightened of when you'll come home, in case you spank me because I didn't do my fucking PT."

"Reid."

He turned, glaring at Hotch. "What?"

"It's not about you," Hotch whispered. "I can't talk about it – I've tried."

"Oh," Reid whispered. "I'm… I'm sorry. I know I'm being, I'm constantly being… but I can't stop, I just— and that's no excuse. I just get so desperate sometimes, waiting for you to call me, or come home, and then you come home and I'm just… angry."

"I know."

"Like you're scared. Scared I'll be dead, or— or anything else."

"Yes."

That night, Hotch slept on top of Reid, because Reid pulled him to lie on top of him, to put all his weight on Reid's back, and Hotch went willingly. That night, Reid whispered into the pillow about when he first realised his mother had something wrong with her, and Hotch listened intently, but didn't interrupt, didn't ask questions.

"I've never told anyone that before," Reid whispered. "There's so much I've never told anyone."

"Me neither."

Hotch slept, and for the first time in several months, the sleep was dreamless – no nightmares, whatsoever. It didn't fix the state of things, but it was… something.

Reid fucked himself on Hotch's cock that morning, his hands cupping Hotch's jaw, whimpering against Hotch's mouth as they stayed wrapped up in one another, close tight together, Hotch's hands grasping at his ass. They rocked tightly together, and afterward, Reid loosely grasped at Hotch's wrists to stop him from pushing Reid off.

"I just want to— I want to sit here a while," he said softly. "And feel… feel it."

"You want to warm my cock, you mean," Hotch murmured against his mouth, feeling Reid shiver. "Is that what you think you're good for – would you like that, Spence, to kneel under my desk and keep my cock buried in your throat while I work?"

"No," Reid said. "I'd want to be in your lap. Naked, so— so everyone can see me, in your lap, still in your suit, your cock in me just like this."

"I'm sorry about yesterday," Hotch whispered. "I can't tell you how scared I was."

"I'm sorry I screamed at you," Reid said. "I was tired, and it—" He closed his eyes, and said, "it really hurt. When you pulled me out of the water, my thigh, it was really bad."

"I'm sorry," Hotch said again.

"No more apologies," Reid murmured, pulling Hotch to lie on his side, Reid beside him. "We'll be here for days, otherwise."

"I can't kneel for too long at a time," Hotch murmured against his mouth, after some time had passed, "because my knees are shot. Nerve damage, and a lot of scar tissue, primarily. My father would— I knelt in rice. Sometimes he'd put salt in it, and cut my knees, to make it worse."

Reid said nothing, which Hotch was grateful for.

For a long, long time, they laid there in silence.