"Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys." Alphonse De Lamartine

Chapter 4 – Observations

Now that he knew Dave watched him as closely as he did, he had begun to notice it himself, along with a few other anomalies.

His friend seemed to know more about this kind of trauma than most people, even those within the BAU, and slowly but surely, Hotch was beginning to suspect that there was something more there that Dave hadn't told him about.

The problem was that he couldn't just come out and say, "Hey Dave, ever been assaulted?" It wasn't exactly a good way to start out a random conversation, even if they had known each other for a long time.

Hotch thought back through what he knew of the other man, realizing as he did that there wasn't very much to think of. He knew that Dave had a younger sister who had died while still in her teens, but he didn't know the details of it. He could likely get Garcia to dig around for him, but he really didn't want to. If Dave had wanted him to know, then he would have told him by now. It simply wasn't his business. He snorted to himself at the irony of the statement. By all rights, there were so many things that weren't his business to know about, yet that hadn't stopped him in the past, had it?

He shook his head. He was in bed under his covers, staring at the ceiling and thinking. His nightmares had slacked off a bit as of lately, and he hoped that they would stay that way. It was tiring to dream of horrific things every night and then be expected to get up in the mornings and continue on as always.

That was the thing though; Dave didn't expect him to do that. He expected it of himself, but Dave didn't.

And then there were the dreams he had when he wasn't having nightmares.

Last night, for example, he had dreamed about Dave. It was not unheard of, dreaming of another member of his team, but this was not at all the same kind of thing at all.

For one, Dave had been very close to him in his dream, possibly even in his bed. For another, he and Dave had been the only two present in the dream. The situation also hadn't revolved around any cases, previous or imagined. Hotch closed his eyes and briefly tried to recall the sensations that he still remembered. He had spent most of the dream listening to his friend speak. Dave had asked him repeatedly if he was okay, how he felt, and even what he wanted. Hotch's brow creased as he remembered surge of pure wanting that he had felt when he had been asked that. What on earth did that mean about him? About them? Them? There was no "them." They were friends, just friends.

Hotch shook his head and tried to think back to the dream once more. Warmth—he remembered that Dave had been very warm; his touch causing butterflies to appear in his stomach and other places as well. Hotch felt heat rise in his cheeks as he thought about the other places that had reacted to the dream Dave. He'd never dreamed about a man in this way, and now that he had, he wasn't sure what to do with the feelings that he had been left with.

The intellectual side of him tried to argue that his growing awareness of Dave was nothing more than a side effect of his being abducted and raped—there was that dreaded word again—by another man. Dave was everything that Michael had not been; considerate, comfortable, empathetic and above all else, safe.

Was it possible that he wasn't as straight as he had always thought? He and Haley had been together straight out of high school, so there hadn't been any chances for any kind of outside experimentation while he was in college. Truthfully, he had never even thought about looking at a man, but now that the idea had been rather forcefully introduced to him, he found that he couldn't as easily turn off that side of his brain and return to how things had been before.

Probably he was simply over thinking everything. Dave was just his friend, and he asked him to stay at his house because he was worried about Hotch readjusting after his ordeal. If Dave was watching him more than before, then it was because he wanted to make sure he was healing.

So what would happen after he was healed and moved back into his lonely apartment by himself once more? Would Dave's awareness of his every move drop back down into nothingness? Or had Hotch been fooling himself all along? Was it possible that Dave had always been more watchful than he had ever given him credit for?

He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of much of anything anymore. All he knew was that he felt safe with Dave, and that the feeling wasn't the same with anyone else.

He resolved to talk to Derek about his changing feelings. If anyone would know, it would be him.

. . .

"Can I ask you something personal?" Hotch asked the younger man a few nights later.

Derek Morgan looked up at him with a serious expression. "What about?"

"Carl Buford."

A muscle twitched in Morgan's jaw at the mention of the man who had molested him through most of his teen years, but otherwise there was no reaction. Hotch wasn't sure whether he should be worried or not.

"What about him man?" Morgan asked; his voice unusually rough.

"After dealing with him," Hotch asked slowly, choosing his words carefully. "Did you ever find yourself questioning your sexuality?"

Hotch waited with bated breath while Derek seemed to consider his question. His was a very personal inquiry; not one that he could easily ask very many others on their team without being excessively questioned.

"Sometimes, yeah, more than sometimes I did. I think that's pretty normal though," Derek shrugged. "Is this about what happened to you with that crazy unsub down in Texas? You been having thoughts?"

Hotch nodded. His throat didn't seem to be working very well for some reason.

"Did you ever question yourself before?" Derek looked at him, and he tried to swallow past the mental obstruction.

"No, but lately I've started having these dreams . . ." he trailed off, uncertain of whether to mention Rossi or not.

"Of the unsub or someone else?"

"Someone else."

"A man?" Morgan's expression was thoughtful, and the look in his eye had become calculating.

"Yes," he said, looking more than a little uncomfortable.

"Well, it's not like you're the first person to ever have a dream about someone of the same sex as them," Morgan said, pausing in thought for a moment. "Hell, have you ever had a prostate exam?"

"Yes," he answered warily.

"Ever gotten hard during one?" Morgan didn't wait for his response, but went and plunged ahead in his explanation. "It's pretty normal if you have. My doc knows that I've got some past issues regarding that area of my body, so before doing any procedures down there," Morgan gave him a pointed look, and Hotch cracked a small grin the other man's terminology. "My doctor always makes sure to explain everything to me, including what usually happens to most people. The prostate is pretty easy to manipulate, and it's really sensitive."

"Now, I don't know everything that the unsub did to you while you were with him, but if you're worried about having gotten off from what he did to you, then you're worrying for nothing man. Rapists, especially ones that rape men, like to make us think that we got hard because we liked what was done to us, but it's not true. It's just the way we work down yonder, you get me?"

"I—I remember thinking that Michael was trying to use my body against me," Hotch admitted quietly.

"You're right man. He probably was. Ol' Buford liked playing sick mind games too," Derek's eyes narrowed.

"Care to explain?" Hotch asked gently, feeling more in his element as he watched his subordinate fidget uncomfortably in front of him.

"Not really," Derek gave a bitter bark of laughter. "But maybe I should anyways. My therapist keeps trying to get me to talk more, and I might as well talk to you as to her, you know?"

"Your therapist is female?" He asked in some surprise.

"Yeah. I couldn't handle the idea of being alone with an older guy while I explained what another older guy did to me back when I was just a kid."

"I understand," Hotch said. And he did.

"Yeah. Well, Carl used to mess with our heads, telling me and James that if we dreamed about him, then that meant that we wanted more of it. He'd tell us that he'd stop if we didn't get hard, but you know, we were just teens. I mean, stiff breeze and all that, right?" Derek's jaw twitched again, and Hotch watched carefully as the younger man looked down at his hands, which were trembling slightly.

"We couldn't make it stop. We knew that if we said anything, all the help he was giving us would just go away, and we'd end up rotting away our days there in the neighborhood, or getting carted off to jail. Who'd listen to two teen boys anyways? Both of us had gotten in trouble before," Derek shrugged, blinking hard as he struggled to tell the story.

Hotch tentatively reached out his hand and laid it on top of the other man's clenched fists.

"You're not alone anymore, Derek. Tell me that you know that," he instructed softly, leaning forwards to try and catch the other man's eye.

"Yeah, I know Hotch-man," Derek answered, a weary smile on his face. "But at the time, there wasn't any way out of it."

He nodded. That was how he felt while with Michael too. That was also how he had felt growing up with his bastard of a father.

"Michael kept me tied up in one way or another the entire time I was with him," Hotch spoke slowly, not wanting to tell his story, but feeling that Morgan needed to hear at least some of it.

"You really couldn't get away," the younger man nodded.

"I didn't like what he did to me," he said slowly, his eyes distant and hard as he recalled the uncomfortable memories. He held up a hand as Derek seemed ready to speak, and the other man leaned back again to let him finish. Hotch had a feeling that if he didn't say this now, he would never get it out.

"I didn't like it, but at the same time, my body reacted to it," he could feel his fists clenching up again. "On some level, it felt good, and that made me hate him even more for making me feel something I didn't want. Intellectually, I knew—I know better, but—," he wiped his sweaty hands off on his jeans.

"But you still hate him for making you hate yourself," Derek finished for him after he found he couldn't continue.

"Yes. I don't like feeling weak or needy, and he made me feel both repeatedly," he answered in a gravelly voice.

Derek nodded at him. "Hotch man, believe me when I tell you that I understand. The worst of it is waking up at three in the morning after a nightmare wondering if there couldn't have been more you could have done to make it stop, you know?"

He nodded, wide eyed.

"But there wasn't anything else you or I could have done. It's over man. It's in the past, and you have to learn how to live with the knowledge that it happened, and that there's nothing you can do about it except keep going."

"Except that makes me feels like I'm doing nothing," Hotch said.

"But it's not. Figuring out how to keep on living is sometimes the hardest part. People don't understand that, but survivors do." Morgan looked up at him seriously before cracking a grin. "Now this man that you dreamt about, do I know him?" Morgan asked with a small smile.

"It's not you," Hotch answered quickly.

"But you didn't say anything about me not knowing him, right? Uh huh," Morgan laughed mischievously. "Better not be my little brother Reid, right?"

Derek stared him down and Hotch was suddenly very grateful that his dreams had not been about the much younger man currently in question. "No."

"Then if not Reid . . ." abruptly Morgan's eyebrows went up and Hotch let out a groan, briefly hiding his face in his hands.

"Dude, are you talking about who I think you are?" The self-satisfied grin across his subordinate's face was embarrassing to look at, so he tried not to.

"It's not like it matters, Derek. He's straight, I'm straight. It doesn't matter. It's not going to happen."

"Who you trying to convince? Me or you?" Derek laughed again and Hotch felt his cheeks begin to burn again. "Besides, I know for a fact that he's not as straight as you think he is," the other man said with a knowing wink.

What?

"What do you mean? He's had three ex-wives, remember?"

"And half a dozen ex-boyfriends," Derek laughed at the flabbergasted expression on Hotch's face. "Come on, you're telling me that you never once noticed any of that?"

Hotch numbly shook his head in the negative.

"And you call yourself a profiler?" Morgan snorted playfully.

"No inter-team profiling," Hotch answered weakly.

"Right."

"Is that how you learned about it?"

"Naw man. Ever since Alaska, you've been rooming me with him a lot more. Sometimes we stay up and talk, you know?"

Hotch knew. Sometimes it was impossible to go straight to sleep after the more twisted cases, regardless of how exhausted you were.

"What about his reputation as a womanizer?"

"Just a half truth," Derek shrugged. "Look, Rossi put it to me simply: 'I just like sex. I'm not that partial about whom with.'"

"So, what should I do?" He asked after letting that sink in.

"Don't stress about it Hotch. He's had his eye on you for awhile. If he doesn't yet know you're watching back, then he will soon."