Warning: Allusions to drug use. Slash!

Disclaimer: Not mine. I only love them dearly.

Spoilers through 5x2, Haunted

Unbeta'd. All errors are mine. Please read and review!

Author's Note: All right, my doves! This was originally supposed to be a one-shot, but some of you expressed interest in this, and then Spencer crept in and started ranting to me that he wanted his say, too. There is the vaguest of nods to a 5+1 format here.

Chapter Two

Connections

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one.

Spencer Reid was pissed.

Not only was SSA Aaron Hotchner, BAU Unit Chief, standing in front of him: Hotch was standing at the door of his apartment, still wearing the suit Garcia swore he slept in, though Reid thought she was probably joking. Watching Reid hang from his crutches, wrung out from pain for which Tylenol did nothing, dressed in a faded FBI t-shirt, plaid pajama pants, and glasses. Hotch was standing with his long clean spare lines of face and body that made Reid think of an aleph number, an infinite cardinality, the kind of connection he could explain if his goal was—with few exceptions—glazed expressions and shouts of, "Reid!"

It was after midnight.

"Hotch, what are you doing here?"

Reid had known after Phillip Dowd, when he had tried to smile through everything he was feeling and everything he thought he should be feeling, when he had told Hotch the kill shot had been an accident. When Hotch had answered him, maybe understanding the feelings Reid was searching for, and told him to keep the Glock.

"Morgan called me."

Angling his crutches, the click of metal as he shifted loud in the darkness, Reid moved back enough to let Hotch pass, closed and locked the door. Debated turning around, and the risk of seeing that degree of understanding in Hotch's eyes now.

Reid kept his face averted.

"Are you alright?"

Of course Hotch would ask that. He turned and lifted his eyes. Saw Hotch in the dim gold light cast by his library lamp. He shut his eyes again as he maneuvered past, back to the couch where he could prop up his knee and bury everything in his philosophy textbooks. Hegel and Heidegger, obfuscation and obscurantism.

"I got shot, Hotch."

"That's not what I meant."

Fine tremors of exhaustion quivered through his body as he sat. As he took both hands to his leg and pulled it up to rest on the coffee table. As he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, let them drop back to his lap.

Hotch sat next to him on the couch. He lifted the leather bound notebook there, while Reid watched nervously, and touched the embossed symbol on the front. Reid said nothing. Hotch set the notebook down, too courteous to open the cover and pry.

He had known when Hotch had found him in Georgia, dragging him back even though Reid had paused and understood what would happen if he told Charles Hankle yes, he was confessing. Recited Exodus, He that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death. Even though he had, until he saw the search lights across the cemetery, kneeling in his half-dug grave, surrendered to the peace of giving up.

He had known when Hotch had ripped off his suit jacket at the end of the custodial with Hardwicke, ready to attack one of the century's most violent serial killers. Empathy and a profile. Thirteen minutes of telling Hardwicke why he had never had a chance to be something else and hoping they could make it out of there without leaving vital parts of themselves as crimson Rorschachs on the walls.

He had known, he had been sure, the last time he had tightened a tourniquet around his bicep. Because what stopped him, of all the things that were slipping away, was the image of dark fierce eyes and a face that rarely smiled.

Later, when he had lain gasping after breath, trapped in a hospital bed as his body tried to repair the ravages of anthrax, he had evaluated what he wanted and what he knew. He had realized with his abandonment issues, his difficulty finding anyone who could be patient with his tangential thought processes, and with Hotch's integrity and sense of duty binding him irrevocably to the BAU, why he had fallen in love with Hotch.

He had fallen in love with Hotch, because Hotch was safe.

Saying anything, though? He would destroy what had gradually come to define his world.

Reid bit back a grimace as his knee sent up a flare of pain.

Hotch fingered the symbol on his notebook again. "What is this symbol? Some Hebrew character?"

"An aleph number." His voice was a little jagged as he stared at his knee brace. "This one is specifically the representation of all real numbers, which is an uncountable infinite set, as opposed to a countable infinite set. It's a concept in set theory."

"Why do you have it here?"

Reid paused a moment before replying. Wondering how much he would betray. "It's dark and complex. I suppose because it's beautiful. There's no way to quantify the concept of an uncountable infinity, and yet the aleph number encompasses everything."

For a moment they sat in silence. Finally Reid swallowed, repeated, his voice a cracked whisper, "Hotch, what are you doing here?"

"Morgan told me you were upset about what happened today. He made a compelling argument that if you saw me, it would help."

Dropping his head, Reid curled his fingers over his face. So Morgan had figured it out, too? Or Morgan thought he was going to limp out, on his crutches, and find his own pain management plan. Thought Hotch would be an effective deterrent.

With that thought the anger, that made his gut clench and his eyes sting and burn, exploded into words.

"Upset? Hotch, what were you thinking? How could you go after Darin Call without a gun, without a vest, without backup—he was caught in a psychotic break that may have been focused on his father, but he had already demonstrated that he could and would lash out at anyone close enough to get caught in his delusion. Do you have any idea how we were all freaking out, after that profile on the jet when you started projecting and trying to figure out why Call hadn't killed himself? He could have shot you, he could have killed you-"

Reid broke off, panting, feeling his face go cold as he bit back words that would cause too much pain. He could have finished what Foyet started. And you—you knew it.

Miserably, he said instead, voice still a rasp of a whisper and refusing to look at Hotch, "You are not alone. You have people who care about you."

"Prentiss said something similar."

Dismay dragged Reid's eyes up. Prentiss knew? Hotch was watching him, steadily. He suddenly realized how close they were sitting, so close he could feel the heat emanating from Hotch's body.

"Hotch-"

Then, firm and dry and real, lips were pressing against his own. Reid froze; this was what he had always wanted, this wasn't possible, not in any scenario he had ever extrapolated based on available data and logic. Air was scant. He gasped after it, and felt the kiss deepen, Hotch's tongue slipping into his mouth, a gentle exploration.

He was kissing Hotch back.

A hand had reached to curl around his neck, pulling him close, and making a desperate sound Reid gripped Hotch's forearm, something solid and real to anchor him in a world that was dissolving into chaos.

When they broke apart, he let his forehead rest against Hotch's for a moment.

"Tell me what the aleph number means to you," Hotch said, his voice low.

He drew a shaky breath. "Cardinality aleph-one represents the first uncountable, infinite set. You could count forever, and aleph-one would still be there. Aleph-one is fundamentally an abstract, but subsets can be defined by using the axiom of choice." Now he began to stutter, just a bit. "The a-axiom of choice describes what mutually disjoint, non-empty sets have in common."

"Do you understand, now, why I came?"

"Yes." And then there were no words.

Aaron took a moment to straighten his tie, standing outside the apartment door. He had left a little before three, both of them exhausted and needing to go to work tomorrow. Reid had, shyly, shown him the contents of his notebook. The pages were half-filled with mathematical constructs, Bob Dylan lyrics, and a sketch that looked suspiciously like a miniature crossbow made out of popsicle sticks, complete with calculations of trajectories and speeds and weights.

"Don't bring that to work."

Reid laughed.

Instead of hurt, when he had told Reid what they had between them would have to wait until he found Foyet, Hotch had seen only compassion darkening his eyes.

Reid had taken Hotch's hand, tapped the palm, firmly, with two fingers, then closed Hotch's fingers over it like a secret.

Not until the pain etching around the younger man's eyes had deepened with exhaustion had Hotch excused himself. "Sleep," he had murmured. "I'll see you tomorrow."

With that gaze on him that was still so very open, that sweetness almost frightening because after everything that had happened to him, shouldn't the world have taught him not to trust?

A quiet, "I know."

Set theory.

He hoped Reid brought his popsicle stick crossbow into work soon.

As Aaron headed for his car, he felt something on his lips, something that might, someday, be a smile.

...

FIN