Chapter Text
“Help! I need help!”
Harry shot up off his chair and headed through the hall, wiping his eyes to clear them from the sleep. He glanced out through the windows that he passed, seeing the night sky through them, and then ran over to the room. Visiting hours were over and. The shout coming from the room filled the ICU and he jolted off.
He nodded to the FBI agent on guard at the door and stepped in, seeing several nurses trying to hold down the man on the bed. Harry glanced at the white board on the wall, taking in the name of the patient and feeling his heart skip a beat. He recognized that name.
The man on the bed was struggling, his eyes wide with fear and horror. He recognized that look, having woken up from several nightmares in the past. Short dark hair. Dark, hazy eyes. Harry winced and held up his hands, calling for a time out.
“Stop! Everyone just stop and back away!”
One by one the nurses retreated, glancing at him askance.
“He was fighting us,” one of them complained.
“So you crowd him and hold him down? Have we forgotten why this man is in the hospital?”
Harry didn’t even bother to note the looks of his coworkers and slowly walked over to the bed, the monitors screaming at him as the patient’s heart raced in his chest.
“Agent Hotchner…” Harry started, standing over the hospital bed and making himself smaller, lowering his shoulders. Pulling over the chair in the corner and sitting down, putting a gentle hand on the man’s hand.
Aaron Hotchner. FBI agent. Victim of a serial killer, or so the hospital gossip told him.
The man stopped shaking, his eyes drawn to Harry’s. The man’s bandages had bled through in the chaos and Harry winced. The man was on the good drugs, or at least had been put on the good drugs. The adrenaline of a nightmare and the ensuing struggle with the nurses would have chased the drugs away.
“You’re alright. You’re safe. It was just a nightmare. You’re in the hospital,” Harry murmured, peering down at the man’s bandaged body. “We’re just trying to help.”
The man’s throat worked and sweat broke out on his forehead, dripping down his temple. Aaron’s mouth opened and closed slowly, a small whimper of a noise slipping out.
“I…It hurts.”
Harry nodded. “Can we help? We have more drugs. They should help with the pain.”
Aaron stared up at him, licking his lips. Harry pulled over the cup and pitcher of water from the bedside table and poured some water, stuck a straw in it.
“Please.”
Harry nodded, hearing the slightly contained desperation in the man’s voice and unable to deny that. “Hold on.”
He reached down to the bed itself and found the buttons to operate the bed, watching as it rose up. Lifting Aaron’s body upright without the need to touch him. He was unsure as to whether or not touch would feel good to the man or not--didn’t know what truly happened to him.
“Here,” Harry offered, holding the cup up to Aaron’s mouth and waited.
Aaron slowly slipped the straw in his mouth and began to sip. Harry caught the man’s eyes and sighed, turning to look at the man’s bandages. He turned to look at the nurse next to him, seeing the syringe in the woman’s hands and nodding.
The woman’s eyes softened and she administered the medication, slipping it into the IV.
He looked back at his soulmate. Or at least… One of his soulmates. Aaron slowly finished drinking, his eyes blinking and finally staying closed. He pulled back from the straw and lay back down on the bed.
“You’re safe here, Aaron,” Harry whispered, brushing his sweaty hair back from his face as the man fell asleep. “Go back to sleep.”
He maneuvered the bed back to horizontal position and stayed with him for a while, watching as the man’s breathing evened out. He reached out to check the bandages, smoothing over them with little bits of magic--doing something he hadn’t done in a while. He usually only used magic in the hospital if something was dire, if he needed something done and it couldn’t be done by normal means. But. This was his soulmate.
The lines of pain and stress smoothed out all over Aaron’s body, magic aiding the healing. Drawing the skin, muscle and knitting the flesh together. Repairing the stitches that another doctor had applied.
Harry ran a hand through his hair and stood up eventually, yawning discreetly. He wasn’t even normally on the night shift. He was just covering for someone else.
He glanced down at his left arm, at his wand arm, where Aaron’s name was scrawled on his skin. He had a name on his right arm and one over his heart, making three soulmates. And he’d just met one of them, even if he was out of it.
Harry pulled Aaron’s chart at the door and peered down at it, his eyes widening at the contents of it. Stabbed several times. Assaulted and violated with a knife.
His stomach churned at the professional terms for the torture that Aaron had gone through.
He wondered what kind of FBI agent Aaron was, which department he worked in. It was clear that he had drawn the wrong kind of attention. Or maybe this was unrelated to wherever he worked.
Harry glanced back into Aaron’s hospital room, staring at the man on the bed. His heart skipped several beats and he rubbed his left arm, smoothing a thumb over the hidden name.
“You ready to get out of here, man?” Derek asked, helping him into a wheelchair, eying Aaron’s bandages with keen eyes. There weren’t that many on Aaron’s chest or legs and the discharge instructions had been too few. There hadn’t been nearly enough bandages for what Aaron had gone through. For what Derek had been too slow to protect Hotch from. The fact that Foyet had used Derek’s credentials to get Hotch into the hospital had made a hot curl of anger coil in his gut.
Aaron settled into the chair, with a hospital gown on, and peered out through the sliding doors of his hospital room, spotting Prentiss, JJ and Spencer. But not seeing the nurse he had seen a few nights ago. Green eyes floated in his memory but not… His memory was hazy, a sheen of drugs riding over it, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he had seen their last soulmate or not. It had just been one night. The feeling of soft fingers running through his hair was the last thing he had felt before falling into a drugged sleep.
Aaron nodded vehemently. “I am. Derek…”
“We’re looking for him, Aaron. I promise we are.”
Aaron glanced down at himself, at the hospital gown he was in, the bandages he still had on. His body was stiff and achy. There would be scars and. He didn’t feel nearly as badly as he had thought he would. The nurses who had seen to him on the last day had been surprised to see the state of his skin, not at all hiding their feelings.
“Hotch, we still love you,” Derek murmured, slipping one of his hands into Aaron’s and squeezing in reassurance.
Aaron nodded distractedly as they started to roll out of the room, as he caught Spencer’s eyes. Their youngest soulmate was staring at him with wide eyes, leaning on his crutches. Spencer was whiteknuckling the crutches, staring up at Hotch worriedly.
“I’m alright,” Hotch said, reaching up a hand to curl into Spencer’s hip.
“We’ve already got a schedule,” Derek offered, jerking his chin at Spencer. “Pretty boy, why don’t you let JJ help you into the car? I’ve got Hotch.”
Prentiss met his eyes, dropping one of her hands to her waist, close to where her gun sat. Derek shrugged and turned to the nurse’s desk, asking a wordless question.
Prentiss shook her head, her sharp gaze flicking to JJ briefly before she looked at the nurse’s desk too.
“Hotch, we’re taking you home and you’re staying there,” Derek said, as they rolled out. “Rossi’s already getting your apartment cleaned and stocked.”
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Spencer questioned, his eyes narrowing, his shoulders easing their tense hold.
The doors at the end of the hallway opened and let in a few doctors with their patients, a crowded group of people that put Derek on edge.
Hotch nodded in a way that Derek knew he was putting on an act. Wondered if Spence could see it.
“Let’s get out of here,” Hotch whispered.
Aaron sighed as they rolled through the double doors of the hospital, spotting the big black van that would take him home. He was already glad to be not going home alone. Derek had moved in a few days after Haley had moved out and Spencer had followed shortly after.
The names over his arms and heart seemed to warm at the thought and he wondered… He turned to glance back at the hospital, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand up for a minute.
Aaron couldn’t see anything but nurses, doctors, patients and the two security guards at the entrance.