#criminal midns gen fic

[spencers-renaissance]

can't un-sing a song that's sung.

Summary: The worst thing about it is that Derek isn’t even surprised when he gets the call.

Tags: drug use, overdose, hurt/comfort, guilty derek & hotch, angst with a hopeful ending, bedside vigils, protective derek & hotch NO MCD

Pairing: Gen (Platonic Derek Morgan & Spencer Reid; Aaron Hotchner & Spencer Reid)

Word Count: 1.8k

Masterlist // Read on AO3 // Bad Things Happen Bingo

Major TWs, obviously. I'm just so angry that no-one did anything about Spencer's addiction in season two, so I decided to punish Derek and Hotch by having the (almost) worst-case scenario come to fruition. Fic inspired by this gifset & title from this poem (v short but v poignant) Fills the 'Overdose' square on my Bad Things Happen Bingo card.

The worst thing about it is that Derek isn’t even surprised when he gets the call.

His heart sinks, of course, and his stomach feels like it bottoms out. His chest tightens and he struggles to breathe for a minute and a half, his hands clamming up as his tongue freezes and he can’t find the words to respond to Hotch over the phone. But he isn’t surprised. And that, when it really and truly comes down to it, is exactly where his sins lie.

He races as quickly as he can to the hospital, not obeying the traffic laws by any stretch of the imagination as his hands grip so tightly at the steering wheel that his knuckles turn white and the pattern of the leather; the seams where it's sewn imprint themselves on his palm. His heart pounds rapidly and it’s all he can hear, blood thudding in his ears as the tight knot of anxiety sits heavy in his stomach.

He’s just pulling into the hospital car park when he realises that the last time he felt like this — God, the last time he felt like this was when he first realised Spencer was missing all those months ago. He heaves a dry sob as he abandons his car in a space he hopes is the right one, and slams his palm down hard on the steering wheel once.

He allows himself one more guilt-ridden, heartbroken sob before he forces himself to calm down, doing his best to ignore the tumultuous emotions raging inside him as he shuts the car door behind him and hurries towards the entrance.

It’s hard not to cry when he first locks eyes on Hotch. Seeing his calm, stoic supervisor in a state of utter disarray — red-rimmed eyes, messed up hair, ruffled clothes — somehow makes this all seem a bit too real. Maybe in the car ride over he’d still clung to a small, pathetic bit of hope that this is all a nightmare, that he’ll wake up in a minute and he’ll drive to work and Spencer will already be at his desk, beavering away.

In the harsh lights and bustling noise of the hospital corridor, he knows that’s not going to happen.

They don’t say anything as they stare at one another, both clearly struggling to bite back the raw emotion threatening to spill from their eyes, to unleash itself in a full blown meltdown. Eventually, Hotch sits back down and buries his face in his hands, and Derek joins him on the little two-seater bench.

He doesn’t claim to know much about hospitals or medical care in general, but he knows for damn sure that waiting on a bench outside the ICU is not good, and he’s doing everything in his power to not think about that too hard.

They’ve been sat in stony silence for countless minutes before Derek finally lifts his head, though he still can’t bring himself to look at Hotch again. “Have you called the others?”

Hotch swallows, and Derek can see the tear-tracks trailing down the side of his face out of the corner of his eye. He pretends not to notice them.

“No,” he says, voice unsettlingly shaky. “Only you.”

He decides now is not the time to dwell on that. “Is he— is he going to lose his job?”

The only reason none of them had done anything sooner was because they knew how important this job is to Spencer. And Derek hates with a burning, roaring passion that their hesitation; their cowardly delay, might have cost him his life instead. Just the thought brings another choked sob from his lips, and this time the tears come with it. Before he knows it, his shoulders are shaking violently and all the emotions Derek is struggling to name finally come pouring out, right into Hotch’s lap.

He feels an arm wrap around him and he’s too broken not to lean into it, seeking comfort from the one person in the entire world who can offer it right now. Falling apart in his superior’s arms is not how he saw his Thursday evening going, but he’s too exhausted to care.

By the time he finally pulls away, Hotch is crying too, and they sit a little closer on the bench.

“Spencer won’t lose his job,” he says determinedly, looking Derek in the eyes. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Derek knows that they will have to lie. Papers will be forged and Hotch will be backed into an impossible corner, and he knows that they could lose their jobs if they are ever found out. He doesn’t fucking care. They’ve already failed Spencer in a disgusting, immeasurable, utterly unforgivable way, and he’ll be damned if they ever do that again.

“Good,” he says, and that’s the end of that.

Derek doesn’t understand most of what the doctor tells them, but he doesn’t really care that much for the technicalities anyway. All he cares about is that Spencer had overdosed in the parking garage of his building and was found by a neighbour he doesn’t even know that well. He cares that a damn near stranger was there for Spencer when he wasn’t, and he cares that Hotch was called as his emergency contact, and as such, Derek can finally step up. He can walk into his room and hold his hand and tell him that he’s here now, and he’s not leaving again.

He cares that Spencer is going to be okay.

He’s still asleep when they’re finally allowed to take their seats by his bedside, and Derek tries very hard not to cry at the sight of him, but it isn’t easy. There’s still a bluish tint to his fingernails, and he looks pale and clammy under the oxygen mask. Medicine drips slowly into the line connected to the cannula in the crook of his elbow, and the heart rate echoing out from the monitors is still alarmingly quick.

The evidence of Derek’s failings is staring him right in the face, and it’s hard not to turn away, but he refuses to let himself. He has a lot to make up to Spencer, but he can damn well start by sitting with him here in his darkest hour.

“We all knew.”

Derek looks up from Spencer’s hand to meet Hotch’s eyes. “Yeah.”

“We all knew, and we didn’t do anything about it.” The guilt in Hotch’s voice is momentous enough to rival Derek’s own, and it hurts to hear. Derek failed Spencer as a colleague and a friend-maybe-something-more, but Hotch failed him as a father figure.

He feels tears well up in his eyes again and he does his best to swallow them back down. “Emily did.”

A violent sob tears itself out of Hotch’s lungs, and it’s so loud that Derek almost flinches. “And isn’t that just so much worse? She barely knows him! I met him at lunch with Gideon when he was nineteen, I’ve known him for seven years! Before all of this went down, he almost called me ‘dad’. And I sat back and watched him suffer with both the PTSD of being kidnapped and the fucking heroin addiction he developed because of that bastard, and I did nothing!”

Derek’s at a loss as he watches Hotch break down in front of him, his voice breaking as he shouts, tears streaming down his face as he dissolves into sobs.

“He’s never gonna forgive me. Nor should he. I can’t stand myself right now.”

A little uncertain of the right thing to do, Derek stands up and crosses to the other side of the bed and wraps his arms around Hotch like he did for him only hours earlier. “We all fucked up,” he agrees, “but we’ll get through this. We might never forgive ourselves, but we can always do better. We can do right by Spencer as he recovers, we can help him get clean, help him keep his job, remind him of how loved he is. We can’t abandon that duty just because we failed at doing it before.”

Hotch sits back up and wipes at his eyes furiously, casting his eyes on Spencer. He reaches a hand out and brushes it through his short but untamed curls tenderly, his thumb caressing his eyebrow and forehead gently.

“I know,” he says quietly. “I won’t fail him again.”

Both Derek and Hotch spring into action as soon as Spencer stirs, waking up slowly through the layers of sleep until he’s staring at both of them with a look of terrified uncomprehension in his eyes.

“Hey,” Hotch says softly, hand moving to cup the side of his face. “You’re alright, you’re safe. You’re in the hospital with me and Derek, and everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

Spencer slowly looks around the room as the realisation of what’s going on slowly dawns on him, and soon the anxiety is replaced with abject horror and to Derek’s dismay, he immediately starts to cry.

“Hey, hey, pretty boy,” he murmurs as soothingly as he can, following Hotch’s suit and tangling his fingers in Spencer’s hair. “Don’t worry about anything right now, okay? Hotch and I are gonna fix everything right up, and we’re gonna help you. We’re gonna help you like we should’ve helped you before.”

He hates that he loses his composure slightly at the end, but Spencer relaxes slightly so he takes it as a win.

“You can go back to sleep now, Spencer,” Hotch says gently, spotting the signs of exhaustion easily. “We’re gonna stay right here with you, okay? We’ll be here when you wake up.”

When he does finally awaken again, he explains through tears and strangled breaths that he didn’t mean to, that he wasn’t trying to die, he was just so tired and in so much pain that he hadn’t calculated the dosage right.

Hotch and Derek calmly explain that they’re not judging him, and that they’re going to help him through the hospital’s rehab program. Spencer refuses their apologies but they repeat them anyway, trying not to show just how much they hate themselves as they do.

They rope Penelope in, and she helps them make sure Spencer keeps his job, but otherwise their team is entirely oblivious to their chaotic and regret-filled Saturday night spent in George Washington University Hospital.

Most of all, though, Derek does absolutely everything in his power to make sure Spencer is happy, no matter how torn-up and scarred he might feel when he goes home to his own apartment. It isn’t much compared to his property business and his coveted role at the FBI’s behavioural analysis unit, but to Derek it’s his most important and worthy mission in life.

And if that spirals into something more, well. Maybe that’s just one good thing to come out of that small, stuffy, heartbreak-riddled ICU room.

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