Title: Highway Run
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Rating: PG
Length: 176 words
Content notes: Mentions of suicidal thoughts, mentions of character death
Author notes: For the Amnesty Round; also fills the slot intoxication in my 10_hurt_comfort table
Summary: Hotch tries to drink his sorrows away.



The road is long, and it feels like he has been travelling it for ages. Serial killers never stop, and neither do the agents of BAU. Hotch is so tired, so tired of everything. After Hayley’s death and his stabbing, everything went wrong.

What’s the point of it anymore? If it wasn’t for Jack, he would have ended his life already.

The lukewarm beer tastes like ashes in his mouth, so he orders rum and coke instead. Then he realizes it was Hayley’s favourite drink and suddenly swallowing the brown liquid feels like choking. Hotch drinks it anyway because then it all would be over.

It does not stop.

Hotch tries to burrow his sorrow and grief and guilt into his glass – only a few more drinks and then he has accomplished his goal.

“Please stop.”

It’s only weeks later when Hotch finds out it was Spencer who took him back to his hotel room and stroked his back when he threw up countless times in the tiny bathroom. He has no recollection of those hours.