Hotch/Reid Fanfic: "Strangers On A Plane" [R] by me_and_thee Part I
Title: “Strangers On A Plane”
[Yep, shamelessly paraphrasing the title of one of my favorite Hitchcock movies: “Strangers On A Train”.
Go watch it. NOW!
Um, ok, you may reid the story first. ;-) ]
Author: me_and_thee aka Nic/Nickee/Michela
Pairing: Hotch/Reid. What else?!
Rating: R / FRAO?
Genre: canon.
Disclaimer: All characters depicted in this story are property of CBS, Jeff Davis, Edward Allen Bernero, Gigi Coello-Bannon, Deborah Spera blah, blah, blah.
(I think we all know if they were mine, the show would probably be a lot like, um, “Criminal Minds”, meet “Queer As Folk”!)
STRANGERS ON A PLANE
‘...and his eyes had that splendid innocence, that opaque blue candour of the satanically fallen.’
(John Fowles ~ “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”)
i.
Spencer is eighteen when he makes it a point to drive random long distances on Saturday night highways, even though he knows it doesn’t quite become him. But he does it anyway, if only to adjust to a loneliness which, he has decided, will keep him company for the rest of his virtually motherless life.
A degree of awareness he has reached with relatively little effort on his part.
Discreetly.
And accepted almost as peacefully.
ii.
At least until Hotch and Haley invite him to spend Christmas with them.
Hotch lets him fumble through jerky excuses for thirty-five seconds before he realizes all he has to do is put his son on the phone.
And it’s definitely a good thing Hotch is, well, Hotch, Reid ponders two days later, while drying his face on the dark blue-green towels Haley has tastefully arranged for him in the guest bathroom of her parents’ Vermont cottage.
Because - of this he’s positive - in Hotch’s place, Morgan wouldn’t have passed up on the juicy opportunity to harp on the irony of Reid’s first unenthusiastic reaction to Jack, only to ultimately point out just how irremediably HotchnerBoys-whipped his friend is.
It’s so much a good thing that his boss is who he is that, if Reid were a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl-the one more people than he cares to admit see in him-he would confess it makes him want to adopt a dozen freaking puppies with Hotch.
-----
“I thought you hated the theatre.”
“I do. I also hate the sight of blood, but it’s in my veins.”
Haley can see it when both her husband and Spencer raise the corners of their mouths in the same barely-there smile of deep, shared understanding at the brilliant exchange on the small TV set.
Once “Limelight” gives way to a blank screen, she gets up and stretches bony arms before pressing the stop and eject buttons on the old VCR. She places a tender-friendly? Reid chooses this, of all nights, to be one for wishful thinking-peck on Hotch’s mouth. “And try not to stay up all night, guys. When Jack wakes you up at 6 a.m., you’re going to need more energy than if you were pursuing one of your bad guys across the continent.” She chuckles.
Hotch drops his head back against the small couch he’s sharing with Reid and lets out an exaggerated, low groan, pinching the bridge of his nose for good theatrical measure. “Maybe it wasn’t so wise of you to accept our invitation, Spence. It’s going to be the longest Christmas day you’ve ever experienced, my friend,” he adds with a breathless laugh that is strangely not Aaron and not quite Hotchner, either.
And Reid’s intermittent insecurity would maybe gnaw at him and poke him uncomfortably in the ribs until he gives in and interprets Hotch’s joke as a signed-sealed-delivered confirmation that he has only invited him out of sheer holiday spirit, if not pity (aren’t we optimistic, Spencer? Must be the Christmas atmosphere, he muses), knowing Reid would have spent their four days off duty alone, otherwise.
But those last two words-and how completely different the ‘Spence’ nickname sounds when coming from Hotch’s lips rather than JJ’s-make him decide he prefers dwelling on the tangibility in Hotch’s voice and on the nearness of him, instead.
So much so that, when Hotch opens his eyes and grins to the ceiling, Reid can’t help the happy glint in his own raw umber eyes and hopes he has a right to claim part of that fondness as his, if only to himself.
Then Hotch is up, pushing the battered VHS tape back in. “Sorry about that. Haley doesn’t know you’re that much of a geek,” he says with a light slap on Reid’s arm and a hearty smirk that just begs for Spencer’s mock punch to his side and the sarcastic retort that ensues.
“Says the Chief of Rusty Coin Freaks United!”
This time, Reid knows the full-blown laugh that follows is for him and him alone.
Haley knows it, too. And she sighs resignedly into her son’s soft hair while the bittersweet score of “Modern Times” dissolves in the drowsy haze of her mind.
iii.
“So. How long have you been in love with our resident Mother Hen, huh?” Elle asks Reid at what can only be an ungodly hour on New Year’s Eve. She lands the question as chirpily and yet cautiously as if she were trying to steer a young girl away from a suspected rapist without cueing her into exactly what is going on. With a tinge of exhilaration in her voice that Reid, for all his profiling genius, doesn’t quite detect.
Possibly because he’s too busy choking on his overly-sugared coffee.
As soon as he stops coughing-and thank God Hotch is letting JJ humiliate him at darts thirty feet away!-a mask of horrified embarrassment replaces the cheerful frown that is his trademark facial expression. “Wh-what are you talking about?!”
“Don’t worry, Spencer. Your secret is safe with me,” she adds, patting his forearm with the mildly annoying fondness of an older sister.
“B-but there is no secret!!” He hopes his eyes aren’t actually bulging out as much as it feels like they are; and a distant, mocking regret for the time his mother spent to help him get over his stuttering condition seeps through the thumping of bad hip-hop tunes.
“Right. I guess there isn’t one anymore.” She pauses to raise an eyebrow. “Unless you still want to pretend you do not TiVo “As The World Turns” on a daily basis, that is.” A wink is all he’s granted before she gets up from her stool and leaves him, painfully dumbfounded, to join Derek, Penelope and Prentiss at the bar.
iv.
Six hours and twelve aspirins later, the team, minus Elle, of course-except it’s one of those days when it’s especially hard not to think of her as part of The Team anymore-are back at the BAU headquarters, racking sleep-deprived brains in an attempt to predict the UnSub’s next move, on the meager basis of the puzzling victimology they’re presented with: “Three females: Chyler Crawford, 24, professional violinist from Philadelphia; Claire O’Reilly, 40, Bioethics teacher at the University of Pittsburgh; Kathryn Montgomery, 32, social worker from Allentown,” JJ recites.
To which Morgan groans and remarks how he could have lived without another Frank on National Splitting Headache Day.
-----
“How can it not bother you? Any of you?” Reid blurts out. He’s mindlessly nursing his third cup of coffee when Hotch raises shadowed eyes from the inevitable paperwork to a tilt of Reid’s head that implicates the rest of the team, although not in the immediate vicinity, in the question.
“What should?”
“The way people keep saying your UnSub here and your UnSub there?” Reid mistakes Hotch’s blank look for patronizing perplexity and hurries on to his self-conscious, “Never mind, I’m just…” -frustration palpable in his voice- “…It makes me feel kind of *dirty* when they spit it out at us like that. As if we were responsible for sociopaths’ and sadists’, um, ‘accomplishments’.”
“Don’t let it get to you too much; you know how terrified people crave for a willing scapegoat. And FBI profilers are ideal candidates for that, apparently,” Hotch comments dryly, his eyes not leaving the files he’s been poring over for twenty minutes. Then a thoughtful pause, and, “But, yeah, while I can’t answer for the others, it used to bother me, too,” he adds, this time letting his own gaze meet Reid’s intrigued one.
“When did it stop?”
And Hotch knows what Spencer really wants-needs-to know is how it stopped.
Better yet, how to make it stop. The up-surging, claustrophobic knot in his windpipe that every so often threatens to suffocate Reid in his sleep; that makes him spring up in undercover motel beds, unfairly alert at any goddamn hour of the night-only for Hotch to have to feign obliviousness to this last shred of Henkel’s unwanted legacy.
Hotch, forced to pretend he doesn’t hold his own breath - stiflingly warm with anger and pity and awe for this wonder boy - through the unbearably long minutes it takes Spencer to wind down and let sleep claim him back.
“When you saved yourself from Raphael. That’s when it stopped.” Hotch answers, his voice overcome with a grave uneasiness that makes Reid shudder more than the mention of his torturer itself.
Part II