Hotch/Reid Fanfic: "Strangers On A Plane" [R] by me_and_thee Part III
ix.
“Do you think you can do this, guys?” Morgan asks Hotch and Reid after Garcia only half-jokingly proposed they pretend to be a gay couple to lure in the former UnSub and, much to her own surprise, was taken seriously.
Thanks in no small part to Prentiss’ encouraging suggestion that the age difference between her boss and youngest teammate, while not abysmal, might prove substantial enough to trigger the killer’s new raptus, simply by mirroring the age gap between Donovan and his own rapist.
Neither Hotch nor Reid answers; both nod the uncertain nod of the hopeful and leave to go get ready for their wild night out at Nostalgia night club.
-----
“Spencer, you’ll have to call me *Aaron* at some point, you know that, right?”
“Um, yeah. That’s possibly going to be as weird as having to kiss my boss.” And if Hotch wasn’t almost moved by Reid’s socially-challenged attempt at wit, he’d let himself be hurt by his verbal choice of having to.
“Is this your way of telling us you’d rather kiss Morgan?”
Reid groans at the absurdity of such a scenario and suddenly wishes he wasn’t always the one on the receiving end of Hotch’s rusty sense of humor.
Of course, the fact that JJ, Prentiss and Garcia are giggling like teenyboppers at a Backstreet Boys meet ‘n’ greet doesn’t help matters any.
And if cradling Hotch’s face in his hands and placing a chaste yet solid kiss on his mouth is the only way he can get this rehearsal thing over with, who’s he not to sacrifice himself for a greater good?
“So? Was it believable enough, ladies?”
“It-it was hot as hell, is what it was.” Penelope babbles, while Emily and JJ only cough their way out of blatant gaping.
-----
But then it’s 11 p.m. and there’s sweat along Reid’s hairline. Sweat, from the sultriness of the dance floor and from a crippling fear that too tight a squeeze on the other man’s silk shirt-a suspiciously lingering brush of his tongue against Hotch’s, might betray the full, so very unprofessional scope of his feelings for him.
x.
The Donovan case is gone but not forgotten and fifteen months of dust have already piled up on the file when April comes again; unfortunately, though, it’s not the first day of the month anymore when Reid shows Hotch the letter Gideon has left for him at the cabin, so they’re not even granted a lousy chance to conjecture an April Fool’s joke from their boss-slash-teammate, however unlikely in itself.
What Hotch doesn’t tell Reid-maybe someday, he tells himself instead-is that he, too, has received a letter from Jason. And, even without Reid’s eidetic memory, he has already managed to commit most of it to memory.
To learn it by heart.
And the expression, if cheesy, has never sounded more appropriate.
:: You once told me I sometimes forget people need to know they’re important, remember? Well, I believe he needs to know just how important he is, Hotch.
I know you-all of us, really-sometimes let the fact that he’s so incredibly smart and perceptive overwhelm you, to the point where it can get intimidating. And I’m aware it must sound horribly hypocritical of me to say this when it looks like I’m abandoning him, but now, of all times, is when you cannot be allowed the luxury of forgetting he’s little more than a kid.
No, scratch that.
He’s a son. A brother. A friend. He’s part of a family. And he needs to be reminded of that when he starts doubting himself just because I was pavid and selfish and weak.
And I believe he needs to hear it from you. ::
xi.
“Remember that list of twenty-five things you must do before you die Gideon compiled two years ago?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve made one myself.”
“Oh? Ok.”
“I’m down to number twenty-four. And it’s about us.” He takes a deep breath before blurting it out like he’d shed an itchy old sweater he’s insanely fond of but can’t stand anymore. “I’m in love with someone else.”
“I know, Aaron,” she says, all too soothingly, after mere seconds that feel like decades to Hotch.
“What do you mean you-but how?” Had Haley been there when Reid had said “I choose Aaron Hotchner” to Raphael, she would have been able to recognize the same sober, yet petrified, mask of shock on her husband’s face.
“They say bad company brings bad habits, right? Well, you don’t live with a profiler for fifteen years without picking up a couple of tricks.” And her smile seems so radiant he wonders, if only for an instant, if he’s not making a giant mistake. The kind he might live to regret.
But then she brings him back to contingency. “I never thought it possible-and, trust me, there are days when it still kills me to admit it, if only to myself-but he loves you even more and better” (unconditionally, is what she thinks and doesn’t say) “than I’m capable of. And I cannot be the one who takes something like that from you.” And, in spite of the ill-disguised resentment dodging the reins of her words, he can see the rightness of it all with astounding clarity.
He would even question her improbable selflessness, if he didn’t remember odd afternoon phone calls, the kind where he’d find himself on the receiving end of an all too telltale silence. He would put up a bitter fight against his own cause, if only to have her bend and break like he would a suspect in the interrogation room.
But he can’t bring himself to care anymore.
He looks down at the crumpled piece of paper in between his left index and thumb and, selfishly enough, what he sees there is all he’s inclined to care about at that very moment.
# 25 - Tell Spencer.
xii.
“I’m not saying I could ever play such a crucial role in anybody’s life-hell, even my own father didn’t blink twice before letting my schizophrenic mother raise me!” Reid confides, in a frantic, laugh-like crashing of words that makes Hotch’s blood run dry. “I’m just wondering if maybe Gideon feels like he’s failed with me…”
“Failed you how?”
“Not failed *me*. *With* me. Because of, you know… what happened after Tobias.”
“Reid, don’t do this to yourself. You’re such a brilliant *creature*--”
“Don-don’t ever call me that.” Reid grimaces when faced, once again, with the only word that can make him feel like a Great Depression circus freak. Even coming from Hotch.
Who’s sure he won’t again. If only because it’s one of those moments where Hotch himself is hit with a gashing reminder, of times when excellent profiler automatically translated into terrible husband and father, instead.
Then, almost imperceptibly, indignation crosses a thin line into tired understanding when Reid adds a strained “Please.”
One that breaks Hotch’s heart and his resolve not to touch him.
-----
The kiss is welcome salt in the wound of both souls and the fact that this may or may not have been what Gideon meant by his letter is just another thing Hotch can’t pretend to care about anymore.
So he keeps on kissing Reid, so compliant and intimidatingly vulnerable in his arms. He marks him with the cleansing fire of memories in the making, with chasing nibbles on the boy’s lips that give way to equally full of longing, open-mouthed touches.
Reid smiles lazily into the kisses, as if he’d been doing this forever; he lets his teeth clumsily clash against Hotch’s upper lip, only to teasingly lick inside the corner of his mouth.
Hotch never knew that such undiluted trust, the raw familiarity of Reid’s gestures, could turn his world upside-down-and-up-again; and the feeling that he’s never going to have enough of such vibrancy has a terrifying quality to it.
-----
Buried deep within Spencer-tangled limbs hot and rippling like plump tendrils-is when he inconveniently remembers he has the hateful duty to put a screeching halt to whatever this is.
Before the bugbear of fraternization rules is reduced to even more of a pitiful puppet.
Then he’s heavy and spent under the maddening pressure of sharp angles and chiseled skin, and yet “Spencer, we shouldn’t…” is all he needs to force out of his mouth before Reid is out the door, a ghost on his suddenly ice-cold lips.
xiii.
Hotch doesn’t know whether to be relieved or crushed when Reid does not call in sick the following day.
So he settles for both. And throws in a generous pinch of self-hatred for good measure.
He meets Reid’s eyes once, during a briefing in a PD room full of typical profiler-allergic officers, and what he finds there is a quiet resignation which he can’t help but see through the shards of a broken promise.
I will never take him for granted.
Part IV