Chapter One: Who we grow to be

Thank you to my beta, Tafferling! Tagged for smut, drug use, and adult themes.

AN: For those who are unfamiliar with the His Dark Materials universe, this is basically all you need to know (taken from the wiki)

A dæmon /ˈdiːmən/ is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily, almost instantaneously, to become any creature, real or imaginary. During their adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons and their humans are almost always of different genders.

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My turn shall also come:

I sense the spreading of a wing.

Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems

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Aaron Hotchner had once sat on the sidelines at his cousin's birthday party because he couldn't decide whether he wanted to play party games with one group of excited children or tag with another. Instead, he'd moodily slouched against the wall of his uncle's house while his daemon snuffled around his legs in the form a badger, huffing at anyone who came too close.

Grandmamma had wandered over to him, clicking her tongue in disapproval at his flushed face. Running a cool hand over his forehead, she wiped a dark lock of wayward hair back into place. "You're not very good at knowing what you want," she'd commented with a sharp gleam in her eyes, and Aaron had shrugged.

He never really outgrew that.

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Spencer Reid unsettled people.

He'd considered the possibility that it was his age coupled with his intelligence, and maybe they just felt threatened by their own insecurities.

Eventually, he had to face the truth that it was probably Aureilo.

"You need to stop this," William Reid scolded them one day, two years before he walked out on Spencer and Diana without ever looking back. His daemon, a bristle backed coyote, shook its head at Aureilo in disappointment. "It makes people uncomfortable, Spencer."

Aureilo made an angry noise, shifting quickly to a polecat and back to his favoured hare form. "You're angry at us because we frighten you," he said furiously, his tail flicking. "You don't understand us. You don't even try."

"You talk far too much," William said coldly to his son's daemon before turning back to Spencer. "And you entirely too little. What's wrong with you? Why are you like this?"

"There's nothing wrong with us," Aureilo said, laying back long velvet ears and staring unblinkingly at their father.

Spencer hadn't said anything, just looked down at his battered sneakers.

"There's nothing wrong with us," Aureilo repeated later that night, licking tears from Spencer's face.

Spencer wasn't sure he was right.

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"Your daemon still hasn't settled." The school psychologist eyed him over narrow glasses, a slight look of distaste around her mouth.

Aaron fought the urge to kick her under the table as she carefully avoided looking at Halaimon. Hal was flickering at a rapid pace through a startling variety of animals, each displaying Aaron's irate mood. The woman's daemon, a barred owl, clucked his beak a few times and rustled heavy feathers in obvious disapproval.

At seventeen, Hal should have settled ages ago. But Aaron rarely did what was expected of him; why would his daemon would be any different?

"It says here your brother's daemon settled two years ago, and he's younger than you." There was that desire to kick her again as she rattled off the bane of his life.

Why can't you be more like your brother? Why are you so serious, why are you so cold? You're a disappointment, Aaron.

"I'm not my brother," he muttered to the glossy surface of her desk. Hal shifted into a crow and made a harsh noise of agreement.

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There was never any question about what Aureilo would settle as. Ever since he could remember, Spencer had had his hare daemon loping after him with easy strides and only occasionally shifting if the need arose for wings or sharper teeth.

So when he woke up one day at twelve years old, put his glasses on and knew, it came as no surprise that it was a hare curled up on the mattress next to him.

Spencer went to the library and found every book on hares they had, even though he'd read them all before.

"Daemon settled has it, love?" the librarian asked him absently, wandering past his teetering stack of books.

Aureilo opened his mouth to answer, but Spencer shoved a book into his paw. They were trying not to be weird anymore, and that meant he had to talk. "Yeah, he's Lepus europaeus," he said softly, a proud note to his voice. "They're the largest hare species in the world."

"Not the prettiest though," the librarian noted. "Very plain looking. But if you're happy, good for you!" She wandered away, shelving books as she went.

"You can run up thirty-five miles per hour," Spencer comforted Aureilo as the woman walked away. "What does it matter what you look like?"

Aureilo eyed him over the pile of books. "We don't always have to run; hares can fight too. You forget that."

Spencer hadn't.

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Aaron had left home as soon as he was able, and he never looked back.

Which was why Sean on his doorstep in the middle of the night when he had finals the next day was a surprise, and not a welcome one.

"Why are you here?" Aaron had asked, moving aside with a raised eyebrow to let his brother in, his otter daemon gambolling playfully around his ankles.

"What? Can't I visit my big brother without there being some ulterior motive?" Sean said with a snort, stopping dead at the sight of Hal sprawled near Aaron's bed. "Woah, she settled big."

Aaron looked from Sean's slim, cheerful daemon to his own watching the proceedings with cold eyes. He shrugged. "She's some sort of shepherd dog. They get big."

Sean knew him better than to believe that he didn't know exactly what his daemon was, but he also knew better than to pry.

"Can I stay here for a while?" he said later that night after a few beers and Aaron warily agreed, even as Hal bared long fangs at Paarthurnax in a silent command for her to keep her distance.

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"What's your daemon?" asked the FBI recruiter on the first day of Aaron's training, his pen poised over the intake paperwork.

Aaron thought of the work he'd soon be doing, dangerous and thrilling and for the first time something he wanted more than anything.

"She's a wolf," he told the man quietly and Hal rumbled in agreement.

Halaimon - grey wolf, the form said in clear print for everyone to see.

"What does it matter what they call me anyway?" Hal asked later that night. Aaron didn't answer.

When the other trainees introduced themselves to him, he told them to call him Hotch. There was a lot of power in names, even if Hal didn't see it. Aaron had a dog daemon and everyone compared him to his brother.

Hotch had a wolf daemon, and no one questioned him.

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Aureilo almost escaped.

Spencer didn't have a chance, even though his daemon sniffed out the trap and shouted for him to run moments before the teenagers emerged from their hiding places. He'd barely taken two steps before a meaty hand had him by his collar, pulling him off his feet and momentarily cutting off his airway.

His hare bolted with all the speed his species was renowned for, but there was only so much he could do when forced to run in awkward half-circles at the end of his invisible tether to his human. One of the teenager's daemons herded him against a wall, lunging at him with wide, canine jaws.

Aureilo waited until the dog was almost on him before lashing out with a strong foreleg and leaving a bleeding gash across the dog's muzzle. Then he took off again.

Spencer wasn't sure what was more disorientating; the terrible pulling sensation of his hare straining against their bond to get away from the infuriated dog, or the clout he'd received from the owner of the dog daemon when his hare had struck it. He began to cry from the pain of it, and the hare turned and ran straight back into the jaws of the dog in his desperation to be reunited with him.

Spencer wouldn't remember them stripping his clothes and tying him to the goalpost, or if he did, those memories were easily shadowed by the horrible agony of his daemon drawing away.

When he started screaming, they left him alone. Eventually Aureilo picked himself up from where the dog had shaken him viciously and dropped him, limping over to gnaw the ties off Spencer's wrists and licking at the bloody grazes left behind.

"I'm sorry," the hare said, shaking uncontrollably as the sick sensation of distance began to fade. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm here. I won't go that far again."

Spencer clutched his hare to him and stroked his soft fur with trembling hands.

"We can do better," he murmured into his daemon's coat. "We can stop them from hurting us like that again." He thought quietly to himself that maybe daemons weren't such a great idea after all.

How could anyone ever not be vulnerable with a fragment of their own soul visible for everyone to see?

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"Listen Aaron, you're a great guy, we're just… not compatible." The latest in a long string of failed relationships smiled sadly at him as she packed her things. "It's not you…"

"It's my daemon," Hotch cut in, not bothering to temper his voice. Hal, a large dark form laying by the door, raised her head and bared her teeth at the woman's rook daemon, who looked away.

"She's… intimidating," Anna muttered, skin flushing red. "I'm sorry. It's just she looks so vicious; you know? I feel like people stare at us when we're together…"

Hotch let her leave. "We don't need them anyway," he said to Hal bitterly. "If they're so quick to judge."

Hal padded up and placed a consoling paw on his knee. "We didn't like her anyway," she said calmly.

He snorted, scratching behind her ear. "Who said that? I liked her just fine."

"No you didn't. She always left the milk in the fridge door instead of at the back, and you told her I'm a wolf."

"You are a wolf."

Hal's eyes flickered up to his, somehow both shadowed and knowing. "Why are you telling me this? I know what I am. You're the one who's confused."

Hotch shook her off irritably. Standing, he paced around the room as restlessness clawed at him. He hated it when she got like this. "That doesn't even make sense. I know what I am, idiot."

"Lonely," she remarked, laying back down.

He didn't argue with her.

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The first time Spencer let someone touch his daemon, he was drunk and not entirely sure of what was going on.

Ethan ran a careful hand down Aureilo's spine, the hare's skin twitching violently under his fingers, his eyes wide with wonder and something else, darker and hungrier. Spencer couldn't decide if the intense feeling of wrongness that accompanied the gesture made him want to throw up or whimper with a charged sort of desire.

"Don't," Aureilo said sharply as their friend lifted his hand to do it again. "We don't like it."

In the end, Spencer ended up sleeping with Ethan anyway and it none of it was anything at all like he'd expected. Aureilo kept his distance from the whole thing, sitting by the window and looking out into the night with cold eyes.

Ethan's rat daemon kept trying to nuzzle against the hare, but he never spared her a glance.

"Why did you do that?" the hare complained later, back in their own room, as Spencer examined a dark bruise on his collarbone. "Why do you need him?"

"Because that's what normal people do, Aureilo. Normal people make friends and they have partners and they have fun. Can't you just let us be normal for once?"

"That wasn't fun," griped the hare, flattening himself against the floor. "And there's nothing wrong with us. We are normal."

Spencer let him be, quietly admitting to himself that it wasn't exactly something he was in a hurry to repeat anyway.

Two years later, Jason Gideon called him into his office and offered him a job. He accepted immediately. Working with the elite Behavioural Analysis Team to delve into the darkest recesses of the human mind? There was nothing he'd find more compelling, he was certain.

Six months after that, he walked into the BAU and met Aaron Hotchner, and suddenly he wasn't so sure anymore.

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He wasn't sure what to make of the new team member Gideon had insisted on. The kid was all gangly limbs and wide eyes; his ridiculous hair flopping into his eyes and guaranteeing he'd never be able to get off a clear shot—assuming he ever qualified for a weapon, anyway.

"I dunno, Hotch," Morgan said out of the corner of his mouth, watching Gideon talking to the kid in his office. "He looks like he's going to get himself killed in the field." His daemon, a boxer dog with a powerful, muscular body, leaned against his leg and rumbled deep in her throat with unspoken agreement.

Hotch let one hand fall onto Hal's rough head, an easy feat considering his daemon's height, and made a non-committal noise.

"Give him a chance," he suggested, despite wanting to do nothing of the sort. "He might surprise us all."

Gideon emerged from his office with his hawk daemon perched on his shoulder and a wide grin on his face, the cocky one that Hotch always hated. "I'd like to introduce you all to Dr. Spencer Reid," he announced, shoving the man forward even as he tried to hang back.

"Where's his daemon?" Hal said in a voice low enough that only Hotch could hear. There was no animal perched on the man's cardigan or hanging out of a pocket, the ground around his feet clear. Hotch frowned, and made a mental note to ask him if he had an insect daemon and a proper safety case for the creature to travel in.

In the end, that turned out to be the least mysterious thing about Spencer Reid.