An added scene to Nelson's Sparrow, because while I enjoy the Rossi and Reid moment every time I watch the episode, I can't help but wish for a Hotch and Reid scene, too.
I own nothing, but an imagination and a heart that loves Criminal Minds.
"Odd things happen in a battle, and the human heart has strange and gruesome depths and the brain still stranger shallows." - Nathaniel Philbrick
The afternoon sunlight debouches from fractures in the clouds, creating muted slivers of reflection across the lake water before him. In between the natural tempo of the waves lapping at the shore, his slender fingers tap out a rhythm on the brown and burgundy stripes of his left sock that's exposed in the space between the bottom of his pant leg and the top of his converse, while his solid olive right socked foot remains tucked up underneath him. The compressed nerves of his toes tingle in their fight to regain their function as he wiggles them in their confined space. They gain the feeling back when he shifts, sliding his foot until it is statued next to the other so that his arms can encircle his bent knees.
It's only when he's comfortable again, slender build blanketed by clothes that keep him from the chill of the air and folded into a position to repel everything else, that he's joined by another.
"Reid," his last name is spoken in the span of a second, but the syllable claims years of memory. The heavy presence in possession of the deep voice fills the space beside him, casting faint shadows across shifting dirt as dust swirls up from the ground visualizing the ghostlike barrier between them.
Statued feet mimic his own, but unlike a con artist forging a sculptured masterpiece, the man beside him folds his body into that of which many feel Spencer should try to learn. With his back straight, legs bent easy, and arms resting across the tops, Aaron Hotchner presents the world he lives in as a paint by numbers to an abstract man. The nervous need to swallow becomes overpowering and Reid heavily does so, making a sound more wet than the waves stumbling up the shoreline.
"We've been looking for you," his boss says, and if he had any intention of replying, Reid feels like he should do so with a, "Yes, sir," and a brief moment of eye contact. Instead, he squints as if the sun is at its highest point rather than retreating south of westward clouds, and tilts his head down, brown, neck-length curls exposing the pale skin that they usually conceal.
His mannerisms are rewarded with a sigh and this time Hotch says, "Spencer."
It scares him, because although the first name is rare off the older man's tongue, Reid understands it completely.
"I just...I don't like being in there. He's not there and..." although his tongue stills, the words somehow spill between them, short of the "Yes, Sir," that now ceases to exist where the cold breeze blows between family. The silence that lingers taunts his fingers into an anxious dance that knead gently at his left eye while a mumbled, "Sorry," gets pushed between sheepishly clenched teeth.
"You know, most of the team would disagree with you. Myself included. Every inch of that place screams Gideon," Aaron replies as though Spencer merely finished his thoughts with nothing but clearly marked words and a straight back, and Hotch's tone is light as if Jack has suddenly appeared and garnered his father's attention. With the little boy miles away and the older man's gaze weighing heavily on the side of his face, Reid swallows again and cringes into a reply. "I guess so, like the chess board."
If there's a grin tugging at the corners of Hotch's mouth around the "Sure," he offers, Reid doesn't look, doesn't want to know that no matter how intelligent he is, he's incapable of finding free happiness in a moment such as this.
"Come on," the older man says, statued feet coming to life in a piece of art personifying direction. However, his outstretched hand appears to be that of one who touches a sculpture out of admiration for flawless work, calloused fingers cautiously wrapping around an unmoving wrist made of marble, polished swirls of grief and abandonment. "Reid," he says, as if the word alone is enough to breathe life into an inanimate object, "come with me. I want to show you something."
There's a conviction in his voice that's too hard to deny, as if whatever it is that Spencer needs to see is more immaculate than the life he's grieving for, and it makes him angry. He pulls his arm from Hotch's grasp, but he lacks the energy to make it appear anything more than aversion to being touched, and Hotch is all too accommodating by standing up straight and walking in a direction he expects Spencer to follow.
He does so as a defeated soldier stands on the front lines, expectations pushing him forward and a battered heart slowing him down. By the time he's caught up to Hotch, the older man is pushing an old canoe across rocks that scrape the bottom in a harsh sound that cuts through the wind in the leaves in the same way that Aaron interrupts Reid when he starts to say, "You know, statistically-"
"No. No statistics, no facts. Just get in the boat. When we're in the SUV headed home you can regale us with lake facts. Until then, just...," he motions with his hand towards the canoe, and Spencer has to focus on that instead of the smirk once again playing at his boss' lips.
They're floating away from the bank, and as he watches it drift away from them, Reid feels his grief wrest his heart. Fingers back to working over his eyes, he lets his left leg bounce out nervous energy until it wiggles the boat on top of the water enough to make his stomach flop.
"You're not looking," Hotch says without a smirk this time and Reid feels his breath come a little easier when his boss' face is hard and free of tainted content.
"At what?"
The smirk tugs at the right corner of the older man's mouth again and Reid pulls at the edge of his sleeve, leg going back to bouncing up and down.
"After some hard cases, Gideon brought me out here to the lake. Just a few times, but-... We never talked about work. He'd just say, "Aaron, even beauty such as this can be depressing if you let it. The trick is not to think about it.""
Reid blinks hard enough that the skin around his eyes ripple and expand, his leg falling still long before he'd noticed. "How...how do you do that?"
"That riddle again, Gideon? You said that last time," Hotch voices between the empty space in the boat. "What do you even mean?"
Jason lets the echo waft out into the tree line, his thin-lipped smile working hard to stay dull. "You tell me."
Hotch grins, so much so he pushes air through his nostrils in as much of laugh as he allows himself, but instead of making him angry, it makes Spencer ruefully bite his lip. "I haven't the slightest clue. I was hoping you could tell me."
"Me? I- I don't know. He never brought me out here, or said that to me."
"No?" Hotch watches Reid's forehead crinkle like the wavelets around the paddles he moves across the water before his brown curls sway with a shake of his head. "Hmm, guess we're both in the dark."
"I get it. Distract me with riddles, so I won't think about the case."
Gideon's grin manifests into a smile. "Always works on Spencer," he says, fondness making it seem in tune with the soft sound of leaves rustling in the breeze. He catches Aaron's gaze while wrinkling the skin around his eyes as he forces his grin sympathetically wider, "Remember that."
The silhouette of Gideon's house is dark behind the trunks of old trees, pacing shadows in the window squares remind them that they've probably been worried over given the length of time they've been gone, but Spencer's hand on his arm causes Hotch to stop and their team's pacing to continue.
"I don't think I'm able to not think about it," Reid says, and his voice cracks a little because it's the first words to pass through his lips since they got out of the canoe.
"That's okay," the older man says, reassurance coating his words enough that when they reach the man he says them to, Reid catches him in the eye in his usual eye-wandering pattern of up, down, and to the side.
"Really? Because if I can't forget about his death, it seems like...it feels like I'll forget about his life. Not the actual memories themselves, but...but how they feel. Maybe...maybe that's what he meant. You know, if...if you're too busy focusing on the worst part of something, where does all the good stuff go?"
Hotch tilts his head to the side, almost as if it trails down with the volume of Reid's voice as he brittlely tries to vocalize his rapid thoughts, and like a painter starting over on a blank canvas, every hard line on the older man's face softens into something Reid is skittish to recognize.
"Don't you think he could use something he doesn't have to figure out?" Hotch asks, watching Gideon row the paddles through the water as if turning the page of a book.
Like he's just read the ending of a story he's had figured out all along, he smiles. "That's why he has you."
"Reid, it wouldn't be this hard if you had forgotten his life, and if that's what he meant, then I disagree. If you ignore something, it taints the real thing. Makes it something that it isn't."
"Like with a case?" Reid questions, Adam's apple bobbing uncomfortably because he knows Hotch isn't talking about work.
"With anything," Aaron says, and the hard lines on his face appear again as if they were never gone at all. "It'll take time, Spencer, but it will get easier."
"Isn't it pretty to think so?" - Ernest Hemingway