Lies, Deception, and Sure Knowledge
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Genre: Action
Rating: K+
Setting: Episode 1x06 "L.D.S.K."
POV: Spencer Reid
Disclaimer: I don't own any Criminal Minds.
Acknowledgements: The real credit goes to the very expressive actors in this scene, if it hadn't been for which I would not have bothered to write this (slight) AU. The dialogue is mostly word-for-word from the episode, so I need to give specific credit to the writers for that as well.
Preface: Did Spencer Reid really know what Hotch was planning? L.D.S.K. slight AU one-shot.
*********FBI-BAU*********
"They knew, and they sent me into a hostage situation with an unarmed kid who couldn't shoot his way out of a wet paper bag."
Spencer Reid watched his boss's face in horrified fascination as its expression twisted with hate and he turned into a complete stranger.
"They set you up."
Spencer could read the unsub's subtext. You can't trust your people, just like I couldn't trust mine.
"Exactly. They're probably laughing about it right now."
Anyone else, and Spencer would have assumed—would have known—that the profiler was simply following the situational playbook: building a rapport with the unsub by showing empathy toward his position. But Spencer had been around Hotchner long enough to become used to reading his eyes rather than his typically muted facial expressions, and this time Hotch's eyes reflected the bitter words on his lips. Spencer found himself realizing that Hotchner believed them. He had been saddled with an unarmed partner and sent to look for a sniper in a hectic hospital environment. The need to blame others was rational enough.
"That's why you want to help me." The unsub spoke it with ironic conviction.
"I wouldn't say I want to help you." Hotchner was rationalizing his decisions, trying to explain away behavior that had to be contrary to a self-image he had cultivated. I resent dying in your stupid personal war and I'm not going to help the men outside kill you, just so I can die on the altar of principles. If Dowd couldn't see the animosity that Hotch was aiming obliquely at him, even if he was verbally placing the blame on the men outside, Spencer could. "A lot of us are going to get killed in the crossfire," he was saying bitterly. "They sent me in here. I figure why make it easier for them."
Spencer couldn't disagree with the desire to live, in principle, but their duty was to facilitate the unsub's arrest and save as many hostages as possible, even at the cost of their lives.
"Do you want to know why they took away boy-genius's gun?" Hotch was feeding the unsub, Dowd, his own anger and focusing him on Spencer. Spencer suddenly felt chilled and exposed. "He failed his qualifications. Twice a year I have to listen to him whine about re-qualifying. So I tutor him," Hotch added derisively, "and he fails again."
The unsub laughed. Spencer could sense the unsub warming to Hotch's plight, sympathisizing with his animosity toward his younger colleague. Hotchner was aligning himself with Doyle and casting Reid as the outsider. The failure, the obstacle. Was Hotch really imagining an outcome where he and Doyle—clearly the other smartest person in the room, besides Spencer's useless book-smarts—found a means of escaping the situation? Or was he simply expressing emotions he'd been forced to suppress in order to do the job, a job no longer relevant when his life had a known endpoint? The latter profile seemed more consistent with the darkness in Hotch's face.
Gideon didn't care if a profiler carried a gun. Hotchner obviously did.
The unsub continued to pace, the automatic rifle gripped tightly, not directed at either Hotch or Spencer, but a constant presence that Spencer knew they were all keenly aware of. Hotch's dark eyes seemed to follow it shrewdly. "You think you've got it rough?" Dowd asked. "These people have done nothing but undermine me." Dowd gestured with the gun at the little group of ER staff huddled watching against the wall behind him.
"Put them next to the barricade."
Spencer felt his gut drop. Hotch was stepping off a moral precipice, suggesting that the unsub put civilians in the line of fire. Hotch was no longer the man any of his team knew. Had he ever really been?
"That way way when they blast their way out of here, both our problems will be solved." Hotch laughed. "That sort of thing can ruin a cop's career."
If Hotchner thought there was any chance whatsoever of surviving this, he was reducing the chances of there being witnesses. Spencer realized that had to mean him, too.
Dowd got the implication. "You are one sick bastard." He said it with admiration.
"How do you think I caught you?" Hotch wasn't going to accept the backhanded compliment without throwing it back at him.
*********FBI-BAU*********
As Dowd waved the hospital employees over to the far doors, Spencer started to rise, expecting to follow when Hotch stopped him with a cynical, appraising stare. "Can I ask you a favor?" he asked, tilting his head toward Dowd.
"What?" The unsub seemed curious as to what the turned Fed would want from him.
"I figure the chances of my making it out of here alive are pretty slim."
"So?"
"I want to kick the snot out of this kid."
New fear spiked through Spencer. He wanted to back up, join the others. At least they were huddling together for support. At least they weren't alone like he was, with a narcissistic sniper and a Federal agent who he now knew hated him. Who wanted to punish him for his uselessness.
The unsub laughed.
"He's made my life miserable for three lousy years," Hotch added venomously.
Hotch really had found him a burden. For the first time Spencer knew it. Everyone knew SSA Hotchner had ambitions—he was a career agent whose drive for efficiency made it clear he had hoped to run his own Bureau division some day—but Spencer had never realized that he felt his team was holding him back, or that Spencer had been a specific thorn in his side. He wanted to kick the snot out of him.
"Knock yourself out," Dowd said, evidently amused.
Hotch hadn't asked to have the zip-tie on his hands removed; he had to realize the unsub still didn't trust him that far. He had simply asked to kick. Dowd would be standing over him with the gun the whole time; there was nothing Hotch could gain accept some personal satisfaction.
Spencer was suddenly thankful for the zip-ties; he could survive a solid kicking, but with his hands free Hotch could easily kill him.
Spencer had risen to his feet when Hotchner turned on him, eyes full of unrecognizable menace. He quickly threw the lighter man to the floor and began meting out his punishment. Spencer curled in on himself, trying to protect his ribs while the blows landed on his back, his stomach and his forearms. Hotch's feet were heavy and he wore sturdy shoes.
"How smart are you now, smart guy?" Hotchner was berating him, timing his words with each kick. The embarrassment made Spencer's eyes burn. "It's front sight, trigger pull, follow-through." Spencer was back in the shooting range, his aim humiliatingly off as the projectiles hit all around the target. Hotch's voice had been no harder than usual then but now he thought he could remember a coldness in it.
He was dissociating. He was trying not to feel the pain. He had to pull back to the present.
"Front sight, trigger pull, follow-through!"
Spencer had complained he couldn't master the technique in one afternoon. Hotch had leaned down, in one smooth motion drawing from his ankle holster. Front sight. Slowly enough for accuracy. Trigger pull. Controlled. Follow-through.
"Front sight, trigger pull, follow-through! That's enough, it's not that hard! A Dalmatian could do it!"
A Dalmatian would have his teeth sunk in your leg by now. Spencer gritted his own teeth against another kick.
His leg.
Hotch, who was left-handed but held his gun in his right, was kicking him with his left leg. Approximately 50% of left-handed people were dominant in the same leg, but Hotchner was not strongly left-handed, and he was presumably right-eyed, which made right-sided dominance more likely overall.
His mind was spinning out on facts. Morgan and Hotchner both hated when he did that.
His leg.
Reach down. Smooth raising motion. Front sight.
Ankle holster.
Spencer was suddenly scrambling for that leg, no longer guarding his body with his arms but clinging, with dog-like tenacity, to Hotch's ankle. The zip-tie on his hands made it difficult, but the weapon was there, under the pant-leg. The pant-leg Hotch was so forcefully offering him. The straps were harder to work with his hands bound, but he managed to fumble them free despite Hotch's attempt to shake him off. He wrestled the Glock out of its holster and into his fingers.
"Let go. Let go!" Hotch tried to pull his leg away, harder.
Front sight. Trigger pull. Follow-through.
Hotch had been coaching him, branding the technique into his consciousness despite the pain from each kick.
Hotch had been pulling his kicks.
Spencer knew if he hadn't, he wouldn't be able to untwist his torso and roll away, gun concealed against his chest, as Hotch shook him off.
"Feel better?" Dowd's voice held a snicker.
"I think he got the message." Hotch sounded satisfied. The unsub would hear enjoyment in his tone. Spencer was pretty sure—realized it with his own delirious surge of hope—that it was actually relief.
Spencer Reid was not alone. And he had finally gotten the message.
"What's that?" The unsub's sharp question, directed toward Hotchner, left Spencer with no doubt he had noticed the ankle holster, straps hanging empty where Spencer had pulled Hotch's pant leg up above it.
As Spencer rolled back over, Dowd's gun barrel swung up to aim squarely at Hotch's forehead. There wasn't likely to be another question.
Hotch's words calmly asserted themselves in his memory like on the target range. Front sight.
*********FBI-BAU*********
It was over very fast.
Hotch was at the door, yelling. "Federal agents! Hold your fire!" And then, "It's all clear!"
Then he was back on the floor, kneeling by Spencer, impatient to have his wrists freed by the SWAT agent who had found a pocket knife and begun cutting the zip-ties. "Hey, get us a medic over here," Hotch was calling. "Somebody needs to see to my partner." Hotch, hands now freed, took the pocket knife and leaned over. "Here." He took the Glock out of Spencer's hands and set it down. "Let me."
Spencer's wrists were numb where the zip-tie had dug in and he rubbed them as the tight plastic band fell away. Then Hotch was gently lifting his shoulders. "I'm so sorry. Can you stand?"
He thought so. Spencer found himself being guided shakily to his feet, and Hotch passed him off onto a waiting EMT before turning to the SWAT team that was crowding around the other hostages.
Hotch had called him his partner.
*********FBI-BAU*********
"You alright?" Hotchner had sidled up, looking unusually uncomfortable, to the back of the ambulance where Spencer was waiting for the EMT to return. Spencer nodded; his body hurt, and there would be some bruising, but nothing was really damaged.
"Nice shot." The quiet words were spoken with a mixture of disbelief and admiration.
Spencer looked up at Hotchner. He wasn't going to pretend to be some prodigy in this case; it had been a lucky shot. "I was actually aiming for his leg." Hotch would get the joke.
The older agent shook his head and gave a small, remorseful smile. "I wouldn't have kept kicking, but I was afraid you didn't get my plans, so."
Plans that he had put in motion from the moment he'd had his primary weapon taken away. Plans that relied on convincing the unsub that Hotch had turned on his fellow agent, and was working on the unsub's side.
Unless he had, and giving Spencer access to his ankle holster had been an oversight.
Left leg.
Front sight. Trigger pull. Follow-through.
He knew it hadn't.
Spencer shook his head. There was no way he could tell his boss how convincingly he had acted; how completely Spencer had doubted him. It would shake Hotchner's confidence if he ever had to try something like that again.
"I got your plan as soon as you moved the hostages out of my line of fire," he lied.
Hotch looked a little relieved. Maybe had wondered just how far Spencer would trust him. "Well, I hope I didn't hurt you too badly."
Spencer smiled. "Hotch, I was a twelve-year-old prodigy in a Las Vegas public high school. You kick like a 9-year-old girl." At least, when you pull your kicks.
Hotch let a little lightness reach his smile this time as he started to move away.
Spencer reached into his pocket for Hotch's backup weapon. "Here…"
"No, keep it," Hotch said, handing it back. "As far as I'm concerned you've passed your qualification."
Spencer put it back in his pocket and nodded as he watched the older agent walk away. He would return it as soon as he passed his qualifications officially and received his own service weapon back. In the meantime he could hold onto it for Hotch.
Front sight. Trigger pull. Follow-through.
He knew he would never forget Hotch's coaching.
He also knew he would never forget the other things that Hotchner had said to Dowd, or the way he had felt hearing them. He would never forget the way his courage had sank when Hotchner turned on him.
He would never forget what it felt like to face a threat like Dowd completely alone.
He also knew with absolute confidence that, as long as Hotch was close by, he would never have reason to feel that way again.
*******finis*******