All because of you
I believe in angels
Not the kind with wings, no
Not the kind with halos
There is a dark smudge under his left eye.
He wets the washcloth in his right hand with hot water and rubs it across the smudge; no noticeable difference takes place. He leans in over the small sink, scrubbing at his cheekbone for a moment before giving up and washing the rest of his face; he feels disgusting after this latest raid and stills smells the smoke of the burning house on his clothes. He is the last to get a shower, as he always is—they go by seniority, which doesn't really bother him, but he was waiting rather anxiously for JJ to finish and come back out. He doesn't even care that there's no hot water left.
He pulls his shirt over his head and stands so that his side is displayed in the mirror instead of his front; almost his entire left side is one massive blue-and-purple bruise. He knows that he has at least one fractured rib; it hurts to inhale too deeply, but there's not a lot he, or anyone else, can do about it at the moment. He strips the rest of the way, quickly and impersonally, and showers quickly, washing his overlong hair with bar soap because he doesn't want to smell like Prentiss. He dresses four minutes later in jeans, a button-up shirt, a plain black vest, and his socks and shoes, combing through his hair with his fingers.
He looks in the mirror again and raises the washcloth to his face, but touches the spot with a bare finger and realizes that it's not dirt embedded there—it's gunpowder, and there's nothing he can do to get rid of it here. And so he exits, putting his towel and his dirty clothes in the bag he brought in with him.
The rest of the team is asleep, and he sits back down where he had been originally, next to a black-haired man, tense-looking even in sleep. Reid puts his hand near the other man's on the center armrest and closes his eyes; for a second, he feels another hand, a larger, rougher hand, lace its fingers with his own and squeeze for just a second.
He looks over, and Aaron Hotchner's face relaxes into something like peace.
And, suddenly, the smoke-smelling clothes and the gunpowder in his cheek seem very far away, and Spencer Reid smiles.
The kind that bring you hope
When hope becomes a strange place
I'll follow your voice
All you have to do is shout it out