Beginning
Thanks to my beta, Greeneyedconstellations!
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The silver Swan, who, living, had no Note,
when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.
Orlando Gibbons, The Silver Swan
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In the end, Spencer Reid could tell you down to the day how much time they'd had together.
But no one ever thought to ask, and he didn't realize that time was finite.
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It began when Jason Gideon swept his hand aside with a sanctimonious grin and introduced them to their newest team member.
It began when Aaron Hotchner met the hazel eyes of Spencer Reid for the first time and quietly thought to himself that the man would never last; when Spencer Reid looked up from behind narrow framed glasses and eyed Aaron Hotchner with a distinct feeling that this was a man who would let no one close to him.
They were both right, in a way.
They were also both wrong.
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The first time was just a moment in time, a brush of shoulders and a caught gaze, the slightest promise of something more.
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The second was a late night and one too many drinks, Hotch slipping a companionable arm around his youngest team member to help the swaying profiler from the bar and finding his body pleasurably warm and firm against his side.
At the crossroads they stopped and drew apart, and neither of them told the other what they wanted, or how much.
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The third was Chester Hardwick and Hotch showing his hand, putting himself between Reid and the deranged murderer without a thought.
Reid hadn't had much experience with being cherished, so he didn't think anything of it. After all, Hotch would have done the same for any of his team.
Hotch didn't have much experience with admitting his shortfalls and this, he felt, was one of his greatest.
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The fourth was a cult with Reid on the inside and Hotch outside where he couldn't reach him.
It was listening to Prentiss being beaten over the radio as Rossi trembled with rage and being sickly relieved that it wasn't Reid screaming because he knew he could never hide his heart if that happened.
It was the first moment he considered that maybe he'd somehow started falling in love with a man he'd never even kissed.
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There was a fifth time, because Hotch didn't know how to express his emotions, and Reid wasn't sure if he felt them at all. It felt inexorable, predestined, as though everything in their lives had led to this one moment.
Reid with his cane walking into Hotch's office to find the man running his hand thoughtfully over a framed photo of Jack and leaning in close to examine the picture.
Hotch with uncharacteristic rashness leaning into the distance that yawned between them and pressing his lips awkwardly against the younger man's. He didn't know why he did it and wasn't surprised when Reid skittered back in shock and left without a word.
What he wanted, he wasn't going to get.
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The sixth was a last 'almost' in a life filled with 'almosts', and it was because of Haley.
She was gone and Hotch was alone and broken, and so Reid wasn't surprised when he opened his front door and found the man standing there. Nor was he surprised when Hotch pulled him in and kissed him like he was making up for lost time, a desperation to his movements that betrayed his pain.
He kissed like a man with nothing left to lose.
Reid let him, feeling everything he'd tried to deny for years threatening to overwhelm him, the possibility of having what he'd wanted dancing tentatively at his fingertips. Hotch smelled of whiskey and cologne and loneliness, and something in Reid recognised himself in that scent.
He let him until Hotch's hands fumbled with his belt and he realized that there was a point of no return and they were about to cross it. He'd always been good at denying himself what he desired.
"Stop," he said once, breathless, and then once more in a sharper tone. "Not now. Not like this."
Hotch pulled back with eyes so dark that Reid could feel himself getting lost in them as he stared at him like a stranger. "But you want this."
He did.
But not like this.
"Aaron," he breathed slowly, but he was already gone. The room felt ten degrees colder and emptier than it had ever been.
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The seventh time wasn't an almost, but it was almost an end.
It was Reid's turn to be torn apart by grief, Emily haunting his every waking moment.
He went to Hotch because he needed something to remind him that he was still alive, that they hadn't buried him in the cold grave next to his friend. Hotch didn't turn him away because he couldn't find the words.
There was more than their histories tying them together.
When Spencer shuddered and rocked his hips, feeling Aaron panting under him, there was a timelessness to the moment. It felt as though everything had been somehow leading to this, except now that they'd finally gotten here it was nothing like what they'd imagined.
It was cold and desolate and even though they were together, they'd never been further apart. Emily stood between them like a ghost and in every whimper of Spencer's breath, Aaron could hear the promise that this would end them.
He couldn't look Spencer in the eye because there was a light in them that almost said, "I love you."
When he moaned and whispered his lover's name against the warm sheets, there was an unspoken "I'm sorry," hidden between the words.
"She's not dead," hung over them the whole night, in the whiteness of Spencer's skin against the blankets, and the echoing hollowness that was left when the other man slipped out of him. "She's not dead," spoken in a thousand different ways as Reid dressed quietly, even replacing his tie, a shield against betrayal.
"She's not dead," should have been what he said, but instead he stood and pulled him close, ignoring the stiffness of his posture, and breathed in the scent of his hair. "I want this," he admitted, closing his eyes and daring to hope, even though there was nothing he deserved less.
"Stop running then," Reid mumbled, before slipping out of his grasp like a ghost and leaving.
Then Emily came back, shattering everything they'd built from the foundation up, and he couldn't see a future in which it was rebuilt.
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There was a time when Spencer Reid could have counted down to the minute how long they had left, but no one asked him to and so he didn't realize how small that number actually was.
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It was always unknown which minute details would save a life.
There had been cases solved with the title of a song or a leaf from a tree. Small, unimportant things right up until they became everything, made huge in the moment of their proving.
Today it was a moment of thoughtlessness and a broken wrist sustained in training for the real thing.
Two lives saved because of the details.
Spencer Reid had always delighted in the details, but these ones would only ever cause him pain.
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"We're going to assist the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. They've received a tip about a forced prostitution ring here in D.C., and they've requested our help with the raid and with interviewing anyone captured during the operation." Hotch's eyes were serious, and there was a moment when he met Reid's own gaze and they darkened.
There was always a price.
"Will's received the tip personally," JJ mentioned quietly, paging through the file she'd accumulated. "He asked if we could help him."
"And I agreed. Our profiling skills could be what they need to put these men away for good."
Reid glanced over the details of the planned raid and hummed noncommittally, something niggling in the back of his mind. It was a small thought, a bite of mistrust that normally would have him pulling them back, reeling them in. Normally being the days when he could trust those around him, when their every interaction wasn't coloured with the knowledge they'd been managing his perceptions in order to deceive him.
Trust was hard to earn and easily broken.
"Is there a problem, Reid?" Hotch asked him as the team filed out the room. Reid stared at the plan on the board and thought of everything he could say to hurt the man in front of him, a petty impulse that he pushed away quickly.
"No, just lost in my own thoughts," he replied, avoiding Hotch's gaze and the history that threatened to overwhelm him there.
There was a distance between them that hadn't been there before they buried Emily Prentiss. When they walked from the room side by side, neither of them thought to cherish the moment.
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"You're sitting this one out," Rossi teased Prentiss, using his pen to tap the colourful cast on her wrist. She scowled at him, irritated despite the expectedness of the announcement. Reid imagined Morgan would catch the worst of her ire later, the injury having been caused by a botched training session. "We don't want to be worrying about a stray punching bag coming back for revenge on you."
"Ass," she muttered as Rossi gravitated towards a stressed looking JJ. Reid didn't reply, eyeing the door of Hotch's office with a mounting disquiet. She turned to him, attuned as always to the ebb and flow of his moods. "Penny for your thoughts?"
He blinked down at her, thrown. "I don't think you can place a monetary value on my thoughts."
There was a flicker of something around her mouth, a restrained smile. "Isn't that exactly what they did when they hired you?"
He thought of Aaron in his arms and the pained gasp he'd made when they'd finally given into each other, a trust that they were finding impossible to retain outside of the bedroom. "They hired me for my smile as well," he told her seriously, face deadpan.
He couldn't be mad at her. He'd lost her once.
She choked back a startled laugh and he left her standing there with the ghost of a grin on his own face.
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It was a mistake, Reid knew that the moment he opened his mouth, but that didn't stop him from disagreeing with his boss in front of the rest of their team, the gathered police and the SWAT team.
It wasn't the first time he'd ever tried to overrule Hotch, and he doubted it would be the last, but as soon as he'd seen the warehouse complex they were to raid he knew it was wrong.
"We'll talk in private, Dr Reid," Hotch said tersely, trying to draw him to the side, but Reid could see his refusal in the line of his mouth and the distrust that was destroying them in the set of his shoulders.
"No, the blueprints are wrong, Hotch. Look at that building – it doesn't match the data we've been given. I have an eidetic memory, you know to trust me on this."
Morgan was eyeing the building and his face was thoughtful, calculating. Rossi was looking from the ring of unfamiliar faces around him to their team leader's face, his own expression inscrutable. "I don't see any difference," he said slowly. "But I'd trust Reid's calculations over mine any day."
"We can pull back," Will said, standing between JJ and his partner with an unsettled air. "It's all very neat. These things are never this neat, not in this line of work."
Hotch hesitated and there was a single long moment where Reid could see him fighting with his loyalty to his team and his sense of duty.
Duty won. "No. There are women in there who need our help, and if we lose them now there might not be another chance." His eyes met Reid's, and there was almost an apology there. "I need you at my back."
"This is wrong," Reid restated mulishly, tossing a lock of hair out of his eyes nervously and rocking back on his heels. His hands twitched against his sides, trembling with frantic energy, and he knew they could all read the signs of his unrest as easily as they could the FBI acronym emblazoned across his chest. "You're not listening to me because you think my judgement is compromised; you think I'm still mad about Prentiss."
They needed to be a team right now and he was being anything but.
"Our personal business has no place in the field," Hotch said, quieter, stepping forward so the words were between them. "We don't have a choice, Reid."
"There's always a choice, Aaron."
If he'd thought using his first name would gain him some leverage, some sort of nod to the events of that night, he'd been wrong. Hotch's expression shuttered closed and he stepped away.
"If you can't keep your head straight, stay out here and lead us in," he instructed coldly, tilting his head towards the command centre they'd established, before turning and moving into position without another word.
Reid followed him.
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There was a split second when Hotch rounded a corner and Reid jerked around to face him, gun out and hovering for a frighteningly long moment on Hotch's chest.
His youngest agent's finger stayed steady, never strayed towards the trigger, and he should have felt pleased about that.
Instead he noted the wild, cornered look on the tall man's pale face, and the heavy worry that had settled on his shoulders grow into a crushing force. He'd seen that look before, the tightly-strung fearful countenance, and during a hard entry into a hostile situation it got people killed.
He told himself firmly that he would do this for anyone who looked like they were one misfired shot away from heart failure, and drew up next to Reid.
He could smell the harsh bite of sweat on the other man's skin, and a sharper scent that still haunted his dreams and woke him aching in the middle of the night, alone in his bed. "You need to calm down."
A huff of air from clenched teeth. "I am calm."
He was anything but.
His next words were a betrayal, and he knew they'd be taken as such. He said them anyway. "Your judgement is compromised, I can't have you in here. Take over command, lead us in."
Reid closed his eyes for a moment as though Hotch had slapped him instead of dismissing him, and nodded once, slowly. He didn't argue.
He just went.
Hotch held the memory of his scent in his mind for a long frozen moment, before pushing it aside and turning back to the job at hand. There'd be time for apologies later.
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The breeze blew cool and fresh against his face as he walked out of the building, his boss's (lover's?) stern rebuke burning in the back of his mind and making his neck prickle with uncomfortable heat.
It took him a beat longer than it should to have realize it wasn't his embarrassment that had turned the air hot and dry; he stopped right as the world at his back turned to flames and something punched into his spine and threw him forward into darkness.
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This grief was an overwhelming monstrous thing that couldn't be put aside, too big for any box that he tried to contain it in. It was the thought of two orphaned children. It was Garcia making a quiet, pained noise as though her heart was breaking. It was the empty spaces in their lives that somehow contained all of the air that they breathed. It was JJ's half-doodled butterfly on the side of one of his post-it notes, and Emily's blank stare when she walked into his hospital room and found him sitting there alone.
It was five state funerals and Reid solemnly being asked to fulfil the duties of godfather to a lost, broken child.
It was rocking that child to sleep in his arms in the silent, empty apartment that had never felt so isolated, waiting until he had finally cried himself to sleep before succumbing to the tears that tore him apart as they fell.
It was a world once filled with colour becoming lit solely by shades of grey.
It was losing everything you'd ever gained and having people expect you to move on when all you wanted to do was stop to catch your breath.
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If you had asked Aaron Hotchner how many days until he would see Spencer Reid again, he wouldn't have been able to tell you.
But trapped in a dark world lit only by fading moonlight, he could have told you every regret he carried right down to the last.