Author's note: A short-story. Something a little lighter and softer, so you know I'm not all twisted horror and surprise endings.
Reid sat in the plane, crocheting a scarf. Hotch sat opposite him, staring at the stitch work with a kind of hypnotic fascination. In fact, everyone seemed to be watching it. Reid was both amused and annoyed. In an attempt to detract attention, he tried to strike up a conversation.
"So… what do you do in your spare time?" he asked Hotch.
Hotch stared a bit longer without looking up before replying blankly "Nothing like that."
An awkward silence. "How's Jack?" Hotch continued to stare stonily. "Look, I may not be some budding socialite, but at least I'm trying to engage in some sort of conversation here."
Hotch snapped out of it and looked up at Reid's face. "Jack's fine." He offered up a bit of a laugh, "Well, to be honest, he's a bit peeved. He's been losing a tooth every two weeks while every other week a new one grows in in some random order. Growing in teeth is a pretty painful business. He's always going around with an ice cube in his mouth." A little smirk. "And he hates it when I take pictures."
Having stopped crocheting, Reid sat there with a thoughtful look on his face. After a pause, he replied, "It's quite an interesting topic. You know, there was a dental expert who not long ago published a paper illustrating a correlation between the time line of the development of adult teeth and future orthodontological involvement."
Hotch gave him that blank look he was so familiar with before picking up his newspaper and making to leave.
He was barely out of his seat before Reid spoke up again. "I think he'll need braces."
Hotch stopped mid-rise and descended heavily back to his seat with a sigh. "Given what I've seen of him, it won't be till his late teens that it'll be obvious, but if you catch it early on, it'll take less time to correct.
"When I was at university, I went around wearing a thick metal contraption with fluorescent green elastic bands for two years, giving it up as a lost cause; just one of the lesser ways the universe chose to torment me. That was before I finally did some research and discovered a brand that do translucent braces with little coloured plates. I find it's not such a cause of ridicule if it doesn't look like you're actively trying to hide something." He went back to crocheting the scarf. "They're not the cheapest ones available, but they're the ones I'd use."
Hotch stared at him a moment longer, processing everything and accepting it before finally replying, "Either way it'll be cheaper than what I'm paying the tooth fairy right now."
Reid gave him a friendly smile that lasted precisely one and a half seconds before he dropped it. "What's the tooth fairy?"