Essential listening: So Easily, Kathryn Calder

0o0

JJ stepped out into the wall of heat that seemed to be a permanent feature of Miami's South Beach. It was nearly midnight, and still achingly hot. The others had gone back to the hotel already, after a fruitless search among the crowds cutting loose in the clubs and bars in their target area. Even Grace, who appeared to have been enjoying the heat so far, had begun to tire of it. She and Emily had left together, making Reid turn a fetching shade of pink with a fairly graphic conversation about ice cold showers.

She stopped at the top of the steps. Leaning on the rail below, Will was having one of the hardest phone calls of his life. JJ watched him for a moment, comforting a woman several hundred miles away whose life was crashing down around her ears, even though he was still hurting.

Her lips curled up into a smile. He was such a good, kind person. No matter how hard things were right now, maybe she could give him a little comfort, too. She owed him that much.

JJ walked down the steps to meet him, intending to ask him to dinner.

"Hey," she said.

He looked up, startled, and then looked away again. JJ frowned. This felt more awkward than she had thought it would.

"Man," he exclaimed, to cover his surprise. "It sure is warm in the Bayou, but at least it cools down some at night." JJ smiled. That was certainly true. "Hah. What, you leavin'?" he asked.

"Yeah," she sighed. "I'm beat."

"Without sayin' goodbye?"

"I didn't know where you were," JJ frowned.

"Did you look?"

He was half-joking, but years of hanging around with profilers told her that also meant he was half-serious. She met his eyes, trying to fathom what he was thinking. Her time at the BAU had taught her more than a few tricks, but right now she had no idea what to expect.

"Should I be worried?" he asked, in earnest now.

JJ sighed.

Will narrowed his eyes. "I mean, it doesn't take a profiler to see that you've got one foot out the door o' this relationship."

No! JJ thought, but what she was feeling and what actually came out of her head didn't seem to be matching up today. They couldn't have this conversation here – not right in front of the Police Department.

"Could you just – please – keep your voice down?" she begged.

"I don't care if they hear us," Will shrugged, to her dismay. "Hey!" He called, though there was no one nearby to hear him. "I'm crazy 'bout her."

She glared at him and he tilted his head, assessing her.

"You know, I don't have a problem with people knowin' about it."

"Well, I do," she told him, sounding shorter than she'd intended.

"Why?"

"Just because!" she snapped. "Alright? It's my business."

Will shook his head.

"Are you ashamed o' this?" he asked, sounding suddenly far more serious than she'd expected him to.

"No."

"Did I offend you?"

"No."

"I say somethin' wrong?"

"No."

"You – you seein' another guy?"

"No!"

"You wanna see another guy?"

"No!"

"You wanna break up?"

"Y-"

She stopped herself, stunned. That was the last thing she'd expected to come out of her mouth. It pulled Will up short, too. For the first time since she'd met him he looked truly lost, and truly hurt.

"You – you do?"

"Yeah…" She found herself nodding, but it was like someone else was piloting her body.

This was crazy.

Will stared at her, no longer sure what to say.

"Okay," he said at last, and JJ felt compelled to explain herself.

"It's just – a hop on a plane every weekend, forever?" she asked, rhetorically. "And neither one of us is willing to relocate, so…"

"Wh– when did we have that discussion?" Will asked, disbelieving.

"Well, do you?" she demanded, slipping into anger mostly out of fear.

What the hell was she doing?

"Well, maybe," he admitted, with a tight shrug.

JJ stared at him, astonished.

"You wanna give up your career in New Orleans so you can live in Quantico, Virginia?"

"Well, I'd – I'd at least like to have that option!" He looked away. This wasn't the way he'd envisioned this conversation going, either. "You know, all I'm lookin' for here is an acknowledgement to your friends that you care about me."

"Why?" JJ snapped, knowing she was being unreasonable. "Why is that so important to you?"

Will paused, taken aback.

"Why?" He sighed, angrily when no answer was forthcoming. "Have a good night, JJ."

"Will…"

She didn't try to stop him, though every part of her was screaming at her to do just that; she just let him stride away.

0o0

Another morning, another quiet back alley where some poor victim had met their end.

Aaron led his team towards the hive of activity, centred – today – around the back of the local coroner's van. Breakfast had been oddly strained. Everyone had seemed distracted – except Rossi, whose long years of experience helped him stay out of most forms of trouble (these days). Even Prentiss, who had apparently had her worst night's sleep in years because of the heat, was tense.

It didn't take a profiler to know where everyone else's minds were.

Morgan had been texting Detective Lopez under the table all through the meal. Reid had been casting glances at Pearce, pretending that he was reading; it didn't fool Aaron for a moment, the kid hadn't turned a page during the entire meal. Pearce actually had been reading, but Aaron would wager she knew exactly what Reid was doing and was simply ignoring him. Their friendship was still unpleasantly rocky. They would work things out, he expected; hopefully sooner, rather than later.

Though there wasn't actually a rule that said people in the same unit had to be friends, teams (particularly their team, it seemed) worked better if they were. And both of them could be tiringly snappish if they were unhappy. He would rather not have to deal with that again, any time soon – though he had yet to experience Pearce at her worst, he suspected. There were flickers of something darker behind her eyes, from time to time, but they were gone so quickly he couldn't be sure it wasn't just his imagination. Sometimes he wondered if her usual equanimity wasn't just a show she put on for the rest of the BAU.

Look at me: I'm totally normal. Can't see ghosts; not strange at all. Nothing to see here, folks, move it along…

JJ, too, had been unusually quiet. He had seen her the evening before, quiet and sad, and trying to keep her tears to herself. He recognised the pain of a break-up when he saw one. He'd been as supportive as he could without either of them actually mentioning it, but beyond that there was little he could do. He hated not being able to help a friend.

He shook his head. Half his team were hurting right now.

Well, Morgan wasn't, but that was another matter.

They'd all straightened their backs and put their game faces on when the call had come in, though. It was days like this he felt extremely proud to be a part of a team of people who could – and would – push their problems aside to catch a killer.

"What've we got?" he asked, catching Detective Lopez's eye.

"Male, same age range – and we found Luvet's police badge about a half a block from here," she told them, handing the badge to Aaron.

"So the unsub either ditched it or dropped it when he was gettin' away," Morgan inferred. "Any sign of Luvet's gun?"

"No, he may be holdin' onto that."

"Why would he kill out in the open like this?" Reid asked, looking around.

As kill-sites went, this one was pretty busy.

"He's losing control emotionally," Aaron suggested. "He could be devolving."

Pearce made a noise of slight disagreement.

"I don't know, maybe this is just where the urge to kill overcame him," she proposed. "I mean, look around – this is exactly the kind of place you might find a couple of people fooling around outside a bar."

"You think the victim came onto him?" Morgan queried.

"Maybe – or maybe he was into it too, until it came to the act itself."

"And that was a step too far for him…" Rossi mused. "We've seen that before."

"Leaving the body out in plain sight," said Prentiss, thoughtfully. "That's off-pattern."

"He was interrupted," said Detective Lopez.

"Who interrupted him?" Rossi asked.

The busboy from the nearest bar hadn't seen enough to be particularly useful in terms of identification, but the way the unsub had reacted to the interruption was suggestive, at least. Aaron watched JJ lead the young man away to get his information.

Interesting.

"So, this guy's impersonating Luvet?" the detective asked, puzzled.

"It could just be a ruse he used to get away," Morgan allowed.

"If he is impersonating his victims, why?" Prentiss wondered aloud.

"Transference," said Reid, at once.

Aaron nodded, feeling that they were beginning to find the right track with this guy.

"Whatever he sees in his victims he wants for himself," he expanded. "He hates who he is. He's targeting tourists because he sees them as living a kind of lie, too."

"He could be suffering from Cluster B," Prentiss suggested, after a moment.

Eyebrows raised all around the circle. That would explain a lot.

"Cluster B?" Lopez asked.

"A cluster of personality disorders," Reid explained. "It's also called the 'erratic-traumatic emotional cluster'. An enduring pattern of inner experience and behaviour that differentiates itself remarkably from the expectations of the individual's culture. It manifests itself –"

"This guy's one sick dude," Morgan interrupted, feeling that Lopez's eyes had begun to glaze over.

Reid broke off, looking chastened.

"In this instance he's looking for a proxy to become in order to escape from what he hates in himself," Pearce picked up, perhaps feeling that some more explanation was, in fact, justified. Aaron watched Reid's eyes flick hopefully in her direction as she continued: "When he kills someone, he takes on their persona until he finds and his new victim. Ultimately, though, the persona has to die alongside the new victim."

"Something triggers his constant need to escape," said Prentiss. "It could be drugs, sex – something that makes him feel vulnerable."

"And he can't allow himself the vulnerability," Aaron added.

"Escape into the fantasy protects him from ever having to look at himself," Rossi continued.

"Well, if this is about him struggling with his sexuality then the personas share the same major characteristic as him – he views it as a flaw." Pearce shrugged. "He can't help but take on a persona that's gay, because that's who he is, but that persona has to be destroyed in the end, because that's the thing he hates about himself the most."

"That is messed up," Lopez remarked.

"Like I said," Morgan chipped in. "One sick dude." He frowned. "You know, if the unsub lives in their skin, odds are he's livin' in their hotel rooms."

0o0

Deacon Rogers, they quickly found out, when Garcia received the prints, was a native of Odessa Texas and had a hotel room in South Beach. A hotel room whose door was ajar when they arrived.

Detective Lopez and Morgan took point, while Emily and Spencer brought up the rear. A quick sweep of the suite told them their unsub was long gone. The rooms were a mess. Deacon's clothes were strewn all over the place, everything that could be moved had been.

Emily expelled the air from her cheeks, surveying the disarray. "Well, he tore through this place in a hurry," she exclaimed.

"What was he looking for?" asked Reid.

"Identity," said Emily. "Anything to possess a new one."

"He thinks there's a witness out there who can ID him," Morgan put in.

Which means he needs a new persona, and fast.

"It's not about fulfillin' his need anymore," Morgan continued. "It's about survival."

0o0

The interviews with the families of the two men who had gone missing on one day could not have been more different, Grace reflected. The first man (from out of state) wasn't openly out, but his folks knew he was gay and were totally fine with it – he had come to South Beach to kick back and relax before heading back to college; the second – well, that was a different kettle of fish.

His father had been abusive far beyond the point of criminality, and he had beaten into his son a hatred of his own sexuality. The sister, on the other hand, genuinely wanted to help her brother. Grace got the impression that while her father had never physically hurt her, she lived in fear of him, all the same.

The guilt of not telling anyone about what he was doing to Stephen must have been overwhelming.

The new scene was a sort of back-road car park – one of those spare pieces of ground overlooking the city that end up as sort of unofficial meeting places and out-of-hours, unticketed parking.

The late Deacon Rogers had owned a nice car: a black, top-down sports model that must have been his pride and joy. Even Grace, who very much preferred a motorbike for most situations, could appreciate it.

The corpse of another young man was slumped in the passenger seat.

"He's speeding up," she remarked, and nodded to Detective Lopez.

"Texas plates," Rossi observed.

"Deacon Rogers never rented a car," said Lopez. "He drove here from Texas in this. Put it out as a BOLO."

"Agent Hotchner's taking statements from the family of Stephen Fitzgerald," Reid told her. "He might be our unsub."

"Seriously?" she asked, stunned.

"It's an unusual household," Emily said, with a grimace.

"We've had his picture this whole time?"

"Apparently." Reid bit his lip.

"We didn't know soon enough to prevent this," Rossi groused, voicing the coppers' guilt they were all harbouring. "One set of tyre tracks in, nothing out."

"Yeah, I noticed," said Lopez. "County spotted the vehicle twenty minutes ago, just as-is."

"Asphyxiated?" Emily asked.

"No obvious marks," said Grace, peering at the underside of the victim's neck, careful not to disturb anything. "Looks like a chokehold, same as before."

Lopez sighed, clearly frustrated. "Why mess with a good thing, it's clearly workin' for him."

"This stretch of road takes you right out of the city," Emily pointed out, looking off along it.

"He's thinking about skipping town," Grace agreed, following her train of thought.

"If we lose Stephen now it could take us months to catch up with him again!" Emily warned.

"May I?" Morgan asked, nodding towards the body, which hadn't yet been processed.

They didn't have the time to waste this time, and Lopez seemed to be painfully aware of that. "Knock yourself out."

The agent leaned into the car and reached into the dead man's pockets, pulling out papers and a scrunched up napkin.

"What is it?" Rossi asked.

"I dunno – some kind of scraps of paper," said Morgan, opening them out. "Looks like some kind of food wrapper…" He frowned at the paper. "Huh. It's a receipt for a youth hostel. It's dated last night. The name on it is – uh – Michael Aldridge."

Rossi narrowed his eyes. "From the looks of his sunburn, it's a good guess this young man was hitch-hiking."

"Assuming Stephen has taken over Michael's identity, he might have hitched a ride out of here," Reid speculated.

"He didn't drive?" Rossi asked.

"Not if Michael didn't," Reid clarified. "He's not becoming his victims by choice, it's his illness. He'd have to travel the exact same way."

"Which means he's probably still in the city," Grace realised.

"Hostels," said Rossi.

"There's a few hostels in North Miami Beach," Lopez told them. "Four miles that way." She pointed along the road. "And in Seneca, five miles west."

"Okay, we'll have to split up," said Rossi. "You take Seneca," he said, indicating Lopez, Morgan and Grace. "We'll take North Miami Beach."

0o0

"You know, I could never work out why all the hostels always wind up on the same street," Grace complained, as they piled out of the Yuke.

"You take that one," Morgan suggested, nodding to a brightly painted door across the street. "We'll take the one further down."

Grace suppressed a smile. Even in the midst of a case, Morgan and Lopez were instinctively drawing closer to one another. She didn't even think they knew they were doing it. Heading up the front steps, she wondered what they'd do about it, once the case was over.

Morgan wasn't the kind of guy to let an opportunity slip by him, and Lopez seemed pretty relaxed about flirting with him, too. They'd be good together, at least for a while.

The man on the front desk looked her over, winced and then extracted himself from his chair, clearly expecting some form of drugs raid on his guests. Fortunately for him, he'd never heard of a Michael Aldridge, so Grace left him to his doodling and headed back out onto the street. The absence of any officers worried her. She was in the process of pulling out her phone when it rang.

"Pearce. He's here, we're goin' in," said Morgan, without preamble. "Call the others. We're gonna send people out, keep 'em back…"

"You couldn't wait?" she demanded, but he'd already hung up.

Rolling her eyes, she speed dialled Hotch and then Rossi, telling them to break the traffic laws on their way.

"Alright people, I need you to go across the street and stay on the opposite pavement!" she shouted, as scared, half-clothed hostel denizens began to spill out of the front door. "Hey, are you the manager?"

A slim, frightened woman with short hair turned around and nodded.

"Okay, I need you to keep your guests over there as best you can. Stay calm – if you're calm, they'll be calm."

The look of terror the woman sent her way was quite eloquent.

"Don't worry, ma'am. I'm sure my colleagues have everything under control. Just keep everyone out of the way – this street is about to get extremely busy.

0o0

Grace watched Morgan and Lopez flirt, their suspect safely stowed in the back of a patrol car, hands cuffed behind his back. The two officers had already driven off. With a man as unstable as Stephen Fitzgerald, it was important to get him to the psychiatric hospital, under the supervision of people who could handle violent outbursts and dramatic shifts in persona. There would be a twenty-four hour police presence at the hospital for the next few weeks, just in case.

She'd checked Stephen's backpack, found Detective Luvet's gun inside and handed it to Detective Lopez, who had shaken her head, amazed. She'd told her how Morgan had talked him down, putting himself in the firing line without a gun.

A calculated risk.

Grace chewed the inside of her mouth. That was the kind of risk she would have expected him to take, but going into an unsecured building full of kids with an armed and unstable unsub? That didn't feel like a Derek Morgan kind of move at all, though it might conceivably be something a frustrated detective might pull, if she felt all those kids were in danger…

She looked up as the rest of the team arrived.

"Morgan!" Hotch called, looking both stern and surprised. "You couldn't wait?"

She saw him glance in Lopez's direction; Morgan shook his head.

"This one's on me, Hotch," he said, firmly shouldering the blame. "I didn't think we had time."

Hotch's expression was the picture of incredulity, but he didn't say anything. The rest of the team looked similarly disbelieving, too, as they began to move towards the cars; Emily even glared at him.

"On you, is it?" Grace asked, sliding past.

She flashed him a grin he couldn't help but return. Really, people did the silliest things sometimes, and as much as she trusted him, a stunt like that could have ended badly for everyone.

For a moment, she met Reid's eyes across the roof of the Yuke.

People did the silliest things.

0o0

Grace was loitering around the fridge with Emily when JJ came in, and made sure she was (if not quite out of sight) at least partially obscured by the filing cabinet. Emily took a seat at the table, where she couldn't be seen, both of them trying not to listen in.

Will was leaning against a desk by the murder board, emotional and utterly exhausted. He ran tired hands over his face when JJ approached, carrying Luvet's personal effects.

"Detective Lopez signed this into your custody," she told him.

"Thank you," he sighed. "I still can't believe it."

"That Charlie was gay?"

"No. That he thought he couldn' tell me. That he thought he had ta hide it." He shook his head. "I mean, I can't think of anythin' I'd care less about than him bein' gay, you know?"

He looked up and gave JJ a sad smile.

"Well, he was my friend and I loved 'im. And all I ever woulda wanted was for him to be happy, you know?"

They looked at one another for a long moment. From their hiding places, Grace and Emily shared an exasperated glance, shaking their heads.

"Well," said Will, picking up his bag. "Take care o' yourself, JJ."

Grace bit her lip, quietly stirring some ice tea someone had thoughtfully decided she should try. While she could completely understand JJ's reluctance to share her love life with the rest of the team, it worried her a little that her friend might be about to throw away something precious.

She winced in Emily's general direction, and the other agent went to knock some sense into their friend. Grace's love life back in London had regularly been such a mess that she didn't feel she ought to comment on anyone else's.

"You should go for him," Emily encouraged, while JJ pretended to be unaffected by her soon-to-be-ex lover walking out the door.

"What?"

"You'd make a cute couple," she observed, nonchalantly.

There was a pause – hardly even the length of a couple of heartbeats, then: "You know what?" JJ said, faintly, and then ran out of the door.

Grace joined Emily by the front window, where they saw their friend catch up with Will and try to make amends.

"It's not that I don't want them to know, alright?" she began, breathlessly. "I don't care about that. It's not about the relocating, or travelling on the weekends, or some guy…"

Will had already begun to smile slightly, pleased that she was trying to apologise and explain.

"It's… I didn't wanna tell anyone because… the minute I – I do it becomes real, and when it becomes real, people get hurt. And I've always, always run from getting hurt. And I don't wanna run anymore – at least, not from you, and –"

"JJ, shut up."

Grace laughed, satisfied, as Will pulled her into her arms and kissed her.

"Well, finally!" Morgan remarked, coming up behind the two women, Reid in tow.

"Tch-yeah," Emily snorted. "I thought she was never gonna admit it."

"Yeah, what's it been, like, a year?" Reid scoffed, as they all began to move away.

"Yeah, somethin' like that," said Morgan.

"Your life's not your own around here," Grace observed.

"Hazard of the BAU," Morgan told her.

"Oh yeah? And when are you going to call Lopez, then?"

"Get in the car, Pearce," he said, gently pushing her out of the back door. "Or I'll put itchin' powder in your panties."

"Promises, promises!"

0o0

If we knew each other's secrets, what comforts we should find.

John Churton Collins

0o0

Grace put down her knitting and stretched her back, intending to make a cup of tea.

With the resolution of the last case, the team had quickly evaporated into the Virginia night, fully intending to make the most of a hopefully crime-free weekend – an uncommon luxury at the BAU. JJ had escaped with not a little teasing about her now openly obvious relationship with Will, but had taken it with reasonable grace. It was a good thing, Grace thought, to know one's mind and pursue something so positive to the full.

She was almost in the kitchen when someone knocked on her front door. A glance at the clock told her that it wasn't unreasonably late, so she padded over to the peephole. Grace sighed.

An anxious looking Spencer Reid was loitering on her garden path, peering up at the second storey windows (which were dark). Briefly, she debated ignoring him and just getting on with her evening, but she decided against it. He was peculiarly stubborn, just as she was, and she suspected he might sit out there all night. He'd probably just construct some kind of elaborate Rube-Goldberg machine to make her come outside, anyway.

Conceding that perhaps she was being a little unfair about the silliness in West Bune, she opened the door. One look at his hopeful, worried face brought back all her anger, however. He had come so close to getting himself (and everyone else) murdered. The thought of him being gunned down on that street in front of them was still a little too much for her.

She folded her arms, feeling cross and unfriendly. Spencer winced.

"Uh – hi…"

Grace raised an eyebrow.

"I – uh – I came to… I wanted to tell you that I know what I did in Texas was really dumb," he apologised. "It was irresponsible and stupid. I am really, really sorry, Grace."

Her frown deepened, still angry. It wasn't enough to know that he knew he was an idiot if there remained the possibility of him ever doing it again. And why apologise to her? He'd put the whole team at risk! She pursed her lips. Reading her (probably fairly eloquent) micro-expressions, he frowned.

"And all that stuff I said to you – I didn't mean any of it. There's no way you would – you would never do that to any of us. I trust you."

He gave her a sad little smile.

"I acted like a total ass."

She felt her mouth twitch involuntarily into an answering smile and immediately suppressed it, biting hard on the inside of her mouth.

"No argument," she said, tightly.

Spencer chuckled, pleased to be making a little headway.

"Um, I – uh – I brought a peace offering," he told her, holding up a grocery bag. "Pizza…"

"That's a bit presumptive," she remarked, surprised.

"Not really," he offered. "I figured if you wouldn't let me in I could heat it up at home."

The smile threatened again; this time he definitely saw it.

"And I bought beer…"

"You hate beer," she pointed out.

"You don't."

It really didn't help that he looked so adorable, standing earnestly among the roses in the late evening sunlight. With a shrug, she relented.

"Fine," she said, stepping back to let him in. "I was going to watch St Trinian's, if you're interested."

"That sounds amazing," he smiled, relieved, and was so genuinely pleased that it charmed her a little.

She put the pizza in the oven while Spencer located her bottle opener and together they went into her living room. Grace stopped him on the threshold, a firm hand pressed on the centre of his chest.

He blinked owlishly down at it, then back up at her.

"You step in front of my gun again and there's an unsub behind you, I will shoot you," she told him, bluntly.

"I th-think that would pr-obably be fair," he admitted, stumbling a little over the words, and she permitted him a small smile.

"Just as long as we're clear…"

He touched his chest, hesitantly, where she had stopped him, and flopped on the sofa beside her, where she struggled with the feeling that the house felt much more like home now her friend was in it again.

0o0

Note: Thanks go to Karelin Lestrange, Mina Lofthouse and Appolline Tabourot for pointing me towards the Rube-Goldberg machine idea. I can totally see them setting it off anyway as a proof of concept!