Chapter Twenty-One: Wolf Bite
A huge thank you to my beta, Greeneyedconstellation, and more thanks to everyone who read, reviewed, favourited or followed this weird little experimental piece of mine. Can't say I'm not glad it's over, but it was a fun ride!
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"This is Dr. Spencer Reid. I can't come to the phone right now, so please leave a detailed message and I will return your call as soon as possible."
"This is Dr. Spencer Reid. I can't come to the phone right now, so please leave a detailed message and I will return your call as soon as possible."
"We're sorry; you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again."
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The heat of the bar is like a physical blow when Emily walks in, and she immediately starts sweating under the layers of clothes she's wearing.
She hates this place.
No one looks around, but she knows they're all focused on her. Ears and noses and senses beyond those… she can feel their attention burning on the back of her neck as she walks up and slides onto a stool, nonchalantly shrugging her outer coat from her shoulders and slinging it across the next seat.
She smiles at the young barkeep, and he smiles back with far too many teeth. She returns that, and when she opens her mouth to do so, information floods her mind.
She can't count the number of times these new abilities have come in handy. Not without an extra seven hands at least.
Doesn't mean she doesn't wish they'd acquired them in a manner less likely to leave them this fucked up.
"You're not here for a drink, are you fed?" the barkeep asks, his mouth thinning into an unhappy line.
She doesn't break eye contact as she slides the photo across the polished wood. He doesn't look at it.
"Never seen him before in my life," he lies, and she sighs.
Then she tenses as cold washes against her back, the wind blowing in a familiar scent.
"No one here will help you, Agent Prentiss," says a quiet voice. "Come on. You're making the locals uncomfortable."
She spins on the stool and smirks as she picks up her coat. Jackpot. "Alex," she says, pulling the coat on and following him out into the weak excuse for an Alaskan summer. "Where is he?"
Alex doesn't look at her either, and her heart sinks. Don't be dead, don't be dead, we'd know if he was dead, not when we're so close…
"I'm not helping you either," Alex says. "It's not our custom. Those who come here, come here for a reason."
"So he is here then. Why even come see me at all if you're not going to take me to him?"
He touches her arm and his eyes are locked on something behind her. When she turns, she catches the tail end of a dark shape darting low to the ground out from the alley by the bar and vanishing into the nearby trees. "Come on," he says again. "It's his choice. Only his. No one will help you find him unless he comes to you first. Might as well kill some time between now and that message reaching him."
She raises an eyebrow. Cocky little shit. "Oh, and your idea of killing time is?"
Alex's mouth slips into a smile, and she'd forgotten how green his eyes were. "Well, we can go back in the bar now John has had time to duck out without you following him. If… if you want a drink I guess. Or we can go to the… library?"
Christ. He's Reid. He's just a slightly less awkward Reid. She rolls her eyes and leans against his car, thoughtful.
They've waited six months to find him.
What's a few more hours?
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It's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
The dreams, sure. They're not real dreams anyway, just flashes of… knowing. Remembering maybe.
Sometimes he suspects they're cravings.
But when they start leeching into his waking hours? When he's stepping off the jet into the Georgian summer and the heat makes his heart thump and his skin itch, or when he's following Rossi down a dirt track in a forest and every part of him is hyper-focused on the hum of the forest and aching to shift… that's when things start getting harder.
He dreams of snow and when he's awake he longs for winter.
And he's starting to get the horrible sensation that maybe, just maybe, there was a reason so many of the people turned had never left Alaska.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Rossi asks one day when they're moving silently together through the closest thing they have to the forest they're both dreaming of. "Is it all of us?"
"If I saw them to ask them, I would," Hotch replies snidely, and tries to pretend it doesn't bother him that they run as two now instead of six.
Seven.
They cross the familiar scents, and Hotch feels Rossi's huff of delight as he hastens. "Do I smell cupcakes?" he calls, and Hotch rolls his eyes.
Morgan's leaning against his car, human, and Garcia is sitting cross-legged nearby. She brightens when she sees them.
Morgan doesn't.
"So, Babygirl rocks up on my doorstep this afternoon and tells me Emily's gone on vacation," Morgan says, and Hotch notes he looks tired. "I don't think I really need to guess where."
"Europe," Hotch says coolly, and shifts. "She's going to visit her mother while she's working in London."
"How's white collar treating you?" Rossi asks, shifting as well and gravitating towards the sealed container perched on Morgan's hood. "Bored out of your mind yet?"
"Bullshit she's in London," Morgan snaps, and ignores Rossi. "Come on, I know I'm not the only one goddamn obsessing over snow and fucking forests. It's gotten worse. I mean, it started when Reid-"
He stops and Hotch doesn't let his gaze waver.
"You think she's in Alaska?" Garcia asks, sliding her bracelets off her wrist and folding her hands in her lap. "I mean… why? If she's looking for Reid, there's absolutely no record of him flying over there and well, would he go back? Why would he go back? That's the last place he'd go, isn't it?"
"Course he's in Alaska," Rossi says, licking icing off of his fingers and turning back. "Just because you two are content to pretend the kid is in Vegas playing the Strip, doesn't mean the rest of us are that stupid. Are we going back out? I've got my show set to record, I'm set for the next hour."
"But I checked every flight!" Garcia protests, and shifts at the same time Morgan does. Hotch flinches.
He hates that she chose this.
He's so fucking relieved that she had the option to choose this.
Mostly, he just hates that he can't forgive Morgan for giving her this. Even with his reasoning. If you won't turn her, I will, Hotch. She wants this. She'll get it. We're not the only wolves in DC, and she knows that.
The lesser of two evils perhaps, but still an evil as far as he's concerned.
"There is definitely no record of him flying or driving into Canada, and there's no way he's travelling under an assumed name because come on, that's so illegal he'd probably arrest himself for thinking of it," Garcia finishes, and nudges the now wolf-again Rossi with her shoulder happily.
They don't talk about the ones missing, but they're all aware.
"I doubt he flew or drove," Rossi replies, and bounds away. "You're not the only one running, Morgan. Only difference is, he ran towards his problems. Not away."
"I got a transfer, Dave. I didn't run. I'm like, two fucking floors down. I still have lunch with Garcia most days! If you're so shitty with me for leaving, why not bitch at JJ? I mean, the Pentagon? She didn't even warn us, she just left. Or what about Hotch? He didn't do a damn thing to get Reid back."
"He's an adult," Hotch says, bristling at Morgan's pent-up-anger. "I can't stop him."
"You didn't even try."
Something broke the day Reid walked out of their lives. Something fragile and tentative that they'd only just started to repair.
He's starting to doubt it's fixable.
No matter how far Emily goes to try.
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They end up exactly where Emily had assumed they would as soon as Alex had reached over her to pay the barkeep, and the brush of her arm against her shoulder had set her heart racing.
It's not like they don't have the time to kill.
He's shy and focused and for a few hours, she forgets everything that's been haunting them and just loses herself in his touch. JJ leaving, Morgan transferring out to try and avoid his guilt over Reid fucking off into the middle of nowhere. All the bullshit over Garcia, and Hotch's absolute fury when they'd gone ahead and done it anyway.
Emily doesn't blame Morgan for what he did. Hell, if he'd refused, she can't guarantee she wouldn't have just turned her herself. If there's one thing Emily learnt and learnt well from those three days in Tongass, it's that better the wolf you know than the wolf you don't.
And then there's Hotch's misery that he hides really, really well to everyone who doesn't spend a couple of hours a week sharing thoughts with him.
Alex falls asleep and she drifts in and out of a cat-like nap, senses sharp and attuned to the unfamiliar surroundings. The scent of his room, the sounds of life outside, the calm awareness of his heart and his body.
The sound of the front door opening.
She shifts and she's by the door of his room in seconds, arched and silent, waiting to strike.
"It's okay, Em," Alex says sleepily, rolling over. The sheets slip from his body, baring him to her again. She only spares him a glance before fixing her gaze back on the door and the utter silence on the other sound.
A wolf-like silence.
Oh.
"He has a key," Alex adds, and she nudges the door open to find Reid standing in the dark, human, and eyeing her cautiously. The light from the bedside lamp through the doorway catches his eyes and they flicker gold-green with an eerie reflection.
There's very little that's human in them, despite his form.
And he smells wild.
"Bout goddamn time," she says, stepping once towards him. "Thought you'd gotten thrown into a zoo or something."
Or something, he sends back, and smiles.
She'd know that smile anywhere. She relaxes.
It's him.
He shifts. "Run with me?"
"Thought you'd never ask."
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Having Emily by his side is a painful reminder of what he's been working to regain.
But it's the sweetest kind of pain imaginable.
"I've missed you," he admits finally, when they've been running through the woods in silence and he can feel her suspicion growing. "How is everyone?"
"You really want to ask that question?" she answers, and stops. He can feel her worry, her sadness, overlaid with her delight at being with him again. "Why did you run, Spence? Why did you leave? We would have helped you."
"I'm not running," he answers, and presses his muzzle to her ears, flicking his tongue over her silky fur and memorising her scent lovingly. "I'm… learning."
"Learning what? How to weave baskets and make daisy chains? What can you possibly be learning here that you can't learn at home, with us?"
"How to be myself."
She's there for three days. When she leaves, he doesn't follow.
She asks him if he's ever coming home when she hugs him goodbye. He wonders if she's going to tell Hotch where he is. He wonders how he feels about that.
"Of course," he says quietly. "I always intended to."
But not yet.
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Prentiss comes back and she says nothing about where she's been, but her clothes smell of ice and wind and… Spencer.
They all know.
"Hotch," she says to him one day when they're alone and a quiet has fallen between them. "He's coming home. When he's ready."
Hotch doesn't listen. He can't bear the hope.
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Ever since their weird little pack fractured down the middle, JJ spends more time moving around the streets of DC alone than she does with the others. Being with them… it's an uncomfortable reminder that they just keep failing each other.
Sometimes Garcia finds her. Morgan did, once, but they quickly pointed out that while the two women can at least somewhat move around without notice, there's no damn way Morgan's not causing panic-attacks every time someone catches a glimpse of him.
Emily came twice, but JJ knows she's still pissed that she left. When she stopped showing up, JJ didn't push the issue.
It's eight months after Tongass when she comes across a scent she knows.
She doesn't follow it. She slips back to her car, shifts, and she calls Hotch.
"Hey, Hotch? It's JJ. Good, yeah. It's, um… he's back."
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The apartment building they drive to isn't nice, nor is it shabby. It's firmly in between, and Hotch examines it critically.
"How did you find him?" he asks Prentiss as she throws the car into park and leans back in the driver's seat.
"Well, my sense of smell is like a gazillion times better," she teases, smiling. He raises an eyebrow. "… Garcia. How do you think I found him?"
He unsnaps his seatbelt. Takes a deep breath. "Are you coming?"
"Nope." She gives his arm a shove. "Go on. Big boy pants on."
He's starting to suspect that maybe his team doesn't respect him as much as they should.
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He knocks. There's no answer.
So he waits. And waits. And waits.
Silence.
Dejected, he slips out of the building and walks towards the car. He can see Emily with her arms behind her head, snoozing.
The wind shifts. So does he, within a second of catching the familiar scent.
Down the alley next to the building, he slinks along the bins and bags of garbage, senses going haywire. He snuffs the air. His paw nudges a bottle.
Reid slips out and watches him warily.
Hotch stops and just… looks. Looks at him, properly this time. Looks at him like he's never going to get the chance to look again, because at this instant he realizes his heart didn't stop when Reid walked out, and maybe, just maybe, he might not get another chance.
Hazel eyes watch him from a narrow face, large ears pricked forward. He's standing slightly side-on, his tail stiff and still. Muscles tensed, legs ready to run.
There's a collar hanging loosely around his neck, the silver-plate on the side catching the light as it sways slightly in the wind.
"Nice collar," Hotch says, and steps forward once. Reid lowers his head, and Hotch pauses. His hackles are up. "Tartan? Really?"
"It was the only one in my size," Reid says softly, his fur settling. "And spending a night with the municipal dog warden is an experience that you only ever wish to enjoy… once."
"Whose number is on the tag?" he asks curiously, sitting on his haunches and yawning. Anything to show that he is calm, he's fine, that he isn't rattling out of his fur with tension.
"Mine," Emily says, padding up behind them. "That was a fun day. Wasn't it fun, Spencer?"
"For you."
Emily knew he was back.
Of course she did.
"At least you're loyal to one pack," he sends grumpily, and feels her smile in return.
"Far as I'm concerned, that pack is one and the same. Once you guys figure that out, we'll be a damn sight happier."
There's a nudge at his mind, and when he lets it in, it's hesitant and shy. "I am home," Reid whispers, and he says it like he's expecting to be rejected. "I understand if you would prefer I keep my distance…"
Of course he wouldn't. He tells him so.
When they leave the alley, they leave as three.
Maybe a pack. Maybe.
They'll see.
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He's been back two weeks before he's alone with Hotch. At first there's Garcia and JJ and neither of them seem content to let him out of their sight.
Then there's Henry and as soon as the boy bursts into tears at seeing his godfather, Reid starts up too. JJ's not far behind. He's just glad Rossi wasn't there to witness that particular show.
Then there's Rossi and Rossi hides his relief behind a false anger and bravado. Reid lets him. He can feel the emotion the older man isn't showing, and that's enough.
Morgan he tackles head on.
"I'm okay, you know," Reid says to him one day, and watches his friend stiffen. "I thought you should… I want to be like we used to again. Before everything. Nothing Charlotte did to us should change that."
"What did you do back there, anyway?" Morgan asks, and Reid wonders how to answer.
The truth. Or most of it, anyway.
"Helped. There's still tension there. Some of Charlotte's wolves want to reintegrate, others… can't. The town wolves are of two minds about whether or not they should be allowed. Both sides trust me, I helped them… cope. And they helped me, indirectly."
"I'm glad," Morgan says finally, and presses their shoulders together. "I'm… really glad, kid."
And then there's Hotch.
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He goes to Reid's apartment one night and settles awkwardly on the couch, wrinkling his nose uncomfortably.
"You get used to the smell of mildew," Reid says, pouring them both a drink and placing it carefully on the wonky coffee table. "It's almost soothing now."
"And wonderful for your lungs, no doubt," Hotch comments, tilting his glass to watch the liquid glimmer. He watches Reid's mouth fall open and the visible struggle the man undergoes to avoid slipping into lecture mode.
And he doesn't. He closes his mouth and just nods, smiling tightly.
Hotch swallows the alcohol and his disappointment all at once.
"I talked to Strauss," Reid says finally, when the awkwardness between them begins to grate. He's standing, uncertain, clearly not okay with sitting on the couch with inches to spare between them.
"And?" Hotch asks, knowing the answer. He already talked to Strauss.
"Maybe. There's a lot of hoops she wants me to jump through. I might… it could be like normal again."
Hotch slides over and leaves a wide space for Reid to sit, and when he does, he makes sure they're not touching. "It's okay for some things to change," he says to his empty glass, fingers slipping on the cool sides. "We're not ever going to be the same, Spence, and that's okay."
There's a long, low exhale of air next to him, and suddenly Reid is leaning gingerly against his side. "I know," he murmurs. "Hotch… Aaron. I don't… us. I never stopped wanting us. But… I don't think I can. Be like that. Not for…" He shudders and Hotch fights the desire to wrap his arms around him and pull him close.
"I don't care," he says finally. "Not like that. It's never been your body I loved, not ever. If, for us to be anything, it takes us ten years, I don't care. I'll wait. Whenever you're ready."
"Thank you," Reid says finally, and they curl their fingers together.
They talk.
It's okay.
It's a start.
He'll start over a dozen times if that's what they need. He's never been one to give up.
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Reid steps out the car and walks down into the thin trees.
JJ sees him first. He smiles as she races up to him, twining catlike around his legs with her white fur gleaming in the summer sun. Welcome back! she sends, and presses her nose to his hip. He flattens her ears under his palm and smiles.
Garcia is right behind him, her fur darker gold than JJ's but just as beautiful. Hey handsome, she says, and Morgan is right behind her. It's been too quiet here without you.
Morgan isn't shy. He bounds up and rears, his muddy paws leaving dark streaks down Reid's cardigan. Hurry up, kid. Daylight's wasting and you promised me a race. I'm not gonna be beaten by a skinny thing like you.
He already beat you twice, Rossi says, yawning and rolling onto his back, his white belly sharply outlined by his slate-grey coat. Give it up.
Reid shifts. It takes some dodging, but he manages to squirm his way out of the pile of canine paws and noses greeting him exuberantly, padding down the hill towards the two dark forms watching them from the tree line.
They smell familiar. He knows this scent, the one surrounding them.
"Finally," Emily says, and licks his muzzle, before pacing away to leave them alone.
"Run with me?" he asks Hotch shyly.
"Thought you'd never ask."
Reid inhales the scent once more as they run together, memorizing it. He'll always know it.
(home)