Criminal Minds Fanfic

by spinner

Healing

1  2  3

Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it. 

-- Tori Amos

1

There was something distracting about the way that Reid used his hands while he talked.  It was hypnotizing to watch them.  His hands moved like birds trying desperately to escape a snare. 

Hotch and Gideon watched Reid ramble for three minutes straight about the comfort zone of their current unsub—how it was evident that the unsub was living between the suburbs and downtown; how he operated entirely within the radius between work and home; how he would no doubt strike again within the limits of that confined area.   When Spencer reached the end of his oxygen supply, he gasped in another quick breath.  He went on talking after only the smallest pause.   

Jason’s tiny smile bloomed to the size of a half-moon.  He watched Reid fondly.  Seeing that Gideon was not going to do anything to rein his pupil in, maybe even sensing that Jason got a bit of weird amusement out of watching Reid do this sort of thing, Aaron felt he had no other choice.  He reached up and took hold of both Reid’s hands, tugging his arms downward and holding very firmly. 

Spencer inhaled in horror and stopped mid-word.  His mouth hung open in surprise. 

“Reid, stop rambling,” Hotch ordered sternly. 

The doctor took a shaky breath.   Gideon chipped in finally.

“It’s not a conversation unless you let us reply,” Jason explained in that condescending manner he sometimes adopted.  The tone didn’t bother Reid, but it never failed to raise Hotch’s hackles. 

Reid took another breath.  Hotch couldn’t help but be reminded of his three-year-old son Jack when the toddler was about to launch into a screaming fit.  Aaron immediately felt guilty for comparing Reid with his son.  Spencer wasn’t a child – he was a grown man.  But there were several aspects about Reid which made Hotch feel protective of him—the age difference between Spencer and the other team members, his awkward lack of social graces, his painful shyness, his slender build, his inability to handle a gun well.  Lately he had been so damned shaky that Hotch’s alarms were in high alert around him at all times.  Hotch often adopted a parental manner with Reid that he wouldn’t dream of using with any other member of the team.   He wondered if Reid found his patronizing manner any more annoying than Gideon’s condescending tone. 

The moment after he had taken hold of Reid’s hands, Hotch realized it was the absolute worse thing he could have done.  Not only did Reid not like being touched, he really did not like being restrained.   Holding tight to Reid’s fingers and keeping his hands captive had scared the young man.  It hadn’t been two months ago that he had been restrained against his will by Tobias Hankel.  Reid had been chained to a chair, beaten and tortured both physically and psychologically.   Those memories were fresh in his mind.  His inner torment played across his face.   Tobias Hankel was at peace, but he had shackled his demons to Reid.   

The doctor’s large brown eyes grew wider.  His revulsion at being touched consumed him.  Because it was Hotch, Reid wasn’t going to snap and bite.   Lately though, he had been snapping angrily at other team members.   Neither Prentiss nor Morgan had complained.  JJ had wibbled but quickly forgot her anger, tempering her annoyance from that infinite well of patience she seemed to have when it came to Reid. 

Garcia had spent fifteen minutes in a complete tizzy last week because Reid had simply walked away when they were in the middle of what she had felt was an extremely-important conversation.  Hotch had managed to smooth things over with Penelope because by chance he had followed Reid into the bathroom, and had spied him in the last stall, balled up in front of the toilet, trembling, sweating, vomiting.  Once Hotch explained to Garcia that Reid had been ill, and he had probably darted away unexpectedly because he hadn’t wanted to throw up on her flashy, designer pumps, Penelope had calmed down.  She even came over to his desk later and gave him some 7-Up and a careful hug.  Reid had cringed down and away from the hug as if Garcia were hurting him. 

Reid would never bark at Hotch like he did with everyone else.  He wasn’t going to be rude to him either.  He was not going to cross that boundary with Hotch unless Aaron invited him across.    The unit chief wondered whether that was out of fear or respect.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. 

“Let me go,” Reid begged, trembling. 

“I will let go.  But you have to stop rambling,” Hotch scolded as gently as possible.   

The young man stared helplessly at Hotch.   Revulsion was ebbing away, but irritation bloomed, growing fast, moving from Reid’s eyes, to his face, to his mouth.  His lips closed, started bunching together tighter and tighter.  He wanted to scream so badly—Hotch knew it. 

Hotch carefully released Reid’s hands, and Spencer retracted from Aaron’s grasp as if the touch had burned him.   Reid jerked his hands far out of reach.  He kept them almost behind his head in an attempt to keep them away from Hotch. 

Without ceremony, without words, without a sound, Dr. Reid turned and walked out of the room.  The door closed with a loud bang, and Hotch was suddenly so angry that Reid had walked away from him.   Gideon hung his head and shook it back and forth. 

“Hotch, you need to be patient with him.  He’s struggling,” Jason whispered. 

“I can tell he’s struggling,” Hotch growled.   "I'm not blind, or stupid."   

“Let me talk to him,” Gideon offered. 

“No,” Hotch replied.  “You wait here.  I’ll talk to him.” 

Hotch had a sneaking suspicion that Gideon would probably only turn this into a ‘teachable moment’, and Aaron didn’t want Reid to feel he could continue acting the way he had been acting.    

2

Hotch found Reid in the small room in the local police station where they had set up shop to coordinate on the case.   The room was arranged in the manner of a lecture space, with a large desk at the front of the room, a smart board and a bulletin board behind the larger desk, and rows of tables flowing back towards the door.  Hotch wasn’t surprised that Reid had fled there. 

Reid was standing in front of the map on the bulletin board.  He had charted out the location of each abduction.    Spencer was stabbing push pins into the map with such ferocity that the entire board shook with each blow.  Aaron wondered what Reid was imagining in his mind’s eye each time he jabbed a new pin into place.  

Hotch found himself watching those hands again—pale, long, and slender; stronger than you might guess yet also fragile; tendons and veins and thin bones barely covered with muscle and flesh.   Those hands were like a microcosm of Reid himself.  

“Reid, I didn’t mean to offend you.  I wanted to make the point that when you do all the talking, no one else can contribute their thoughts. That limits the team to only one perspective—yours.  Everyone’s opinions and words are equally relevant.”

Spencer stopped.  More accurately, he froze.  His spine stiffened.  He inhaled sharply.  He clenched both hands into tight fists.  He had not heard Hotch enter the room, and he was surprised to have been crept up on. 

Hotch cursed himself inwardly.  He should have announced himself before he had started speaking.   He hadn’t meant to scare Reid.  Spencer had been so jumpy – ever since Georgia, ever since Hankel.   The traumas that Reid had suffered were obviously haunting him. 

Hotch second-guessed himself again about not giving Reid more time off to deal with everything that had happened in Georgia.  Gideon and Hotch had argued over Reid’s report in the office late one night after the rest of the team had gone home.  After reading Spencer’s sketchy description of the events, Hotch had wanted to recommend at least a month off to allow Reid to pull himself together. 

Gideon had disagreed with Hotch, arguing that four weeks of isolation was not going to banish the ghost of Tobias Hankel from Reid’s brain.  Jason had argued that that much time away would likely make Reid feel like he was being punished for allowing himself to be hurt.  Keeping him isolated from the team, from his family support group, would cripple him emotionally, more so than he already was. 

Jason knew right where to dig at Hotch – family support system? 

In the end, Hotch had relented to Gideon’s suggestions.  After all, Hotch reasoned, no one knew Reid better than Gideon did, right?  Hotch allowed Reid back the moment he was released from the hospital.   Had that been all of four days?  What the hell had Hotch been thinking? 

This was the result of allowing Reid to rush back—an agent who two  months later was still suffering from PTSD.  This was someone who was not dealing with what he could admit had happened to him, let alone the things that had happened which he could not admit.   Reid was pretending that everything was fine, but he was falling to pieces. 

Hotch could see it now.  He had been wrong to follow Gideon’s advice on this.  What’s more, his own guilt about what had happened was making him unsure how to handle Reid.   Hotch thought of his team as his family, his wolf pack.  He was their father, their alpha.  He felt like a failure because he hadn’t been able to protect his youngest cub, and he was filled with such self-loathing and remorse. 

There were days when it made Aaron hurt physically to see how much pain Reid was carrying around.  All Hotch wanted to do was take him aside and comfort him, lick his wounds clean for him, fold him up in a protective embrace, reassure him that he would always be a valued and loved member of their pack.  No one would think less of Reid if he needed time to heal.     

Hotch understood where Dr. Reid as coming from though.  Because Spencer had relied on himself for so long, he had a difficult time trusting himself to other people.   He might joke about being smaller than Morgan, or less nimble than Prentiss, or less capable with firearms than Hotch was, but when it came down to internal strength, Reid had a hard time showing weakness of character to anyone.  Maybe it was time to remind Reid that there were benefits to belonging to a pack.  When you’re not strong enough to deal with everything on your own, you could rely on the others.  As a unit, the team was stronger than they could ever be individually.           

Steeling himself for what must be done, Hotch left his thoughts and came back to reality.   He watched as Reid opened his left hand and dropped scores of push pins to the ground.  They scattered along the tiles noisily.   Hotch ignored the tacks as they spilled away.  His eyes were glued to several pins which were embedded in Spencer’s grip, buried in his skin.  

Hotch came forward and lifted Reid’s hand, pulling the push pins out one at a time.   Reid shuddered and stopped breathing.  Hotch wished his very touch wasn’t making Reid shake with fear.   Spencer twisted and went down to his knees on the cold tile floor.  He was willing Hotch to let go of his arm.  Though he could have jerked away, he didn’t.  He whimpered once, almost inaudibly.   

Aaron ignored the sound, ignored the unspoken plea to let go.  He smoothed the broad of his thumb over the puncture marks in Spencer’s left hand.  They weren’t bleeding too much—a  drop here, a drop there, not even enough for a blood test.  Hotch pulled a tissue from a flowery purple box on largest desk.  He laid the tissue flat over Reid’s palm, and held on tight to Spencer's hand.    

Reid was upset at being touched again.  His right hand reacting to the left hand being held prisoner.   His fingers were clenched into hooks, and his arm was tucked tight to his body.  His body language devastated Hotch—how had he not seen this before?   Spencer was making himself as small and unthreatening as possible.  This whole situation was going from bad to worse. 

The stern unit chief sat down on the floor beside Reid, hoping he appeared less threatening that way.  He unhooked his hand from Reid’s hand and removed the blood-dotted tissue.  His eyes focused on the one tear that was still bleeding.   Aaron balled the wrinkled, sweaty tissue up and put it back on that spot. 

“You need a Band-Aid,” Hotch said.  He hobbled over to the large desk and searched in the drawers.  Success!  Someone had left a small stash of bandages tucked in the top drawer.  Hotch tugged one free of the package, and returned to Reid.

The young man sat flat on the ground, knees folded out, eyes down.   Hotch sat down cross-legged in front of Reid, knees to knees with him, and carefully took his left hand.  Hotch pulled Reid’s arm out straight once more and shoved the sweater and shirt sleeve out of his way.  He peeled the bandage out of its wrapper, and hovered over the small wound on the pad of Reid’s palm at the base of his thumb.  Hotch made sure the tiny square was centered properly.  Maybe this was overkill — it wasn’t a serious injury by any means.  But this was more about the gesture than actual necessity.   

Hotch pulled the edges of the tiny bandage tight, wrapped the ends around the base of Reid’s thumb.  He let Reid curl his fingers back up once the wound was dressed.  Hotch lifted Reid’s hand, and dotted a kiss on top of the small square in the middle of the Band-Aid.  He could smell antiseptic, and feel small raised dots against his lips. 

“All better,” Hotch whispered.   It was a gesture of kindness, and it did not go unappreciated.  Reid sniveled softly and suppressed a timid smile. He couldn’t meet Hotch’s gaze.  Aaron was fighting with himself about how to reach out, how to get Reid to open up to him.  Would that kind of unwelcome gesture only make Reid withdraw further?  The problem was that Hotch couldn’t bandage what was really wrong with Reid, and without attention, those wounds might never heal.  Hotch knew from experience that unacknowledged wounds could kill faster than bullets. 

Hotch was pulling Reid’s shirt and sweater sleeves back down over his left arm when he realized that he had uncovered angry red dots, fresh and half-healed punctures far more serious than push pins could cause.  The veins in the underside of Reid’s forearm were swollen and angry in sections that had been punctured over and over and over again. 

Hotch had been so focused on Reid’s hand that he was only now noticing his arm, as he was covering the pale, bruised skin over again.  A terrible cold sweat flooded Hotch’s body.  He hesitated but did not stop, tried not to react to what he had seen.  He tucked Reid’s left hand back to his chest, bending down to try to catch Reid’s distant gaze.  The young doctor’s hair swung back into his face.   His thoughts were a million miles away. 

Hotch felt foolish and inadequate.  He felt so stupid.  How had he not guessed?  How had he not realized before?  Hankel had used drugs as a means of escaping his miserable existence and his abusive father.  Tobias must have drugged Reid with Dilaudid in order to control him while he had held him captive.  Now Reid was injecting himself in order to quell his own fearful memories of the ordeal.   It was no wonder Reid had been terrified when Hotch had grabbed his hands.  Hankel must have had to have held his arms immobile in order to inject him.  Hankel probably concentrated on Reid’s right arm, but of course, Reid was right handed, so he would be injecting himself in his left arm. 

Hotch thought about the wounded, limping animal Spencer had been when they had found him hunched over Hankel’s dead corpse.  Aaron’s heart ached with guilt because he hadn’t been able to protect Reid.   But he felt guilty too about how Reid had focused on him first and foremost among the shapes bounding over the leaf-covered cemetery grounds.   Hotch had expected Reid to fall into Gideon’s arms and stay there, but he hadn’t.  Reid had been hazy-eyed and in shock.  He had just had to kill a man in order to stay alive.  When the team found him, Hotch had been the first there.  Reid had reached his arms up around Hotch’s neck, had held on tight to Aaron, held on as if he might never let go. 

It hit Hotch suddenly that he might have stumbled upon the reason Gideon had been cross lately too – was Jason having a problem with the fact that Reid had focused on Hotch and not on himself?  Was Gideon mad at Hotch for this?   It was easy enough to understand, if Gideon would just think it through.  Reid had hung onto Hotch because the team leader had been the first person to speak directly to Reid, the first person Spencer had recognized in his terrified delirium. 

It had not been a pleasant hug.  The young man had reeked of sweat, vomit, sour clothes, and burnt fish flesh.   But there was something else that had caught Hotch’s nose that night – something medicinal, something antiseptic, something nervous and sweaty.   The smell of the Band-Aid had shaken the memory loose from his mind.  Hotch realized that it had been the smell of the drugs in Reid's sweat. 

In the here and now, Hotch moved carefully closer to Reid.  He felt the nip of several push pins denting his trousers and taunting his legs, but he ignored them.  He slid one arm around Reid’s chest and one around his back.  Aaron pulled Spencer into his arms, and again he detected that terrible scent – something medicinal and antiseptic, something nervous and sweaty.    

Reid shivered but he allowed the hug.  Hotch pulled back slightly so he could study Reid’s face.  Spencer’s eyes remained open and distant.  Aaron carefully tucked Reid’s unwashed hair behind one ear, and he dotted a small kiss to the shell of that ear.  He caressed Reid’s back, settled on a spot over his lower spine where he stroked slowly in small circles.   Reid made a little sound – something between a hiccup and a gasp.  Hotch connected it immediately with noises that Jack made when he had had a troubled dream and he was trying not to cry.   Hearing Reid make that pitiful noise overwhelmed Hotch with the need to protect and soothe.   His mind filled with memories of how angry he had felt, watching Tobias Hankel beat and yell at Reid, watching the insane father and the vengeful angel torment the helpless young man in turn.  Hotch had wanted to smash through that video feed and stomp Hankel to death for harming Spencer.   

It took a few minutes of gentle rubbing, but eventually, Reid leaned his head on Hotch’s shoulder.   He was tilted at an awkward angle, like a worn-out child who didn’t want to give into the need to sleep.  He sniffled softly.  Tension began to ebb from his tight frame.  His eyes drifted closed.   He might have actually been falling asleep.   

Hotch was melting with sympathy.  He swallowed hard to keep from crying.  If three minutes of gentle handling could put Reid into an impromptu nap, how long had it been since he had slept through the night?  How long had it been since he had felt safe?   Hotch suddenly wanted to take Reid home and care for him.  He wanted to sit awake on guard beside him while he slept.  

Hotch wondered if Haley would mind.  They could let Reid have the guest room for a while-- until he was himself again.  Aaron shook the thought from his head.  It was the last thing in the world Haley was going to allow, and he knew better than to even ask.   Maybe part of him understood every objection she would raise.  And maybe another part of him was angry at her because he knew she would refuse.  That wasn't fair, because he hadn’t even actually asked her, but he felt that anger anyway.  He couldn’t help himself.   

Hotch looked down at the bandage at the base of Reid’s left thumb, and saw that Spencer was rubbing his fingertips across it over and over again in a repetitive motion.  Hotch knew the action was called stimming, and that it was a calming mechanism which helped autistic people deal with stressful situations.   Reid usually hid these repetitive actions so well that only a trained eye would notice.   The fact that Reid was openly stimming was a warning sign Hotch simply could not ignore.  He was practically begging for help. 

Hotch wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he stayed where he was, letting Reid rest against him.  When Aaron was certain that Spencer felt secure with being touched, he reached his free hand around to Reid’s right sleeves, slowly pulling the material upwards.   Spencer hardly reacted at all.  Although the material was up only a handful of inches, Hotch saw what he needed to see—how Reid’s right arm was also covered in angry red dots and annoyed patches of skin over major veins.   The injuries on his right arm were older than the ones on his left arm.  As Hotch had speculated, Hankel had injected Reid in his right arm, but Reid had been injecting himself in his left arm. 

Hotch lowered the right shirt and sweater sleeves back into place and ran his thumb over the inside crook of Reid’s covered elbow and down the inside of his forearm, carefully petting him.  Reid opened his eyes and started to shiver.   He knew his dreadful secret was out.  His life, his job, his future were literally in Aaron’s hands.     

Hotch cleared his throat and tucked Reid’s lank hair behind his ear again.  Instead of pulling away in disgust or disapproval, Hotch moved closer, held him tighter.  He put his chin on top of Reid’s lowered head.   

“I’m here for you.  I know you’re hurting.  Please don’t shut me out.  Do you need help?” Hotch asked.    

Spencer nodded.  Hotch stroked Reid’s back. 

“Please help me,” Spencer whispered.   “I…. I can’t stop…. I’ve tried.   I’ve tried so many times….  I can’t…. I’ve tried ….I…. I….”

“I’ll get help for you.   Don’t worry.  Everything will be fine,” Hotch promised.   

“I can’t stop,” Reid whispered, eyes closed. “Can’t stop.  Can’t stop.”  He was rocking and chanting under his breath. 

Hotch felt a hot tear trace down his own cheek.  Reaching out to help could hurt worse than standing by and doing nothing, but in the end, he could no longer stand by and do nothing.   He only wished he had reached out before now. 

Hotch glanced back at the door to the room and saw Gideon was there.   Any other man would have darted out of sight or dodged away.  Jason stared back at Aaron and frowned an unreadable frown. 

3

“Do you think it was a mistake to let Reid handle this by himself?” Gideon asked over coffee in Hotch’s office on Monday when they were back at Quantico.

“He’s not handling it by himself,” Hotch defended, sipping from his cup.  “It’s the best program in DC.  It’s twenty-eight days.   You and I are a phone call away.  He’ll be back very soon.  Once he’s completed the program, he’ll be able to come back to work.  He can continue to attend  weekly meetings when the team is home.  If he needs us, we’re here.  We’re not leaving him alone.   We do want him to feel that we trust him, so we’re not hovering.  But we’re not leaving him alone.”

Hotch didn’t feel it was necessary to add that if asked, he would be spending every night of the next twenty-eight days talking on his cell phone, soothing Reid to sleep with whatever would help – books, magazines, periodicals, the newspaper, the phone book, the dinner menu from Happy Cat Chinese Carry-Out.  He would recite the manual from his vacuum cleaner if that could make a difference.

“Maybe we should be more involved.  Sometimes Reid needs a firm hand to guide him.  We need to make sure he stays committed to rehab,” Gideon cajoled.  Hotch wondered if he was playing devil’s advocate.  Was he sounding out whether or not this could alter Hotch's trust in Reid and his abilities?

“Dr. Reid is not a child,” Hotch murmured, clearing his hoarse throat.  There was something about the way Gideon smiled when Hotch said this that concerned Aaron.   It made him angry too.  

“What did you tell the others?” Gideon asked.   “What did you tell the Section Chief?”

“I told them that with my permission, Reid is taking a small sabbatical, in order to write a couple of research papers which he hopes to flesh out into a book at some point down the road.”

“Well, Spencer can write those papers in his sleep.  I saw him write one on the back of a napkin in a restaurant before.”

“He’ll be back in no time,” Hotch promised. 

“I don't feel the same when he's not here with us," Gideon said sadly, peering mournfully down into his coffee mug.  "It's wrong.  I shouldn't do that.  I know it.  I shouldn't grow too attached to him.  I shouldn't be so protective of him.  He's a grown man, and he doesn't need us hovering over him-- his unit chief and his mentor."

"We'll stay far enough back to keep from suffocating him, but close enough that we can catch him if he falls," Hotch insisted.   Jason nodded and gave a small head shake and smile.  

"Hotch, I have to know.  How did you guess that Reid was using drugs?  Years and years of experience as a profiler?” Gideon wondered. 

“No, I didn’t guess.  Like most idiots, I had to have solid evidence,” Hotch admitted.   

“His sleeves?” Gideon pressed.  Hotch nodded even though that wasn’t entirely the truth.  “Yeah, me too.  That’s what clued me in.  We were in New Orleans, hottest, wettest place I’ve ever been, and there he was, dressed in long sleeves, shivering like it was Alaska in January.”

Hotch almost smiled, and then the thought struck him.  The case in New Orleans had been a month ago.   He caught his breath and didn’t bother to hide his displeasure.

“You left Reid to twist in the wind since New Orleans?” he demanded in disbelief.   

“You said it yourself, Hotch.  Reid is not a child.  I wanted to let him deal with it on his own,” Gideon replied. 

“For a goddamn month?” Hotch wailed.

“I have watched him carefully.  I knew he was trying to stop.  He was making progress.  I didn’t want to butt in if he didn’t want me there.  He could go a week without.  He went ten days without.  Then he would stumble again.  I was hoping with a little more time, he would be able to stop on his own.”

Hotch stared at Gideon and narrowed his eyes.  "I can't believe you...."  

“Was I wrong?" Gideon demanded.  "You said it yourself.  We should offer assistance, tell him we’re here if he needs us, but we should not coddle him,” Jason defended.    “If we both came to the same conclusion, then it’s got to be the right approach.  Why are you angry?”

“I’m not angry,” Hotch lied.   He wasn't angry so much as frightened to death, worrying how long Gideon would have waited without acting.  

“Then I did the right thing,” Gideon smiled to himself. 

Hotch had to let it go, absolutely had to, because he was inches from punching Gideon in the face.  That kind of reaction wasn’t going to solve anything, not for team dynamics and certainly not for Reid.  So Aaron let it go.  But he did not forget it. 

“Let’s hope the cases for the next few weeks keep us close to home so we can be there for Reid when he calls,” Aaron offered. 

“Here’s to hoping,” Gideon agreed, climbing up from his seat when he saw JJ was about to tap on Hotch’s office door.  

Jureau knocked, popped her head in, and waved a couple folders around.   Hotch worried how much of their conversation she might have overheard.  

“Ready to go another round?” she asked.  "Everyone's in the conference room."

“We’ll be right there,” Hotch promised.   Gideon left Hotch's office on fast feet.  They were apparently done here.   Hotch glanced down at his phone to check for messages – nothing from Reid.  He would check again later, once the team was on the plane. 

more to come

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