The Other Side, Part II Criminal Minds Big Bang
Title: The Other Side
Author: wit_worry_what
Beta: Katherine the Amazing
Artist: peasnbeanstalks
Art
PART II
Although Reid is a little hung over, he wouldn’t take that night back for the rest of his life. He feels more at peace going into the Council’s chambers than ever before. With the steady presence of Gideon, who is walking just slightly in front of him, as was proper, he feels like he could truly be free from all of this.
The chamber’s air is heavy as his feet click-clack across the dark marbled floor. The ceiling rests at fifteen feet, leaving the taller-than-normal Reid feeling small, as he passes through the large oak archways. When both he and Gideon come up to the nine raised thrones which are arranged in a semi circle with blood red drapes supplying a back drop, the thick oak stained doors thud shut, locking both of them and the nine councilmen away from the rest of the world.
Gideon and Reid bypass the gate that locks out bystanders and stand in the center of the marble circle looking up at the faces of the nine most powerful vampires in the world. The Council, whose members change throughout the centuries, was created in the 16th century when vampires stopped hiding and exposed themselves to humankind. The Council was created as a vampire court. These nine vampires would rule over vampire kind, traveling wherever needed to keep an appearance of control of the vampire community. At the same time, though, there arose a recurring problem of what to do with and how to treat human mates. Thus the Selection began. In order to create a perfect companion to any vampire, Assessors were sent out into the world and would take children usually ranging from 7 to 15 years old that showed promise of being an appropriate submissive. This tradition, over time, became more archaic and was finally deemed chauvinistic. However, there still, as Reid is intimately aware of, is a small group of Selected, which has now become diverse with both humans and vampires in its ranks, that are given as treats or rewards for important and influential vampires. So that now, to have a Selected on your leash is considered a status symbol in the modern century. Reid, when he left the Den, is one of the only humans to have rejected their rigid and strenuous upbringing and turn his back on tradition.
Reid stops looking up at the nine vampires who have molded his life into what it is today and feels no anger, which would be expected, but instead, a great sorrow . To have disappointed them is to Reid a grave mistake. However, he reminds himself, he has found a home with the man he considers a father. He can finally belong because he has been accepted for who he is, not because of what these people have created as some sort of treasure. With that in mind he addresses the Supreme Councilor.
“Supreme Councilor Chilcott and the Council as a whole, I thank you for this audience. I wish to discuss my separation from the Den and my integration into the human world. I have brought with me former Assessor Jason Gideon, who comes here today to stand as my guardian. He has agreed to this clause in my freedom. He has signed the necessary papers, which we present to you in good faith,” Reid reads in a straight monotone, as if from a teleprompter. Gideon and he had agreed it would be best for him to make the opening statement to show his eagerness for a new life and because Reid knows the proper protocols much better than Gideon, since Gideon has never been the sort for protocols. A man in dark robes comes and takes the signed papers from him and delivers them up to the Councilmen and women.
“Yes, Spencer, I remember your initial petition,” states one Councilor to the left of the sneering Supreme Councilor. Reid remembers her name as Griffin. “It was granted on two stipulations, I believe. One, you must, as according to your original agreement with the Den, remain pure and unused till the end of your life. This does not only include sexual acts but also blood donation and any other vampiric acts. Two, that you must respond to Assessor Gideon as your Master while out of the Council direct protection, since he was the man who originally brought you to us. I see that the second caveat has been met, but has the first?” As Reid contemplates his response he remembers that Councilor Griffin was a Selected herself centuries ago, so this issue must be near to her heart.
“Councilor Griffin, I understand the Council fears of any…dalliances I might have while away, and how that would damage not only the investment you have made in me, but also create danger for myself. I guarantee that I have no urge to take part in any sort of sexual or blood-related activity with another vampire or human. I rescind all body rights.” Gideon nods his head in Reid’s direction to show that he approves of his words and his tactic. Reid smiles one of those small, genuine smiles that he is using more and more these days. Councilor Griffin apparently is also assuaged, it seems, because she smiles and nods her head as well, while leaning back in her throne-like chair.
“Yes, that is all fine and nice, Selected,” interrupts Chilcott, “but how do we know that the minute you leave here you will not bend over and bear your neck to any willing common bloodsucker? Hmm?” His rather abrupt and brash question ruffles a few feathers, but it also raises as many questions. Reid, of course, has been expecting this.
“Supreme Councilor Chilcott, I am a Selected. I’m one of the most elite members of your own rank. Are you implying that the people you train and raise yourself are not trustworthy? I believe I and all of my brothers and sisters in the Den deserve more trust and respect from this body,” Reid asserts, contorting his face into a mask of offense. He is not surprised that Chilcott is the one to attack.
“Well, then, Dr. Reid,” Chilcott says trying to backpedal desperately, “I did not mean to imply that you are untrustworthy….” Reid’s attack is spot-on because Councilor Chilcott understands that the value and respect he earns is mostly given by the Den, which is the much more publicly recognized face for the Council. Public record of him calling a Selected a liar would cause an instant dismissal for him. After all, to politicians it is all about the appearance.
Gideon interrupts and speaks up for Reid for the first time, “Imply, no.”
Chilcott clears his throat while Gideon smirks. “I am surely just trying to determine the seriousness of your commitment. You understand, then, that this means you cannot play with any Dom until, or if, you return to us. You understand all that you will be giving up?”
Reid looks up from the ground where his gaze had fallen once again, and says with an almost impossible air of confidence, “To give up all of that for a place to belong is akin to giving up nothing.”
***
Gideon and Reid walk out side by side, and the smile that stretches across Reid’s face is one that he believes can never be taken away.
***
It isn’t until his third case with the BAU that Reid finally fully understands the warning Gideon gave him all those weeks ago. The first two cases are straight forward, just murders. One doesn’t even have a serial killer, but coincidental murders taking place close together. Those two were primarily paperwork with a few meetings with either Gideon or Hotch to confirm Reid’s observations on the case.
His first round table with the team is on his third official case with the BAU. Four faces glide onto the flatscreen TV in front of them. Each of the smiling faces looking down on the table startles Reid for a reason can’t actually place.
“Four deaths,” Hotch’s voice breaking through the gnawing sensation in Reid’s lower gut and the small din in the conference room. “in two weeks both perpetrated the same way. They look to be murder-suicides involving, reportedly happy, vampire-human couples.”
Prentiss is the first one to look up from the briefing file she received. “It’s not an easily found or a particularly common murder technique. Poison? That’s an odd choice for a vampire murder.”
Reid, his mind moving quickly, is the one to respond to that. “It wouldn’t be odd if the humans are held against their will.”
There falls a silence over the table and Morgan breaks it carefully, “Well, yeah, maybe, but there isn’t any proof of that, is there? Everyone says that these are two happy, well-adjusted couples. One went to a dinner party before they died, for God’s sake!”
Not backing down, knowing he is right, Reid argues his position, “Possibly, however it would not be the first time that a couple kept a false, pretty face for the outside world, while internally they were broken. If, let’s say, these humans were kept by extremely tough Doms and were not given the opportunity to leave the relationship, the only way they could escape was through,” eyes flicking down to the file in front of him, “the Morteous poison. Their partner would never know that when they take their next drink it’ll be poisonous. It makes perfect sense.”
Morgan nods and Gideon picks up the questioning. “But, why kill yourself?”
Reid looks down, not reading the file, just a cover to divert his gaze, “If you are in that type of situation, where your life is no longer your own, not because you have willfully submitted but because you’ve been abused, death doesn’t seem that bad. Those subs would have spent the entire relationship being constantly reminded of how inferior, worthless, and unloved they were.“ He looks up to see Gideon with a smile on his face.
“I agree.”
Hotch, merely amused with the “let’s quiz Spencer” game the team is playing, speaks, “I agree as well, but why don’t we kept our own options open. Wheels up in thirty.”
Garcia, sitting next to Morgan, raises her hand before anybody can fully rise from the table, “Wait, uh, sorry, it’s just that…there’s a poison that can kill vampires? How did I not know about this?”
Morgan is about to open his mouth to give, Reid’s sure, a highly inaccurate explanation, when Reid jumps in, “The Morteous Poison, produced by the juices on the Morteous flower, was discovered in 1693 by famed vampire botanist Emmet Flemming. The flower, originally located and grown in the area known as Prussia, is a small green stemmed yellow flower with two long-bodied leaves attached. The poison attacks dead cells, which is why it has the ability to effectively ‘re-kill’ a vampire. A human body is unable to properly break down the poison, so when injected it builds up in the liver and kidneys causing multi-organ system failure. Death for a vampire, when injected into their bloodstream or, as in this case, ingested, takes place as soon as ten to fifteen minutes after infection, although it causes an almost automatic vertigo for a vampire . Humans usually last forty to fifty minutes before death finally takes place.”
The entire table, flabbergasted, just stare at the genius.
Morgan finally says, “So, that is gonna be a thing, then.”
The gnawing sensation in Reid’s gut is gone and has become a pleasant sensation of butterflies. He can do this.
***
As it turns out, Reid is wrong. After arriving in Middlebury, Vermont, where there are more cows than people, the team discovered a formerly abused human sub, who has been kept in the exact situation Reid had described. This poor, broken sub was attempting to liberate all of the humans in what he saw as the same relationship. Unfortunately, though, two more couples had to die before they figured it out. Their faces would forever be burned in Reid’s memory.
***
The next year of Reid’s life is the happiest even if he has daily encounters with the horror and perversion and scum of the world. He is surrounded by real family and a support system which he chose, something he has never truly had.
He watches as Morgan and Garcia are on and off again. He can now tell just by the set of the submissive’s jaw when he walks in to the bullpen in the morning.
He watches as Prentiss and JJ keep dancing around each other in a gentle and cautious rhythm, even though they both know they could find no one better. However, he sees that the fear of rejection and a friendship in tatters holds any forward momentum at bay.
Hotch slowly but surely works with Reid to make him a better profiler, particularly working with geography; he’s now the best on the team at geographic profiling mostly due to Hotch, but of course Hotch won’t hear of something like that.
His relationship with Gideon prospers and grows with each and every game of chess played and book read.
Reid has his own small apartment now and has filled every available surface with books and books and books. He missed having and keeping his own property. Just knowing that, this object that was made by separate entities and has no actual value as a part of your being, is forever and inherently and completely his, is awe inspiring.
Nonetheless, even in the face of all of this much beloved freedom, Reid still feels a distinct loneliness and loss.
Even though he has finally found a family he belongs to, he still has a compulsion for order. It’s this part that he hates the most. He saw his mother deal with “compulsion” and what that leads to. Her mental illness destroyed her marriage, her career, and, lastly, her sanity. Reid has never and would never disparage the time he spent with his mother before he was taken to the Den, but he’s not blinded to the fact that his childhood was cut drastically short by his mother’s condition and his father’s abandonment. The fact that schizophrenia can be hereditary is not lost to him, and he would be lying if he said he doesn’t worry about it; any sane person would.
So, this compulsion he has for order, for being controlled, scares him. He cannot contain his desires, but he has learned methods to thwart them. Hence, his love of Chess. The archaic board game has a set number of moves and combinations, and its rules cannot be deviated from or else the game itself falls apart. Just as sometimes late at night curled into a ball on the top of his mattress, he feels that without any strong arms wrapped around his body, without any rules to guide him throughout his day, he, too, will fall apart.
All of these hardships he has endured - his mother’s illness, his father’s rejection, the Den’s strict upbringing, or even the bullying in school - wither and die when he is confronted with Tobias Hankel. From then on, there is only him locked away in a dank shack surrounded by hazy feelings of pain, disgust, anger, futility, shame, and the sting of the needle.
In Georgia, the schizophrenic UnSub took every rule and order and balance that Reid has acquired over the past year and obliterates them.
Reid has been surviving well on the outside, even considering the bad nights curled into a ball alone in his bed. Being surrounded by such strong and relentless tops the likes of Gideon, Prentiss, Garcia, and Hotch has supplied him with enough domination that he doesn’t feel like he is spiraling out of control. Although Reid will never admit it to himself, those strong arms he imagines at night are always attached to Hotch’s body. Always. So just seeing him everyday makes his life easier.
Hankel, when he kidnapped Reid, though, destroyed every image of freedom and liberty he had fought so hard to retain, and he destroyed the illusion Reid had made for himself: that he was fine. In reality, Reid is on a slow slide downwards because he craves to be taken to a subspace where his brain didn’t move 100 miles a minute, where instead it reaches an eerie calm and just stops and stays still. Hankel tears up his gradual dissension and forces him straight into a free fall. As a hole in a parachute will cause a paratrooper to plummet to his untimely death, so is Reid’s stability. Yet, he doesn’t plummet to the ground, but is instead buoyed by dilaudid. The damned delightful drug was injected into Reid at several intervals during his time with the mentally disturbed young man. So then, when he finally escapes the clutches of Hankel, all he has left is dilaudid to keep from tumbling into despair.
The team is not blind to Reid’s pain, and Morgan goes over to Spencer’s apartment repeatedly while Reid is out of the office recuperating. Garcia sends him, and sometimes JJ tags along, because they believe that Reid is too skittish to be in a room with a Dom again so soon. JJ comes over alone explicitly in order to apologize for her part in his abduction; but of course, Reid would hear none of that. He just turns to her and grabs her forearm and pulls her close whispering, “I’m just glad it wasn’t you, JJ.”
Though surrounded by friends, Reid still feels lost; whether that is due to the loss of work or the abduction or loss of order, Reid is unable to really figure out. He sits up at night trying to dissect his responses to certain stimuli in order to understand why he is so unhappy, in order to understand why he still feels trapped in that shed when it had been him to shoot Hankel. Reid knows that Hankel is gone and buried, but Spencer still can’t accept that it is over.
***
After two weeks of recovery and going through one bottle of dilaudid he returns to work. Reid, who hasn’t seen Hotch in over twelve days and Gideon in eight, has placed so much importance in being in the presence of these Doms that he forgets the reality of the situation. He is tapping his foot on the elevator floor, impatiently waiting for the doors to open on the right level. The doors finally slide to the side and Reid smiles with an anxious tick and bounds into the bullpen…and nothing has changed. Intellectually he understands that nothing should change, but Reid himself feels so different that he almost can’t believe that this place he calls home doesn’t mirror his transformation. Garcia bounds up out of his chair when she gets a glimpse of the young profiler in the bullpen.
“Reid!” He can tell she is trying to keep herself from hugging him, obviously having been warned off by Hotch or Gideon or both. However, her toppy instinct overcomes and she pulls him into a rough hug. Reid, so deprived of this, melts into and rests his head on her shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re ok. Never let that happen again, ok? I was so worried!” She gives him another squeeze and pulls away, straightening his tie, which had been left askew from her embrace. “It has been so boring here without you. Hotch just moped around the entire time and the whole team was forced to do constant paperwork. Paperwork! It was horrible. Morgan was so wired it was almost impossible to bring him down when we got home. The hardships of having such a needy sub!” She finishes jokingly.
“Hey! Watch out who you call needy.” Morgan comes over, all smiles, and tugs on a piece of Garcia’s now flaming orange hair. Reid watches them interact when a wave of longing washes over him so intense the breath gets knocked out of him.
Garcia is about to ask if he is ok, she has that look about her, when Hotch walks over and looks at Morgan and Garcia saying, “We have a case.” He turns to Reid and his hand twitches as if he is fighting the urge to touch. “I’m glad you’re back, Spen,” he coughs, “Dr. Reid.” And with that stiffly walks away towards the conference room. Garcia audibly sighs, while Morgan attempts to cover, “Back to the grind, then.”
Ctd. Part III
Author: wit_worry_what
Beta: Katherine the Amazing
Artist: peasnbeanstalks
Art
PART II
Although Reid is a little hung over, he wouldn’t take that night back for the rest of his life. He feels more at peace going into the Council’s chambers than ever before. With the steady presence of Gideon, who is walking just slightly in front of him, as was proper, he feels like he could truly be free from all of this.
The chamber’s air is heavy as his feet click-clack across the dark marbled floor. The ceiling rests at fifteen feet, leaving the taller-than-normal Reid feeling small, as he passes through the large oak archways. When both he and Gideon come up to the nine raised thrones which are arranged in a semi circle with blood red drapes supplying a back drop, the thick oak stained doors thud shut, locking both of them and the nine councilmen away from the rest of the world.
Gideon and Reid bypass the gate that locks out bystanders and stand in the center of the marble circle looking up at the faces of the nine most powerful vampires in the world. The Council, whose members change throughout the centuries, was created in the 16th century when vampires stopped hiding and exposed themselves to humankind. The Council was created as a vampire court. These nine vampires would rule over vampire kind, traveling wherever needed to keep an appearance of control of the vampire community. At the same time, though, there arose a recurring problem of what to do with and how to treat human mates. Thus the Selection began. In order to create a perfect companion to any vampire, Assessors were sent out into the world and would take children usually ranging from 7 to 15 years old that showed promise of being an appropriate submissive. This tradition, over time, became more archaic and was finally deemed chauvinistic. However, there still, as Reid is intimately aware of, is a small group of Selected, which has now become diverse with both humans and vampires in its ranks, that are given as treats or rewards for important and influential vampires. So that now, to have a Selected on your leash is considered a status symbol in the modern century. Reid, when he left the Den, is one of the only humans to have rejected their rigid and strenuous upbringing and turn his back on tradition.
Reid stops looking up at the nine vampires who have molded his life into what it is today and feels no anger, which would be expected, but instead, a great sorrow . To have disappointed them is to Reid a grave mistake. However, he reminds himself, he has found a home with the man he considers a father. He can finally belong because he has been accepted for who he is, not because of what these people have created as some sort of treasure. With that in mind he addresses the Supreme Councilor.
“Supreme Councilor Chilcott and the Council as a whole, I thank you for this audience. I wish to discuss my separation from the Den and my integration into the human world. I have brought with me former Assessor Jason Gideon, who comes here today to stand as my guardian. He has agreed to this clause in my freedom. He has signed the necessary papers, which we present to you in good faith,” Reid reads in a straight monotone, as if from a teleprompter. Gideon and he had agreed it would be best for him to make the opening statement to show his eagerness for a new life and because Reid knows the proper protocols much better than Gideon, since Gideon has never been the sort for protocols. A man in dark robes comes and takes the signed papers from him and delivers them up to the Councilmen and women.
“Yes, Spencer, I remember your initial petition,” states one Councilor to the left of the sneering Supreme Councilor. Reid remembers her name as Griffin. “It was granted on two stipulations, I believe. One, you must, as according to your original agreement with the Den, remain pure and unused till the end of your life. This does not only include sexual acts but also blood donation and any other vampiric acts. Two, that you must respond to Assessor Gideon as your Master while out of the Council direct protection, since he was the man who originally brought you to us. I see that the second caveat has been met, but has the first?” As Reid contemplates his response he remembers that Councilor Griffin was a Selected herself centuries ago, so this issue must be near to her heart.
“Councilor Griffin, I understand the Council fears of any…dalliances I might have while away, and how that would damage not only the investment you have made in me, but also create danger for myself. I guarantee that I have no urge to take part in any sort of sexual or blood-related activity with another vampire or human. I rescind all body rights.” Gideon nods his head in Reid’s direction to show that he approves of his words and his tactic. Reid smiles one of those small, genuine smiles that he is using more and more these days. Councilor Griffin apparently is also assuaged, it seems, because she smiles and nods her head as well, while leaning back in her throne-like chair.
“Yes, that is all fine and nice, Selected,” interrupts Chilcott, “but how do we know that the minute you leave here you will not bend over and bear your neck to any willing common bloodsucker? Hmm?” His rather abrupt and brash question ruffles a few feathers, but it also raises as many questions. Reid, of course, has been expecting this.
“Supreme Councilor Chilcott, I am a Selected. I’m one of the most elite members of your own rank. Are you implying that the people you train and raise yourself are not trustworthy? I believe I and all of my brothers and sisters in the Den deserve more trust and respect from this body,” Reid asserts, contorting his face into a mask of offense. He is not surprised that Chilcott is the one to attack.
“Well, then, Dr. Reid,” Chilcott says trying to backpedal desperately, “I did not mean to imply that you are untrustworthy….” Reid’s attack is spot-on because Councilor Chilcott understands that the value and respect he earns is mostly given by the Den, which is the much more publicly recognized face for the Council. Public record of him calling a Selected a liar would cause an instant dismissal for him. After all, to politicians it is all about the appearance.
Gideon interrupts and speaks up for Reid for the first time, “Imply, no.”
Chilcott clears his throat while Gideon smirks. “I am surely just trying to determine the seriousness of your commitment. You understand, then, that this means you cannot play with any Dom until, or if, you return to us. You understand all that you will be giving up?”
Reid looks up from the ground where his gaze had fallen once again, and says with an almost impossible air of confidence, “To give up all of that for a place to belong is akin to giving up nothing.”
***
Gideon and Reid walk out side by side, and the smile that stretches across Reid’s face is one that he believes can never be taken away.
***
It isn’t until his third case with the BAU that Reid finally fully understands the warning Gideon gave him all those weeks ago. The first two cases are straight forward, just murders. One doesn’t even have a serial killer, but coincidental murders taking place close together. Those two were primarily paperwork with a few meetings with either Gideon or Hotch to confirm Reid’s observations on the case.
His first round table with the team is on his third official case with the BAU. Four faces glide onto the flatscreen TV in front of them. Each of the smiling faces looking down on the table startles Reid for a reason can’t actually place.
“Four deaths,” Hotch’s voice breaking through the gnawing sensation in Reid’s lower gut and the small din in the conference room. “in two weeks both perpetrated the same way. They look to be murder-suicides involving, reportedly happy, vampire-human couples.”
Prentiss is the first one to look up from the briefing file she received. “It’s not an easily found or a particularly common murder technique. Poison? That’s an odd choice for a vampire murder.”
Reid, his mind moving quickly, is the one to respond to that. “It wouldn’t be odd if the humans are held against their will.”
There falls a silence over the table and Morgan breaks it carefully, “Well, yeah, maybe, but there isn’t any proof of that, is there? Everyone says that these are two happy, well-adjusted couples. One went to a dinner party before they died, for God’s sake!”
Not backing down, knowing he is right, Reid argues his position, “Possibly, however it would not be the first time that a couple kept a false, pretty face for the outside world, while internally they were broken. If, let’s say, these humans were kept by extremely tough Doms and were not given the opportunity to leave the relationship, the only way they could escape was through,” eyes flicking down to the file in front of him, “the Morteous poison. Their partner would never know that when they take their next drink it’ll be poisonous. It makes perfect sense.”
Morgan nods and Gideon picks up the questioning. “But, why kill yourself?”
Reid looks down, not reading the file, just a cover to divert his gaze, “If you are in that type of situation, where your life is no longer your own, not because you have willfully submitted but because you’ve been abused, death doesn’t seem that bad. Those subs would have spent the entire relationship being constantly reminded of how inferior, worthless, and unloved they were.“ He looks up to see Gideon with a smile on his face.
“I agree.”
Hotch, merely amused with the “let’s quiz Spencer” game the team is playing, speaks, “I agree as well, but why don’t we kept our own options open. Wheels up in thirty.”
Garcia, sitting next to Morgan, raises her hand before anybody can fully rise from the table, “Wait, uh, sorry, it’s just that…there’s a poison that can kill vampires? How did I not know about this?”
Morgan is about to open his mouth to give, Reid’s sure, a highly inaccurate explanation, when Reid jumps in, “The Morteous Poison, produced by the juices on the Morteous flower, was discovered in 1693 by famed vampire botanist Emmet Flemming. The flower, originally located and grown in the area known as Prussia, is a small green stemmed yellow flower with two long-bodied leaves attached. The poison attacks dead cells, which is why it has the ability to effectively ‘re-kill’ a vampire. A human body is unable to properly break down the poison, so when injected it builds up in the liver and kidneys causing multi-organ system failure. Death for a vampire, when injected into their bloodstream or, as in this case, ingested, takes place as soon as ten to fifteen minutes after infection, although it causes an almost automatic vertigo for a vampire . Humans usually last forty to fifty minutes before death finally takes place.”
The entire table, flabbergasted, just stare at the genius.
Morgan finally says, “So, that is gonna be a thing, then.”
The gnawing sensation in Reid’s gut is gone and has become a pleasant sensation of butterflies. He can do this.
***
As it turns out, Reid is wrong. After arriving in Middlebury, Vermont, where there are more cows than people, the team discovered a formerly abused human sub, who has been kept in the exact situation Reid had described. This poor, broken sub was attempting to liberate all of the humans in what he saw as the same relationship. Unfortunately, though, two more couples had to die before they figured it out. Their faces would forever be burned in Reid’s memory.
***
The next year of Reid’s life is the happiest even if he has daily encounters with the horror and perversion and scum of the world. He is surrounded by real family and a support system which he chose, something he has never truly had.
He watches as Morgan and Garcia are on and off again. He can now tell just by the set of the submissive’s jaw when he walks in to the bullpen in the morning.
He watches as Prentiss and JJ keep dancing around each other in a gentle and cautious rhythm, even though they both know they could find no one better. However, he sees that the fear of rejection and a friendship in tatters holds any forward momentum at bay.
Hotch slowly but surely works with Reid to make him a better profiler, particularly working with geography; he’s now the best on the team at geographic profiling mostly due to Hotch, but of course Hotch won’t hear of something like that.
His relationship with Gideon prospers and grows with each and every game of chess played and book read.
Reid has his own small apartment now and has filled every available surface with books and books and books. He missed having and keeping his own property. Just knowing that, this object that was made by separate entities and has no actual value as a part of your being, is forever and inherently and completely his, is awe inspiring.
Nonetheless, even in the face of all of this much beloved freedom, Reid still feels a distinct loneliness and loss.
Even though he has finally found a family he belongs to, he still has a compulsion for order. It’s this part that he hates the most. He saw his mother deal with “compulsion” and what that leads to. Her mental illness destroyed her marriage, her career, and, lastly, her sanity. Reid has never and would never disparage the time he spent with his mother before he was taken to the Den, but he’s not blinded to the fact that his childhood was cut drastically short by his mother’s condition and his father’s abandonment. The fact that schizophrenia can be hereditary is not lost to him, and he would be lying if he said he doesn’t worry about it; any sane person would.
So, this compulsion he has for order, for being controlled, scares him. He cannot contain his desires, but he has learned methods to thwart them. Hence, his love of Chess. The archaic board game has a set number of moves and combinations, and its rules cannot be deviated from or else the game itself falls apart. Just as sometimes late at night curled into a ball on the top of his mattress, he feels that without any strong arms wrapped around his body, without any rules to guide him throughout his day, he, too, will fall apart.
All of these hardships he has endured - his mother’s illness, his father’s rejection, the Den’s strict upbringing, or even the bullying in school - wither and die when he is confronted with Tobias Hankel. From then on, there is only him locked away in a dank shack surrounded by hazy feelings of pain, disgust, anger, futility, shame, and the sting of the needle.
In Georgia, the schizophrenic UnSub took every rule and order and balance that Reid has acquired over the past year and obliterates them.
Reid has been surviving well on the outside, even considering the bad nights curled into a ball alone in his bed. Being surrounded by such strong and relentless tops the likes of Gideon, Prentiss, Garcia, and Hotch has supplied him with enough domination that he doesn’t feel like he is spiraling out of control. Although Reid will never admit it to himself, those strong arms he imagines at night are always attached to Hotch’s body. Always. So just seeing him everyday makes his life easier.
Hankel, when he kidnapped Reid, though, destroyed every image of freedom and liberty he had fought so hard to retain, and he destroyed the illusion Reid had made for himself: that he was fine. In reality, Reid is on a slow slide downwards because he craves to be taken to a subspace where his brain didn’t move 100 miles a minute, where instead it reaches an eerie calm and just stops and stays still. Hankel tears up his gradual dissension and forces him straight into a free fall. As a hole in a parachute will cause a paratrooper to plummet to his untimely death, so is Reid’s stability. Yet, he doesn’t plummet to the ground, but is instead buoyed by dilaudid. The damned delightful drug was injected into Reid at several intervals during his time with the mentally disturbed young man. So then, when he finally escapes the clutches of Hankel, all he has left is dilaudid to keep from tumbling into despair.
The team is not blind to Reid’s pain, and Morgan goes over to Spencer’s apartment repeatedly while Reid is out of the office recuperating. Garcia sends him, and sometimes JJ tags along, because they believe that Reid is too skittish to be in a room with a Dom again so soon. JJ comes over alone explicitly in order to apologize for her part in his abduction; but of course, Reid would hear none of that. He just turns to her and grabs her forearm and pulls her close whispering, “I’m just glad it wasn’t you, JJ.”
Though surrounded by friends, Reid still feels lost; whether that is due to the loss of work or the abduction or loss of order, Reid is unable to really figure out. He sits up at night trying to dissect his responses to certain stimuli in order to understand why he is so unhappy, in order to understand why he still feels trapped in that shed when it had been him to shoot Hankel. Reid knows that Hankel is gone and buried, but Spencer still can’t accept that it is over.
***
After two weeks of recovery and going through one bottle of dilaudid he returns to work. Reid, who hasn’t seen Hotch in over twelve days and Gideon in eight, has placed so much importance in being in the presence of these Doms that he forgets the reality of the situation. He is tapping his foot on the elevator floor, impatiently waiting for the doors to open on the right level. The doors finally slide to the side and Reid smiles with an anxious tick and bounds into the bullpen…and nothing has changed. Intellectually he understands that nothing should change, but Reid himself feels so different that he almost can’t believe that this place he calls home doesn’t mirror his transformation. Garcia bounds up out of his chair when she gets a glimpse of the young profiler in the bullpen.
“Reid!” He can tell she is trying to keep herself from hugging him, obviously having been warned off by Hotch or Gideon or both. However, her toppy instinct overcomes and she pulls him into a rough hug. Reid, so deprived of this, melts into and rests his head on her shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re ok. Never let that happen again, ok? I was so worried!” She gives him another squeeze and pulls away, straightening his tie, which had been left askew from her embrace. “It has been so boring here without you. Hotch just moped around the entire time and the whole team was forced to do constant paperwork. Paperwork! It was horrible. Morgan was so wired it was almost impossible to bring him down when we got home. The hardships of having such a needy sub!” She finishes jokingly.
“Hey! Watch out who you call needy.” Morgan comes over, all smiles, and tugs on a piece of Garcia’s now flaming orange hair. Reid watches them interact when a wave of longing washes over him so intense the breath gets knocked out of him.
Garcia is about to ask if he is ok, she has that look about her, when Hotch walks over and looks at Morgan and Garcia saying, “We have a case.” He turns to Reid and his hand twitches as if he is fighting the urge to touch. “I’m glad you’re back, Spen,” he coughs, “Dr. Reid.” And with that stiffly walks away towards the conference room. Garcia audibly sighs, while Morgan attempts to cover, “Back to the grind, then.”
Ctd. Part III