Things Unsaid

Disclaimer: The most estimable characters of Criminal Minds belong to CBS and I am only borrowing them. No actual characters were harmed in the making of this fanfic.

Rating: T – references to past drug use. Being cautious with my rating.

Warning: Hotch/Reid preslash

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragement, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

-Thomas Carlyle

When Hotch first met Spencer Reid, he knew his mind must be something dangerous beyond imagining; because the body— He saw the Academy scores, countered by the numerous remediations. "You're going to get him killed," he had hissed to Gideon the night of Reid's graduation, the boy triumphant and nervous and babbling to Haley, God, something about Thomas Edison and Model Ts and barbecues.

"He's brilliant. He'll figure out how to survive."

At Gideon's seeming callousness Aaron felt the muscles in his jaw slacken, just for an instant. "Survive? What the hell, Gideon?"

"The BAU is changing, you know that. In a team environment, we can play to his strengths; he can play to ours. Given experience and some seasoning as an agent, he's going to be the most dangerous weapon in the BAU's arsenal."

Spencer Reid got his experience. After Georgia, when his frame turned from slender to skeletal, his hands shook almost constantly, and he couldn't bear loud noises. They tried, all of them did, an unspoken conspiracy, to pretend it was only PTSD. He had passed the psych evals.

Easy for someone who had memorized the answer key.

Georgia had been a trial of psychology and choice, torture and sacrifice. All because Reid had split up from his partner, because he was a kid and he didn't know any better.

Aaron would give anything to take that back.

Now, on the jet, the air cold and stale and heavy, he watched Reid. Everyone else was sleeping, or pretending to. Gideon had dragged Reid out of some dive in New Orleans, claimed he had handled it. But Gideon was the one sleeping. Reid, Reid was awake, in his seat alone at the back of the plane, legs and arms crossed but limp, face planed down to some hollow simulacrum not even a memory of the eager graduate he had been.

Less than half a decade for that haunted look to creep into his eyes.

Hotch's eyes had changed, too, but they glittered and they were predatory and as much as they frightened the unsubs they frightened Hotch more. Haley says when she looks at him she sees a stranger, and he knew she meant more than the frequent absences his job entailed.

Reid was staring off into some middle distance, head tilted slightly as though he were listening to something. Aaron notices his face is very pale. No, not pale. White. Translucent. Ghostly. Something almost imperceptible, a quivering in his shoulders that gathered strength until Reid's whole body was shaking. Now Reid was screwing his eyes shut, whispering something soundlessly, and his hands were clenched into fists.

I choose... I choose... Was his mind taking him back to a shack in a Georgia cemetery and a reek of fish hearts and livers?

Aaron looked around. Gideon's eyes were still closed.

He sighed, folded the report he had yet to start, and walked over to take the seat across from the younger man.

At the movement Reid's eyes flew open, he jerked back, and made a strangled quiet sound, "Don't."

The defensiveness, the hypervigilance, the fact that Reid did not lapse into self-conscious laughter at himself but just settled back, staring at him, with those eyes that were knowing and weighing and resigned because the other shoe had already fallen and nothing could ever hurt again because he was numb. Dead.

All that made Aaron's heart spasm in his chest. Reid wouldn't give up on his own. How much pain can one man endure? But even now, when he was bending and Aaron was afraid he might break, they needed him.

With any other member of his team, Hotch might have reached out to rest his hand on a knee, a shoulder, supportive without being too intimate. But this was Reid, and while Aaron was one of the few allowed into his personal space, touch—with the exceptions being the Fisher King incident when Aaron had dragged him from the blast radius of a bomb, and later, when Reid had crawled out of his own grave in Georgia and actually needed a hug—touch would not be welcome.

They were silent for a moment, only looking at one another. Aaron concerned, Reid getting angry and trying to hide it. Finally, Reid licked his tongue over dry lips. "You know, after she was shot, I told Elle she won. Garner was dead. She survived."

"You're not Elle."

"I know that." Reid looked down, focusing on his hands, hands that usually danced through his thoughts and were now still. "Still. I thought I understood what she meant."

He made a face, and Aaron felt his heart spasm again when he realized, God, that was supposed to be a smile.

"You know, when I was little, and my mother read to me, I loved it because I didn't remember it the same as if I read it myself. It was familiar, but still new, every time I heard one of my favorites. But some things, I don't have to read to remember them perfectly."

Reid's eyes flashed back up to Aaron's, his voice hushed as though for confession. Aaron wanted to take him in his arms and tell him crying really would help (even though that was a lie) and tell him he almost died, he did die, and that's not something Aaron's ever going to be able to forget either.

Something like relief flashed over Reid's face when Aaron said none of this aloud. "Gideon talked to you?"

"He did." Aaron tried not to let his impatience with the taciturn explanation he had received, I took care of it. Reid will be fine, make his answer curt. But Reid flinched slightly.

"There's—I need to take some personal time. Something I need to do. It should take about a week."

There it was. So oblique, the closest thing to an admission either of them could afford if they wanted to keep their jobs.

"Anything you need. Will you need any help?" His voice was careful, like trying to lure in a skittish wild animal lurking around the edges of things unsaid. Such as how long it takes to detox from narcotics.

Reid tilted his head slightly. "Thank you. But I'll manage on my own."

They were silent for a moment, between them concern and such a weight of memory that would be relieved if the numbness would only let it crash.

Reid's voice was a whisper when Aaron shifted his weight, preparatory to standing and returning to his unfinished report. "I remember my mom reading from Proust. He wrote, A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves."

Aaron did let his hand rest on Reid's shoulder, now, and Reid accepted the contact. Huge hazel eyes met his own, and they were expressive as hell. "It's never going to be the same."

Features drawn and gaunt, Reid looked down at his motionless fingers. A whisper, "I know."

And as Aaron settled back back into his own seat, with everyone else but Reid asleep or pretending to sleep, he wished Spencer Reid could have had the chance to do more than survive.

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