Criminal Minds drabble

[triedunture]

The plane ride home was long and quiet. Outside the tiny plastic-coated windows, it was raining, grey and black and powder-dark clouds. Morgan and Elle were slumped on each other’s shoulders, asleep. JJ had her seat reclined and her jacket stuffed under her head. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Gideon sat in his seat and leaned against the bulkhead of the aircraft’s interior, his neck cricked at an odd angle while he dozed with his arms folded across his chest.

Reid stared out the window, his chin perched on his clenched fists, his elbows resting on his knees. His drab sweater hung on his thin, hunched shoulders, and his reading glasses were stowed away in his breast pocket. Far away in the distance, a bolt of lightning flashed bright for a moment. He counted the seconds, but heard no rumble of thunder. Silent storms, he thought, that the wind takes away.

“We didn’t catch him,” Reid said in a hushed whisper.

The only awake occupant lifted his gaze from the file in his hands. “We aren’t perfect,” Agent Hotchner said just as quietly. “The profile was off; it happens.”

“Never happened before.” Reid shifted in his leather seat. “Not to me.”

Hotchner sighed, a dark figure in a dark suit, almost a silhouette in the dim light. “You’ve been trained so well, except to deal with failure,” he said. “It’s something we should have prepared you for.”

“I keep turning it over and over in my head,” Reid continued, not acknowledging his superior’s words. “I know I missed something, some detail, some small clue, and if I could just figure out what it is…”

Another flash of lightning illuminated the cabin for a split second, throwing the planes and hollows of Reid’s face into sharp relief. The youngest team member sighed and pushed a lock of hair back into place behind his ear.

“The worst part,” he said, “is that half of me wishes he would kill again. Just so we could get more information on him. So we could get another chance.” Reid ducked his head and clenched his hands in his lap. “Pretty horrible, right?”

“No.” Hotch consulted his papers again. “That’s your job. To anticipate the worst, and to be ready for it.” He flicked his eyes up from the forms in his hand. “Try to get some rest.”

A low moan of thunder rolled against the small plane, making it shudder in the stormy air. Reid tracked the horizontal movements of the raindrops on the window as they dashed along the surface before being flung off into space.

“I don’t think I can,” he said, still gazing out the window.

Hotcher nodded and kept studying his files, and they both stayed awake until the wheels touched down in Quantico.





Download the podfic here.