Rating: PG
Words: 2,621
Summary: Two days, seven hours, thirty-three minutes, five seconds and two jiffies ago, Spencer Reid had grown wings.
Wingfic is usually considered crack!fic but “Something Beautiful” is not in any way stupid or nonsensical. As silly as a person suddenly growing a pair of white fluffy wings sounds, we know that a good fantasy story is never about the improbable situations the characters are thrown in. It is about the true nature of the characters magnified by those situations, and “Something Beautiful” does just that. It mirrors the essence of Spencer Reid and Aaron Hotchner in an honest and truthful way that not many traditional stories manage to pull off.
The plot is simple. Spencer Reid came home from a case on Friday night and woke up with wings on Saturday morning. It was now Monday and he was supposed to be at work but instead he was cowering in his bathtub, ignoring the phone. Noon came, along with the inevitable: a knock on his door. It was Aaron Hotchner. Despite his fears, Reid let his boss in, and after a moment of dumbfounded silence, they shared an intimate moment that led to their first kiss.
The message behind the somewhat silly plot is, however, not as simple. In Reid’s neurotic but charming voice, the story touches upon the one issue that our genius has faced and is still facing every day: self-acceptance. Reid’s worst fear has always been losing his mind, becoming his mother, being beaten by his genetic destiny. That fear is the exact fear Reid is going through with his “perfect, inexplicable pair of wings that had not existed when he went to bed, and then were simply there, as though they’d always been.” It is the fear of his own biology, something he has no control over. He cannot fix his ‘wing’ problem any more than he can cure his mother regardless of how much he knows about the illness.
There was no scientific precedent for this in any article he’d ever read, and he’d read most of them. If the medical community didn’t have any explanation, then Reid didn’t have any.
Over the years the fear of becoming “an unprecedented genetic aberration” has raised an issue of social approval in Reid. The author goes back to Reid’s daddy issues, how Reid craves father figures who he can count on accepting him for who he is, not who he could be. William Reid and Jason Gideon are not them, and it doesn’t matter that Aaron Hotchner “praised him, watched over him, and made him feel valuable to the team […] taught him how to shoot, and when not t, […] kept his secret, but never made him feel ashamed” because Reid would never love Hotch like a father.
He loved [Hotch] like JJ loved Will, or Garcia loved Kevin. This was real – dry lips, heart palpitations, stammering statistics real. It was also awkward, inappropriate, and hugely problematic.
So it is understandable that Reid would feel as if it was the end of the world. Not because he has grown wings overnight, but because he has grown wings which would inevitably cost him his only family, the team – because it never occurs to Reid that anyone would accept him in his current ‘condition.’
Despite all these fears, Reid unlashes the door and lets Hotch in, literally and figuratively. Contrary to Reid’s expectations, Hotch doesn’t scream or leave. There is an understandable shock but the sight does not disgust Hotch. Instead Hotch is enraptured with Reid’s wings and asks a question Reid does not expect.
“Did it hurt?” Softness crept into his expression, the corners of his eyes crinkling with worry. Reid had known that look before, and it loosened some of the fear that squeezed his chest. It wasn’t the kind of love Reid dreamed about, but he needed it all the same.
And then Hotch did something even more unexpected. He asks Reid permission to touch the wings, an action which is very sensual and, to me, narrated like a sex scene.
Whatever Reid had anticipated, it was nothing like what he got. Hotch’s hands were softer than they looked, and his fingers walked up Reid’s spine with surprising tenderness. Hotch explored the tense knot of muscles that had grown between his shoulders, and then followed the bones all the way out to the tip. He buried his hands among the feathers, and it made Reid gasp, feeling a million different sensations from a million different nerve endings. It was amazing. Better than amazing.
The kiss seems almost an afterthought. It is desperate and electrifying, but to Reid it is nothing compared to the look on Hotch’s face afterward.
The look was warm and blissful, not like anything Reid had seen in him since long before the divorce. It was beautiful, and it was for him, because of him. When they woke up tomorrow, when Reid still had wings and Hotch had a unit to run, maybe this would mean nothing at all. Maybe everything would go back to business as usual. Maybe everything would be ruined. But it didn’t matter at all – his wings had put light back in Hotch, and he would never, ever forget it.
Yes, you read it right: Reid’s wings have put light back in Hotch. How beautiful a concept is that?
Now that Reid realizes how wrong he was to doubt Hotch (and the team), there is only one question left that matters – will Reid be able to accept who he truly is? The closing paragraph provides the best answer:
Reid knew now what he hadn’t known two days ago. Hotch was different. So was he. And maybe he didn’t want to be any other way.
I will leave you with the same passage from “Something Beautiful” by Robbie Williams that the author used to close the story:
May you find the love that won’t leave you
May you find it by the end of the day
You won’t be lost, hurt, tired and lonely
Something beautiful will come your way
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