[✓] 𝐶𝐼𝑁𝐷𝐸𝑅 | 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑 𝐑𝐄𝐈𝐃

𝟐𝟗 | 𝐋𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 | 𝟏/𝟑

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐞

— 𝒞 —

"𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐆𝐎𝐓 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆?"

Charlie's ears perked up at Hotch's voice behind her, though she kept her focus on the work on her desk. Still, she couldn't help but overhear Rossi's reply:

"Not sure. From an old storage unit."

She looked up at Spencer, who seemed to be just as interested in this as her. He raised her eyebrows and nodded behind her, and she grinned.

Rossi continued as she and Spencer stood, "Case agent from the Philly field office sent it to me."

"Somebody you know?" asked Hotch, taking the few papers that the other man handed to him.

"She knows me, you know."

"Oh, a fan," Hotch humoured. "Your world's a very crowded place, isn't it?"

Charlie crept to Hotch's side, though she knew he was very much aware of her snooping. She peered over his shoulder to see one paper that had been sent to Rossi—and instantly crinkled her nose in disgust. There was a diagram—very accurate in a mechanical sense—of some kind of suspension device. And the load in question was a naked, unconscious woman.

Rossi shrugged. "You'd be surprised."

"This is detailed," Hotch remarked, moving to the next page, which showed a mouth-opening device. Her eyes skimmed the paragraph above it, though she couldn't bear more than the 'That's a good idea to scar her crotch. Put my initials on all their asses like a herd of cows.'

"Future tense," Spencer noted, examining the same paragraph. "They're fantasies."

Rossi nodded. "That agent thinks it could be more than that."

"There's more of this?" asked Hotch, to which Rossi confirmed:

"Few boxes in the field office. I'd like to drive up there, look at the rest of the material—make a judgment from that."

Hotch raised a brow before nodding. "Take Reid and Jang with you."

"Are you sure?" asked Charlie in surprise. "Both of us? I mean, because we're . . . you know."

"You two are mature enough; I trust you," Hotch assured her, turning. "Besides," he muttered in a voice so low only Charlie could hear, "Reid might drive Rossi a little crazy."

"Road trip, nice!" Spencer cheered, hurrying back to his desk. "I've got books on tape with Peter Coyote reading the entire Foundation Trilogy."

And to Rossi's exasperated look, Charlie reassured him in a murmur, "Don't worry, I'll 'lose them.'"

— 𝒞 —

"Are you sure they're not on my desk?" Spencer pouted as they loaded the last of their stuff into the trunk of the car. He frowned while Charlie shut the trunk. "I swear I saw those tapes the other day!"

"I triple-checked, Spence," Charlie said with a dismissive shrug. As bad as she felt lying to him, she was not about to spend five hours listening to some guy reading some book. "I didn't see them."

Spencer craned his neck over to the building. "Maybe I should go in and check one more time."

"No time," quickly said Rossi, opening the driver seat door. "Get in."

To settle on who got the front passenger seat, Charlie and Spencer—the very mature adults they were—played rock, paper, scissors. Charlie, to her annoyance, lost two out of three rounds, and so she climbed into the back seat while a gloating Spencer sat in the front. She did her best to ignore him as he explained the statistics behind rock, paper, scissors ("Scissors is used twenty-nine-point-six-percent of the time, under-indexing by three-point-seventy-three-percent compared to the predicted average of thirty-three-point-thirty-three-percent!")