Work Text:
"I'm not stupid." Spencer shouted, voice disconnected and deep, his tongue displaced, hands slapping noisily as he clumsily threw signs at Hotch and Morgan.
Hotch was always surprised for a little while when that deep voice arrived into focal point - Spencer so often used Morgan as a conduit that when his words were spoken and his deaf accent was heard in full pelt, he often found himself trying to get used to the peculiar way in which Spencer's tongue formed words that his ears had never heard.
Derek exhaled with his eyes closed and sat on one of the two desks across the room that made up the small Louisiana police station, watching Spencer pace and sign sharply. "I know." He signed as he spoke, repeating the same line for the ninth time; the argument hadn't stopped since they'd left the school that the unsub's second victim attended and Derek was getting sick of going in circles.
Hotch cleared his throat. "I'm sorry." His hand circled slowly on his chest as he spoke. "I didn't mean..."
"I can read lips - I can do it just fine." Spencer insisted. His anger only curdled his grasp of spoken word further, omitting letters from his words as they tumbled loosely from his mouth. He signed quickly, with agitation and annoyance. "I'm not an infant, I don't need you always sticking up for me." His anger was focused on Morgan, despite it having been Hotchner - who had insisted that Spencer leave the crime scene and return to the station for bookwork - that had started this whole argument.
Derek frowned, "They were going circles, Spencer, like we are now. You were..." He grappled for a kind way of wording what Hotch's problem had been. Then Hotchner spoke up for himself.
He waved his hand to Spencer for his attention and the doctor looked at him through lidded, angry eyes. "You freaked them out. They don't want the FBI here, and giving them you with your weirdness before even hinting at your deafness is too much. They saw your sign and assumed we were here to cock up. I thought asking you to come back here and work on what we already had would speed things up and level their annoyance with us. It wasn't - it's not personal, Reid."
Morgan sighed at his tactless words but sincere attempt and Spencer simply glared at him.
Silent for a moment longer, Spencer nodded his head. "I can look after myself." He pointed hard against his own chest as he spoke. "I don't need you, or Derek pushing me out of my job - I can fight for myself."
Derek wet his lips with a swipe of his tongue and signed carefully, this time in almost complete silence, blocking Hotch from his and Spencer's world. "I know. I also know that what they do, what they say, hurts you. I want help. Hotch was wrong asking you to leave the scene, but I..." He paused and thought, and Spencer's eyes bore into him. "I'm sorry he hurt your feelings, but sometimes slowing down for you means slowing down for saving the victims, for catching the unsub. I'll do what I can to help, you know that - but sometimes I can't. Sometimes, Hotchner needs you just to step aside."
Spencer frowned and sat down with a bump onto the room's narrow window sill. "No." He spoke deeply, hands still. "I don't want your help. Or yours." He pointed to Hotch.
Derek nodded walked to the kitchenette at the far corner of the room and took a bottle of water from the refrigerator. He cracked the cap open and took a sip. "Fine." He said, without signing. "That's fine. But this is what it's like, to be at there with noise and conversation and no hands." He raised his eyebrows. "You don't want my help or just to be left to be who you are, that your choice buddy." He took another mouthful of his water. "But believe me, nobody is going to want to stop and explain it all again with the weird deaf tag-along."
Spencer frowned deeply as he processed Morgan's words, making sense of his facial expressions and lip shapes. He got most of it, but faces Derek had pulled had alluded him completely and he wasn't entirely sure what his current, blank facial expression meant.
Spencer's face darkened. "Stop trying to make a point." He signed, silent.
Morgan set down his water bottle. "See why I help?" He asked with fingers alight. "I don't pity you Spence, I help and go with Hotch's decisions sometimes because I don't want others to pity you. That's why I help. That's why I fight with you. So you come off okay and they back off."
Hotch watched them, aware of some signs and able to converse simply but lost and mesmerised by the dance their hands did; remarkably loud considering Reid's deafness, it was like a perfectly choreographed routine - a thing of beauty. Spencer looked cross and animated in it, while Morgan's face was perpetually sorry as he signed with occasional spoken words before erupting into speech loudly as he signed.
"Spencer!" He crowed. "This is not like that. Not like what you think." Everything was punctuated as he signed. "We know what you can do, but when you use your hands at a crime scene they do not see the smarts, and it slows the work down. I know it hurts and it sucks - but Gideon and Hotch do not turn you away from scenes just to piss you off. They know what you are capable of but when time is of the essence, hearing what is said first time is important."
Spencer silenced and stood still, arms at his side. He stared at Morgan and then licked his eyes over Hotch.
"Don't ever ask me to leave that bluntly again." He said firmly in Hotch's direction. "I speak because it's easy for you, for work. My language is different. Learn it, talk to me how I hear it, and learn to include me first time so I hear it first time." He focused on Derek and shook his head. "Reading lips is exhausting. I work in your world and I keep up because I have to but sometimes I can't. Cut me a bit of slack, 'kay?"
Morgan nodded and approached Spencer with his hands out submissively.
"I mean it." Spencer signed. "You interpret for me the whole time or not at all, don't leave me out half way through the conversation. I try to keep up - you have to meet me half way."
Morgan put his hands on Spencer's shoulders and then, unselfconsciously, pulled Spencer close to him. He kissed the top of his head and shut out fact that Hotch was behind them. He whispered a quiet sorry, one Spencer would never know he had spoken with a loving or deeply apologetic tone. To cement his apology, though, he kissed top of Spencer's head again and pulled him closer.
Case or not, busy or not, to Derek there was always time to ensure the important people in his own life never felt like the victim.