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“Yeah, Baby, what's up? Uh-huh. Yeah, we're here now. Sorry, what? The lab’s clean? You're sure? All right.”
Morgan turns around to tell Reid but the kid is gone. His heart drops down to his feet. He thinks he steps on it as he scrambles towards the house. He’s sure he’s yelling the kid’s name, but it’s all static until he sees Reid’s face.
Reid’s eyes are frantic as he locks the door to the lab. “Morgan, get— get back!” He yells, muffled by the glass. “Get back! Get out of here!”
Morgan tugs on the door and hates himself for the way Reid flinches back. “What are you doing?” he asks, terrified, “What's wrong?”
“No, don't!” Reid exclaims, pushing harder in the opposite direction.
“ What's wrong?” Morgan repeats, shaking now.
“Believe me, get back.”
Morgan’s eyes dart around the room in a frantic attempt to get answers. He zeroes in on a vial, shattered on the ground. The air is blowing. There’s powder mixed with the glass. He knows what it is without having to think. He nearly throws up. The horrified feeling manifests as a harsh bang against the door instead.
“Reid, open the door!” Morgan shouts in his scariest voice. The one he uses to command unsubs. The one he’s used for every evil man in his life. Reid shrinks back, but doesn’t budge from his position locking himself in.
“I'm sorry,” Reid says, barely loud enough to hear.
-
“Morgan, how's Reid?” Hotch asks as soon as he arrives. Morgan’s pacing on the grass now, body feeling like it’s on fire. He needs to do something, anything, to make this better. To save Reid.
“There's white powder in the room and the air was blasting,” he explains. He can practically feel Hotch’s disappointment, though his face stays carefully neutral. “I should have been right there with him.”
“Morgan, there's no time for second-guessing,” Hotch tells him, “What do we know?”
“Nichols is dead. Blunt force trauma to his head. Reid thinks he's been dead 2 or 3 days.”
Whitworth pipes up. “Well, then he couldn't have been responsible for the attack,” he concludes, rubbing at the stubble on his chin.
Morgan tries to shake out the tension in his hand. He looks guiltily at the window. He can’t see Reid. “Reid took Cipro today, so he's gotta be ok, right?”
Hotch sighs. “I don't know. It was precautionary.”
“It's not helping patients at the hospital.” Whitworth says. Morgan wants to punch him. He wants to scream and beg for even a sliver of hope. He takes a deep, shaky breath instead.
“Yeah, but they didn't take it until after they were exposed.” Morgan says, trying desperately to see a future where Reid gets out of this. “Reid took it before.”
Whitworth says something, but Morgan can’t hear it. He can’t do anything but stare at the window, where Reid has finally come into view. Morgan’s phone rings as Reid holds his own up to his ear. Morgan holds the phone out between himself and Hotch. He puts it on speaker.
“Reid,” Hotch says, gruff but strangely kind.
“Hotch, I really messed up this time,” Reid says with a dark chuckle. Morgan sees him rub at his eyes through the window.
“Reid, we need to get you out and to the hospital,” Hotch tells him firmly. Reid makes a noise that almost sounds offended.
“No!” He scoffs, “I'm staying right here.”
Morgan’s fist clenches tight. His nails dig into his palm and he barely feels it. “No, you're not, Reid.”
He can practically hear Reid roll his eyes over the phone. He departs from the window and already Morgan mourns the loss. “I'm already exposed. It's not gonna do me any good to stop working the case.” Reid sighs, though it sounds more irritated than exhausted. “My best chance is to stay here, see if there's a cure, try to figure out who killed Dr. Nichols.”
“Come on, Hotch, say something to him,” Morgan pleads. He feels like he’s bargining for his life. He needs Reid to be okay. He needs Hotch to say anything at all to keep the kid from killing himself in there.
Hotch shakes his head and Morgan knows it’s over. “He's right,” Hotch says, “His best chance is inside. We're going to get a suit and mask in for you right away.”
Reid coughs, and Morgan feels it in his own chest. “Don't bother,” he dismisses, “It's not gonna do me any good. I'm already infected.”
Hotch grumbles, but he doesn’t protest. Morgan begins to pace again, just to keep himself breathing. He stays close enough to hear. “Reid, what do you see in there?” Hotch asks. Morgan tries to prepare himself for the onslaught of information. He needs to be his best right now. For Reid.
Reid hesitates before he speaks. “I see cages filled with dead animals. There’s signs of a struggle, probably before Dr. Nichols was murdered. Equipment's missing. There's a large desk with clutter all over the surface. But in the corner, there's a smaller desk. It's organized, functional.”
Morgan perks up. He’s reminded of their desks back in Quantico. The visible differences in their spaces. “Two different work spaces?” he suggests, feeling something like relief surge through him as Reid confirms.
“Two sets of handwriting,” he says, then mutters under his breath as he reads whatever notebook he must’ve found. “I'm looking at instructions on how to boil lab-grade broth, sterilize lab equipment, and transfer spores. He has a partner, maybe even a protege. Go back to the BAU, try to figure out who this partner is.”
Morgan looks desperately at Hotch. “Hotch, why don't you go?” he begs more than suggests. “I'll stay with Reid.”
Hotch frowns at him but doesn’t argue. “Funnel all the information you get to me,” he orders. Morgan nods.
Then, they’re alone on the call. Morgan can hear Reid’s breathing. It’s Weak. Rough around the edges. He opens his mouth to speak but Reid talks first.
“Morgan,” He says, having suddenly lost all the confidence he had while examining the lab.
Morgan hugs himself in a feeble attempt to calm down. He tries his best to sound strong. “Yeah, kid?”
Reid pauses before he speaks. “I’m scared,” he admits quietly.
Morgan feels his lip quiver. He can’t stop it. “Me too,” he says. Reid makes a sound that’s almost a laugh. He descends into hacking coughs and has to gulp deep breaths before he can speak again.
“The Great Derek Morgan’s scared of something?” He says, trying to fall back into their routine.
“Yes,” Morgan says, raw. He regrets it as soon as he says it. He can almost hear Reid’s smirk drop.
“If…” Reid begins, “If I—”
“Nothing’s gonna happen to you, Reid.”
Reid makes a high pitched, nervous noise. He doesn’t believe Morgan. It’s obvious. “Yeah, yeah,” He agrees, “Just… Uhm..”
Morgan starts to lose what little control he had over himself. He thinks he sounds more afraid than Reid when he asks “What is it?”
“If something does happen.”
“And it won't," Morgan repeats.
“And-And it probably won’t,” Reid says, just to placate Morgan. “But if it does, could you…” Reid holds the phone away from his face for a moment. Morgan can hear him say something to himself, but he can’t make out what it is. Reid’s voice sounds small when he talks into the microphone again. “Could you make sure ‘son’ isn’t on my gravestone?”
Morgan’s world shifts on its axis. He’d braced himself many different things from this strange deathbed-like confession. This isn’t one of them. “What?” he says, lost.
Reid’s voice raises an octave. It gets that strange tinny quality it usually does when he’s trying to explain something away. “F-friend is okay,” He clarifies, “Child, uhm… Colleague? Just please don’t let me be son. Please morgan. Can you promise me?”
Morgan can’t speak. His tongue feels useless in his mouth. His find rushes through every possible answer for what this could mean. For what Reid is really asking from him.
“Derek,” Reid says, sounding so afraid that it’s like a knife to the chest. Morgan forces himself out of his haze.
“Yeah,” he says gently, “Yeah, I promise.”
Reid sounds relieved. Truly, wholly relieved. Like he suddenly isn’t at risk of dying. Like his life isn’t in the team’s hands. “Thanks,” he says. Morgan stays on the line in silence and listens to Reid hypothesize about a cure with Dr. Kimura.
“Garcia’s calling,” he alerts Reid when her face lights up his screen.
“Patch her in,” Reid says, pulling his attention away from Kimura.
Garcia has to shake herself out before clicking accept on the incoming call. “Hey, Reid,” she says, trying her best to sound hopeful. It doesn’t work as well as she’d hoped.
“Gee, wow,” Reid says, making a sound close to a laugh. “No, uh, no witty Garcia greeting for me?”
Garcia can’t hold back her sigh. “I can't be my sparkly self when you are where you are.” She knows Reid understands. It doesn’t make it any easier.
Reid lets them sit in silence for a few moments. He sounds nervous when he asks “Garcia, do you think you can do something for me?”
“Anything.”
Reid gets hoarse, like he’s having to push out every word through blades. “I, uh... I know I can't call my mom without, ah—” He clears his throat harshly, and Garcia winces at the painful sound. “without alerting everyone at her hospital.”
She bites her lip and prepares her hands for magic. “What do you need?”
“I need you to record a message for her in case anything happens to me.”
Garcia crumbles in her seat. “Oh, nothing's going to happen to you. You're gonna…” Her mind flounders, unable to find its usual silver lining. “You’re gonna brilliantly find out who did this and we're gonna treat this strain.”
There isn’t any optimism in Reid’s voice. Not even the dark statistical optimism he tried to have. “I hope you're right,” he says, to make her feel better, “but if you're not, I just— I really want to make sure that she hears my voice.”
Garcia swallows down the horrible lump in her throat. “Ok. Just, uh, give me a second,” she requests, frantically setting up a recording on the line.
“Ready,” She says, feeling like her office is low on oxygen.Reid clears his throat once more before he speaks.
“Hi, mom,” he says, “This is, um, this is your Spencer. I just…” Theres a shuffling noise as Reid rubs his hand over his temple, trying to sound brave. “I just... really want you to know that I love you, and…” Reid’s voice catches. He stifles a sob, and has to take a few seconds to get back in control. “And I tried really hard not to be weak. I need you to know that I spend every day of my life proud to be your…” Reid’s words stop again. Garcia can hear him sniffle, though he tries to muffle it. “Proud to be your son.”
Garcia’s concern spikes at the strange tone Reid takes on. Like admitting that to his mother was more terrifying than dying. Like it hurt him deep enough to cut bone. “Reid?” she says, knowing he’ll pick up the fear in her voice.
She hears Dr Kimura call out “Prep the victim for transfer” to her coworkers.
“I gotta go,” Reid says swiftly.
A deep pit of worry has cemented in the pit of Morgan’s stomach. He nearly has it. Whatever ‘it’ is. He’s almost figured it out. “Kid, you did real good,” He says, “Now get the hell out of there.”
He thinks Reid may be smiling as he says “Bye.” The coughs he hears from the house don’t assure him at all.
Reid’s being hosed down when he remembers to call Hotch with an update.
“They're checking out Brown's house,” Morgan tells Reid. He doesn’t care, but he knows Reid will.
Reid raises his arms for Kimura. “Go help Hotch,” he says, squinting at Morgan through the plastic. He’s had to take his contacts out. Morgan doubts he can see much of anything right now.
Regardless, Morgan shakes his head. “Hotch has plenty of people helping him,” he grumbles, crossing his arms stubbornly over his chest.
Reid’s face scrunches with displeasure. “He needs you more than I do,” he whines, knowing it isn’t true.
Morgan gets stern, though his protective impulse over Reid makes him sound more like a frantic dog than a firm superior giving an order. “Reid, I'm gonna see you off to the hospital.”
Reid groans like a child. “I'm about to get naked so they can scrub me down!” He exclaims, “Is that something you really want to see?”
“I'm not going anywhere.”
Reid flushes a humiliating shade of red as his clothes are peeled off him. He can feel Morgan watching him. He’s about to complain about it when Kimura grabs his arm.
“Dr. Reid, did you cut yourself?” she asks urgently. Reid looks down at the wound with wide eyes. He’d forgotten entirely about the little scrape. Kimura wastes no time after the discovery. He barely even remembers the minutes between the decontamination and the ambulance. Morgan holds the oxygen up to Reid’s face as he coughs.
“How are you feeling?” Morgan asks, his now
gloved hand gripping Reid’s tightly.
Reid tries to look at him. His eyes don’t quite focus. “My throat's a little dry,” he admits, “But other than that, I feel... Flee... Feel fin. I fel— fleel fin. I–” Reid’s face crumbles into terror as he realizes what’s happening to him. Morgan looks up at Kimura helplessly. She orders the driver to go faster.
Morgan thinks being in that ambulance was some form of Hell. Feeling Reid’s grip loosen. Watching as he coughed his way into respiratory distress. Morgan makes himself watch everything they do to keep Reid alive. He makes himself suffer through every wheeze and commits the frail beep of Reid’s heart to memory. He should’ve called Hotch. He knows he should. Even when he’s forced to sit in the waiting room, trying to return to his body by tucking his head between his legs. He feels suspended in time until someone mercifully calls out for the family of Dr. Spencer Reid.
He alerts the team once he’s finally allowed to see Reid’s face. When he’s tucked up close to the kid’s bed, he can see the rise and fall of his chest. Hotch doesn’t have the heart to reprimand him for it, though Morgan can tell he’d been worrying himself sick about it too.
Morgan holds Reid’s cold fingers between his and lets himself really think for the first time all day. He can’t stop lingering on Reid’s request. He rubs Reid’s hand in gentle circles as he tries to make sense of it all. He only accepts a friendly nurse’s jello offer because he knows Reid will want some when he wakes.
It’s dark outside when Morgan finally gets it. He asks Garcia to bring him a laptop, and she doesn’t ask why he needs it. He knows he can’t be sure until he asks, but he spends all of that first night next to Reid trying to understand all he can. He calls up his Ma near midnight and lets her ground him for putting himself in danger. She softens when he explains what’s happened with Reid.
Morgan shakes his head when he wakes to find that he’d fallen asleep neck deep in research. For a moment he almost understands how Reid could become so fixated on his studies.
He’s scarfing down an egg sandwich when Reid wakes up.
“You’re getting crumbs everywhere,” Reid grumbles, looking at the edge of the blanket where Morgan’s been eating. Morgan’s brows shoot up at the rough sound of Reid’s voice. He feels his heart tremble in his chest.
Morgan tries to appear casual as he hums. “Hey, kid,” he says, wiping sauce off his lips.
Reid looks around the room in a daze. “What happened?”
Morgan puts down his sandwich and tries to wipe off his hands to the best of his ability before touching Reid’s arm. “You're gonna be all right, kid. And we got Brown. It's over.”
Reid nods minutely. “How’re the victims?”
Morgan smiles, his hand sliding down to Reid’s. “You were right about where to look for the cure,” he says, “They’re getting better.” Reid relaxes, worries apparently soothed for the time being.
“Does my mom know I’m here?” Reid asks, sounding a bit like a child who knows they’re in trouble. Morgan shakes his head.
“About that,” Morgan mutters, trying to find a segway that wasn’t horrifically awkward. Reid frowns at him and he gives up on that plan immediately.
“Reid,” He says seriously, making the kid tense up awkwardly again. Morgan hits himself internally. “No, it’s nothing bad,” he clarifies, meeting Reid’s eyes in an attempt to show honesty. Reid looks skeptical to say the least.
“I was just— I’ve been thinking a lot,” he says sheepishly.
Reid huffs out a chuckle, “Well nothing good ever comes of that.”
Morgan smirks and nudges Reid’s shoulder with his fist. “I was thinking about what you said to me, when you were in there. And what you said to Penelope.” Reid goes still.
“I.. Okay, don’t laugh,” he warns, “I did some research while you were out.” Reid very carefully does not laugh, though they may have been a twitch of the lips. “And I talked to my Ma, and my sisters, and—” Morgan shakes his head, frustrated with himself. He grips Reid’s hand tightly.
“Do you feel like a girl, Reid?” he asks clumsily, though his expression is entirely sincere. Reid stares at him blankly, eyes cartoonishly wide. “It’s okay if you do, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re still— Whatever you are, it's fine, don’t let me speak for you. I was just— I want you to know I’m here for you. That’s all.”
Reid stares at Morgan for a good few minutes, bewildered. Morgan’s lips twist with the need to clarify, to say something more, to comfort or explain or anything useful. He forces himself to sit in the discomfort, and watches Reid carefully. Nothing can describe the feeling he gets when Reid’s face finally lights up with a shy smile.
“I don’t know,” Reid admits quietly “Maybe?”. Morgan can tell Reid’s never talked about this before. Never allowed it to be verbalized. “Would it really be okay?”
Morgan brings Reid’s hand up to his face and kisses each finger gently. He soaks in the way Reid’s face burns with embarrassment.
“You’ve always been pretty to me,” he says, “Doesn’t matter if 'girl' or 'boy' is after that.”
Reid looks away, blushing so hard Morgan’s a little worried he may have to watch the kid go into respiratory distress again. Reid is still looking away when she manages to speak.
“Could we try it?” She whispers like the request may make the world end.
“Always,” Derek assures, holding Spencer’s hand against his cheek.
Spencer looks back at Derek and opens her mouth to speak but is cut off by a loud rumble from her stomach. Derek lets himself really laugh, deep from the dissipating pit in his gut, and takes Spencer’s embarrassed roughhousing in stride.
“I’ll get you something to eat, babygirl,” He promises, stretching out his legs as he stands up. Spencer looks at her hand with wonder when it’s returned to her from Derek’s grasp.
“Don’t let Penelope hear you say that,” Spencer warns, brushing away the lingering crumbs on the sheet.
“I wouldn’t dare,” Derek agrees, shuddering at the thought of her rage.
“And get me jello?” Spencer asks, battering her eyes like it’s a gargantuan task. Derek makes a show of bowing dramatically in response.
“Whatever you wish, princess,” he says, loud enough for most of the staff to give him waywards glances. He leaves Spencer grumbling irritatedly about decorum with a self-satisfied grin.