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“I fooled myself into believing that I was in control. That somehow since Hotch hasn't fired me yet, I must have gotten away with it, and I was so in over my head that any patience extended towards me— I was about to throw it away.”
“Reid, what are you telling me, man?”
A million years ago on a Sunday morning, Spencer was standing on his doorstep, he said he’d reached that step of his journey: making amends. He barely let Morgan get a word out before sucker-punching him with the subsequent confession. Filling in the blanks of the moments where the screen had turned black, ever since the terror had seized his heart in that empty cornfield in Georgia: dilaudid, the addiction, getting clean by himself in the aftermath of everything that had slipped through his fingers.
In between it all, Morgan remembered trying to address the issue, being met with a wall, resistance, avoidance. He’d had the thought, to let it go, that Reid would come to him when he was ready to, and he did, though Morgan hadn’t expected it’d be by the time he had already pulled through.
Facing each other in stunned silence in the bitter cold of that early January morning, still battling the physical exhaustion of the last case, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d let something come undone, that he’d started to let it come undone in that graveyard.
The days he’d spent haunted by the memories of his hands coated in Spencer’s blood… It was jarring, even with the awareness that those memories were false, that Derek hadn’t even been able to come forward and touch him at the time… That now wherever they used to be at, whatever in-between-the-lines understanding they’d had, that it had taken such a severe setback it had almost fallen apart.
“I don’t know what you knew, or if you knew, but it's important for me to tell you now.” He watched Reid, restless on his feet, fold and refold his arms, blinking when Spencer started sniffling.
“Fuck— Reid, how are you feeling now?”
“...better.”
Still, Reid found his way there, because it was something worth saving.
“Will you tell me if it ever doesn’t? Feel better?” Morgan added after a moment.
Spencer nodded, moisture clinging to his eyelashes, and Derek took a deep breath, the faintest of shivers rumbling beneath his chest, reaching a resolution within himself and dropped an arm around Reid’s bony shoulders, walking him inside.
He turned on the game as they fell into the embrace of Morgan’s sofa, said ‘Man, you’re gonna love this!’ knowing full well he wouldn’t. The kid complained through most of it but made no move to leave, instead leaning further into the arm draped over his shoulders, as if they were slowly mending what was broken.
Sometime later they would have to have that conversation, but for the next few hours, the knowledge that, despite the odds, Reid was sitting next to him, there to see another day, and the silent vow he’d made of never leaving these things to chance again, was enough.
It’s been about a decade since that day, including the months leading up to Derek’s retirement, after which he hasn’t seen, heard from or heard hardly anything about Spencer at all. In the near radio silence that has come to pass, where Penelope has taken to gently shutting him down with excuses of long hard cases, conveniently broken phones and suspiciously high-pitched ‘ you know how bad Reid is with technology. I gotta go— ’, Derek has wondered, with a deep pang of sadness, if maybe he has no right to know anything anymore.
His head is spinning now, his hand hovering about to knock on an unfamiliar safe house door. It’s been almost three months to the day since Spencer was processed into maximum security prison.
Chest expanding slowly at the end of the long, cold hallway, Derek tries to push through the way his sense of reality has shifted ever since he emerged from mowing the lawn of his front yard to a message from ‘Garcia’ . There had been so little effort to try and make it look authentic it was almost funny.
He didn’t really expect a response when he forwarded it to Spencer with an added little quip of his own, though secretly he had hoped they would be laughing over it.
He glanced down at the message again, waiting for his reply, eyes moving over the words, ‘Reid is out of prison and wants to see you. He has set his mother up at an FBI safe house where he is keeping her for the night. Text me back—’ The preview cut off as his phone vibrated with Spencer’s response.
‘I’m so sorry. Please contact Emily. I will explain everything later.’
His blood went cold with it.
From there on, he has only what’s felt like a few hours to come to terms with what had unfolded over the last few months— to try to begin to parse all of the damage that had been done and dealt with between the time since he had received that text and now, when he’s found himself on the precipice of the safe-house’s entrance. Everything behind that door could have been lost to him in the blink of an eye and he might have been the last to even know, and now, despite everything, all he has is a bag of breakfast sandwiches to show for it.
But Spencer is there, and, against all odds, alive.
Still… in such an unfamiliar place, Derek can’t shake off the sensation of desolate numbness settling into his limbs as he stands here, acutely aware of how unreachable Spencer suddenly feels.
Everything he thought he would say dissolves into silence the moment the door unlocks.
“Kid…”
Reid is staring back at him with wide eyes. The skin of his face is discoloured in places and he moves carefully, his movements slow, pained, around the leg he’d stabbed. It’s hard to tear his eyes away, and for a fleeting second, it feels like he’s peering at some kind of foreign creature where Spencer Reid should be, but even then, the relief is dizzying.
His breath nearly falters.
“I’m really glad to see you.” It's Spencer who speaks first, the words that were on the tip of his tongue.
“No shit.” He finally manages to get out, and when Derek presses his hand on his shoulder, Spencer looks for all the world like the gesture will cause him to crumble.
“Please don't blindside me like that… Ever again." Derek adds, tone firm despite the worry.
Reid makes a small sound in the back of his throat, like acquiescence. Hopefully that’s what it is.
A strange fear settles in Derek's stomach in the unbearable silence that follows, as though they have gone through every possible thing that could have been said right then. Pressing his nails hard into his palms, the bite of it breaks him out of it, instead his fear speaks for him.
“Is it really over?”
With some delay, Reid nods in response, slowly at first, as if he’s still contemplating the question, then much too quickly, and for a little too long. Derek accepts the answer that neither of them believe, and offers his hand, palm open. Reid meets it with a small familiar smile.
The old scar tissue on Derek's palm, from where he was stabbed, rubs against newer scar tissue, from where Spencer had gripped the knife by the blade.
From inside the apartment, a door clicks open.
“Crash?" A new voice calls out. Diana Reid. “Is someone here? Who is it?”
Morgan turns in her direction, his and Spencer's hands now pulling apart, to find her eyes looking somewhere past Derek, over his shoulder, then through him.
“Mom, it’s Derek. Morgan. You’ve met before but it's been a while, um…” Spencer’s words trail off.
Diana doesn't react, as her son stares from across the room, mouth still partially open. The living space sparse and austere.
“We first met at the FBI headquarters, I used to work there with Spencer.” Derek offers. Diana’s face hardens at that. It’s barely noticeable but being around Reid right now means soaking in all the nervous energy around him, it makes him feel like he needs to pay extra attention to every nuance of her reaction, and he mentally berates himself for bringing up anything related to the BAU at all.
Momentarily taken aback when Spencer’s palm materialises against his chest, Derek stands his ground regardless. He exchanges a look with Reid, who has moved so that he's between Derek and his mother now, in which he hopes to convey that it’s alright, and tries again.
“It’s been a minute but you helped us on a pretty hard case, something involving the Fisher King, I remember you were pretty knowledgeable about that” He says “My father used to read me these kinds of stories as a kid, those are some of the best memories I have of him, my favourite was ‘The Once and Future King’. ”
Something in her gaze shifts from how she’d been observing him a second prior, it looks uncannily similar to the one Spencer gets when he is on the verge of a new discovery,
“The Once and Future King…” She acknowledges, smiling. “I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it."
So far so good.
“I remember you. The knight.” She concludes, as though something has clicked into place. In the periphery of his vision, Spencer is still in a state of seemingly suspended animation. ”Did you find it?”
He doesn’t know if at this point the discussion still pertains to the elusive grail of that decade old case, to Rebecca, or to something bigger that only Diana Reid can see, but it doesn't matter.
“Yeah. Thanks to you.”
She nods approvingly, seemingly satisfied with that, and Spencer jumps on the moment to usher her to take a nap. They exchange one final glance, her fingertips hovering just over the knob, right before she goes through the bedroom door.
When Reid returns, there’s the soft crumpling sound of paper as Derek hands him the breakfast bag. Spencer stands there with it for a long moment, holding it to his chest but makes no move to eat it. He eyes the kitchen table with the same lethargy, where a glass of orange juice sits equally untouched, but makes no move to go for it either.
“Thank you,” He manages eventually, half-heartedly motioning to the food. He looks almost like he’s just deciding on the most convenient place to collapse, or perhaps have a meltdown, whichever comes first.
It doesn’t feel so long ago that they were sharing rooms in roadside motels, sustaining themselves on stale vending machine food. Morgan takes some time to note the surroundings, similarly to those old familiar places there isn’t much to go by. A single picture on the white walls, a coffee table, a couch, and he decides to sit down there.
Spencer eyes the space next to where he has settled, the older man patting the cushion encouragingly. Slowly, Reid sinks down, as close as he dares to let himself, their knees touching. The room is silent save for the ambient sheets of rain pelting the windows. Spencer leans back in the low light, closes his eyes and Derek doesn't comment on the tremors that vibrate all the way to him from their point of contact.
He’s not the one shaking but he is scared all the same.
Suddenly his phone rings and Reid goes so abruptly still he might well have stopped breathing.
There were, in the years they’d known each other, a handful of times where Morgan thought Reid would spontaneously drop dead. One particularly memorable instance on a decidedly miserable day in their joint existence had Derek dragging him from where he was laying, broken on his apartment floor, refusing to face the reality in which they had to carry Emily’s coffin that very day.
Derek had let go of him only to put a glass of water in his hand, making sure he was in a half sitting-position. He wasn't proud of the next impulse that possessed him that day, but he wasn’t ashamed of it either. So he quickly did a sweep through his place, not trying to hide what it was he was doing. Spencer had followed him with his eyes, and through it all, they didn’t exchange a word to each other, but the tension of unbridled fear in the air between them was thick enough to cut with a knife regardless.
Whatever message his phone delivers makes Spencer spring to his feet, and he has that same look again now, pacing around the room, staring at the phone in his hand in abject despair, before seemingly remembering he’s being watched. He tries and fails to school his expression into one resembling neutrality.
“What happened?”
The response comes slowly, like he doesn’t believe it himself, “I’m needed.”
It sends Derek's nerves into a frenzy.
“Reid, you can’t go. We should call Prentiss.”
“No!” His voice is firm, somewhere between panic and anger, “Sorry. I’ve got this, Morgan. I’m just joining the others. It's not a big deal.”
Nothing about the look on his face indicates that he’s got this, but watching him so desperately trying to stay composed, Derek tips his head down and nods.
Spencer tries to offer a smile in his direction, like an act of consolation before raking a hand through his hair, almost resignedly. After a moment, he disappears to instruct the nurse with his mother's care.
When he comes back, he stops in the kitchen and remains rooted to the spot for a few seconds, far enough away that Morgan can’t make out if his hands are shaking still, but he’s glowering at the refrigerator until eventually he shakes himself back into motion again.
Derek watches him go, leans back against the couch and closes his eyes. The sudden silence leaves him dizzy.
Morgan has never felt so alone in his adult life as he does when he wakes up to a call from Penelope, first asking him if he’s still in the area or if he’d already caught his flight, and then tearfully catching him up on everything that had transpired— how they barely got Emily back, how frantic Reid had acted through it all. Almost simultaneously, a message from Spencer flickers across his screen, apologizing for the abrupt departure, saying everything is okay and under control, that he himself is okay, completely neglecting to mention any of the rest of it. By the time he parks the car at the hospital and cuts the ignition, runs through the sterile, overly bright corridors, his mind has already looped endlessly through the colossal amount he’s missed.
“Don’t—” Emily warns, before he can utter a word, “I'm fine, Derek.”
Looking out of place in the hospital gown, her face is laden with invisible pressure but beneath the white lights, her glare holds little weight. Not that she really meant for it to, if Derek knows her at all.
“I can see that, boss.” Derek teases, and moves to sit at her bedside ”But just so we're clear, next time I have to carry your casket, I'm shaking that thing open.”
Emily laughs, wincing a little, as she swats away his hand when he tries to reach out, then seems to think better of it and moves to rest her hand on his arm, squeezing. Her nails are completely chewed down.
For the fourth time that day, they both pretend not to see Spencer peering in and out of the doorway.
He's been hovering over Emily’s room like a long unsettled ghost, frozen in time, still in the exact same outfit Morgan saw him in at the safe house, refusing to go in, and simultaneously, refusing to leave.
“Can’t you just drag his ass in here?” She asks, unnerved. “He’s visited everyone in this hospital except me, did you know that? I’m holding this shit over his head next time he asks for a day off.”
Sometimes, he wound up in the waiting room, folded in three next to the new recruit Alvez, pretending to read, never flipping the page of whatever magazine he got his hands on. Emotionally out of sync with everyone else, like Morgan was just a few days ago.
Derek knows Emily led the charge in getting him out and he knows what this is. Not that Spencer could ever hide his emotions that well anyway, but this one is deeply familiar… and one that almost ate Derek alive as well, at one point.
The guilt of being too slow when she needed it, of failing her.
But Emily always had her own way of sorting these types of things out with Spencer in the end.
“Prentiss…” She perks up at the switch to her last name. “The brass will probably want your input as his unit chief. Will you give the okay on reinstating Reid?”
Her hand squeezes his just a little harder before Emily, possibly one of the most level-headed people he knows, tells him, “He'll pull through.”
She believes it. She really does.
Now, in his house in Chicago, Spencer is curled on the couch, one knee up, supporting Hank who is perched upon it, and pretending to make trinkets appear behind his ear, to his godson’s delight. It’s been over a month since he’s been reinstated, since Alvez called Derek in concern.
Reid has been sleeping on that same couch ever since he arrived— passing out like a light the moment he got himself curled beneath the covers, for hours on end, very much like a man who hasn’t been scared to close his eyes for the last few months.
It’s good when he does, Derek thinks, to watch the rise and fall of his chest, to be assured that he’s still breathing. Then he would wake up, looking all kinds of wrecked, like half of him was still trying to come back from some distant world that only he could see.
Propped on the coffee table, Penelope’s face illuminates a tablet screen in bright pinks and sparkly teals.
“Now the leather jacket” she instructs.
“He doesn’t like it, Garcia.” Reid retorts.
“Yes he does!” Penelope's voice rises in pitch, “He wants to look adorable like his dad! I didn't send you there with a bag of very stylish baby clothes so you could hoard them for yourself, mister.”
Spencer shakes his head in amusement, then looks to Hank and whispers.
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to wear it.”
Garcia gasps, feigning indignation. As they keep bickering Spencer laughs again, it's soft, barely carrying through to where Derek sits. Hank’s voice follows, parroting his godfather, because he’s now learned that it results in Garcia making funny sounds.
But Spencer carries himself a little easier when he talks to her, doesn’t look nearly as broken.
“That’s it! I strip you of decisional powers when it comes to our godson. You’re abusing it.” She declares, and then extends her hands upward, “Derek, please pick me up! Pick me up, my love!”
Derek stands up, picks up the tablet, falsely admonishes Spencer and then turns to Penelope, “I would never treat you like this, baby girl.”
“Oh hello, you beautiful creature!” She coos when his face comes into view. “We need to have a one-on-one right now. Alone.” She winks.
He laughs and obliges. When they’re out of view, she leans in, conspiratorially.
“Are we sufficiently outside?”
“We’re out of earshot. Why? Got any gossip for me?”
“Oh you know me so well.” She swoons, then pretends to look to her left and right, as if to ensure their conversation remains secret, “I might have found unfinished letters addressed to you.”
“What did you do this time, baby girl?”
“I wasn’t even snooping! I was over at Spencer's place to give him Hank’s gifts, and Derek, I think Boy Wonder might be getting himself into a tizzy. He’s obviously making a bigger deal of this than a simple vacation.” She says quickly, “And I know that I shouldn’t tell you, but months of having to hide things from you has taken a great toll on me, we’re not meant to keep secrets from each other! And it’s not life or death anyways, so it’s fine right? Oh my god, I’m justifying being a jerk. Derek, am I being a jerk? The letters—”
“Don’t tell me.” He says, shutting his eyes. “Please don’t tell me, Penelope.”
At his response, she leans in, as much as the screen barrier allows her to.
“Talk to me, my love,” Her eyes narrow, before leaning back, “You’re freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out,” He defends.
Penelope’s gaze softens, and she waits, but doesn't add anything.
“I’m not, Garcia.” He tries to fill the silence, albeit a little lamely.
She sighs.
“Okay,” Her voice is smaller now, he hates to be the cause of it.
“If I’d been listened to from the beginning. By a certain someone…” She huffs, then deflates a little, “None of this unnecessary freaking out would be happening. So you listen to me now. Whatever you’re thinking, you’re overthinking it. Being your blindingly beautiful self is more than enough.”
Out of view, Hank, whose attention span is already shifting, starts asking his godfather strings of random questions, childlike curiosity evident in each further inquiry— about the trinkets that he makes disappear, the name of the cards, finally he asks about the things in the sky.
“Up in the sky…?” Spencer repeats, but the words seize something in Derek's chest.
Spencer starts listing the clouds by name, going into details to describe his favorite kind.
“Everything, Hank.” He concludes. “Everything is up there, you can take what you want. You pick.”
Past the church and the park, further north at the end of a shrub-lined street stands a small house he acquired years ago, before Hank was born, before Derek ever contemplated retiring. The short ride over there has been steeped in mostly silence.
The quiet unsettles him, given how good they’ve always been at filling the silence. It’s as though most of Spencer’s voice has been stolen by fear.
They have so much putting together to do, and the moment he laid down all the basics, Reid seemed so intently invested in this renovation to the point that he seems almost obsessed, not that Morgan would ever tell him that. These days he seems to exist mostly in a muted state of mindless tenacity.
At some point eventually Reid accidentally rips some paint along with the tape in a corner, and collapses into a heap of long limbs and disappointment on the floor.
“You’ll get it right next time.” Derek says, as he moves to ruffle his hair but stays still because Spencer is staring at him.
He’s not hovering.
“What? I got something on my face?” He asks.
Reid looks away and sort of smiles at the floor.
“You’re happy here.” He says, as if he'd just solved a puzzle he's been dwelling on for an eternity.
They’ve been here since early dawn, neither of them able to sleep much the night before. When stripes of gold slowly start to stretch over Spencer’s face, Morgan thinks of telling him that walking away is the right choice— that he will be there despite whatever Spencer’s brilliant and terrible brain might tell him, that he could walk him out of there and he would never have to come back.
“Can I have a look at that?” Is what he ends up saying, pointing to the fading purple lopsided ring around Reid’s neck.
Spencer nods. Derek quietly drops to the floor, slowly tracing his fingers along the trail of the bruises that disappear downwards, thumb hovering at the hollow of his throat.
Reid hasn’t said a single word of the last few months. What did his face look like then, as it happened? Was he terrified? Derek’s hands freeze.
He blinks a few times in rapid succession, then has to stop himself because of the intensity with which Reid is boring holes into his skull with his gaze.
“Do you think about it?” He finally draws back, before adding, “Retiring?”
There's no immediate push-back, like he expects.
“To do what?” Comes the answer after a few seconds of silence, Spencer readjusts his collar back into place.
“Reid, you could do anything you want.” He catches himself sounding more hopeful than he intends to.
“But I wouldn't be in the FBI… I’m… happy there—” Reid trails off, “Besides, I'm not getting any better at this restoration venture.”
Morgan senses that this is the end of this conversation, that maybe they are on too fragile a footing to have it yet. That maybe staying crammed in a closed space for hours on end isn’t actually a good idea after all.
“It’s that pent up energy. You need to get out of your head. We should go running tomorrow.”
“No!” Reid immediately protests.
“Sorry. Did you have any better plans to fill those free thirty days that Prentiss just gave you?” He badgers, lightly shoving his shoulder, as Spencer pretends to almost fall to the floor from it. “Don’t make me drag your ass there kicking and screaming.”
"Fine. But for the record, I’d take playing softball against the secret service over that.”
Morgan is still attuned to it, picks up that tone Spencer uses when he protests for show with him. When he expects to be pushed back against, so he stands his ground, staring him down.
“Big words for a guy who, as I predicted, thoroughly enjoyed himself that day.”
“My home-run won us the game!” He's still so proud of that.
“Uh-huh and you got there by your own volition?”
“Never said that,” Reid grumbles childishly.
”So it’s safe for me to say that the good doctor has the time of his life whenever I teach him something he doesn’t know?"
Reid chuckles and then relents, as Morgan knew he would.
This at least, he still knows.
Tomorrow comes, thoroughly depleted from running, they return to Morgan's house.
Spencer has changed into a cardigan that Derek distinctly remembers Diana wearing the last time he saw her, and disappears somewhere in the kitchen.
Save for the whistling of the kettle, it is silent in the house, notably absent is Hank’s endless stream of questions, reality testing directed at Spencer, or any available adult interesting enough to provide him an answer, it seems Savannah has taken him to the park instead.
Emerging in his direction, Spencer hands him a cup of tea. It’s not entirely out of the ordinary but it still makes him arch an eyebrow.
‘So you don’t get jittery,’ Morgan’s mind supplies in the absence of any elaboration. He stares at the tea, and then at Reid, “What are you trying to placate me for?"
It's meant to come off as playful, but Reid returns a serious stare.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says, acknowledging the accusation, but standing his ground.
“That we really don’t need to talk about it, what we said we’d talk about.”
It’s been hanging over their heads for awhile, and now that it's out in the open, it sucks the air out of the room and the emotions in his chest immediately change to something else.
“We don't have to if you’re not ready. Is that it? Or is it because you think I can’t handle it?” Morgan asks.
“Because it’s too much to put on you.”
The latter then.
It’s that careful, conciliatory tone again, and he is reminded that Reid must have a lifetime of experience in placating. A poor skill to get good at, but when given the choice, Reid will most likely then not opt for outright avoidance.
“I don’t need to be protected, Reid,” He doesn't mean for it to come off as harsh, but regrets it all the same. Spencer blinks in surprise.
I was so angry Derek, Garcia told him once. I needed you to be there, selfishly I did, and more importantly he needed you to be there. It was horrendous, and the last thing I wanted to do was fight with him, I couldn’t. But in the end, I guess I could see it. It’s a miserable thing seeing you sad. I still don’t agree but, I see why.
He tries again, hoping that this will work.
“You called out for me.”
For a moment, it seems as though he isn't going to get an answer. Finally, Spencer's brows furrow, hands tangling, the most telling evidence of how he feels.
“Help me get it." Derek encourages.
“I had that same nightmare, with the leeches. But if I was wrong back then…” He trails off, “Do you know what happened in Mexico?”
Morgan never brings up Mexico, just like he never brings up prison. He’d reached out to Prentiss for the cold, hard facts, but even with these, there are still so many blanks in their collective knowledge. Reid would be able to fill in some… but Morgan didn't want to go there unless he did.
At the present, Reid just smiles.
“I know you too.” He presses, but it isn't accusatory.
“Cat Adams sent Lindsay Vaughn to where you met Nadie. She was killed, you were drugged.” He stops for a while, “She did things to you.”
Derek already knows— at least he thinks he does, rather he doesn’t know for sure, but he’s inferred — what happened that day, what likely happened in prison. Maybe he really doesn’t… He’s gone back and forth between suppressing the knowledge and sifting through it again, to try to keep his wits.
He doesn’t want to skirt around it, yet he also doesn’t want to be the one to put it out there into the world.
“That’s really unspecific.” Spencer says, and most frustratingly, at that moment, he can’t read him at all, “But then, you know as much as I do.”
Tentatively, Reid tries to settle into a chair across from him, clutching his own cup, then immediately deciding against it, he stands up and paces the length of the living room instead.
“You think I don’t understand.” Morgan follows, pushing past his own dread, “You’re wrong. Kid, you’re dead wrong.”
This time as he turns to him, Derek can easily see Reid’s mind starting to run itself in circles. There’s a new feeling that settles within him, that if he does so much as blink right now, Spencer might fade away from existence again.
“Not really.” Reid settles on “I don’t think…”, He takes a long time before saying his next words, each one carefully measured “You were a child. I can’t imagine what you went through, but just because you call me ‘kid’ doesn't mean I am one.”
Derek is about to open his mouth to interject but Reid barrels on, determined to not let him get another word in “I was— I am a federal agent, and I do know better, I did…” His voice goes up a bit in pitch. “I did a lot of stupid things before it all came down, Derek. That was me. It’s the truth, and you don’t have to protect me from it.”
Morgan can already see it playing out clearly— the wall they are heading towards, can see them both being pushed flat against it.
But Reid isn’t finished, “Crossing the border and trying to hide it, making this situation impossible to navigate for Emily and everyone else… The other shoe was going to drop sooner or later… And now it's done. I can’t even say with certainty that I didn’t make up most of what I think happened in Mexico.”
Tea long forgotten on a counter, Morgan pulls his jacket tighter around himself and steps outside, following Reid who has tucked his arms under his chest, his body visibly tense now. That gesture, so familiar, sends Derek back to the first few months of getting to know the kid who was so desperate to prove himself, was so withdrawn in on himself that his distress was clearly written into the lines of his body, and he knows already that Spencer is ready to shoot down any disagreement without giving it due consideration, so he doesn’t go there yet.
“Why didn't you tell Prentiss you were going to Mexico?” He tries.
Reid’s posture temporarily loosens up, thrown by the question, then his body slides down the column he was leaning against until he’s on the ground. He digs his knuckles into his eye sockets and lets out a long sigh, before answering.
“My… mom won't remember loving me.” His voice has gone a little skewed, Derek follows him down, crouching to get into his line of vision “When I met Nadie, I thought I could stop it... I was ashamed of how much I wanted it.”
Face pinching in anguish, he continues.
“I don’t know what Lindsay did to me, most of it is lost. All that exists in here—” He points at his head, “was for a short moment… I think I felt good … I thought Maeve was there with me, and I wanted to be there. I wanted it.”
With every word he says, he withdraws into himself a little more.
“And maybe considering all the very real things that happened in these last few months… I should just make my peace with that.”
Derek catches a memory of the taste of Helgeson wine and can’t let go, the air starts thinning through the loop of memories, ugly and familiar.
You better man up, boy. Look up to the sky.
“I don’t think you really believe that.” He risks placing a hand on Reid’s shoulder.
Like a spring unloaded, Spencer fully turns to him, and now his hands grip Morgan’s arms, who recoils like he's been electrified.
“Don’t you believe that some rocks don’t need looking under?” Spencer says, staring right through him.
Something snaps in the air between them. For that plummeting moment, this is his own voice and these are his own words. It flashes him back to a hotel room in Las Vegas many years ago. It takes far too long to overcome.
“Sorry.” Spencer lets go, holding his hands up in surrender, “Sorry Morgan. I’m sorry.”
Reid goes for the throat when he feels cornered, and the meaning of that cuts deeper than anything— Derek being here, his presence specifically, can only make things worse.
What could he say that would get through to Spencer now? What would he be willing to accept? There’s a greater weight in his chest. Maybe this is it, the worst setback. The one that can’t be mended.
Reid seems at a loss at what to do with his hands.
Morgan drops his head.
“I wanted to kill her.” He says, snapping Derek from out of his stupor, “I tried to, and failed.” He takes his face into his hands, “She was pregnant, though that didn't really make a difference. Just as I knew I'd have no control over who got poisoned and I still went through with it.”
“What other choice did you have, Reid?” Morgan interjects as the pressure starts building around his chest.
“Moving the drugs, would it really have mattered?”
“It would have. It would have mattered to you.”
”I wish I could tell you all of that was to protect whatever was left of my sobriety or my dignity, but I wanted to cause harm. I know this, and she knew this about me. And you… you need to know it too.”
Around them, the wind starts picking up.
“I know you. I’ve known you for a long time, and I know you were scared—” Reid stiffens, and won’t look at his face, “I know you wanted to live.”
“Reid.” The dread brings with it a tension that almost locks his jaw, but Morgan pushes through regardless, “Reid, I need you to live.”
The branches are swaying, some tapping against the window.
“You remember when I gave that interview here in Chicago? You were there when I found out that he died soon after. It’s not really the reason I said what I said, but I knew it would be the consequence all the same, because I threatened him with it.”
Hazel eyes suddenly so wide and bright are locked on him, as though he holds the answer to it all.
“I don't know what to do with that, Morgan.” He confesses.
The words sit between them for a long moment.
“Me neither, kid.” He says at last. Reid looks up, chuckles, and the tension shakes a little loose with the movement. His next breath comes a little less aborted.
“It doesn't matter whether or not you remember.”
“Doesn't it?”
“There will be no answer that takes everything else away. She wants you to fill in those gaps yourself, and you won’t be able to stop it.” He says as calmly as he can manage and pretends that it doesn’t twist his insides, not being able to fix it.
“This is gonna hurt you.”
“Yeah,” Reid concedes, it’s barely there “…yeah.”
Then the hardest part, feeling seen after everything.
Feeling so small in the midst of it all.
Spencer doesn’t speak after that. His gaze is murky now, neither really here nor there. Derek decides to shift closer until he’s a few inches away. He still feels millions of years of distance between them.
Maybe the shine that appears in the younger man’s eyes then is just a trick of the light, or tears, but he tilts his head up and none spill.
If Spencer looks up to the sky, hopefully all he sees is an unobstructed view of oranges and golds and blue.
Nothing else but some scattered clouds as far as the eye can see.
‘It won't kill you, baby.’
When he was five, Derek walked by the edge of a shallow river, his mother’s reassuring voice ringing in his ears.
‘Unless you stand too close!’ Sarah taunted, pushing him in. He lost balance, went under, air knocked out of his lungs, water and unbridled fear filling wherever there was space.
After she’d fished him out, he ran from her in indignation, tears streaming down his face, until his legs ached and he couldn't hear her calling out to him anymore.
When he’d turned ten years old was when the world first came to a complete halt. It didn't come and go as quickly as that first big scare, but once it started happening, it paved the way to the next occurrence, and the next… From thirteen forward, Carl Buford inserted himself into his life, and his nightmares. A few months short of thirty three, was the day everyone found out, and he remembered what it felt like to stop breathing.
These days, when the walls begin their familiar act of falling apart, and dread burrows so deeply into his brain that it fills everywhere there is space, Derek runs, hard— until he can feel his chest contracting, until he can imagine his lungs collapsing unto themselves.
He relies on the distance to mute it all away— the words, the thoughts, the sensations, laying awake at night holding The Once and Future King wondering why he wasn’t protected by God, the taste of Helgeson wine, looking up to the sky.
Knowing heaven wasn't watching back.
Reaching a corner, he leans against a concrete wall and lets himself be blinded by the high angled sun. It's just him facing the immense quiet. When he retraces his steps back home, it feels like moving through water all over again, and even the subtle aches don’t help. Not at times like these.
Mom?
What is it baby?
A few months short of turning thirty-three, he considered keeping up that old facade for just a second, enough lies to spare his mother that kind of devastation, to not slip back into that familiar, fragile place.
‘I can't believe this is happening either, Mom.’
or
‘He saved my life.’
or
‘If not for him—’
He’d choked on the words, crumbling beneath the weight of all of the sadness in the world reflected in her eyes, and Sarah’s… and Desiree’s. So he reached deep inside of himself, and it spilled out like bitter poison.
‘When I was a child, something bad happened to me.’
and
‘I prayed every day…’
and
‘Your God expects way too much from thirteen year old boys.’
The rest of the team had come to him with words of comfort, the very same that he himself had repeated a dozen plus times to victims. He knew they meant it, that they cared the same way he had cared, and he loved these people so.
Though the words didn’t really help— didn't make things better or worse, so he cut it off, albeit not unkindly, “It’s been a long time." With that, they were able to leave it there, and for that too, he was grateful.
Even now, Spencer and Penelope never bring it up.
In the month that followed, Penelope would simply engulf him in her arms more often, without a reason. ‘I don’t need a reason to love you, my dove.’ She would say.
Lacking Penelope's boldness, Derek would turn suddenly to find Spencer hovering behind him, hand half raised, knowing it would have landed where his shoulder is.
Caught frozen in the act, he cleared his throat and redirected his course of action, reaching over to relieve Morgan of a stack of casework unprompted.
‘It’s just— it’s kind of calming.’ He’d said, mumbled really.
Right.
Derek took a hold of his wrist before he could go back to his desk. Holding his surprised gaze before Derek tousled his hair and Reid made an exaggerated show of almost falling over.
Thinking of his fumbling attempt at comfort, Derek softly laughs to himself, his breathing picks up with it, faster and faster until it turns into sobs.
Sleep comes to him in leaping steps. When he sees Reid again, he is a grainy image inside an old monitor that Penelope's staring at, tied to a chair, emitting tiny whimpers of pain. The image disappears into static, and the screen flickers to other places with Reid in it, some familiar, some not.
Places that other people could reach— Millburn Correctional facility inmates, the Catherine Adams of this world. Faces staring him down in the dark. These are more terrifying than finding him kneeling next to an open grave. Derek can smell it then, trying to reach from the other side, copper pennies, violence and filth. For days to come it won’t leave him. The smell of resignation, of rape. The walls are thick with it.
That they will crumble soon feels inevitable.
Does Spencer even know? That Derek is watching back?
“You could have come in here…” Spencer tells him, having appeared next to him now, “…and you could have made her pay."
He already knows what his next words will be, they were Derek’s own words after all. Yet he fights to stay still through it, when everything falls around them, "But you didn’t, because you’re good.”
When he wakes up he still hears the echoes of it, even as he heads towards the bathroom. He dunks his head under the jet of the water’s spray to feel the million frigid needles falling onto him, to drown out the noise.
Fully aware now that it's near the end of the night, Morgan pads across the living room. The city outside has lit up, and as if on autopilot, his feet carry him in the direction of a low voice. He ends up lingering in Hank's doorway.
There on the ground, Spencer sits, speaking softly, a book on his lap, surrounded by a half-circle of them. Hank is sleeping, and Derek strains to hear.
“I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say … I'm going to sleep…”
He manages to sleep a few more hours after that. At dawn he doesn’t find Reid in the guest room.
There’s a letter tucked in the corner of the desk that wasn’t there before.
‘Derek,’ It starts. There’s nothing else on the page. How long has it been since he’d started writing variations of it? Days? Weeks? Three months to the day, standing on the edge, waiting for the fall?
He finds Reid in the kitchen, perched on a stool, glasses half-way down his nose, reading a book.
“You wrote me letters, when you got out.” He states matter of factly and Reid doesn’t even ask how he knows, though nor does he pretend to be surprised.
“Did you also write to me while you were inside?”
A nod.
“Reid…“
“I'm so sorry. That's what I wanted to tell you.” He interrupts, so quickly as if he was afraid it wouldn’t come out if he waited any longer, “I kept trying to come up with the perfect way to say this but…”
“What for?”
“For not showing up sooner. For Hank.”
“You were arrested—”
“Before that… and I'm sorry for keeping you in the dark during it all.”
Derek’s hand stills against the wall.
“Are we talking about it? You've shut me down each time I tried to bring it up.”
At times, Derek had briefly wondered if everyone forgot, they must have been so drowned in their own circumstances that it had crossed no one’s mind to inform him, and that was that. If he tried, he could make that work for almost everyone. Almost.
Except for the man whose only reprieve was these few moments of connection to the outside world.
Reid nods, his shoulders drawn in.
“All this time… Am I wrong to think I’m the one you’ve been avoiding?”
“You’re not wrong.” He mutes the hurt that’s threatening to bubble to the surface.
“It was in part because of you.” Reid continues, staring hard at the floor, “But it wasn’t your fault. It was me. I just, I so desperately wanted to bury my head in the sand, I couldn’t bring myself to see you."
Derek is peering intently at him now. "What changed?”
“I saw it.” He says with another attempt at a smile, though it fades just as quickly. “I was actually confronted with the reality of it, of never seeing you again. I couldn’t hide from that reality, couldn’t not think of it and… I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
Spencer’s twisting his hands on his lap again, his thumb pushing around the scar tissue there. A dull pain shoots through Derek’s palm at the sight.
“I’m sorry I wasn't there for you.” Derek says.
Spencer stills. “I’m sorry I wasn't there for you.” He says back, finally looking up from his own hands.
Then more shakily, “This means so much to me. You have to know that.” His hands gesture around, “You doing all of this, and making me his godfather. It means everything to me.”
Something twists and knots in his chest and suddenly everything clicks in Derek’s head. All this time he has been trying to bridge that fracture, Spencer has been trying to make amends.
Morgan’s feet carry him there before he registers the movement, circling the counter, walking over the chasm until he is a few inches away, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. There is still a small tremble in Spencer’s frame, his hand is balled into a loose fist, but his eyes aren’t so painful to look at anymore.
It feels absurdly easy to be brave now, he thinks, curling his own hand around Reid’s, relieved when the younger man turns his hand over and intertwines his fingers so tightly around Derek's knuckles it hurts.
Subtle aches.
"I did it for you, and I did it for him.” He lets the silence sit between them for a moment. “Do you know why?"
Spencer stares at him, with that same look as he had before, like he holds the answer to it all. Morgan’s gaze meets his dead on and doesn’t relent, and it’s Reid who breaks eye contact first.
Sometimes, perhaps more often than not, he is that kid with eager eyes, that same one whose life has been wrecked beyond recognition, remade over and over.
‘Use it to become a better person’, the Derek from a decade ago would have said, clumsy advice that would come true in all the ways he wishes he could take back.
A better person, with so little fight left in him.
“I wanted him to have someone so kind in his life too.”
When the sky gets a few shades darker, Morgan brings up going to the supermarket to pick up some groceries. Reid opts to stay and keep working, and they resolve to reconvene two hours later back at his house.
Two hours passes, the groceries have been put away, and Spencer is not there. Not home, not in the house they've been renovating. Twenty minutes pass and he still isn't there. His phone rings, discarded on the coffee table.
Granted, twenty minutes isn't much but Spencer has always been infuriatingly punctual. Derek has half a mind to ask Garcia to track him down.
Before he has time to properly work himself up, Spencer eventually emerges through the front door, the quiet creak giving him away in his truancy.
"You're late," Derek accuses, making an exaggerated motion of looking at his watch.
“Yeah sorry about that. I was...” Spencer begins, averting his eyes “...watching a movie."
“Okay.” He says, lightly throwing his hands in the air. There's no real bite behind it but a tinge of indignation, and the familiar feeling that Spencer is clearly pushing him with the expectation that he would push back, “Oh, well, it's not like you could have warned me that I was being ditched for more important, movie-watching priorities.”
Reid is doing a very good job at looking everywhere but Morgan now.
“And what kind of—”
He interrupts himself mid-sentence. Dear God. He meant NA.
"Oh…" Morgan starts, a little more lamely than he intends when he reaches the realization, and lets his arms drop to his sides, "That's... good, kid– I– do you want to talk about it?"
“I’m good.” Comes the answer and then, “It was a good one. Worth it.”
Spencer’s somehow contrived demeanor changes, and from one moment to the next, Morgan finds himself at the end of a staring contest he’s not aware he agreed to participate in.
But Reid breaks eye contact ten seconds in, shaking his head, a smile spreading slowly across his face that Morgan could only qualify as goofy.
Watching a movie.
Meaning: Narcotics Anonymous.
Or:
I hope it was worth it.
I hope ‘it’ was a ‘she’.
He blinks at Reid, who is grinning at him now. Later, he’ll blame how slowly the cogs in his mind are whirring on the fact that he’s still seized by the weight of the previous month’s shadows.
"Maybe not the kind you've hoped for but—"
"You're fucking with me.” Morgan cuts in. He takes in that last tidbit of information before continuing, “I'm worried for you and you're fucking with me."
Then with his tone a little outraged, something he adds purely to see the way Spencer's lips purse, "And you find yourself funny."
"Mm-hm" He stifles a laugh.
"Oh yeah? And how did that happen?"
"Magic skills?"
Morgan looks at him with a kind of exasperated warmth.
“Hold on. Did you make yourself late just so you could land that joke?”
His body shaking in barely contained laughter, Spencer dips his head in a few short nods, “Pretty good?”
For that asshole move, Morgan closes the distance between them, putting him in a headlock.
“Stoppp!” Spencer protests, more out of principle than anything, if his lack of effort to pull away is anything to go by.
'Roughhousing, kid,' Morgan can feel the sense memory trigger, hears himself say those same words as well over a decade ago. They’ve circled back to that moment somehow.
Back when he was trying to puzzle out the new team addition, out of place with his shakily held weapon. Trying to make him feel welcome. Back then, Spencer went rigid for all of two seconds before trying to wrench away from him.
'We're bonding,' Derek had said, and let go.
‘Bonding,’ Spencer repeated, extracting himself from Morgan’s grip. Eyebrows scrunched as he’d readjusted his ill-fitting jacket, gauging him for a few seconds before looking in the direction of his feet.
He was way too young to be there. Fresh faced, and… no more than, what, twenty something? Twenty two tops? It was clear he was still green.
‘Come on, pretty boy? You can take a swing at me next time so we’re square. Your move.’ He joked.
Then because the kid still looked so stiff, he added.
‘I don't have any reason to be scared of you, do I?’
‘How would you know?’ Reid pushed, to the older man’s surprise, and Morgan pushed back against the part of his brain that would jump to answer ‘because you’re built like a twig’. Morgan knew for a fact that first impressions could mean nothing at all, but that was besides the point, and was not the real question being asked of him.
‘I wouldn’t know, not today anyways. As I said—’ Morgan reiterated, ‘Your move, kid.’
He laid off on the teasing for a time, and he learnt to spot the signs sooner, sent a line in Spencer’s direction about the Doctor Who mug he always carried, which prompted the kid to sit right on his paperwork and start an unending explanation about something Derek wasn’t particularly interested in. Later Derek dragged him to games that Spencer complained through, watched as he struggled to catch the ball, but eventually managed it anyway after a dozen or so tries.
Always coming back ‘anyway’.
Days had gone by, surrounded by the lifeless eyes of the people they were too late to save, blurred into nights spent awake in motels and precincts. The sound of Spencer’s voice relentlessly resonating when the walls began to close in, refusing to leave him alone against the immense quiet.
He would speak of the books Diana had loved to teach about. His hands taking on a life of their own, as his eyes lit up like it was the most beautiful thing in the world. The words, spoken in Spencer’s voice, still echoing in his mind,
‘The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly— by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.’
Being vulnerable in the presence of another man didn’t feel so much like dying then.
Not if it meant Morgan could save him, if he could make him feel like he had before once again, when he closed his eyes, curled up on the far end of the jet, under the team’s watchful gaze, like nothing could hurt him there.
Then Derek watched himself fail over and over, kept count of it. Three bullets he couldn’t stop, and one he did, once upon a time, in a burning church.
His grip slackens and he lets his hand span over Spencer’s collarbone. Reid’s fingers keep making small dents on his arm from where he is still loosely gripping him, when he tried to pull away.
He should have done all of this so long ago. He could have so much more.
If he had known…
He should have known.
More than a decade ago, in a burning house, he remembers the Fisher King begging to hear the question that would heal all his wounds, to hear the question that would erase his guilt.
So what was the question?
‘If I were to be made a knight,’ said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, ‘I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.’
The pressure each tiny dent makes against his skin feels a little like absolution, one for each failure, each promise broken.
Merlyn wrung his hands.
‘Well, anyway,’ he said, ‘Suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?’
‘I could ask,’ said the Wart.
‘You could ask,’ repeated Merlyn.
The thought shifted away from the familiar confines of a wizard and his charge, as the more sobering voice of his father filtered into his consciousness, when it echoed amidst the veneer of dissociation to walk him through his last thirty years of life. Even then Derek had known, as he was struggling with the white hot pain of the knife stuck in his hand, lighting up his nerves and grazing bones, that he’d see Reid go through that door first, that when he did, he would either save Morgan or find him already dead. For a long time… perhaps even as long as they’d know each other, even though he didn’t know how the specifics of it would play out, he thought that a moment like that would come.
Though Morgan might be doubtful at the best of times, he already knew then, the answer to the question being asked that day. He’s known for a long time. He was holding on to that blind faith— trust.
And that belief that for all the things Derek couldn’t lay bare, the things Spencer would never admit to, they’d already learned to make the lack of words count.
The air smells humid like rain now, Reid has fully pulled away and is standing in front of him, hair slightly disheveled, trying and failing to put it back in place.
“Sorry for worrying you, um…” he starts, a little bashful, though not sounding all that sorry, but more like he needs to set the conversation back on track. So Morgan remains still and waits patiently for something to happen. Before him, Spencer holds his satchel a little tighter, then releases it, unsure what to do with his hands, but he stands a little taller regardless.
“You can take a swing at me next time so we’re square,” He tilts his head, “…Your move, Morgan.” He finally says, his eyes wider than Derek ever remembered them being.
They’re gold on the inside.
Still it’s clear the barb has been removed, that he’s settling down in the momentary lull that’s formed between them. A million questions swim through Derek’s head, but there will be time later. For now, there’s only one he needs to hear the answer to.
“Alright. When are you taking me to see that movie?”
Spencer smiles so bright and then laughs. He revels in the moment, lets it wash over him. Some days it feels almost gone, all that wreckage.
“Hmmm…” Reid presses his index finger to his chin, feigning being deeply in thought, with the look of a man who would push him just one last time today, “You’re so not invited.”
Derek grins, shaking his head. He missed this kid so much.
“Like hell I’m not.”
The trees are frozen this time of year, the temperature having dropped sharply overnight. Snow falls over him and clings to his coat as he once again walks down the familiar path, footprints already dented into the snow lined sidewalk.
It’s early enough that the lights are still on, a dim glow spilling over the porch under its curved roof. Sometimes Spencer would go on his own, in the middle of the night, and work until he no longer could.
When Derek steps in this time, it’s all neatly done.
If anyone had bothered to ask then, Morgan would have said something truly asinine, that this is the single most important thing Spencer Reid has accomplished in his entire life— above everything else he could have possibly learned, above saving lives even.
Shaking slightly under the exertion, Spencer steps back, turns around to face him. Some paint is splattered across his mother's cardigan. It most likely won’t come off, the damage already done.
Despite that, everything has been rebuilt, all of it held in place. Derek holds his breath and the walls don’t come tumbling down. He tries to come up with something to say, but can't think of anything. Briefly, he closes his eyes, presses his lips together and tilts his head far back.
Even if there’s only a wooden ceiling above, he won’t make himself look up.
A wary hand clasps around his arm and lingers there for a few seconds, then moves to tighten around him. Derek manages to smooth his palm over the nape of Spencer’s neck, tightens the circle of his arm around him, pulling him closer and effectively crushing them against one another.
He lingers in the sensation for a long moment before directing his gaze out of the nearby window. In the distance, the first calm sky in a million years starts blurring in a mix of reds and golds and yellows, from above and far into the horizon.
Heat pools behind his eyes. His vision goes into and out of focus.
A trick of light, surely.