cling to love like a skidding car
title: cling to love like a skidding car
fandom: criminal minds
pairing: morgan/reid, indescribable 'verse.
words: ~3.6k
summary: Reid speaks but never tells. Morgan watches yet doesn't see. Together, they fit. Or, snapshots of Morgan watching Reid during their relationship
*
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
*
“What do I possibly have to live for?” the unsub hisses into Reid’s hair and he slips a fraction of an inch in his grasp. Behind the confines of his gun, Morgan watches the scene unfold with horrible fascination, watches the cold, sharp, glinting silver of the unsub - Oscar’s- knife press lightly against Reid’s throat, right above where his thyroid gland lies, encased by skin.
“Oscar, you don’t want to do this,” Morgan repeats again from the far end of the room, voice calm and measured and contrary to every emotion coursing through his body. The team has spread around in hopes of getting a clear shot and Hotch’s voice - do not agitate the unsub - is loud and clear and largely ignored in his ear. It would be easy, so easy to press the trigger, lodge a bullet into his forehead except, except -
Oscar straightens and drags Reid up with him. His arms trap Reid’s shoulders, hunching his frame and accentuating his collarbone. Reid’s eyes are wide and firm and fixed on his own feet and his breathing is rapid and shallow; Morgan can almost see his breaths fall over the fine hair on Oscar’s arms.
“What do I possibly have to live for?” Oscar pulls Reid’s hair backwards to stare into his eyes, looking at him with a crazed desperation and Morgan watches in horror as Reid’s eyes widen just a fraction, his cheek twitches once, and something horribly akin to empathy floods through his expressions. And then, and then he stops.
Give me something, Morgan begs silently, give me a signal to go on. Give me a signal to shoot him.
Oscar has eyes for no one but Reid and Reid looks back at him, eyes wide and honest like there isn’t a knife glinting against his skin, like one slash of the blade wouldn’t be enough to end his life, like even the man trying to kill him is worthy of his respect, his belief, his mind.
Morgan holds his breath. Reid has always been better at killing with words than the rest of them, anyway.
“What do I possibly have to live for?” Oscar hisses into Reid’s ear this time, for possibly the last time and pulls his hair downwards, arching his body away from him and exposing more of his throat. He presses the sharp blade of his knife to Reid’s throat, pressing it just enough for him to feel the pressure but not quite enough to bleed. Not yet. Reid looks up with considerable effort to meet his eyes across the room and Morgan’s breath catches in his throat.
And then, Reid smiles.
*
“Did you always have this?” Derek asks, tracing his finger over a small, pear-shared birthmark just over the base of his spine.
Spencer shivers slightly at the trails of warmth left behind by Derek’s fingers against the coolness of his bare back. “I don’t know, maybe?” he asks in reply, pushing himself up on his elbows.
Derek loves days like these, lazy Saturdays spent lying around in bed, legs tangling together within the blankets and toes curling around sheets, filling the gaps within the other’s fingers with their own. Times like these are when he can keep Spencer all for himself, lay him down on the bed to map every single arch, every single contour of his body, learn the seemingly insignificant such as the way Spencer would bare his teeth as he trails kisses down his chest, the way he can leave fingerprints all over Derek’s neck with a surprisingly strong grip, the way he allows himself to close his eyes and let the feeling, the emotion of the moment wash over him. And every single time, the magnitude of the moment will hit Derek in the chest and leave him unable to breathe: that Spencer is willing to appear this uninhibited in front of him, that he’s willing to show this part of himself to someone else.
Spencer yawns against his shoulder. “How can I be sleepy again?” he murmurs in half-wonderment to himself, loud enough for Derek to hear.”I haven’t even woken up yet.”
He laughs. “Is getting up on the cards at all?”
Spencer leans up to kiss him on the cheek before fluffing his pillows and lying back down. “Not yet,” he replies between another yawn. “I think I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning directly.”
Derek stares. “It’s four in the afternoon,” he points out.
He smiles, lying on his side and pulling the blanket up to his chin. “Exactly.”
Derek watches him face the wall and close his eyes, resists the urge to play with his hair.
*
“I have a surprise for you,” Garcia exclaims loudly in the bullpen, making her way towards Reid’s desk. Morgan looks up from his report.
Garcia walks up to him and sets a box down on his desk. He watches Reid open the lid and exclaim in near-childish delight. “Chocolate-chip cookies,” she announces cheerily.
Reid’s smile widens “With those chunky chips?”
She leans forward to muss his hair up a little. “And peanut butter.”
He smiles then, really. Morgan watches, enraptured as his lips curve upwards, forming multiple lines across both sides of his mouth. His eyes crinkle next, folding at the corners as they are tugged upwards, glistening with wonder at the mere conclusion that someone has deigned to listen to something so utterly irrelevant.
Reid digs into the box for a piece with the most chips on it. “Can I have one?” he asks, clutching the biscuit.
Morgan almost fears his heart might burst as Garcia leans down to silently plant a kiss on his forehead before making her way back. He doesn’t think he’s ever loved her more than at that moment.
It’s endearing, watching Reid be enthralled by something as mundane as a cookie. It’s like watching a child learning to take his first steps on his own, learning the innate joy behind the simplicity of the smallest of action, learning to want simply for himself.
And Morgan’s heart aches all over again; for the man clutching a cookie like it’s his biggest piece of joy and learning, for the first time to simply want, and for himself, because he will never get to be the person saying that it’s all right to do so.
*
In her pictures, Diana Reid is always one smile away from total heartbreak.
“This is her at her graduation,” Reid puts another picture in his hands before going back to shuffle through a torn, battered photo album. Morgan looks at Reid instead, sitting straight and cross-legged on his bed amidst a flurry of pictures, often yellowed and blurry and discolored, but Reid doesn’t seem to mind at all. He watches Reid’s face light up every time he discovers a picture of his mother or her family that had been hidden in the album, overlooked, and he takes the time to notice the widening of Reid’s eyes, the upward curves of his mouth, the light shining at the corners of his eyes like this is the greatest gift he’s ever given himself. He watches him discover yet another picture, hidden away in envelopes behind hundreds of negatives and Reid smiles in delight and closes his eyes, as if reliving a memory that had never been his, that he had always only heard of in pictures and stories.
“I think my mother would like you,” Reid tells him and something catches in his throat. Coming from Reid, there is possibly no greater approval.
“I thought she didn’t like the government?” he teases nonetheless.
He passes Morgan another picture, this time of his mother with her Ph.D. in her hands, and shrugs. “She’ll like you when she sees me with you. When she sees how happy you make me.”
Morgan stares at him for a moment but there’s no hint on Reid’s face that his comment was anything but sincere. Blindly, he grapples for Reid’s arm, toppling a few pictures in the process, just to have something to hold on to. Reid looks back at him, his pulse steady and beating and strong under Morgan’s fingers and they smile.
In her pictures, Diana Reid is beautiful.
*
“You watch him a lot,” Emily tells him, sneaking up behind his chair as soon as Reid’s disappeared towards the break-room for more coffee.
Morgan jumps slightly. Swivels his chair around. “I watch who?”
She throws a stapler at him. “You know who I’m talking about,” she hisses into his ear and he subsides. A little.
“I wouldn’t say a lot,” is what he says in reply.
She leans forward like she’s letting him on a huge secret. “You don’t have to worry,” she half-whispers into his ear. “He’s not going to break.”
He raises an eyebrow at her. “I know you worry,” she elaborates. “But he’s stronger than you think. He’s not going to break,” she tells him.
He takes a deep breath and looks away. It isn’t Reid breaking that he’s ever been worried about in the first place.
*
Sometimes, Reid catches him watching.
“What are you staring at?” Reid asks him as he tries his best to pretend that he had been doing anything but. “Do I have something on my face?”
Morgan shakes his head, inevitably, every time.
Reid frowns. “I don’t understand why you would,” he tells him reluctantly. “I’m not going to break, you know, I keep telling you that.”
Morgan sighs and looks back down on his lap, at an open report, a case file, every time, every time.
This story has happened before.
*
“Reid and I will check the house through the back,” Hotch tells him, in front of the dilapidated house where Garcia has traced Oscar’s location to, “and you and Prentiss go with the SWAT team from the front.”
He nods and when he turns around, Reid is already facing the other way and strapping on his Kevlar. “Remember,” Hotch turns back to him again, “he knows we’re coming and he knows he’s going to be caught. Suicide by cop is his best option, so,” Hotch presses a hand on his shoulder briefly and then the both of them are gone, disappearing through a patch of grass on the back.
By the time they clear the first few rooms and reach the bedroom that Oscar had converted into a workspace, Hotch and Reid are nowhere to be seen. He turns back for a minute, securing the entrance behind them and having a hushed conversation with the leader of the SWAT team on their next course of attack. He looks back just in time to see Reid lowering his gun to the floor and walking forward.
Something oddly like time freezes all around him.
“Oscar,” Reid speaks very slowly, taking a step forward and the next and the next, “put the knife down and we’ll talk. Nothing will happen to you if you put the knife down, I promise.”
Reid takes a few more steps and Oscar raises his dominant hand, steel glinting against the last rays of sunlight coming in through the window and slowly lowers it back down. Morgan takes a deep breath and Reid stops where he is, his posture relaxing just a little.
Then, the knife is at his throat.
*
And Morgan?
He forgot to watch, just for a second.
*
Spencer tries to love everything, everyone everywhere.
Sometimes, Spencer will look at him shyly, from behind half-lowered lashes and ask him something along the lines of is this okay or am I doing this right and something will shift and break in Derek’s chest. Sometimes, Spencer looks at him with a stare of intense concentration, much like he would devote towards case files, like their relationship is a book he can read in ten minutes in hopes of regurgitating it for the rest of his life.
All Derek wants to say is you don’t have to.
A better man would let Spencer go, this much he knows. A better man would tell him things that Spencer hadn’t even considered, much less dared to hope for. A better man would tell him that loving someone isn’t the same as the ability to like someone for themselves, that love doesn’t mean waiting for the other shoe to drop, doesn’t mean second-guessing yourself and that, of all things, it never means a compulsion to convince yourself that this is the best you can be.
A better man would let Spencer be free, let him come to terms with his own feeling, let him experience that feeling of crushing happiness that makes you want to run around in the middle of nowhere with a smile on your face, let him wake up one morning without a heavy weight hanging on chest. A better man would never tie Spencer down in a version of love where he’s happier in virtuality than in the present.
A better man would do a lot of things a lot differently but, well.
*
Oscar has eyes for no one but Reid and Reid looks back at him, eyes wide and honest like there isn’t a knife glinting against his skin, like one slash of the blade wouldn’t be enough to end his life, like even the man trying to kill him is worthy of his respect, his belief, his mind.
Morgan holds his breath. Reid has always been better at killing with words than the rest of them, anyway.
“What do I possibly have to live for?” Oscar hisses into Reid’s ear this time, for possibly the last time and pulls his hair downwards, arching his body away from him and exposing more of his throat. He presses the sharp blade of his knife to Reid’s throat, pressing it just enough for him to feel the pressure but not quite enough to bleed. Not yet. Reid looks up with considerable effort to meet his eyes across the room and Morgan’s breath catches in his throat.
And then, Reid smiles.
“Me,” he replies, successfully catching every single person in the room off-guard.
Oscar’s grip on him slackens, not enough for him to move away, but enough for Reid to force the knife out of his hands and on to the floor. He does no such thing.
“Me,” he continues instead. “All you life, you’ve tried to repress a variety of sadistic and psychopathic urges and I know you haven’t been very successful in it since your wife died. I know how big of a thrill killing is to you, but I also know the suffering you go through in the aftermath, when the pain and guilt of killing someone consumes you because you knew, you always knew that they were never your intended target.” Oscar removes his grip from Reid’s hair and he watches Reid stiffen as the knife digs a little deeper into his throat.
He clears his throat against the blade. “I want you to see what it feels like to not kill,” Reid continues. “I want you to know what it feels like to live without guilt. I want you to let me go so that you can remember this, remember me. That when you had the chance to kill me, you didn’t. I want you to have an aftermath that isn’t guilt and pain and bile rising in your throat.”
The knife at this throat slackens, enough for Morgan to be able to see a distance. Oscar’s eyes are wide and red as he stares at Reid. “What would you know about living without guilt?” he asks, grasping at straws. His voice breaks on the last word.
Reid looks down at his feet. Even then, when he finally has the chance to run for it, to get himself a safe distance away, he doesn’t. When he looks up, there’s something broken on his face and Morgan wants nothing more than to push forward, protocol be damned, and kiss away the lines at the corners of his forehead.
“I wouldn’t,” Reid tells Oscar as the knife finally, finally drops. “That’s how I know it’s worth having.”
*
The thing is, sometimes he catches Reid looking at him.
“What’re you looking at?” he teases, an echo of something he can’t quite leave behind. “Do I have something on my face?”
Reid shakes his head, a frown marring his features and lines across his forehead. “I don’t get it,” he admits. “I don’t understand what it is you’re looking for when you stare at me.”
For a second, Morgan feels like he’s drowning on solid ground before pasting a smile on his face. “That’s easy,” he replies, grinning, like that undermines the gravity of his words, “I look at you because you’re the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.”
Reid’s frown deepens. “What?”
Morgan braces himself for a second before putting an arm around his shoulder and pulling him close. “It’s all right. I know that’s not what you see in return.” It’s never been a question, and Reid doesn’t waste time denying it. He doesn’t know what’s worse.
“I--” Reid opens his mouth to speak but Morgan’s faster, leaning in to press a kiss on his forehead. “It’s all right,” he repeats again, because really, it is. It’s never been Reid’s fault, this relationship of theirs.
Reid looks away, fiddling with his fingers to fill a gap where he doesn’t know what to say. Morgan looks sideways at where his arm is still around Reid’s shoulders and closes his eyes briefly.
Only one of them is wrong here, he knows. It’s never been him.
*
Morgan feels JJ’s hands on his wrist, curled just right over his pulse as they both watch Oscar drop to his knees and Reid draw his hands to the back to cuff him. The pressure on his wrist is minimal and when he looks down, there’s something in JJ’s expression that makes him stop moving. The look in her eyes roots him to his place, warns him not to go into the vulnerable sanctity Reid has let everyone see around him, not to engulf the rawness of emotion on Reid’s face. He stops, one foot forward nevertheless, and tries his best to let Reid come over on his own terms, tries his best to protect from a distance.
He looks down in silent thanks towards JJ again, and catches the same expression on her face. They’ve all been here before, hearts pounding and dry lips and hands curled into pockets to stop them from shaking, watching Reid try to live by playing with death. Maybe, maybe he was never the only one watching him.
He wonders if Reid knows what they’re all willing to do, unanimously, for a slight chance at his happiness. More than that, he wonders if he knows that they wouldn’t do it for anyone else.
*
Maybe, maybe all he’s wanted to do is to save himself, this version of himself in the present in the way he’s never been able to save anyone in the past, much less himself. Maybe, maybe he’s always set Spencer up to fail, held him to a regard so high that it was always destined to take a freefall.
Maybe, maybe it was all destined to come to this.
Later, Spencer will tell him: I can’t do this anymore, and in that fleeting impasse before heartbreak and devastation, all he’ll feel will be relief. For a second, all he’ll feel will be a sense of absolution.
*
He waits at the sidelines, leaning against one of the SUVs, watching Reid talk to Hotch and get briefly checked out by the paramedics. After what seems like forever, Morgan sees him making his way towards himself until Reid is standing right in front of him, hands shoved into his pocket and feet scuffling the earth. Reid speaks but never tells.
“I--,” Morgan opens his mouth to speak and Reid looks away. The light from the police car catches against his hair, makes it look like he’s far, far, away. Morgan never knows if he isn’t, anyway.
“Yeah,” Reid breathes finally, looking up to meet his eyes, so wide and simultaneously droopy and so, so very tired that Morgan doesn’t know what to say in return.
I’m so sorry, he wants to say, really, more than anything and something along the lines of how dare you risk your life again and make me watch and do you not realize how much it scares the shit out of me to see you go out and be brave and self-sacrificing because you think your life isn’t worth it. There are lots of words that he swallows around and doesn’t say a thing.
I love you is what it all boils down to, really.
Reid speaks but never tells. Morgan watches yet doesn’t see. Together, they should fit.
This is the tragedy, really. That they should.
Instead, he bumps his shoulders lightly against Reid’s, looking down as their fingers brush against each other, Reid’s long, elegant, beautiful hands mingling with his own.
Together they remain at the end of the road, half-shrouded by darkness and with enough just enough distance between them and the sirens, shoulders touching and hands grasping for the other; and slowly, and slowly Reid slides down next to him by the SUV to lean on his shoulder and they don’t speak.
*
fandom: criminal minds
pairing: morgan/reid, indescribable 'verse.
words: ~3.6k
summary: Reid speaks but never tells. Morgan watches yet doesn't see. Together, they fit. Or, snapshots of Morgan watching Reid during their relationship
*
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
*
“What do I possibly have to live for?” the unsub hisses into Reid’s hair and he slips a fraction of an inch in his grasp. Behind the confines of his gun, Morgan watches the scene unfold with horrible fascination, watches the cold, sharp, glinting silver of the unsub - Oscar’s- knife press lightly against Reid’s throat, right above where his thyroid gland lies, encased by skin.
“Oscar, you don’t want to do this,” Morgan repeats again from the far end of the room, voice calm and measured and contrary to every emotion coursing through his body. The team has spread around in hopes of getting a clear shot and Hotch’s voice - do not agitate the unsub - is loud and clear and largely ignored in his ear. It would be easy, so easy to press the trigger, lodge a bullet into his forehead except, except -
Oscar straightens and drags Reid up with him. His arms trap Reid’s shoulders, hunching his frame and accentuating his collarbone. Reid’s eyes are wide and firm and fixed on his own feet and his breathing is rapid and shallow; Morgan can almost see his breaths fall over the fine hair on Oscar’s arms.
“What do I possibly have to live for?” Oscar pulls Reid’s hair backwards to stare into his eyes, looking at him with a crazed desperation and Morgan watches in horror as Reid’s eyes widen just a fraction, his cheek twitches once, and something horribly akin to empathy floods through his expressions. And then, and then he stops.
Give me something, Morgan begs silently, give me a signal to go on. Give me a signal to shoot him.
Oscar has eyes for no one but Reid and Reid looks back at him, eyes wide and honest like there isn’t a knife glinting against his skin, like one slash of the blade wouldn’t be enough to end his life, like even the man trying to kill him is worthy of his respect, his belief, his mind.
Morgan holds his breath. Reid has always been better at killing with words than the rest of them, anyway.
“What do I possibly have to live for?” Oscar hisses into Reid’s ear this time, for possibly the last time and pulls his hair downwards, arching his body away from him and exposing more of his throat. He presses the sharp blade of his knife to Reid’s throat, pressing it just enough for him to feel the pressure but not quite enough to bleed. Not yet. Reid looks up with considerable effort to meet his eyes across the room and Morgan’s breath catches in his throat.
And then, Reid smiles.
*
“Did you always have this?” Derek asks, tracing his finger over a small, pear-shared birthmark just over the base of his spine.
Spencer shivers slightly at the trails of warmth left behind by Derek’s fingers against the coolness of his bare back. “I don’t know, maybe?” he asks in reply, pushing himself up on his elbows.
Derek loves days like these, lazy Saturdays spent lying around in bed, legs tangling together within the blankets and toes curling around sheets, filling the gaps within the other’s fingers with their own. Times like these are when he can keep Spencer all for himself, lay him down on the bed to map every single arch, every single contour of his body, learn the seemingly insignificant such as the way Spencer would bare his teeth as he trails kisses down his chest, the way he can leave fingerprints all over Derek’s neck with a surprisingly strong grip, the way he allows himself to close his eyes and let the feeling, the emotion of the moment wash over him. And every single time, the magnitude of the moment will hit Derek in the chest and leave him unable to breathe: that Spencer is willing to appear this uninhibited in front of him, that he’s willing to show this part of himself to someone else.
Spencer yawns against his shoulder. “How can I be sleepy again?” he murmurs in half-wonderment to himself, loud enough for Derek to hear.”I haven’t even woken up yet.”
He laughs. “Is getting up on the cards at all?”
Spencer leans up to kiss him on the cheek before fluffing his pillows and lying back down. “Not yet,” he replies between another yawn. “I think I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning directly.”
Derek stares. “It’s four in the afternoon,” he points out.
He smiles, lying on his side and pulling the blanket up to his chin. “Exactly.”
Derek watches him face the wall and close his eyes, resists the urge to play with his hair.
*
“I have a surprise for you,” Garcia exclaims loudly in the bullpen, making her way towards Reid’s desk. Morgan looks up from his report.
Garcia walks up to him and sets a box down on his desk. He watches Reid open the lid and exclaim in near-childish delight. “Chocolate-chip cookies,” she announces cheerily.
Reid’s smile widens “With those chunky chips?”
She leans forward to muss his hair up a little. “And peanut butter.”
He smiles then, really. Morgan watches, enraptured as his lips curve upwards, forming multiple lines across both sides of his mouth. His eyes crinkle next, folding at the corners as they are tugged upwards, glistening with wonder at the mere conclusion that someone has deigned to listen to something so utterly irrelevant.
Reid digs into the box for a piece with the most chips on it. “Can I have one?” he asks, clutching the biscuit.
Morgan almost fears his heart might burst as Garcia leans down to silently plant a kiss on his forehead before making her way back. He doesn’t think he’s ever loved her more than at that moment.
It’s endearing, watching Reid be enthralled by something as mundane as a cookie. It’s like watching a child learning to take his first steps on his own, learning the innate joy behind the simplicity of the smallest of action, learning to want simply for himself.
And Morgan’s heart aches all over again; for the man clutching a cookie like it’s his biggest piece of joy and learning, for the first time to simply want, and for himself, because he will never get to be the person saying that it’s all right to do so.
*
In her pictures, Diana Reid is always one smile away from total heartbreak.
“This is her at her graduation,” Reid puts another picture in his hands before going back to shuffle through a torn, battered photo album. Morgan looks at Reid instead, sitting straight and cross-legged on his bed amidst a flurry of pictures, often yellowed and blurry and discolored, but Reid doesn’t seem to mind at all. He watches Reid’s face light up every time he discovers a picture of his mother or her family that had been hidden in the album, overlooked, and he takes the time to notice the widening of Reid’s eyes, the upward curves of his mouth, the light shining at the corners of his eyes like this is the greatest gift he’s ever given himself. He watches him discover yet another picture, hidden away in envelopes behind hundreds of negatives and Reid smiles in delight and closes his eyes, as if reliving a memory that had never been his, that he had always only heard of in pictures and stories.
“I think my mother would like you,” Reid tells him and something catches in his throat. Coming from Reid, there is possibly no greater approval.
“I thought she didn’t like the government?” he teases nonetheless.
He passes Morgan another picture, this time of his mother with her Ph.D. in her hands, and shrugs. “She’ll like you when she sees me with you. When she sees how happy you make me.”
Morgan stares at him for a moment but there’s no hint on Reid’s face that his comment was anything but sincere. Blindly, he grapples for Reid’s arm, toppling a few pictures in the process, just to have something to hold on to. Reid looks back at him, his pulse steady and beating and strong under Morgan’s fingers and they smile.
In her pictures, Diana Reid is beautiful.
*
“You watch him a lot,” Emily tells him, sneaking up behind his chair as soon as Reid’s disappeared towards the break-room for more coffee.
Morgan jumps slightly. Swivels his chair around. “I watch who?”
She throws a stapler at him. “You know who I’m talking about,” she hisses into his ear and he subsides. A little.
“I wouldn’t say a lot,” is what he says in reply.
She leans forward like she’s letting him on a huge secret. “You don’t have to worry,” she half-whispers into his ear. “He’s not going to break.”
He raises an eyebrow at her. “I know you worry,” she elaborates. “But he’s stronger than you think. He’s not going to break,” she tells him.
He takes a deep breath and looks away. It isn’t Reid breaking that he’s ever been worried about in the first place.
*
Sometimes, Reid catches him watching.
“What are you staring at?” Reid asks him as he tries his best to pretend that he had been doing anything but. “Do I have something on my face?”
Morgan shakes his head, inevitably, every time.
Reid frowns. “I don’t understand why you would,” he tells him reluctantly. “I’m not going to break, you know, I keep telling you that.”
Morgan sighs and looks back down on his lap, at an open report, a case file, every time, every time.
This story has happened before.
*
“Reid and I will check the house through the back,” Hotch tells him, in front of the dilapidated house where Garcia has traced Oscar’s location to, “and you and Prentiss go with the SWAT team from the front.”
He nods and when he turns around, Reid is already facing the other way and strapping on his Kevlar. “Remember,” Hotch turns back to him again, “he knows we’re coming and he knows he’s going to be caught. Suicide by cop is his best option, so,” Hotch presses a hand on his shoulder briefly and then the both of them are gone, disappearing through a patch of grass on the back.
By the time they clear the first few rooms and reach the bedroom that Oscar had converted into a workspace, Hotch and Reid are nowhere to be seen. He turns back for a minute, securing the entrance behind them and having a hushed conversation with the leader of the SWAT team on their next course of attack. He looks back just in time to see Reid lowering his gun to the floor and walking forward.
Something oddly like time freezes all around him.
“Oscar,” Reid speaks very slowly, taking a step forward and the next and the next, “put the knife down and we’ll talk. Nothing will happen to you if you put the knife down, I promise.”
Reid takes a few more steps and Oscar raises his dominant hand, steel glinting against the last rays of sunlight coming in through the window and slowly lowers it back down. Morgan takes a deep breath and Reid stops where he is, his posture relaxing just a little.
Then, the knife is at his throat.
*
And Morgan?
He forgot to watch, just for a second.
*
Spencer tries to love everything, everyone everywhere.
Sometimes, Spencer will look at him shyly, from behind half-lowered lashes and ask him something along the lines of is this okay or am I doing this right and something will shift and break in Derek’s chest. Sometimes, Spencer looks at him with a stare of intense concentration, much like he would devote towards case files, like their relationship is a book he can read in ten minutes in hopes of regurgitating it for the rest of his life.
All Derek wants to say is you don’t have to.
A better man would let Spencer go, this much he knows. A better man would tell him things that Spencer hadn’t even considered, much less dared to hope for. A better man would tell him that loving someone isn’t the same as the ability to like someone for themselves, that love doesn’t mean waiting for the other shoe to drop, doesn’t mean second-guessing yourself and that, of all things, it never means a compulsion to convince yourself that this is the best you can be.
A better man would let Spencer be free, let him come to terms with his own feeling, let him experience that feeling of crushing happiness that makes you want to run around in the middle of nowhere with a smile on your face, let him wake up one morning without a heavy weight hanging on chest. A better man would never tie Spencer down in a version of love where he’s happier in virtuality than in the present.
A better man would do a lot of things a lot differently but, well.
*
Oscar has eyes for no one but Reid and Reid looks back at him, eyes wide and honest like there isn’t a knife glinting against his skin, like one slash of the blade wouldn’t be enough to end his life, like even the man trying to kill him is worthy of his respect, his belief, his mind.
Morgan holds his breath. Reid has always been better at killing with words than the rest of them, anyway.
“What do I possibly have to live for?” Oscar hisses into Reid’s ear this time, for possibly the last time and pulls his hair downwards, arching his body away from him and exposing more of his throat. He presses the sharp blade of his knife to Reid’s throat, pressing it just enough for him to feel the pressure but not quite enough to bleed. Not yet. Reid looks up with considerable effort to meet his eyes across the room and Morgan’s breath catches in his throat.
And then, Reid smiles.
“Me,” he replies, successfully catching every single person in the room off-guard.
Oscar’s grip on him slackens, not enough for him to move away, but enough for Reid to force the knife out of his hands and on to the floor. He does no such thing.
“Me,” he continues instead. “All you life, you’ve tried to repress a variety of sadistic and psychopathic urges and I know you haven’t been very successful in it since your wife died. I know how big of a thrill killing is to you, but I also know the suffering you go through in the aftermath, when the pain and guilt of killing someone consumes you because you knew, you always knew that they were never your intended target.” Oscar removes his grip from Reid’s hair and he watches Reid stiffen as the knife digs a little deeper into his throat.
He clears his throat against the blade. “I want you to see what it feels like to not kill,” Reid continues. “I want you to know what it feels like to live without guilt. I want you to let me go so that you can remember this, remember me. That when you had the chance to kill me, you didn’t. I want you to have an aftermath that isn’t guilt and pain and bile rising in your throat.”
The knife at this throat slackens, enough for Morgan to be able to see a distance. Oscar’s eyes are wide and red as he stares at Reid. “What would you know about living without guilt?” he asks, grasping at straws. His voice breaks on the last word.
Reid looks down at his feet. Even then, when he finally has the chance to run for it, to get himself a safe distance away, he doesn’t. When he looks up, there’s something broken on his face and Morgan wants nothing more than to push forward, protocol be damned, and kiss away the lines at the corners of his forehead.
“I wouldn’t,” Reid tells Oscar as the knife finally, finally drops. “That’s how I know it’s worth having.”
*
The thing is, sometimes he catches Reid looking at him.
“What’re you looking at?” he teases, an echo of something he can’t quite leave behind. “Do I have something on my face?”
Reid shakes his head, a frown marring his features and lines across his forehead. “I don’t get it,” he admits. “I don’t understand what it is you’re looking for when you stare at me.”
For a second, Morgan feels like he’s drowning on solid ground before pasting a smile on his face. “That’s easy,” he replies, grinning, like that undermines the gravity of his words, “I look at you because you’re the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.”
Reid’s frown deepens. “What?”
Morgan braces himself for a second before putting an arm around his shoulder and pulling him close. “It’s all right. I know that’s not what you see in return.” It’s never been a question, and Reid doesn’t waste time denying it. He doesn’t know what’s worse.
“I--” Reid opens his mouth to speak but Morgan’s faster, leaning in to press a kiss on his forehead. “It’s all right,” he repeats again, because really, it is. It’s never been Reid’s fault, this relationship of theirs.
Reid looks away, fiddling with his fingers to fill a gap where he doesn’t know what to say. Morgan looks sideways at where his arm is still around Reid’s shoulders and closes his eyes briefly.
Only one of them is wrong here, he knows. It’s never been him.
*
Morgan feels JJ’s hands on his wrist, curled just right over his pulse as they both watch Oscar drop to his knees and Reid draw his hands to the back to cuff him. The pressure on his wrist is minimal and when he looks down, there’s something in JJ’s expression that makes him stop moving. The look in her eyes roots him to his place, warns him not to go into the vulnerable sanctity Reid has let everyone see around him, not to engulf the rawness of emotion on Reid’s face. He stops, one foot forward nevertheless, and tries his best to let Reid come over on his own terms, tries his best to protect from a distance.
He looks down in silent thanks towards JJ again, and catches the same expression on her face. They’ve all been here before, hearts pounding and dry lips and hands curled into pockets to stop them from shaking, watching Reid try to live by playing with death. Maybe, maybe he was never the only one watching him.
He wonders if Reid knows what they’re all willing to do, unanimously, for a slight chance at his happiness. More than that, he wonders if he knows that they wouldn’t do it for anyone else.
*
Maybe, maybe all he’s wanted to do is to save himself, this version of himself in the present in the way he’s never been able to save anyone in the past, much less himself. Maybe, maybe he’s always set Spencer up to fail, held him to a regard so high that it was always destined to take a freefall.
Maybe, maybe it was all destined to come to this.
Later, Spencer will tell him: I can’t do this anymore, and in that fleeting impasse before heartbreak and devastation, all he’ll feel will be relief. For a second, all he’ll feel will be a sense of absolution.
*
He waits at the sidelines, leaning against one of the SUVs, watching Reid talk to Hotch and get briefly checked out by the paramedics. After what seems like forever, Morgan sees him making his way towards himself until Reid is standing right in front of him, hands shoved into his pocket and feet scuffling the earth. Reid speaks but never tells.
“I--,” Morgan opens his mouth to speak and Reid looks away. The light from the police car catches against his hair, makes it look like he’s far, far, away. Morgan never knows if he isn’t, anyway.
“Yeah,” Reid breathes finally, looking up to meet his eyes, so wide and simultaneously droopy and so, so very tired that Morgan doesn’t know what to say in return.
I’m so sorry, he wants to say, really, more than anything and something along the lines of how dare you risk your life again and make me watch and do you not realize how much it scares the shit out of me to see you go out and be brave and self-sacrificing because you think your life isn’t worth it. There are lots of words that he swallows around and doesn’t say a thing.
I love you is what it all boils down to, really.
Reid speaks but never tells. Morgan watches yet doesn’t see. Together, they should fit.
This is the tragedy, really. That they should.
Instead, he bumps his shoulders lightly against Reid’s, looking down as their fingers brush against each other, Reid’s long, elegant, beautiful hands mingling with his own.
Together they remain at the end of the road, half-shrouded by darkness and with enough just enough distance between them and the sirens, shoulders touching and hands grasping for the other; and slowly, and slowly Reid slides down next to him by the SUV to lean on his shoulder and they don’t speak.
*