'(I Always Feel Like) Somebody's Watching Me' [Joe Jonas/Spencer Reid] [1/2]
Title: "(I Always Feel Like) Somebody's Watching Me"
Author: that_1_incident
Fandom: Criminal Minds/Jonas Brothers
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Death of a minor character. Type Four delusional assassin. Joe Jonas.
Pairing: Joe Jonas/Spencer Reid
Word Count: ~16,750
Summary: This is a riff on a "Criminal Minds" episode - a redux, if you will, of 1x18, also known as "Somebody's Watching" (or, if you're like me and enjoy assigning "Friends"-esque titles to things, The One When Reid Falls Into A Pool). Essentially, Joe's being stalked by a psychotic killer who shoots people in the head, Reid and the gang investigate, and there are some surprising developments along the way.
Disclaimer: Much of the storyline and a significant portion of the dialogue were borrowed and adapted without permission, along with the "Criminal Minds" characters themselves. The lyrics at the beginning are from "Every Breath You Take," written by Sting, and those sampled later on are from "Make You Mine" by Claude Kelly, Nate Hills, Marcella Araica and Joseph Jonas. The title is a lyric from "Somebody's Watching Me" by Kennedy Gordy and Curtis Anthony Nolen. None of this is real.
Author's Notes: This is likely the only Joe/Reid fic on the Internet, potentially because the pairing is too brilliant for most to conceive of but more probably because it's ridiculous.
---<---<---@
Every single day and every word you say
Every game you play, every night you stay
I'll be watching you
Oh, can't you see you belong to me?
Reid's not sure he likes Los Angeles.
It's not too far from Vegas, geographically speaking, but the air's different, somehow, along with the aura of the people. Sure, the Vegas strip has bright lights and the incessant ching ching ching of slot machines, but LA seems flashier somehow - shallower, more extroverted, if a city can even have a personality. He wonders how one would go about profiling a city, and his pensiveness must show on his face because Gideon gently touches his arm as their car pulls to a stop, like he thinks Reid won't notice on his own.
"We're here," Gideon says, and Reid blinks as if waking from a dream, straightens his tie nervously and slides his long legs out of the vehicle. The two of them are in LA on business, but Reid's school friend owns a gallery in the area and Reid said he'd drop by. He's not really an art person - he deals in science, in absolutes, definitive answers where x equals one thing in particular and nothing else - but his New Year's resolution was to be more social, so, here he is.
Truth be told, he hadn't realized how hard it would be to switch off from BAU mode until he'd had to do it. It'd been so long since the last time, which probably contributed to the difficulty, but it makes him remember something Elle said once - about how, with a job like this, you can put your head down to work and glance up to realize twenty years have gone by. Sometimes he sees this... this syndrome threatening to manifest itself in his team members; other times he thinks he sees it in himself, and he's not sure which is more terrifying.
Parker picks him out of the crowd, yells his name and comes over to envelop him in an embrace he's not quite comfortable enough to return. He looks "just the same," apparently, as if he hasn't done more than a decade of growing since they last saw each other - he's just the same old Spencer, only a bit more frayed around the edges.
"Spencer was the only twelve-year-old in our high school graduating class," Parker explains to Gideon, shaking his head and echoing, "Just the same."
"Thanks," Reid says awkwardly, attempting a smile. He's not sure it's really a compliment but doesn't know what else to say.
The three of them engage in small talk for a few moments, and Parker's in the middle of a noble attempt to hawk some of the gallery's contemporary art to Gideon when a man walks into the room whose very presence steals everyone's attention, or so it seems to Reid.
"Joe," Parker calls warmly, striding over to shake the man's hand and beckoning for Reid and Gideon to follow.
Reid has more pressing things on his mind, though, and glances back at Gideon. "Do I look twelve years old to you?"
"Fourteen," Gideon deadpans, and Reid purses his lips for a moment before wandering over to give the newcomer a crooked half-grin.
The man - Joe - appears to be about Reid's age, but exudes a considerably more self-assured air (which isn't difficult, Reid supposes a little self-deprecatingly). He looks dapper in an impeccably-fitting black suit with a somewhat shiny quality to it that Reid is quietly entranced by, and his eyes are a shockingly deep brown, dark and intense.
He leans toward Reid to introduce himself, and Reid wonders whether the name Joe Jonas ought to mean anything to him. The intensity of Joe's eyes combined with the warmth of his hand and startlingly firm handshake lead Reid to stutter in reply.
"Hi, I - I'm, uh, Dr. Spencer... Reid?" he says like it's a question, even though he's pretty sure it's his actual name. "You... you, uh. I'm Spencer. You don't have to call me Doctor."
Honestly, being addressed as anything other than Reid at this point makes him mentally balk, but about the only way to make this exchange more awkward is to tell the guy to call him by his last name, so Spencer will have to suffice.
Joe nods slowly. "I won't," he confirms wryly, and there's what looks like a twinkle of amusement in his eyes, although Reid doesn't recall saying anything funny.
Reid's vaguely aware of Parker moving off to deal with a stray paparazzo snapping photos of Joe - who, apparently, is kind of a big deal - and Gideon gets pulled aside by a woman Reid thinks he hears introduce herself as one of the artists. She looks at Gideon with hungry, predatory eyes, and Reid maybe feels a little bit sorry for him. Joe, meanwhile, seems content with sticking by Reid for the immediate future, for a reason Reid can't begin to fathom but isn't all that interested in protesting.
"So, you're not from around here, are you?" Joe asks, his face relaxed and open.
He's either genuinely interested or extremely good at faking it. As a celebrity, one must become skilled at the latter rather quickly, Reid imagines, then internally chides himself for his unwarranted cynicism. Somewhere among the dismembered limbs and pallid corpses, abductions and sexual torment, his trust in humanity had begun to waver. He'd quite like to reaffirm it, but he feels too old to do that now, like he'd be trying to recapture the myth of Santa Claus after running through the physics in his head and realizing the insurmountable improbabilities.
"Me? No, I'm, uh - we're running a training service about profiling for the Los Angeles Police Department."
"Profiling?"
"Yeah, I'm with the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI; we psychoanalyze crime scenes in order to gain a better understanding of the person who might have committed the offense."
"Psychoanalyze, huh?" Joe muses. "Are you doing that to me right now?"
Reid blinks. "What? No! I'm not psychoanalyzing you, I'm just..."
Joe grins at him and he leaves the sentence unfinished. "I'm kidding, man. You wanna go look at the artwork?"
Reid's about to ask What artwork? when he remembers his primary purpose for being there and shifts his feet awkwardly. "Oh, yeah! Yes, sure, I'd. That would be - yes."
He should probably work on formulating some complete sentences in his head prior to delivering them, because winging it in this situation seems to be resulting in things coming out invariably garbled.
Joe gets that look in his eyes again like he's trying not to laugh, and Reid can feel his face heating up. He hastily turns his attention to the nearest piece of art, a photograph comprised of cobalt blues and electric greens. It's aesthetically pleasing, he supposes, but he's not sure why anyone would want to hang it on their wall.
"Does it make you feel anything?" Joe asks, gesturing to it with a glass of champagne he'd lifted from a passing tray.
"Like what?"
Joe gives him a half-shrug, and the corners of his mouth quirk into a quizzical smile. "Hey, man, I can't tell you how to feel."
Reid takes a deep breath and a chance. "Well, right now I feel pretty good."
He's not - he doesn't really do flirting, but somehow he lets that slip out, and the way Joe raises an eyebrow makes his heart skip a beat and a tentative maybe rise inside him in spite of itself. Before Joe can reply, though, Gideon blusters over and announces they're leaving.
"We're still looking at the exhibit," Reid protests, doing his best to hide the disappointment in his voice.
"Now."
Gideon glances over his shoulder, looking vaguely hunted, and Reid surmises that he may have received some unwelcome attention from the artist. Either that or the paparazzo came back and is now after him, but while Gideon's a rock star in the profiling world, that doesn't exactly translate outside of it.
Reid turns back to Joe. "I - I guess we're leaving, so..."
"Reid, now."
Gideon is Reid's superior and Reid would normally obey him without question, but right now - right now, he's being a tad irritating.
"Nice to meet you," he manages, waving dorkily at Joe and then instantly regretting the action. After that, it's almost a relief to jog out of the gallery hot on Gideon's heels.
--
It's their last night in LA, and after the exhibit, Reid and Gideon both elect to go back to their hotel rooms and end the evening on a quieter note. Reid's been in the city for nearly a week and he still finds it strange to be staying here without the weight of a case bearing down on him. Usually he spends his nights in hotel rooms pacing, going over files, reexamining crime scene photos for anything that might have been missed before finally laying his head down for a paltry few hours before a crack-of-dawn start the next day. Relaxing is harder than he thought.
He has no idea what Gideon's currently doing with his time - turning in early, channel-flipping, going over the session notes to determine what can be done better next time - but he, somewhat guiltily, goes over to his laptop and types Joe Jonas into Google Images.
There are pictures of Joe with a number of different hairstyles: clipped short, like tonight, then long and choppy, and longer still with a shiny swoop of bangs over his left eye. In some, he looks terribly young - mid teens, maybe - and Reid suddenly feels uncomfortable looking in on his life like this. Joe's not an unsub or a victim, after all, and just because his photo is plastered all over the Internet, that doesn't give Reid the right to snoop.
He closes the computer with a knotted feeling in his stomach and cracks open a book on nuclear fission instead.
--
Their LAPD liaison, Detective Owen Kim, escorts them to their car the next morning and insists on driving them to the airport despite Gideon's protestations.
"I didn't invite the FBI here to let them make their own way around town," Kim says. "I can't thank you guys enough for conducting the seminar."
"Well, don't hesitate to call if there's anything we can help with," Gideon tells him, hauling his travel bag into the trunk.
As Reid follows suit, Kim's cell phone goes off, and he has a brief, terse conversation that piques both agents' interest. Gideon's more discreet about it than Reid, but Reid can tell in the way his shoulders stiffen slightly that he's eavesdropping on the part of the exchange he can hear.
"Everything all right?" Gideon asks after the detective hangs up.
Kim shakes his head. "Double murder at a Hollywood bungalow - a celebrity. A young actor, Nathan Ryan, and his fiancée were apparently shot to death. It's gonna be a major pain in the ass."
He sighs. Reid knows his department's been getting some bad press lately - the LAPD is overburdened, understaffed and one of its own recently hung the department out to dry in a widely publicized overtime lawsuit, so they likely need a high-profile case about as much as a hole in the head at this point.
"Hey, you guys care to take a quick look before I drive you to the airport?" Kim asks hopefully. "It's on the way."
"Absolutely," Gideon tells him, and Reid indicates his assent with a nod before sliding into the back seat.
--
Half an hour later, they walk into an immaculately put-together bungalow with magnolia walls, a tan carpet and a heavy oaken front door - immaculate, that is, except for the body of a young man lying prone on the couch and a woman of a similar age slumped, bloodied, at his feet.
"The male was shot execution style, once in the head; the female, three times in the torso," Reid notes as he and Gideon approach the bodies, wading through a sea of crime techs to do so.
"Two different MOs," Gideon echoes.
Kim walks in behind them, looking somber. He'd been outside talking to the officers who'd arrived on the scene first, and if possible, his expression looks grimmer. "We have an image on Ryan's video surveillance camera. He's unidentifiable."
"There's no sign of struggle between the male and the unsub from the door to the couch; the unsub most likely forced him at gunpoint," Reid says.
"He told him to trust him," Gideon adds. "Do what I say, and I won't hurt you."
"Fatal mistake," Kim comments.
Reid nods, elaborating, "He asked the victim to sit on the couch and then shot him in the head."
Gideon turns his attention to the female. "The fiancée wasn't expected. Her killing's messier. It's less controlled, less organized." He looks over at Kim. "What do you think?"
"We've had a couple of other cases like this over the past few months. Same type of weapon - a .22 caliber handgun. Both shot in the head. The first was an established film producer, Wally Melman, and the second was Clayton Harris, another young actor, although not as well-known as Nathan here."
"Any forensic evidence?" Reid asks.
"No. And the guys have been going through this place all morning and haven't come up with anything."
"He clearly knows how to cover his tracks," Gideon says.
Kim frowns. "Like a professional hitman?"
"Maybe."
Reid glances to his left, drawn by movement and flashes at a side window. "Uh... Gideon? There are people taking photographs of us from the next yard."
Kim, seemingly unfazed, looks up from the bodies. "Welcome to LA."
--
Although some more pieces of the puzzle are needed before the three crimes can be designated as serial killings, it certainly appears they're connected. At Kim's request, Gideon and Reid agree to stick around, and the BAU jet takes off for LA within the hour carrying the rest of the team. So much for relaxation time; not that Reid had been doing too much of that anyway, between assisting Gideon with the profiling class and Googling pictures of Joe Jonas.
On the jet, Hotch, JJ, Morgan and Elle work up the profile with Reid and Gideon on video link. The unsub had targeted the other two victims at sites they routinely visited - Harris while walking his dog on the beach and Melman outside a Culver City massage parlor at which he had a standing appointment every Tuesday. The familiarity with their schedules suggests the unsub stalked them for a while prior to their deaths, indicating he has the ability, as Hotch puts it, to hide in plain sight.
"The media's calling Nathan Ryan's murder the biggest celebrity homicide since Sharon Tate," JJ informs them.
"What does that mean for us?" Elle asks.
Hotch presses his lips into a firm, unsmiling line. "Everybody will be watching."
--
Once the rest of the team arrives in LA, they're able to further narrow the profile to a Type Four assassin, meaning the unsub suffers from a mental disorder that makes him - and it's almost certainly a him - frequently delusional. The key to catching him is to figure out the delusion before any more people die, which is set to be a tall order unless they can zero in on any more clues.
--
They hold a private briefing with Kim after they've drawn up the profile, but it's soon interrupted by a tall, heavy-set black male with a concerned expression on his face.
"Is there a Detective Kim here?"
"Right here," Kim answers.
"You're in charge of investigating the Nathan Ryan murder, right?"
Kim answers in the affirmative.
"My name is Robert Feggans. I'm a bodyguard, and one of my clients..." The man trails off, eyeing the team, and Reid gazes back impassively, used to the unnerving effect their presence can have. Feggans directs his attention back to Kim. "Is there anywhere we can talk privately?"
"We're all working this murder."
The man shifts on the balls of his feet. "Okay, well, uh. My client - he's waiting in the other room - just received a note that kinda rattled him. We're used to receiving crazy stuff, but this..."
He holds out a magazine article about Ryan's murder, complete with photo. The dead man's face is circled and scrawled across the text in blood red letters are the words YOU OWE ME in jagged, uneven script. Serial killers, like doctors, never seem to have good handwriting.
Morgan stands up instantly, recognizing the threat for what it is, and Reid follows him out of the conference room, across the bullpen and into a smaller room off to the side. Joe Jonas is there, nursing a cup of coffee and staring absently at nothing, and Reid does a double-take that thankfully escapes Morgan's notice.
"Joe, hi!" he exclaims, hearing his voice soften around the edges, and, wow, okay, so much for being stealthy. Morgan looks at him with this deeply confused amusement, as if to say, Who are you and what have you done with Spencer Reid?
Joe looks around in disbelief, the hint of a smile breaking through the worried lines of his face. "Spencer!" he says warmly, and somehow, from him, Reid's first name doesn't sound weird at all.
--
The rest of the team join Reid and Morgan quickly, and they soon get down to questioning Joe.
"How well did you know Nathan Ryan?"
Hotch kicks off the interview after all the necessary introductions have been made and Reid's done his best not to fidget when he's introduced as Doctor. Joe's eyes meet his and he looks drawn, tired, but there's still a friendly spark of recognition underneath it all. If they were alone, Reid might attempt a joke about how now might be an appropriate time to call him Doctor, so all things considered, it's probably best that they're not.
"Uh, Nathan and I were acquaintances, I guess?" Joe answers, sliding his gaze away from Reid. "We spoke when we saw each other in public, but we were never friends."
"How about Wally Melman?"
Joe looks clueless.
"Wally Melman," Elle echoes. "The producer who was killed a couple of months ago."
Joe's cluelessness gives way to confusion as he protests, "The paper said that was a robbery."
"The paper was wrong," Hotch responds brusquely. "Did you know him?"
"We met a few times about a project - I'm trying to get into acting - but I ended up not getting the part. They went a different way."
"Which way?" Elle questions.
"They cast, um..." Joe's face pales. "Oh, jeez."
Reid resists the urge to reach out and touch his arm. He really needs to get a hold of himself. "What is it?"
"They cast Nathan Ryan."
--
Joe can't think of a direct connection with Clayton Harris, but when Elle holds up Harris' headshot, the likely reason he was targeted immediately becomes clear.
"He looks a lot like you, don't you think? A potential rival."
"He was murdered too?" At Hotch's nod, Joe swallows hard. "So all these people are being killed because of me?"
"It's possible," Hotch hedges, never willing to put all his eggs in one basket.
"What does that mean for my brothers?"
Reid frowns in thought. "You have brothers?"
Joe stares at him. "Nick and Kevin?" he says slowly, like he's not sure Reid's for real. "We're the Jonas Brothers?"
Reid blinks. "Well, the unsub seems to be focusing on people he perceives as constituting a professional threat to you, which suggests your family wouldn't be of interest to him, but do they live in the local area?"
"Uh, Kev lives in New Jersey and Nick's starring in a Broadway show right now. And then there's Frankie, who lives with our parents in Texas."
"Nick's an actor too?"
"You really don't know?"
"Okay, we're getting sidetracked here," Morgan interjects, holding up his hands. "Reid, the Jonas Brothers is a band that's primarily popular among teenage girls." He glances at Joe. "No offense."
"That's fair," Joe says with a shrug. "But we're taking some time off from the band to work on our own stuff. For Nick, that's Broadway. For me, it's my solo project with some acting on the side. And Kevin got married not too long ago, so he's doing the whole stay-at-home thing right now."
So, Joe's in a boy band. Reid's not really up to speed on popular music, but he remembers the girls at his high school swooning over the Backstreet Boys and tries to imagine Joe dancing in a white suit.
He clears his throat. "As I said, given their geographic locations, I'm pretty confident they're unlikely to be targeted. The unsub seems to be focusing on people who reside in LA."
Joe lets out a sigh of relief. "Okay," he says, half to himself. "So my brothers aren't in danger. Okay, good."
Reid's kind of touched by the fact that Joe asked about the safety of his brothers before sparing a thought for his own well-being. He sees that a lot with parents of victims, with spouses, but not as much among siblings, unless they're especially close. He supposes working with one's brothers will do that.
"What - what about me?" Joe asks finally, looking like he's not sure he really wants to know the answer.
Reid knows he won't like this, but he has the right to know the truth, to be aware of the risk posed to him.
"The fact that he's contacting you indicates he believes you owe him something," Reid explains. "This model frequently concludes itself with one of two possibilities - either the stalker will kill himself, or he'll kill the object of his affection."
--
Hotch calls a briefing so they can get the local PD up to speed, and embarrassingly, Reid's unable to fully focus on the session. Joe's dark, worried eyes keep flashing through his mind as Hotch talks about their compound profile - a Type Four delusional assassin with an erotomanic fixation.
Morgan takes over to provide the definition of erotomania, and Reid forces himself to snap to attention.
"Erotomanics are a form of stalker who possess the delusional belief that another person, usually of a higher social status, is in love with them," Morgan's saying.
"In the United States at any given time, there are over 200,000 people being stalked," Elle continues. "Our unsub is having a fantasy love affair with the singer Joe Jonas, the way John Hinckley did with Jodie Foster."
"Mr. Jonas was not aware of his stalker until yesterday. The unsub wasn't trying to impress him; he was more like an unwanted, very violent guardian angel," Hotch explains.
"When stalkers feel as if they've been in some way betrayed by their love object, this often leads to violence against the target," Gideon adds, deferring back to Hotch to outline the specifics of the profile.
"Though stalkers can be either male or female, it's most likely we're looking for a single, Caucasian male in his mid-twenties to early forties, very intelligent, with ample time to follow his victim and study his habits."
Reid picks up Hotch's verbal thread. "As of yet, the unsub has not directed any violence towards Mr. Jonas, but he has shifted his focus from those around Mr. Jonas to him directly."
"This doesn't preclude the fact that anyone who has the vaguest association with Mr. Jonas is a potential target," Gideon notes. "The unsub appears to be keeping his focus local, so Mr. Jonas' family members are not thought to be at risk even though they're high-profile. However, as a precaution, they've been advised to stay out of Los Angeles for the time being. Now, does anyone have any questions?"
An officer Reid vaguely recognizes from the training sessions raises his hand. "So it's safe to assume this guy is a gay male?"
"Gay or bisexual," Hotch says mildly, "but his friends and family may not necessarily know about his predilections, nor might he make them obvious."
Reid squirms.
"So in other words, that doesn't help us narrow down the kind of person we're looking for?" the officer queries.
"Not really, no." Hotch sets down the file he's been brandishing on one of the desks the BAU commandeered for the presentation. "If there are no more questions," (he looks around; there aren't) "then let's get to work on catching this guy."
--
It strikes Reid as morbidly funny that not even twenty-four hours earlier, he'd been chastising himself for looking at photographs of Joe without consent, and now it's necessary to go through the man's entire career for clues to the unsub's identity. Now that the unsub's established contact, the team expects him to reach out to Joe again soon, so everyone's in what Hotch calls a holding pattern and the more chess-minded Gideon characterizes as waiting for their opponent's next move. They'd advised Joe to live his life as usual but keep them posted on his whereabouts, so right now he's at the studio working on his album and the team's at LAPD headquarters rifling through his professional history - or, at least, they are until Hotch's cell phone rings.
It's their move now.
--
Joe - I've always been so good to you.
Why would you go to the police?
Gideon reads the message off a piece of looseleaf paper that had been left under one of the windshield wipers of Joe's car and retrieved by a passing friend of his earlier that day. The team is holed up in one of the meeting rooms at the studio, poring over the note like it's the Rosetta Stone that holds the key to breaking the case.
"I'm intrigued by this particular version of the verb to be," Gideon comments.
"Past participle," Reid notes.
Gideon nods. "Steady state of being. Preceding adverb - always."
"In English?" Kim asks.
"That is English, actually," Reid chips in. "We're discussing the verb tenses of the -"
"Reid." He falls silent, and Gideon continues, "Our stalker sounds like someone Joe knows, based on the tense of the verb."
Morgan frowns. "Maybe it's time to get him off the street."
"You know, there's been no physical threat to him, so he might be safer just staying put as opposed to moving anywhere else," Reid counters.
"Uh, I'm right here, guys. I can hear everything you're saying."
Reid had honestly forgotten Joe was present, sitting in a chair at the other end of the table, the sleeves of his simple black hoodie pulled down over his hands. The left one is starting to fray, and Joe keeps worrying at the threads with his fingers.
"If we did remove you, we'd have to take you to an undisclosed location," Gideon tells him without saying sorry, as if the way he directly addresses him serves as apology enough. "I'm sure your stalker knows where you live."
"I'm not interrupting recording," Joe says firmly. "I want to get this thing out before the end of the year. It's like, I don't know, like my baby." He looks a bit embarrassed by the comparison, but there's a flush of pride there too. "I just wanna get it out into the world and show people what I created, you know? For the first time, it's something that's just mine."
Reid's not sure how to react to that sentiment, but he admires it. He doesn't say anything, and neither do his colleagues.
"Look," Joe continues, sounding frustrated. "I've decided that I'm not gonna be afraid of this lunatic. I'm not gonna let him affect me. So just tell me - am I safe here?"
"We're running background checks on all the staff, cleared the building of all nonessential personnel and have increased security at the gate," Kim answers. "In short, you're probably safer here than almost anywhere else."
"In that case," Joe says, abruptly rising from his chair, "I'm going back to make music."
Reid watches him leave, momentarily distracted by the small sliver of skin that's exposed where the hoodie doesn't quite meet the waistband of Joe's jeans. The door clicks shut, shaking him out of his thoughts.
"I didn't want to say anything in front of him, but the unsub's anger about Joe consulting the authorities suggests he might alter his agenda," Gideon points out. "Joe didn't go to the police alone."
"His bodyguard took him," Morgan says, nodding.
Now it's Gideon's turn to rise, pulling on his jacket as he does so. "You and Reid keep an eye on Joe. I'm going to talk to Mr. Feggans."
--
Reid's never been in a recording studio before, and it strikes him how oddly impersonal the album-making process is. Joe's in the sound booth alone, but three men are watching in addition to Reid and Morgan, two fiddling with dials and slides on the intimidatingly complex-looking piece of equipment in front of them while the other - the Jonas Brothers' bass guitarist; also the friend who found the note - nods his head along with the beat.
Tell me what you want and I'll give it
Just as long as you know where we're headed
Back to my place when it's all over, oh, oh...
Reid's not really a contemporary music person, but the song's nothing if not catchy, and it's obvious Joe's pouring himself into singing it. He even finds that he's tapping his foot at one point, much to Morgan's amusement.
Morgan himself seems more interested in the technical aspect of the whole thing and asks an inordinate number of questions, but nobody really seems to mind. The guitarist, on the other hand - Garbowsky, if Reid remembers correctly - appears content to sit back and survey the proceedings, and Reid follows his lead, watching Joe sing the song through a couple more times and then repeat certain lines until the sound guy and producer are satisfied.
"Take five while we mix those and then we'll see what we've got," the producer says into a microphone, and Joe nods from the booth before lifting the headphones off his ears.
There's a table at the back of the room with a coffee dispenser on it, in addition to water bottles and some kind of herbal tea Reid guesses is supposed to soothe Joe's vocal cords. Joe heads right to it and Reid feels vaguely conspicuous as he sidles up to the singer, clearing his throat to announce his presence.
"Sorry if I was... insensitive earlier," Reid begins haltingly. "We just, ah." He fiddles with the half-empty bottle of Diet Coke he's been nursing all afternoon and wishes being around Joe didn't tie his tongue in knots. "We kind of get wrapped up in the victimology sometimes," he manages, getting the absurd urge to award himself a prize for actually saying something intelligible. "I didn't mean to talk about you like you weren't there."
Joe shrugs. "You were just doing your job, right?"
Reid nods.
"Then there's no need to apologize, man."
Reid takes an awkward sip from the bottle just to have something to do with his hands, and they stand in silence for a moment before Joe drinks a little tea and makes a face.
"Ugh," he says, reaching for Reid's Coke. "You don't mind sharing with me, do you?"
His fingers brush Reid's as he takes the bottle without waiting for an answer, and Reid needs a second to process the tingly sensation this elicits before he can respond.
"No," he says weakly, and Joe grins at him before taking a long swig, pressing the bottle back into Reid's hand and heading over to talk to the producer. Reid haltingly puts it to his lips after staring at it dumbly for a few seconds, and becomes aware of Morgan ambling over to him just a few seconds too late.
The other man has a smirk on his face as he leans against the edge of the table in his cocky Morgan way.
"You don't mind sharing with me, do you?" he asks, and Reid, still drinking, only narrowly avoids choking.
"Shut up," he mutters, jamming the cap back on the bottle, and Morgan laughs and laughs.
--
Joe's back in the sound booth laying down some more vocals when Reid's cell phone rings with a call from Gideon.
"Feggans is dead," Gideon says without preamble, and Reid's breath catches in his throat, his eyes darting directly to Joe.
Joe's laughing into the mic at something the producer said to him, eyes glimmering with mirth as they had on the first night Reid met him, and all Reid can think about is how he'll ever find a way to break the news.
"Up until now, every victim was a person who could've been perceived as a threat. Feggans was an ally, a friend," he says quietly, glancing around to make sure no-one's in earshot, but they all appear focused on Joe.
"He was a threat to the stalker," Gideon points out darkly. "We have to get Joe to a safe house. Take him home, have him pack some things."
Reid's gaze finds its way back to the man in question. "He's going to be devastated."
Gideon's stern, businesslike tone softens. "I know."
It's probably not the smartest thing in the world for Reid to betray more than a professional level of concern for Joe, but the thing is, he can't exactly seem to help it.
"JJ's keeping it out of the press for now," Gideon continues. "Let's not tell Joe yet."
"Not tell him?"
"We need him to cooperate with us," Gideon says calmly, and Reid knows he's right but at the same time, how is he supposed to look Joe in the eyes and not tell him - basically lie by omission? "It'll help us protect him."
That, more than anything, gets through to Reid, but when Joe meets his eyes through the window of the sound booth and aims a goofy salute in his direction, he feels his heart plummet in his chest.
--
The plan is to deny the stalker access to Joe in order to draw him out. The team, including Morgan, chases down leads with Kim while Reid accompanies Joe to his apartment. There's a police cruiser already outside the building when they pull up, and Joe shrugs it off but has the grace to allow some of his nervousness to show.
He lives in a corner apartment high above the city that has two walls of solid glass for windows ("Inconspicuous," Reid mutters, and Joe grins and rolls his eyes). Modern furniture fills the space, and artwork, framed photos and movie posters add splashes of color to the stark white walls.
"I like your place," Reid murmurs, zeroing in on a piece that's hanging above the couch. Sometimes he can't remember what his own walls look like, he spends so little time at home. Lately when he gets a chance to go back there between cases, he's found himself vaguely surprised by the titles on his bookshelves, the tchotchkes on the kitchen counter.
"I'm barely ever here, but I like it too." Joe laughs, following Reid's eyeline. "That's a photographic collage. I like it because it's like life, you know? Obscure. Kinda fantastic."
Now it's Reid's turn to laugh. "There's a stalker after you and you think your life is fantastic?"
Joe shrugs and holds out his arms, gesturing to his surroundings. "I have all this, don't I?"
Reid doubts he'll be so chipper after he finds out Feggans is dead - Big Rob, as Joe calls him - and although a part of him aches to break the news just to get it over with, he knows he has to follow Gideon's orders.
"That's a good outlook to have," he says instead, meaning it, and Joe shoots him a grin that's wide and happy and completely unguarded.
They smile at each other for a few seconds, which makes Reid feel awkward and a little bit thrilled all at once, and then Joe breaks off to go grab them some drinks from the gleaming stainless steel kitchen. Reid's not sure whether to follow him so he ends up staying in the living room, tracing the fractured images of the collage with his eyes.
--
He's still looking at the collage when Joe comes back into the room shortly afterward, holding two mugs of steaming coffee. It's already dark outside, but neither of them is under any illusion that they'll be getting much sleep tonight, so the caffeine jolt won't be a problem.
With both hands full, Joe nudges Reid with his hip to get his attention, and although Reid was aware of him approaching, he still jumps slightly at the unexpected contact.
"Hey, listen, if you see any of the guys from the studio again, leave out the part of this whole mess that involves me drinking coffee, okay?"
Reid tilts his head, curving his hands around the hot mug. "You're not supposed to?"
"I'm encouraged not to," Joe drawls, making air quotes with the fingers of his free hand and laughing at himself. "It dries out your vocal cords or something. But I've been pretty good about avoiding it, and I'm basically done recording now, I think."
"Actually, it's not the coffee that's a dehydrant, but the caffeine contained within it," Reid points out. "Caffeine's a diuretic, meaning it provides a means of forced diuresis - fluid production - which elevates the rate of urination, and that kind of substance can, as you say, dry out your vocal cords. But some people are more sensitive to diuretics than others, and you seemed to be doing just fine at the studio after you drank my Coke, so I wouldn't be overly concerned."
Joe's staring at him with a bemused expression on his face.
"I would, however, recommend decaf," Reid concludes with a perfunctory nod, getting the vague sinking feeling that talking about elevated urination rates probably wasn't an appropriate tangent to take, and Joe's face splits into a smile.
His reaction reminds Reid of how Morgan gets around him sometimes - grinning, huge and goofy, about things he said that weren't even remotely funny. It's par for the course when dealing with Morgan but Reid isn't as sure how to react when it's Joe, although maybe he doesn't have to be because by now Joe's turned his attention to the collage.
"This make you feel anything?"
Reid gets an abrupt sense of déjà vu and for a second his mind transports him back to the art gallery, except this time there's no Gideon around to interrupt.
"It's definitely... appealing..." he manages uncertainly, not entirely sure they're only talking about the picture anymore. He clasps his mug tighter until the sensitive nerves at his fingertips start to prickle at the heat.
Joe leaves his side abruptly at that point, and Reid turns when he hears the other man's footfalls on the burnished wooden floor.
"What are you doing?" he asks, beginning to follow.
Joe puts his mug down, throws open one of the windows (which apparently also functions as a door) and strides out onto the balcony.
"Today was stressful. I need some hot tub time."
There's a note in his voice that would've led Reid to detect that there was more to it than that, had he not been too concerned for Joe's safety to pay the necessary amount of attention. Some profiler he is.
"What?! Joe, you can't!"
He hadn't noticed until now, but Joe's shorts have been replaced with a bathing suit. His quick-change presumably occurred while he was out of Reid's line of sight, purportedly preparing their coffee in the kitchen - which just happens to be next to his bedroom. Before Reid can say anything further, Joe pulls off his shirt and cannonballs in.
It's a - well, it's a hot tub, and a large one at that, although Reid hadn't recognized it as such at first glance due to the fact that it has a raised deck around it into which it's submerged. He saw the deck on his brief tour of the house earlier, but dismissed it as an outdoor bar or something.
Joe causes a pretty significant splash and some of the spray mists onto Reid's shirt, leaving dark speckles on the fabric. Reid winces, his hands fluttering against the frame of the open door.
"Joe, you cannot be doing this right now."
Joe tosses his hair back, the dark strands slicking against his head. "Come on, man, five minutes. You should join me. There are bathing suits in the bedroom; top drawer on the left."
Reid can't believe he's even hearing this. "We're supposed to stay inside!" he says shrilly. "You're meant to be packing so my team can take you to a safe house because you're being pursued by a psychotic killer who shoots people in the head! So, no, I will not join you!"
Joe rolls his eyes. "C'mon, live a little."
"Live a little?! I've known you forty-eight hours; I feel like I've already aged ten years."
Joe folds his arms defiantly, droplets clinging to the lashes that frame the huge dark eyes Reid's trying not to look directly into for fear his resolve will waver.
"I'm not gonna stop living my life," he says mulishly. "This guy - this unsub, whatever you call him - if I start changing the way I do things because of him, he's gonna think he's won."
Reid sighs. "I get it, all right? I do. But your security is paramount, and unfortunately right now that's going to infringe on your freedom. My primary responsibility here is to watch over you and keep you safe until the others get here."
Joe touches his hand to his heart, eyes sparkling mischievously. "Why, Spencer, I didn't know you cared," he breathes girlishly, that grin sweeping across his face again, and Reid feels his cheeks start to heat up.
They stare each other down for a few moments in a battle of wills before Joe drops his gaze and, sighing resignedly, glides to the edge of the hot tub.
"Fine," he says, sounding defeated. "Will you help me out, at least?"
Reid rolls his eyes, followed by his shirt sleeves, and leans down to grab Joe's hand.
Joe isn't big but he's muscular, and he also has the element of surprise on his side. As soon as his hand grips Reid's, his eyes glint impishly and Reid realizes he got scammed.
"Joe," he warns - quite fruitlessly, of course - and Joe lets out a whoop of delight as he falls into the hot tub with a terrific and terribly undignified splash.
--
The hot tub isn't deep, but it takes Reid a second to get his bearings underwater before pushing up to the surface, breaking the roiling meniscus with a splutter. Joe's laughing so hard it sounds like a cackle, but Reid's wet and cold and he liked this tie, damn it, and to top it all off, his FBI-issued gun is at his belt, which will be a really excellent thing to explain to the weapons guys back at Quantico.
"Yes, very funny," he says frostily, trying to salvage some shred of dignity by attempting to tuck his sodden curtain of hair behind his ears. "Laugh it up, Joe. Hilarious. And my gun's wet. This is great."
He fishes it out and water streams from the holster. Joe looks at him, then at the gun, then back at him again, cracking up hard enough that his glistening shoulders are shaking, and Reid stops being angry and starts thinking the whole thing is a little bit funny instead.
"My clothes..." he protests lamely, even as the laughter bubbles up in his throat.
Joe shrugs, sliding closer to him. "You should've worn one of my bathing suits," he veritably purrs.
Reid, who'd been tapping his watch experimentally to see if it was still working, huffs out a laugh and wonders briefly what Joe's true intentions were in proffering a suit earlier. He doesn't get a chance to respond further before Joe grabs his tie - hesitant at first, then more decisive - and pulls him forward, touching their mouths together.
It's at once a surprise and yet not. If Reid's honest, he's been dancing around Joe virtually since the moment they met, he just never thought anything would - y'know, come of it.
Joe's hand effortlessly molds against the back of his skull, and at the press of the other man's lips, Reid feels as if a huge weight of avoidance has been lifted off his shoulders. Something's definitely coming of it.
He pulls away reluctantly, their mouths making a smacking sound as they disengage. "This is completely inappropriate."
Joe cups his jaw tenderly and attempts to brush the hair off his face, a startlingly intimate gesture that makes Reid's insides flutter.
"Please?" Joe asks, voice suddenly soft and cajoling, as if Reid's a deer that - that stumbled onto Joe's woodland picnic or something, and Joe doesn't want to scare him away.
He tugs Reid in for more and Reid acquiesces helplessly. Their mouths meld and Reid even detects a hint of tongue on Joe's part before jerking away once again and trying to steel himself against Joe's wiles. This is completely inappropriate, and Joe's probably only experiencing these feelings for him because of the situation with the unsub. It's a common psychological reaction, but definitely not one he should be facilitating.
The other man's fingers are in his hair now, and as if of their own accord, Reid's hands creep up to tangle in Joe's. They kiss desperately for a couple more seconds before Reid breaks away again, shaking his head.
"No, see, there's this thing called transference..."
He's read definitions of the phenomenon in a thousand different books, the exact phraseology from all of them popping into his head simultaneously - his eidetic memory strikes again - but somehow they all feel as if they'd be falling short.
"You don't like me?" Joe teases.
"What? Are you cra - no, I, I do!"
"I like you," Joe admits coyly.
"I like you too!" Reid reassures him a tad too hastily to be suave, but playing things cool isn't exactly his most pressing concern right now. "Just, I'm a, uh, f-federal agent, you know, I'm supposed to... protect you."
"You said that already," Joe points out, smiling, and Reid's mystified by how he can be so calm about this. "Hey, besides, can you think of a better way to protect me than keeping me this close?"
Reid swallows. He hadn't realized Joe kept a hold on his tie this whole time until now. He feels a slow tug on it, as if Joe's emphasizing their proximity.
"I'm just - I'm a bit worried, you know..." he begins, stalling the inevitable, and Joe kisses him again, sweet and quick. "We're in a hot tub," he continues, only just managing to state the obvious before Joe repeats the motion. There's the unmistakable tang of chlorine on his lips. "And it's, uh." Reid's beginning to lose his train of thought here. "We're," he tries again between kisses, "pretty much exposed."
"We have cops posted out front," Joe points out, and their torsos are pressed together now, Joe's bare skin slick against the drenched fabric of Reid's shirt.
"Yeah, like a million feet below us," Reid retorts hysterically.
Joe nips at his lower lip and then kisses him bruisingly until both of them are breathless. It really isn't fair of him to do this when Reid's trying to tell him something.
"Unless the unsub is Spiderman, I don't think we need to worry about him scaling the building," Joe says seriously.
(Okay, so it's a nonsensical argument, and if there's one thing Reid knows about unsubs it's that they should never be underestimated, but Joe looks so happy right now, so hopeful, and he's been through so much in such a short period of time and, God, Reid just wants him.)
"Stop," he says, pulling away, and a part of him hates himself for it but he can't keep the secret about Big Rob any longer, not after this. "There's something I need to tell you."
--
Joe takes the news about as well as Reid would have expected - which, needless to say, is not terribly well. He raises himself up out of the hot tub and Reid begins to scramble after him, but one glare stops him in his tracks.
"Don't," Joe says - just one word, just Don't, and his lips look flushed from the force with which he kissed Reid, with which Reid kissed him.
It's all Reid can do to stammer out an apology that he's not even sure Joe hears, judging by the speed he storms, dripping wet, into the house. Reid stands motionless in the hot tub for a few moments, shirt heavy and weighed down with water, before putting his head in his hands.
--
He stays out there for about ten minutes, busying himself by stripping off his shirt and wringing it out over the hot tub. He wishes he'd brought his go-bag with him, but he didn't anticipate needing a change of clothes. This was supposed to be a straightforward pit stop for Joe to pack and get things in order before leaving for the safe house, not... not what it had ended up becoming.
He jumps as the glass door slides open and Joe pads out onto the balcony in a bathrobe that's several sizes too big for him, eyes rimmed with red. Reid suddenly doesn't know what to do with his arms, so he drops the shirt next to the hot tub and jams his hands into his wet pockets with a squelch.
"Are you still..." He trails off. Are you still mad at me? is less federal agent and more sixth-grader than he should be going for. "Are you okay?"
"Big Rob... has been everywhere with us," Joe says dully, "since, like, forever. He joined our family in 2007. My younger brothers basically grew up with him around. For real."
"I know," Reid says. He really does (Feggans was never a serious suspect, but the team had checked him out anyway to see if anything popped), although he's going for more of an empathetic I know than a Yes, you are factually accurate one.
"How can he just be..." Joe's eyes are glassy, and although they're aimed in Reid's direction it feels as if Joe's looking straight through him. His expression darkens. "Did they get the guy?"
"Not that I know of," Reid responds carefully. "Although my phone is inside, so..."
Joe turns and walks back into the apartment again, leaving the door open this time, which Reid assumes is an invitation. The other man keeps going, right through the living room and into the bedroom, and Reid stands awkwardly, trying not to drip all over the floor until Joe returns with a hoodie and some sweatpants.
"Thanks," Reid says cautiously, and Joe doesn't reply, just curls into himself on one end of the big couch, looking away from Reid and out into the dark night.
Reid considers going into Joe's room to change, but he's not sure that would be okay anymore so he ducks behind a really large, really ugly floor lamp and shimmies out of his wet clothes right there in Joe's living room, watching the other man the whole time. Joe never moves, never glances at him once.
"Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if our careers hadn't taken off," Joe says after Reid finishes, abruptly breaking the silence as he stares off into the distance.
Once again, Reid isn't sure what to do. He sits uncertainly on one arm of an armchair, and the motion dislodges a droplet from the end of a tendril of his hair. It slides wetly between the borrowed hoodie and his bare skin, and he barely manages to hold back his gasp.
"Like, what if we hadn't been signed as a group act?" Joe continues absently. Reid wonders if he's even aware he's speaking aloud. "What if the past seven years never happened and Nick was the only famous one, and he commuted to New York to be on Broadway and we'd all still live on Lakewood or at least go back there for the holidays, and we'd have graduated from St. Elizabeth's and we'd sing in church on Sundays but it wouldn't be our whole lives, it wouldn't be what people knew us for, and I could be a photographer or a small-time director or just have like a nine-to-five job, and maybe I'd be happy with that, you know? And then Big Rob would be alive even if I didn't know him, and Nathan would be alive, and Wally, and Clayton..."
He trails off, swallowing furiously, his Adam's apple bobbing with emotion, but Reid isn't paying attention to his words anymore - he's staring at the picture, the collage above the couch, and repositioning the ribbons of paper in his mind.
"You said Lakewood?"
Joe turns to look at him. "Huh?"
"Lakewood Drive?"
"...Yeah, Lakewood Drive. How did you -"
"Right there." Reid stands and points to the bottom of one of the ribbons. There's a sliver of a street sign there, just the OD and the DR upside-down, but that's what it is, it has to be. "I need to take this thing apart."
"What?! Look, Parker gave that to me, I don't -"
Reid's blood runs cold. "Parker as in my Parker?"
Joe looks at him questioningly.
"I mean, gallery Parker? Parker from the gallery? The guy who introduced us?"
"Yeah, I - Parker Dunley, yeah. Why do you...?"
Reid bolts for his phone.
--
Reid soon finds himself standing at Joe's kitchen table, trying to fit the strips of the dismantled collage together in a way that makes sense. The OD DR did turn out to be a street sign, and he'd found the IVE hidden elsewhere in the artwork, near the partial crest of the school Joe attended before he and his brothers got too famous.
Joe stands to the side and watches silently, looking oddly vulnerable in the bathrobe he'd donned after the hot tub incident. He isn't actively participating, but when Reid comes across something of indeterminate significance, he turns to Joe and Joe explains. The most chilling is probably the ripped photo of a clock radio - Joe's clock radio, from when he lived with Garbowsky and another roommate, Jack Lawless. The clock is pictured at 7:05, which Joe informs him was the name of one of the songs on the Jonas Brothers' debut album.
"Joe, it looks like you've been stalked for years," Reid says gently. "This guy's been inside your apartment, your dressing rooms... This collage tells your whole life story. Everything since you and your brothers formed the band."
Joe frowns and shakes his head. "That's not possible. I would have -"
"Excuse me." Reid's cell lights up and he answers on the first ring. "Did you find him?"
"It's not Parker." Gideon sounds uneasy, unbalanced, the way he gets when there's been a break in a case but there are still some loose ends dangling in the wind. "It's Gregory Garbowsky. He's the unsub. He's in the Jonas Brothers' live band and he used to be Joe's roommate. He gave Parker the collage to give to Joe and told him to keep its origin a secret. We're trying to get a location on him now."
Stunned, Reid shuts the phone, and Joe looks at him questioningly.
"The guy at the studio when I was there - Gregory Garbowsky?"
"Garbo?"
"Yeah, we think he's -"
"Wait a second." Joe frowns and grabs his vibrating phone from the table next to him, eyes widening when he sees the display screen. "That's him. He's calling me right now."
"Is he calling from a cell phone?"
Joe barks out a disbelieving laugh. "Yeah, are you kidding me? He spent more of the past few years on tour than at home. I don't think he even has a land line."
"Okay, listen to me, we think he's the unsub."
The disbelief on Joe's face crystallizes into a frozen, skeptical smile. "No way."
Reid knows he doesn't have time to convince him and elects to prep him for the call instead. "Answer the phone, act natural and try to keep him talking. The longer you keep him on the line, the more likely we'll be able to trace the call."
"The call from Garbo?" Joe echoes, staring at Reid as if he thinks the other man's crazy, and Reid reaches out and touches his arm.
"You need to trust me," he says seriously, hoping the fragile bond they'd wrought before everything got messed up will be enough to get Joe to do as he asks.
Joe hesitates for a second before nodding definitively and picking up.
--
"Hello?"
Reid moves off to the living room to call Garcia, but he can hear Joe repeating Garbowksy's nickname, asking if he's there, before his own call is answered.
"Oracle of Quantico; speak if you deign to hear truth."
"Garcia, I need an emergency trace on a call to Joe Jonas' cell phone."
"Sure." Garcia's suddenly all business, and he can hear her fingers flying over her keyboard. "Go ahead."
He reads her the number, turning to glance at Joe, who looks stricken.
"What do you mean, you're tired?" Joe asks into the phone, sounding lost. There's a look in his eyes like his whole world's come crashing down around him - which, in a way, it has. Not only has his bodyguard been murdered, but it's looking like one of his best friends is the killer. "I... Garbo, how can you miss me? I saw you today."
Reid motions to keep him talking, and Joe nods.
"What do you mean, you miss the way it was? I have no idea what you're talking about." Pause. "I... yeah, I remember that, but, Garbo, that was one time, that didn't -"
"Reid?" Garcia's voice interrupts his eavesdropping. She sounds shaken. "The call is coming from the same address as yours. He's calling from inside the house."
He drops the phone halfway through Garcia's assurance that she'll get him some backup.
"Joe, how would he get in the house?!" he demands.
Joe turns around slowly, phone still pressed to his ear and a look of abject fear on his face. "He has keys."
--
Reid draws his gun and makes for the bedroom with Joe falling into step behind him. If Garbowsky's holed up anywhere, it would be here - a room that's no doubt centrally featured in his fantasies about Joe - but his hiding place is a good one. He senses movement behind him and spins around to find Garbowsky aiming at Joe's head with a gun.
"Why did you have to bring these people here?" Garbowsky asks Joe, before turning to Reid. "Put down the gun."
Reid obliges. "Garbo..." he begins.
"Don't call me that. You don't know me. Come on, Joe, let's go."
Joe's looking at Reid with huge, scared eyes, and all Reid wants to do is charge in and save him, but he knows he has to be smart about this for any of them to have a hope of getting out alive.
"You don't need to hurt him," he tells Garbowsky quietly.
"You don't know anything." Garbowsky's chiseled good looks are twisted into an expression of ugly, wild-eyed intensity. He pets Joe's hair, pushing it back behind his ears. "I would never do anything to hurt you. I created you."
Joe, to his credit, remains calm. "We created ourselves, Garbo. Me and my family. My dad put our band together, and my solo act is all me. You're just our bass player; you didn't create me."
"Yes. I. Did." Garbowsky's voice is terrifying now, incredulous and outraged. Reid swallows. The situation could get volatile very quickly. "I was with you from the beginning, Joe, God, you ungrateful - I can't believe I loved you."
The gun is still pointed at Joe's head, and the hand it's being held with is trembling with rage. Reid grabs his chance to defuse the situation - or, at the very least, get the gun pointed away from Joe.
He clears his throat. "Garbo, he, uh... he loves me now."
The plan works just as he thought it would. Garbowsky instantly turns the gun on him, a look of disbelief on his face. "What?" he demands.
"He told me so, in the hot tub," Reid continues carefully, aiming to inject just enough truth to make Joe's reactions realistic. If this plays out the way he thinks it will, the knowledge will break Garbowsky. "He kissed me, and now he loves me, okay?" He looks at Joe. "Tell him we kissed in the hot tub."
The expression on Joe's face is heartbreaking. He looks at Reid fearfully, and Reid nods as reassuringly as he can.
"We did," Joe chokes out. "We kissed."
Garbowsky lunges at Joe and Reid pounces, grabbing the arm with the gun in it and twisting so the firearm discharges harmlessly into the ceiling. He tackles Garbowsky to the ground and points the gun at him.
"Don't move," he orders, and Garbowsky's crying now - huge, wracking sobs that shake his whole body as he begs Reid to take his life. Reid can see Joe in his peripheral vision, backed against a wall with his hands over his face as they hear people breaking down the apartment's front door..
"We're going to get you help," Reid tells Garbowsky, lowering the gun and putting a hand on his shoulder.
--
Part Two.
Author: that_1_incident
Fandom: Criminal Minds/Jonas Brothers
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Death of a minor character. Type Four delusional assassin. Joe Jonas.
Pairing: Joe Jonas/Spencer Reid
Word Count: ~16,750
Summary: This is a riff on a "Criminal Minds" episode - a redux, if you will, of 1x18, also known as "Somebody's Watching" (or, if you're like me and enjoy assigning "Friends"-esque titles to things, The One When Reid Falls Into A Pool). Essentially, Joe's being stalked by a psychotic killer who shoots people in the head, Reid and the gang investigate, and there are some surprising developments along the way.
Disclaimer: Much of the storyline and a significant portion of the dialogue were borrowed and adapted without permission, along with the "Criminal Minds" characters themselves. The lyrics at the beginning are from "Every Breath You Take," written by Sting, and those sampled later on are from "Make You Mine" by Claude Kelly, Nate Hills, Marcella Araica and Joseph Jonas. The title is a lyric from "Somebody's Watching Me" by Kennedy Gordy and Curtis Anthony Nolen. None of this is real.
Author's Notes: This is likely the only Joe/Reid fic on the Internet, potentially because the pairing is too brilliant for most to conceive of but more probably because it's ridiculous.
---<---<---@
Every single day and every word you say
Every game you play, every night you stay
I'll be watching you
Oh, can't you see you belong to me?
Reid's not sure he likes Los Angeles.
It's not too far from Vegas, geographically speaking, but the air's different, somehow, along with the aura of the people. Sure, the Vegas strip has bright lights and the incessant ching ching ching of slot machines, but LA seems flashier somehow - shallower, more extroverted, if a city can even have a personality. He wonders how one would go about profiling a city, and his pensiveness must show on his face because Gideon gently touches his arm as their car pulls to a stop, like he thinks Reid won't notice on his own.
"We're here," Gideon says, and Reid blinks as if waking from a dream, straightens his tie nervously and slides his long legs out of the vehicle. The two of them are in LA on business, but Reid's school friend owns a gallery in the area and Reid said he'd drop by. He's not really an art person - he deals in science, in absolutes, definitive answers where x equals one thing in particular and nothing else - but his New Year's resolution was to be more social, so, here he is.
Truth be told, he hadn't realized how hard it would be to switch off from BAU mode until he'd had to do it. It'd been so long since the last time, which probably contributed to the difficulty, but it makes him remember something Elle said once - about how, with a job like this, you can put your head down to work and glance up to realize twenty years have gone by. Sometimes he sees this... this syndrome threatening to manifest itself in his team members; other times he thinks he sees it in himself, and he's not sure which is more terrifying.
Parker picks him out of the crowd, yells his name and comes over to envelop him in an embrace he's not quite comfortable enough to return. He looks "just the same," apparently, as if he hasn't done more than a decade of growing since they last saw each other - he's just the same old Spencer, only a bit more frayed around the edges.
"Spencer was the only twelve-year-old in our high school graduating class," Parker explains to Gideon, shaking his head and echoing, "Just the same."
"Thanks," Reid says awkwardly, attempting a smile. He's not sure it's really a compliment but doesn't know what else to say.
The three of them engage in small talk for a few moments, and Parker's in the middle of a noble attempt to hawk some of the gallery's contemporary art to Gideon when a man walks into the room whose very presence steals everyone's attention, or so it seems to Reid.
"Joe," Parker calls warmly, striding over to shake the man's hand and beckoning for Reid and Gideon to follow.
Reid has more pressing things on his mind, though, and glances back at Gideon. "Do I look twelve years old to you?"
"Fourteen," Gideon deadpans, and Reid purses his lips for a moment before wandering over to give the newcomer a crooked half-grin.
The man - Joe - appears to be about Reid's age, but exudes a considerably more self-assured air (which isn't difficult, Reid supposes a little self-deprecatingly). He looks dapper in an impeccably-fitting black suit with a somewhat shiny quality to it that Reid is quietly entranced by, and his eyes are a shockingly deep brown, dark and intense.
He leans toward Reid to introduce himself, and Reid wonders whether the name Joe Jonas ought to mean anything to him. The intensity of Joe's eyes combined with the warmth of his hand and startlingly firm handshake lead Reid to stutter in reply.
"Hi, I - I'm, uh, Dr. Spencer... Reid?" he says like it's a question, even though he's pretty sure it's his actual name. "You... you, uh. I'm Spencer. You don't have to call me Doctor."
Honestly, being addressed as anything other than Reid at this point makes him mentally balk, but about the only way to make this exchange more awkward is to tell the guy to call him by his last name, so Spencer will have to suffice.
Joe nods slowly. "I won't," he confirms wryly, and there's what looks like a twinkle of amusement in his eyes, although Reid doesn't recall saying anything funny.
Reid's vaguely aware of Parker moving off to deal with a stray paparazzo snapping photos of Joe - who, apparently, is kind of a big deal - and Gideon gets pulled aside by a woman Reid thinks he hears introduce herself as one of the artists. She looks at Gideon with hungry, predatory eyes, and Reid maybe feels a little bit sorry for him. Joe, meanwhile, seems content with sticking by Reid for the immediate future, for a reason Reid can't begin to fathom but isn't all that interested in protesting.
"So, you're not from around here, are you?" Joe asks, his face relaxed and open.
He's either genuinely interested or extremely good at faking it. As a celebrity, one must become skilled at the latter rather quickly, Reid imagines, then internally chides himself for his unwarranted cynicism. Somewhere among the dismembered limbs and pallid corpses, abductions and sexual torment, his trust in humanity had begun to waver. He'd quite like to reaffirm it, but he feels too old to do that now, like he'd be trying to recapture the myth of Santa Claus after running through the physics in his head and realizing the insurmountable improbabilities.
"Me? No, I'm, uh - we're running a training service about profiling for the Los Angeles Police Department."
"Profiling?"
"Yeah, I'm with the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI; we psychoanalyze crime scenes in order to gain a better understanding of the person who might have committed the offense."
"Psychoanalyze, huh?" Joe muses. "Are you doing that to me right now?"
Reid blinks. "What? No! I'm not psychoanalyzing you, I'm just..."
Joe grins at him and he leaves the sentence unfinished. "I'm kidding, man. You wanna go look at the artwork?"
Reid's about to ask What artwork? when he remembers his primary purpose for being there and shifts his feet awkwardly. "Oh, yeah! Yes, sure, I'd. That would be - yes."
He should probably work on formulating some complete sentences in his head prior to delivering them, because winging it in this situation seems to be resulting in things coming out invariably garbled.
Joe gets that look in his eyes again like he's trying not to laugh, and Reid can feel his face heating up. He hastily turns his attention to the nearest piece of art, a photograph comprised of cobalt blues and electric greens. It's aesthetically pleasing, he supposes, but he's not sure why anyone would want to hang it on their wall.
"Does it make you feel anything?" Joe asks, gesturing to it with a glass of champagne he'd lifted from a passing tray.
"Like what?"
Joe gives him a half-shrug, and the corners of his mouth quirk into a quizzical smile. "Hey, man, I can't tell you how to feel."
Reid takes a deep breath and a chance. "Well, right now I feel pretty good."
He's not - he doesn't really do flirting, but somehow he lets that slip out, and the way Joe raises an eyebrow makes his heart skip a beat and a tentative maybe rise inside him in spite of itself. Before Joe can reply, though, Gideon blusters over and announces they're leaving.
"We're still looking at the exhibit," Reid protests, doing his best to hide the disappointment in his voice.
"Now."
Gideon glances over his shoulder, looking vaguely hunted, and Reid surmises that he may have received some unwelcome attention from the artist. Either that or the paparazzo came back and is now after him, but while Gideon's a rock star in the profiling world, that doesn't exactly translate outside of it.
Reid turns back to Joe. "I - I guess we're leaving, so..."
"Reid, now."
Gideon is Reid's superior and Reid would normally obey him without question, but right now - right now, he's being a tad irritating.
"Nice to meet you," he manages, waving dorkily at Joe and then instantly regretting the action. After that, it's almost a relief to jog out of the gallery hot on Gideon's heels.
--
It's their last night in LA, and after the exhibit, Reid and Gideon both elect to go back to their hotel rooms and end the evening on a quieter note. Reid's been in the city for nearly a week and he still finds it strange to be staying here without the weight of a case bearing down on him. Usually he spends his nights in hotel rooms pacing, going over files, reexamining crime scene photos for anything that might have been missed before finally laying his head down for a paltry few hours before a crack-of-dawn start the next day. Relaxing is harder than he thought.
He has no idea what Gideon's currently doing with his time - turning in early, channel-flipping, going over the session notes to determine what can be done better next time - but he, somewhat guiltily, goes over to his laptop and types Joe Jonas into Google Images.
There are pictures of Joe with a number of different hairstyles: clipped short, like tonight, then long and choppy, and longer still with a shiny swoop of bangs over his left eye. In some, he looks terribly young - mid teens, maybe - and Reid suddenly feels uncomfortable looking in on his life like this. Joe's not an unsub or a victim, after all, and just because his photo is plastered all over the Internet, that doesn't give Reid the right to snoop.
He closes the computer with a knotted feeling in his stomach and cracks open a book on nuclear fission instead.
--
Their LAPD liaison, Detective Owen Kim, escorts them to their car the next morning and insists on driving them to the airport despite Gideon's protestations.
"I didn't invite the FBI here to let them make their own way around town," Kim says. "I can't thank you guys enough for conducting the seminar."
"Well, don't hesitate to call if there's anything we can help with," Gideon tells him, hauling his travel bag into the trunk.
As Reid follows suit, Kim's cell phone goes off, and he has a brief, terse conversation that piques both agents' interest. Gideon's more discreet about it than Reid, but Reid can tell in the way his shoulders stiffen slightly that he's eavesdropping on the part of the exchange he can hear.
"Everything all right?" Gideon asks after the detective hangs up.
Kim shakes his head. "Double murder at a Hollywood bungalow - a celebrity. A young actor, Nathan Ryan, and his fiancée were apparently shot to death. It's gonna be a major pain in the ass."
He sighs. Reid knows his department's been getting some bad press lately - the LAPD is overburdened, understaffed and one of its own recently hung the department out to dry in a widely publicized overtime lawsuit, so they likely need a high-profile case about as much as a hole in the head at this point.
"Hey, you guys care to take a quick look before I drive you to the airport?" Kim asks hopefully. "It's on the way."
"Absolutely," Gideon tells him, and Reid indicates his assent with a nod before sliding into the back seat.
--
Half an hour later, they walk into an immaculately put-together bungalow with magnolia walls, a tan carpet and a heavy oaken front door - immaculate, that is, except for the body of a young man lying prone on the couch and a woman of a similar age slumped, bloodied, at his feet.
"The male was shot execution style, once in the head; the female, three times in the torso," Reid notes as he and Gideon approach the bodies, wading through a sea of crime techs to do so.
"Two different MOs," Gideon echoes.
Kim walks in behind them, looking somber. He'd been outside talking to the officers who'd arrived on the scene first, and if possible, his expression looks grimmer. "We have an image on Ryan's video surveillance camera. He's unidentifiable."
"There's no sign of struggle between the male and the unsub from the door to the couch; the unsub most likely forced him at gunpoint," Reid says.
"He told him to trust him," Gideon adds. "Do what I say, and I won't hurt you."
"Fatal mistake," Kim comments.
Reid nods, elaborating, "He asked the victim to sit on the couch and then shot him in the head."
Gideon turns his attention to the female. "The fiancée wasn't expected. Her killing's messier. It's less controlled, less organized." He looks over at Kim. "What do you think?"
"We've had a couple of other cases like this over the past few months. Same type of weapon - a .22 caliber handgun. Both shot in the head. The first was an established film producer, Wally Melman, and the second was Clayton Harris, another young actor, although not as well-known as Nathan here."
"Any forensic evidence?" Reid asks.
"No. And the guys have been going through this place all morning and haven't come up with anything."
"He clearly knows how to cover his tracks," Gideon says.
Kim frowns. "Like a professional hitman?"
"Maybe."
Reid glances to his left, drawn by movement and flashes at a side window. "Uh... Gideon? There are people taking photographs of us from the next yard."
Kim, seemingly unfazed, looks up from the bodies. "Welcome to LA."
--
Although some more pieces of the puzzle are needed before the three crimes can be designated as serial killings, it certainly appears they're connected. At Kim's request, Gideon and Reid agree to stick around, and the BAU jet takes off for LA within the hour carrying the rest of the team. So much for relaxation time; not that Reid had been doing too much of that anyway, between assisting Gideon with the profiling class and Googling pictures of Joe Jonas.
On the jet, Hotch, JJ, Morgan and Elle work up the profile with Reid and Gideon on video link. The unsub had targeted the other two victims at sites they routinely visited - Harris while walking his dog on the beach and Melman outside a Culver City massage parlor at which he had a standing appointment every Tuesday. The familiarity with their schedules suggests the unsub stalked them for a while prior to their deaths, indicating he has the ability, as Hotch puts it, to hide in plain sight.
"The media's calling Nathan Ryan's murder the biggest celebrity homicide since Sharon Tate," JJ informs them.
"What does that mean for us?" Elle asks.
Hotch presses his lips into a firm, unsmiling line. "Everybody will be watching."
--
Once the rest of the team arrives in LA, they're able to further narrow the profile to a Type Four assassin, meaning the unsub suffers from a mental disorder that makes him - and it's almost certainly a him - frequently delusional. The key to catching him is to figure out the delusion before any more people die, which is set to be a tall order unless they can zero in on any more clues.
--
They hold a private briefing with Kim after they've drawn up the profile, but it's soon interrupted by a tall, heavy-set black male with a concerned expression on his face.
"Is there a Detective Kim here?"
"Right here," Kim answers.
"You're in charge of investigating the Nathan Ryan murder, right?"
Kim answers in the affirmative.
"My name is Robert Feggans. I'm a bodyguard, and one of my clients..." The man trails off, eyeing the team, and Reid gazes back impassively, used to the unnerving effect their presence can have. Feggans directs his attention back to Kim. "Is there anywhere we can talk privately?"
"We're all working this murder."
The man shifts on the balls of his feet. "Okay, well, uh. My client - he's waiting in the other room - just received a note that kinda rattled him. We're used to receiving crazy stuff, but this..."
He holds out a magazine article about Ryan's murder, complete with photo. The dead man's face is circled and scrawled across the text in blood red letters are the words YOU OWE ME in jagged, uneven script. Serial killers, like doctors, never seem to have good handwriting.
Morgan stands up instantly, recognizing the threat for what it is, and Reid follows him out of the conference room, across the bullpen and into a smaller room off to the side. Joe Jonas is there, nursing a cup of coffee and staring absently at nothing, and Reid does a double-take that thankfully escapes Morgan's notice.
"Joe, hi!" he exclaims, hearing his voice soften around the edges, and, wow, okay, so much for being stealthy. Morgan looks at him with this deeply confused amusement, as if to say, Who are you and what have you done with Spencer Reid?
Joe looks around in disbelief, the hint of a smile breaking through the worried lines of his face. "Spencer!" he says warmly, and somehow, from him, Reid's first name doesn't sound weird at all.
--
The rest of the team join Reid and Morgan quickly, and they soon get down to questioning Joe.
"How well did you know Nathan Ryan?"
Hotch kicks off the interview after all the necessary introductions have been made and Reid's done his best not to fidget when he's introduced as Doctor. Joe's eyes meet his and he looks drawn, tired, but there's still a friendly spark of recognition underneath it all. If they were alone, Reid might attempt a joke about how now might be an appropriate time to call him Doctor, so all things considered, it's probably best that they're not.
"Uh, Nathan and I were acquaintances, I guess?" Joe answers, sliding his gaze away from Reid. "We spoke when we saw each other in public, but we were never friends."
"How about Wally Melman?"
Joe looks clueless.
"Wally Melman," Elle echoes. "The producer who was killed a couple of months ago."
Joe's cluelessness gives way to confusion as he protests, "The paper said that was a robbery."
"The paper was wrong," Hotch responds brusquely. "Did you know him?"
"We met a few times about a project - I'm trying to get into acting - but I ended up not getting the part. They went a different way."
"Which way?" Elle questions.
"They cast, um..." Joe's face pales. "Oh, jeez."
Reid resists the urge to reach out and touch his arm. He really needs to get a hold of himself. "What is it?"
"They cast Nathan Ryan."
--
Joe can't think of a direct connection with Clayton Harris, but when Elle holds up Harris' headshot, the likely reason he was targeted immediately becomes clear.
"He looks a lot like you, don't you think? A potential rival."
"He was murdered too?" At Hotch's nod, Joe swallows hard. "So all these people are being killed because of me?"
"It's possible," Hotch hedges, never willing to put all his eggs in one basket.
"What does that mean for my brothers?"
Reid frowns in thought. "You have brothers?"
Joe stares at him. "Nick and Kevin?" he says slowly, like he's not sure Reid's for real. "We're the Jonas Brothers?"
Reid blinks. "Well, the unsub seems to be focusing on people he perceives as constituting a professional threat to you, which suggests your family wouldn't be of interest to him, but do they live in the local area?"
"Uh, Kev lives in New Jersey and Nick's starring in a Broadway show right now. And then there's Frankie, who lives with our parents in Texas."
"Nick's an actor too?"
"You really don't know?"
"Okay, we're getting sidetracked here," Morgan interjects, holding up his hands. "Reid, the Jonas Brothers is a band that's primarily popular among teenage girls." He glances at Joe. "No offense."
"That's fair," Joe says with a shrug. "But we're taking some time off from the band to work on our own stuff. For Nick, that's Broadway. For me, it's my solo project with some acting on the side. And Kevin got married not too long ago, so he's doing the whole stay-at-home thing right now."
So, Joe's in a boy band. Reid's not really up to speed on popular music, but he remembers the girls at his high school swooning over the Backstreet Boys and tries to imagine Joe dancing in a white suit.
He clears his throat. "As I said, given their geographic locations, I'm pretty confident they're unlikely to be targeted. The unsub seems to be focusing on people who reside in LA."
Joe lets out a sigh of relief. "Okay," he says, half to himself. "So my brothers aren't in danger. Okay, good."
Reid's kind of touched by the fact that Joe asked about the safety of his brothers before sparing a thought for his own well-being. He sees that a lot with parents of victims, with spouses, but not as much among siblings, unless they're especially close. He supposes working with one's brothers will do that.
"What - what about me?" Joe asks finally, looking like he's not sure he really wants to know the answer.
Reid knows he won't like this, but he has the right to know the truth, to be aware of the risk posed to him.
"The fact that he's contacting you indicates he believes you owe him something," Reid explains. "This model frequently concludes itself with one of two possibilities - either the stalker will kill himself, or he'll kill the object of his affection."
--
Hotch calls a briefing so they can get the local PD up to speed, and embarrassingly, Reid's unable to fully focus on the session. Joe's dark, worried eyes keep flashing through his mind as Hotch talks about their compound profile - a Type Four delusional assassin with an erotomanic fixation.
Morgan takes over to provide the definition of erotomania, and Reid forces himself to snap to attention.
"Erotomanics are a form of stalker who possess the delusional belief that another person, usually of a higher social status, is in love with them," Morgan's saying.
"In the United States at any given time, there are over 200,000 people being stalked," Elle continues. "Our unsub is having a fantasy love affair with the singer Joe Jonas, the way John Hinckley did with Jodie Foster."
"Mr. Jonas was not aware of his stalker until yesterday. The unsub wasn't trying to impress him; he was more like an unwanted, very violent guardian angel," Hotch explains.
"When stalkers feel as if they've been in some way betrayed by their love object, this often leads to violence against the target," Gideon adds, deferring back to Hotch to outline the specifics of the profile.
"Though stalkers can be either male or female, it's most likely we're looking for a single, Caucasian male in his mid-twenties to early forties, very intelligent, with ample time to follow his victim and study his habits."
Reid picks up Hotch's verbal thread. "As of yet, the unsub has not directed any violence towards Mr. Jonas, but he has shifted his focus from those around Mr. Jonas to him directly."
"This doesn't preclude the fact that anyone who has the vaguest association with Mr. Jonas is a potential target," Gideon notes. "The unsub appears to be keeping his focus local, so Mr. Jonas' family members are not thought to be at risk even though they're high-profile. However, as a precaution, they've been advised to stay out of Los Angeles for the time being. Now, does anyone have any questions?"
An officer Reid vaguely recognizes from the training sessions raises his hand. "So it's safe to assume this guy is a gay male?"
"Gay or bisexual," Hotch says mildly, "but his friends and family may not necessarily know about his predilections, nor might he make them obvious."
Reid squirms.
"So in other words, that doesn't help us narrow down the kind of person we're looking for?" the officer queries.
"Not really, no." Hotch sets down the file he's been brandishing on one of the desks the BAU commandeered for the presentation. "If there are no more questions," (he looks around; there aren't) "then let's get to work on catching this guy."
--
It strikes Reid as morbidly funny that not even twenty-four hours earlier, he'd been chastising himself for looking at photographs of Joe without consent, and now it's necessary to go through the man's entire career for clues to the unsub's identity. Now that the unsub's established contact, the team expects him to reach out to Joe again soon, so everyone's in what Hotch calls a holding pattern and the more chess-minded Gideon characterizes as waiting for their opponent's next move. They'd advised Joe to live his life as usual but keep them posted on his whereabouts, so right now he's at the studio working on his album and the team's at LAPD headquarters rifling through his professional history - or, at least, they are until Hotch's cell phone rings.
It's their move now.
--
Joe - I've always been so good to you.
Why would you go to the police?
Gideon reads the message off a piece of looseleaf paper that had been left under one of the windshield wipers of Joe's car and retrieved by a passing friend of his earlier that day. The team is holed up in one of the meeting rooms at the studio, poring over the note like it's the Rosetta Stone that holds the key to breaking the case.
"I'm intrigued by this particular version of the verb to be," Gideon comments.
"Past participle," Reid notes.
Gideon nods. "Steady state of being. Preceding adverb - always."
"In English?" Kim asks.
"That is English, actually," Reid chips in. "We're discussing the verb tenses of the -"
"Reid." He falls silent, and Gideon continues, "Our stalker sounds like someone Joe knows, based on the tense of the verb."
Morgan frowns. "Maybe it's time to get him off the street."
"You know, there's been no physical threat to him, so he might be safer just staying put as opposed to moving anywhere else," Reid counters.
"Uh, I'm right here, guys. I can hear everything you're saying."
Reid had honestly forgotten Joe was present, sitting in a chair at the other end of the table, the sleeves of his simple black hoodie pulled down over his hands. The left one is starting to fray, and Joe keeps worrying at the threads with his fingers.
"If we did remove you, we'd have to take you to an undisclosed location," Gideon tells him without saying sorry, as if the way he directly addresses him serves as apology enough. "I'm sure your stalker knows where you live."
"I'm not interrupting recording," Joe says firmly. "I want to get this thing out before the end of the year. It's like, I don't know, like my baby." He looks a bit embarrassed by the comparison, but there's a flush of pride there too. "I just wanna get it out into the world and show people what I created, you know? For the first time, it's something that's just mine."
Reid's not sure how to react to that sentiment, but he admires it. He doesn't say anything, and neither do his colleagues.
"Look," Joe continues, sounding frustrated. "I've decided that I'm not gonna be afraid of this lunatic. I'm not gonna let him affect me. So just tell me - am I safe here?"
"We're running background checks on all the staff, cleared the building of all nonessential personnel and have increased security at the gate," Kim answers. "In short, you're probably safer here than almost anywhere else."
"In that case," Joe says, abruptly rising from his chair, "I'm going back to make music."
Reid watches him leave, momentarily distracted by the small sliver of skin that's exposed where the hoodie doesn't quite meet the waistband of Joe's jeans. The door clicks shut, shaking him out of his thoughts.
"I didn't want to say anything in front of him, but the unsub's anger about Joe consulting the authorities suggests he might alter his agenda," Gideon points out. "Joe didn't go to the police alone."
"His bodyguard took him," Morgan says, nodding.
Now it's Gideon's turn to rise, pulling on his jacket as he does so. "You and Reid keep an eye on Joe. I'm going to talk to Mr. Feggans."
--
Reid's never been in a recording studio before, and it strikes him how oddly impersonal the album-making process is. Joe's in the sound booth alone, but three men are watching in addition to Reid and Morgan, two fiddling with dials and slides on the intimidatingly complex-looking piece of equipment in front of them while the other - the Jonas Brothers' bass guitarist; also the friend who found the note - nods his head along with the beat.
Tell me what you want and I'll give it
Just as long as you know where we're headed
Back to my place when it's all over, oh, oh...
Reid's not really a contemporary music person, but the song's nothing if not catchy, and it's obvious Joe's pouring himself into singing it. He even finds that he's tapping his foot at one point, much to Morgan's amusement.
Morgan himself seems more interested in the technical aspect of the whole thing and asks an inordinate number of questions, but nobody really seems to mind. The guitarist, on the other hand - Garbowsky, if Reid remembers correctly - appears content to sit back and survey the proceedings, and Reid follows his lead, watching Joe sing the song through a couple more times and then repeat certain lines until the sound guy and producer are satisfied.
"Take five while we mix those and then we'll see what we've got," the producer says into a microphone, and Joe nods from the booth before lifting the headphones off his ears.
There's a table at the back of the room with a coffee dispenser on it, in addition to water bottles and some kind of herbal tea Reid guesses is supposed to soothe Joe's vocal cords. Joe heads right to it and Reid feels vaguely conspicuous as he sidles up to the singer, clearing his throat to announce his presence.
"Sorry if I was... insensitive earlier," Reid begins haltingly. "We just, ah." He fiddles with the half-empty bottle of Diet Coke he's been nursing all afternoon and wishes being around Joe didn't tie his tongue in knots. "We kind of get wrapped up in the victimology sometimes," he manages, getting the absurd urge to award himself a prize for actually saying something intelligible. "I didn't mean to talk about you like you weren't there."
Joe shrugs. "You were just doing your job, right?"
Reid nods.
"Then there's no need to apologize, man."
Reid takes an awkward sip from the bottle just to have something to do with his hands, and they stand in silence for a moment before Joe drinks a little tea and makes a face.
"Ugh," he says, reaching for Reid's Coke. "You don't mind sharing with me, do you?"
His fingers brush Reid's as he takes the bottle without waiting for an answer, and Reid needs a second to process the tingly sensation this elicits before he can respond.
"No," he says weakly, and Joe grins at him before taking a long swig, pressing the bottle back into Reid's hand and heading over to talk to the producer. Reid haltingly puts it to his lips after staring at it dumbly for a few seconds, and becomes aware of Morgan ambling over to him just a few seconds too late.
The other man has a smirk on his face as he leans against the edge of the table in his cocky Morgan way.
"You don't mind sharing with me, do you?" he asks, and Reid, still drinking, only narrowly avoids choking.
"Shut up," he mutters, jamming the cap back on the bottle, and Morgan laughs and laughs.
--
Joe's back in the sound booth laying down some more vocals when Reid's cell phone rings with a call from Gideon.
"Feggans is dead," Gideon says without preamble, and Reid's breath catches in his throat, his eyes darting directly to Joe.
Joe's laughing into the mic at something the producer said to him, eyes glimmering with mirth as they had on the first night Reid met him, and all Reid can think about is how he'll ever find a way to break the news.
"Up until now, every victim was a person who could've been perceived as a threat. Feggans was an ally, a friend," he says quietly, glancing around to make sure no-one's in earshot, but they all appear focused on Joe.
"He was a threat to the stalker," Gideon points out darkly. "We have to get Joe to a safe house. Take him home, have him pack some things."
Reid's gaze finds its way back to the man in question. "He's going to be devastated."
Gideon's stern, businesslike tone softens. "I know."
It's probably not the smartest thing in the world for Reid to betray more than a professional level of concern for Joe, but the thing is, he can't exactly seem to help it.
"JJ's keeping it out of the press for now," Gideon continues. "Let's not tell Joe yet."
"Not tell him?"
"We need him to cooperate with us," Gideon says calmly, and Reid knows he's right but at the same time, how is he supposed to look Joe in the eyes and not tell him - basically lie by omission? "It'll help us protect him."
That, more than anything, gets through to Reid, but when Joe meets his eyes through the window of the sound booth and aims a goofy salute in his direction, he feels his heart plummet in his chest.
--
The plan is to deny the stalker access to Joe in order to draw him out. The team, including Morgan, chases down leads with Kim while Reid accompanies Joe to his apartment. There's a police cruiser already outside the building when they pull up, and Joe shrugs it off but has the grace to allow some of his nervousness to show.
He lives in a corner apartment high above the city that has two walls of solid glass for windows ("Inconspicuous," Reid mutters, and Joe grins and rolls his eyes). Modern furniture fills the space, and artwork, framed photos and movie posters add splashes of color to the stark white walls.
"I like your place," Reid murmurs, zeroing in on a piece that's hanging above the couch. Sometimes he can't remember what his own walls look like, he spends so little time at home. Lately when he gets a chance to go back there between cases, he's found himself vaguely surprised by the titles on his bookshelves, the tchotchkes on the kitchen counter.
"I'm barely ever here, but I like it too." Joe laughs, following Reid's eyeline. "That's a photographic collage. I like it because it's like life, you know? Obscure. Kinda fantastic."
Now it's Reid's turn to laugh. "There's a stalker after you and you think your life is fantastic?"
Joe shrugs and holds out his arms, gesturing to his surroundings. "I have all this, don't I?"
Reid doubts he'll be so chipper after he finds out Feggans is dead - Big Rob, as Joe calls him - and although a part of him aches to break the news just to get it over with, he knows he has to follow Gideon's orders.
"That's a good outlook to have," he says instead, meaning it, and Joe shoots him a grin that's wide and happy and completely unguarded.
They smile at each other for a few seconds, which makes Reid feel awkward and a little bit thrilled all at once, and then Joe breaks off to go grab them some drinks from the gleaming stainless steel kitchen. Reid's not sure whether to follow him so he ends up staying in the living room, tracing the fractured images of the collage with his eyes.
--
He's still looking at the collage when Joe comes back into the room shortly afterward, holding two mugs of steaming coffee. It's already dark outside, but neither of them is under any illusion that they'll be getting much sleep tonight, so the caffeine jolt won't be a problem.
With both hands full, Joe nudges Reid with his hip to get his attention, and although Reid was aware of him approaching, he still jumps slightly at the unexpected contact.
"Hey, listen, if you see any of the guys from the studio again, leave out the part of this whole mess that involves me drinking coffee, okay?"
Reid tilts his head, curving his hands around the hot mug. "You're not supposed to?"
"I'm encouraged not to," Joe drawls, making air quotes with the fingers of his free hand and laughing at himself. "It dries out your vocal cords or something. But I've been pretty good about avoiding it, and I'm basically done recording now, I think."
"Actually, it's not the coffee that's a dehydrant, but the caffeine contained within it," Reid points out. "Caffeine's a diuretic, meaning it provides a means of forced diuresis - fluid production - which elevates the rate of urination, and that kind of substance can, as you say, dry out your vocal cords. But some people are more sensitive to diuretics than others, and you seemed to be doing just fine at the studio after you drank my Coke, so I wouldn't be overly concerned."
Joe's staring at him with a bemused expression on his face.
"I would, however, recommend decaf," Reid concludes with a perfunctory nod, getting the vague sinking feeling that talking about elevated urination rates probably wasn't an appropriate tangent to take, and Joe's face splits into a smile.
His reaction reminds Reid of how Morgan gets around him sometimes - grinning, huge and goofy, about things he said that weren't even remotely funny. It's par for the course when dealing with Morgan but Reid isn't as sure how to react when it's Joe, although maybe he doesn't have to be because by now Joe's turned his attention to the collage.
"This make you feel anything?"
Reid gets an abrupt sense of déjà vu and for a second his mind transports him back to the art gallery, except this time there's no Gideon around to interrupt.
"It's definitely... appealing..." he manages uncertainly, not entirely sure they're only talking about the picture anymore. He clasps his mug tighter until the sensitive nerves at his fingertips start to prickle at the heat.
Joe leaves his side abruptly at that point, and Reid turns when he hears the other man's footfalls on the burnished wooden floor.
"What are you doing?" he asks, beginning to follow.
Joe puts his mug down, throws open one of the windows (which apparently also functions as a door) and strides out onto the balcony.
"Today was stressful. I need some hot tub time."
There's a note in his voice that would've led Reid to detect that there was more to it than that, had he not been too concerned for Joe's safety to pay the necessary amount of attention. Some profiler he is.
"What?! Joe, you can't!"
He hadn't noticed until now, but Joe's shorts have been replaced with a bathing suit. His quick-change presumably occurred while he was out of Reid's line of sight, purportedly preparing their coffee in the kitchen - which just happens to be next to his bedroom. Before Reid can say anything further, Joe pulls off his shirt and cannonballs in.
It's a - well, it's a hot tub, and a large one at that, although Reid hadn't recognized it as such at first glance due to the fact that it has a raised deck around it into which it's submerged. He saw the deck on his brief tour of the house earlier, but dismissed it as an outdoor bar or something.
Joe causes a pretty significant splash and some of the spray mists onto Reid's shirt, leaving dark speckles on the fabric. Reid winces, his hands fluttering against the frame of the open door.
"Joe, you cannot be doing this right now."
Joe tosses his hair back, the dark strands slicking against his head. "Come on, man, five minutes. You should join me. There are bathing suits in the bedroom; top drawer on the left."
Reid can't believe he's even hearing this. "We're supposed to stay inside!" he says shrilly. "You're meant to be packing so my team can take you to a safe house because you're being pursued by a psychotic killer who shoots people in the head! So, no, I will not join you!"
Joe rolls his eyes. "C'mon, live a little."
"Live a little?! I've known you forty-eight hours; I feel like I've already aged ten years."
Joe folds his arms defiantly, droplets clinging to the lashes that frame the huge dark eyes Reid's trying not to look directly into for fear his resolve will waver.
"I'm not gonna stop living my life," he says mulishly. "This guy - this unsub, whatever you call him - if I start changing the way I do things because of him, he's gonna think he's won."
Reid sighs. "I get it, all right? I do. But your security is paramount, and unfortunately right now that's going to infringe on your freedom. My primary responsibility here is to watch over you and keep you safe until the others get here."
Joe touches his hand to his heart, eyes sparkling mischievously. "Why, Spencer, I didn't know you cared," he breathes girlishly, that grin sweeping across his face again, and Reid feels his cheeks start to heat up.
They stare each other down for a few moments in a battle of wills before Joe drops his gaze and, sighing resignedly, glides to the edge of the hot tub.
"Fine," he says, sounding defeated. "Will you help me out, at least?"
Reid rolls his eyes, followed by his shirt sleeves, and leans down to grab Joe's hand.
Joe isn't big but he's muscular, and he also has the element of surprise on his side. As soon as his hand grips Reid's, his eyes glint impishly and Reid realizes he got scammed.
"Joe," he warns - quite fruitlessly, of course - and Joe lets out a whoop of delight as he falls into the hot tub with a terrific and terribly undignified splash.
--
The hot tub isn't deep, but it takes Reid a second to get his bearings underwater before pushing up to the surface, breaking the roiling meniscus with a splutter. Joe's laughing so hard it sounds like a cackle, but Reid's wet and cold and he liked this tie, damn it, and to top it all off, his FBI-issued gun is at his belt, which will be a really excellent thing to explain to the weapons guys back at Quantico.
"Yes, very funny," he says frostily, trying to salvage some shred of dignity by attempting to tuck his sodden curtain of hair behind his ears. "Laugh it up, Joe. Hilarious. And my gun's wet. This is great."
He fishes it out and water streams from the holster. Joe looks at him, then at the gun, then back at him again, cracking up hard enough that his glistening shoulders are shaking, and Reid stops being angry and starts thinking the whole thing is a little bit funny instead.
"My clothes..." he protests lamely, even as the laughter bubbles up in his throat.
Joe shrugs, sliding closer to him. "You should've worn one of my bathing suits," he veritably purrs.
Reid, who'd been tapping his watch experimentally to see if it was still working, huffs out a laugh and wonders briefly what Joe's true intentions were in proffering a suit earlier. He doesn't get a chance to respond further before Joe grabs his tie - hesitant at first, then more decisive - and pulls him forward, touching their mouths together.
It's at once a surprise and yet not. If Reid's honest, he's been dancing around Joe virtually since the moment they met, he just never thought anything would - y'know, come of it.
Joe's hand effortlessly molds against the back of his skull, and at the press of the other man's lips, Reid feels as if a huge weight of avoidance has been lifted off his shoulders. Something's definitely coming of it.
He pulls away reluctantly, their mouths making a smacking sound as they disengage. "This is completely inappropriate."
Joe cups his jaw tenderly and attempts to brush the hair off his face, a startlingly intimate gesture that makes Reid's insides flutter.
"Please?" Joe asks, voice suddenly soft and cajoling, as if Reid's a deer that - that stumbled onto Joe's woodland picnic or something, and Joe doesn't want to scare him away.
He tugs Reid in for more and Reid acquiesces helplessly. Their mouths meld and Reid even detects a hint of tongue on Joe's part before jerking away once again and trying to steel himself against Joe's wiles. This is completely inappropriate, and Joe's probably only experiencing these feelings for him because of the situation with the unsub. It's a common psychological reaction, but definitely not one he should be facilitating.
The other man's fingers are in his hair now, and as if of their own accord, Reid's hands creep up to tangle in Joe's. They kiss desperately for a couple more seconds before Reid breaks away again, shaking his head.
"No, see, there's this thing called transference..."
He's read definitions of the phenomenon in a thousand different books, the exact phraseology from all of them popping into his head simultaneously - his eidetic memory strikes again - but somehow they all feel as if they'd be falling short.
"You don't like me?" Joe teases.
"What? Are you cra - no, I, I do!"
"I like you," Joe admits coyly.
"I like you too!" Reid reassures him a tad too hastily to be suave, but playing things cool isn't exactly his most pressing concern right now. "Just, I'm a, uh, f-federal agent, you know, I'm supposed to... protect you."
"You said that already," Joe points out, smiling, and Reid's mystified by how he can be so calm about this. "Hey, besides, can you think of a better way to protect me than keeping me this close?"
Reid swallows. He hadn't realized Joe kept a hold on his tie this whole time until now. He feels a slow tug on it, as if Joe's emphasizing their proximity.
"I'm just - I'm a bit worried, you know..." he begins, stalling the inevitable, and Joe kisses him again, sweet and quick. "We're in a hot tub," he continues, only just managing to state the obvious before Joe repeats the motion. There's the unmistakable tang of chlorine on his lips. "And it's, uh." Reid's beginning to lose his train of thought here. "We're," he tries again between kisses, "pretty much exposed."
"We have cops posted out front," Joe points out, and their torsos are pressed together now, Joe's bare skin slick against the drenched fabric of Reid's shirt.
"Yeah, like a million feet below us," Reid retorts hysterically.
Joe nips at his lower lip and then kisses him bruisingly until both of them are breathless. It really isn't fair of him to do this when Reid's trying to tell him something.
"Unless the unsub is Spiderman, I don't think we need to worry about him scaling the building," Joe says seriously.
(Okay, so it's a nonsensical argument, and if there's one thing Reid knows about unsubs it's that they should never be underestimated, but Joe looks so happy right now, so hopeful, and he's been through so much in such a short period of time and, God, Reid just wants him.)
"Stop," he says, pulling away, and a part of him hates himself for it but he can't keep the secret about Big Rob any longer, not after this. "There's something I need to tell you."
--
Joe takes the news about as well as Reid would have expected - which, needless to say, is not terribly well. He raises himself up out of the hot tub and Reid begins to scramble after him, but one glare stops him in his tracks.
"Don't," Joe says - just one word, just Don't, and his lips look flushed from the force with which he kissed Reid, with which Reid kissed him.
It's all Reid can do to stammer out an apology that he's not even sure Joe hears, judging by the speed he storms, dripping wet, into the house. Reid stands motionless in the hot tub for a few moments, shirt heavy and weighed down with water, before putting his head in his hands.
--
He stays out there for about ten minutes, busying himself by stripping off his shirt and wringing it out over the hot tub. He wishes he'd brought his go-bag with him, but he didn't anticipate needing a change of clothes. This was supposed to be a straightforward pit stop for Joe to pack and get things in order before leaving for the safe house, not... not what it had ended up becoming.
He jumps as the glass door slides open and Joe pads out onto the balcony in a bathrobe that's several sizes too big for him, eyes rimmed with red. Reid suddenly doesn't know what to do with his arms, so he drops the shirt next to the hot tub and jams his hands into his wet pockets with a squelch.
"Are you still..." He trails off. Are you still mad at me? is less federal agent and more sixth-grader than he should be going for. "Are you okay?"
"Big Rob... has been everywhere with us," Joe says dully, "since, like, forever. He joined our family in 2007. My younger brothers basically grew up with him around. For real."
"I know," Reid says. He really does (Feggans was never a serious suspect, but the team had checked him out anyway to see if anything popped), although he's going for more of an empathetic I know than a Yes, you are factually accurate one.
"How can he just be..." Joe's eyes are glassy, and although they're aimed in Reid's direction it feels as if Joe's looking straight through him. His expression darkens. "Did they get the guy?"
"Not that I know of," Reid responds carefully. "Although my phone is inside, so..."
Joe turns and walks back into the apartment again, leaving the door open this time, which Reid assumes is an invitation. The other man keeps going, right through the living room and into the bedroom, and Reid stands awkwardly, trying not to drip all over the floor until Joe returns with a hoodie and some sweatpants.
"Thanks," Reid says cautiously, and Joe doesn't reply, just curls into himself on one end of the big couch, looking away from Reid and out into the dark night.
Reid considers going into Joe's room to change, but he's not sure that would be okay anymore so he ducks behind a really large, really ugly floor lamp and shimmies out of his wet clothes right there in Joe's living room, watching the other man the whole time. Joe never moves, never glances at him once.
"Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if our careers hadn't taken off," Joe says after Reid finishes, abruptly breaking the silence as he stares off into the distance.
Once again, Reid isn't sure what to do. He sits uncertainly on one arm of an armchair, and the motion dislodges a droplet from the end of a tendril of his hair. It slides wetly between the borrowed hoodie and his bare skin, and he barely manages to hold back his gasp.
"Like, what if we hadn't been signed as a group act?" Joe continues absently. Reid wonders if he's even aware he's speaking aloud. "What if the past seven years never happened and Nick was the only famous one, and he commuted to New York to be on Broadway and we'd all still live on Lakewood or at least go back there for the holidays, and we'd have graduated from St. Elizabeth's and we'd sing in church on Sundays but it wouldn't be our whole lives, it wouldn't be what people knew us for, and I could be a photographer or a small-time director or just have like a nine-to-five job, and maybe I'd be happy with that, you know? And then Big Rob would be alive even if I didn't know him, and Nathan would be alive, and Wally, and Clayton..."
He trails off, swallowing furiously, his Adam's apple bobbing with emotion, but Reid isn't paying attention to his words anymore - he's staring at the picture, the collage above the couch, and repositioning the ribbons of paper in his mind.
"You said Lakewood?"
Joe turns to look at him. "Huh?"
"Lakewood Drive?"
"...Yeah, Lakewood Drive. How did you -"
"Right there." Reid stands and points to the bottom of one of the ribbons. There's a sliver of a street sign there, just the OD and the DR upside-down, but that's what it is, it has to be. "I need to take this thing apart."
"What?! Look, Parker gave that to me, I don't -"
Reid's blood runs cold. "Parker as in my Parker?"
Joe looks at him questioningly.
"I mean, gallery Parker? Parker from the gallery? The guy who introduced us?"
"Yeah, I - Parker Dunley, yeah. Why do you...?"
Reid bolts for his phone.
--
Reid soon finds himself standing at Joe's kitchen table, trying to fit the strips of the dismantled collage together in a way that makes sense. The OD DR did turn out to be a street sign, and he'd found the IVE hidden elsewhere in the artwork, near the partial crest of the school Joe attended before he and his brothers got too famous.
Joe stands to the side and watches silently, looking oddly vulnerable in the bathrobe he'd donned after the hot tub incident. He isn't actively participating, but when Reid comes across something of indeterminate significance, he turns to Joe and Joe explains. The most chilling is probably the ripped photo of a clock radio - Joe's clock radio, from when he lived with Garbowsky and another roommate, Jack Lawless. The clock is pictured at 7:05, which Joe informs him was the name of one of the songs on the Jonas Brothers' debut album.
"Joe, it looks like you've been stalked for years," Reid says gently. "This guy's been inside your apartment, your dressing rooms... This collage tells your whole life story. Everything since you and your brothers formed the band."
Joe frowns and shakes his head. "That's not possible. I would have -"
"Excuse me." Reid's cell lights up and he answers on the first ring. "Did you find him?"
"It's not Parker." Gideon sounds uneasy, unbalanced, the way he gets when there's been a break in a case but there are still some loose ends dangling in the wind. "It's Gregory Garbowsky. He's the unsub. He's in the Jonas Brothers' live band and he used to be Joe's roommate. He gave Parker the collage to give to Joe and told him to keep its origin a secret. We're trying to get a location on him now."
Stunned, Reid shuts the phone, and Joe looks at him questioningly.
"The guy at the studio when I was there - Gregory Garbowsky?"
"Garbo?"
"Yeah, we think he's -"
"Wait a second." Joe frowns and grabs his vibrating phone from the table next to him, eyes widening when he sees the display screen. "That's him. He's calling me right now."
"Is he calling from a cell phone?"
Joe barks out a disbelieving laugh. "Yeah, are you kidding me? He spent more of the past few years on tour than at home. I don't think he even has a land line."
"Okay, listen to me, we think he's the unsub."
The disbelief on Joe's face crystallizes into a frozen, skeptical smile. "No way."
Reid knows he doesn't have time to convince him and elects to prep him for the call instead. "Answer the phone, act natural and try to keep him talking. The longer you keep him on the line, the more likely we'll be able to trace the call."
"The call from Garbo?" Joe echoes, staring at Reid as if he thinks the other man's crazy, and Reid reaches out and touches his arm.
"You need to trust me," he says seriously, hoping the fragile bond they'd wrought before everything got messed up will be enough to get Joe to do as he asks.
Joe hesitates for a second before nodding definitively and picking up.
--
"Hello?"
Reid moves off to the living room to call Garcia, but he can hear Joe repeating Garbowksy's nickname, asking if he's there, before his own call is answered.
"Oracle of Quantico; speak if you deign to hear truth."
"Garcia, I need an emergency trace on a call to Joe Jonas' cell phone."
"Sure." Garcia's suddenly all business, and he can hear her fingers flying over her keyboard. "Go ahead."
He reads her the number, turning to glance at Joe, who looks stricken.
"What do you mean, you're tired?" Joe asks into the phone, sounding lost. There's a look in his eyes like his whole world's come crashing down around him - which, in a way, it has. Not only has his bodyguard been murdered, but it's looking like one of his best friends is the killer. "I... Garbo, how can you miss me? I saw you today."
Reid motions to keep him talking, and Joe nods.
"What do you mean, you miss the way it was? I have no idea what you're talking about." Pause. "I... yeah, I remember that, but, Garbo, that was one time, that didn't -"
"Reid?" Garcia's voice interrupts his eavesdropping. She sounds shaken. "The call is coming from the same address as yours. He's calling from inside the house."
He drops the phone halfway through Garcia's assurance that she'll get him some backup.
"Joe, how would he get in the house?!" he demands.
Joe turns around slowly, phone still pressed to his ear and a look of abject fear on his face. "He has keys."
--
Reid draws his gun and makes for the bedroom with Joe falling into step behind him. If Garbowsky's holed up anywhere, it would be here - a room that's no doubt centrally featured in his fantasies about Joe - but his hiding place is a good one. He senses movement behind him and spins around to find Garbowsky aiming at Joe's head with a gun.
"Why did you have to bring these people here?" Garbowsky asks Joe, before turning to Reid. "Put down the gun."
Reid obliges. "Garbo..." he begins.
"Don't call me that. You don't know me. Come on, Joe, let's go."
Joe's looking at Reid with huge, scared eyes, and all Reid wants to do is charge in and save him, but he knows he has to be smart about this for any of them to have a hope of getting out alive.
"You don't need to hurt him," he tells Garbowsky quietly.
"You don't know anything." Garbowsky's chiseled good looks are twisted into an expression of ugly, wild-eyed intensity. He pets Joe's hair, pushing it back behind his ears. "I would never do anything to hurt you. I created you."
Joe, to his credit, remains calm. "We created ourselves, Garbo. Me and my family. My dad put our band together, and my solo act is all me. You're just our bass player; you didn't create me."
"Yes. I. Did." Garbowsky's voice is terrifying now, incredulous and outraged. Reid swallows. The situation could get volatile very quickly. "I was with you from the beginning, Joe, God, you ungrateful - I can't believe I loved you."
The gun is still pointed at Joe's head, and the hand it's being held with is trembling with rage. Reid grabs his chance to defuse the situation - or, at the very least, get the gun pointed away from Joe.
He clears his throat. "Garbo, he, uh... he loves me now."
The plan works just as he thought it would. Garbowsky instantly turns the gun on him, a look of disbelief on his face. "What?" he demands.
"He told me so, in the hot tub," Reid continues carefully, aiming to inject just enough truth to make Joe's reactions realistic. If this plays out the way he thinks it will, the knowledge will break Garbowsky. "He kissed me, and now he loves me, okay?" He looks at Joe. "Tell him we kissed in the hot tub."
The expression on Joe's face is heartbreaking. He looks at Reid fearfully, and Reid nods as reassuringly as he can.
"We did," Joe chokes out. "We kissed."
Garbowsky lunges at Joe and Reid pounces, grabbing the arm with the gun in it and twisting so the firearm discharges harmlessly into the ceiling. He tackles Garbowsky to the ground and points the gun at him.
"Don't move," he orders, and Garbowsky's crying now - huge, wracking sobs that shake his whole body as he begs Reid to take his life. Reid can see Joe in his peripheral vision, backed against a wall with his hands over his face as they hear people breaking down the apartment's front door..
"We're going to get you help," Reid tells Garbowsky, lowering the gun and putting a hand on his shoulder.
--
Part Two.