I have no idea where this one-shot came from or how or why it formed. It just kind of popped into my mind. This story is meant to be set in season seven, and any information about criminals and disorders was based off of quick Google searches. Have a happy, angsty read! :)
"Oh, hold them up. Never do let them fall. Pray to the rust and the dust and the ruin that names us and shames us and claims us all. I guess it had to happen someday soon. Wasn't nothing to hold them down. They would rise from among us like a big balloon. Take the sky. Forsake the ground. Oh, other hearts were broken. Oh, other dreams ran die. And our golden ones sail on to another land beneath another a sky. " -James Taylor, "Never Die Young"
Everything came to a front when Miles Lewis sequestered himself in a corner of an abandoned housing development that was strewn with rusted equipment and various spare supplies. The scorching sun began setting, casting long shadows onto ghostly, half-constructed buildings.
The gun in Mile's hand trembled, and his sweat saturated locks clung to his forehead just above the crease in his thin eyebrows. His fingernails were chewed, his jeans tattered, and, for the first time since their chase began, Derek Morgan realized that their unsub had kidnapped, mutilated, raped, and killed five woman before he was old enough to drink legally.
"Put down the gun, Miles," Reid's hypnotically soft voice echoed off speckled walls. "Put down the gun so we can talk." Miles shook his head so forcefully that snot splattered against his upper lip.
"Not with them here." The kid glared at the team."And not with your gun." The young man's eyes were filled with hatred, and, on Reid's right side, Morgan's muscles tightened from his rigid position.
"Just focus on me," Reid instructed, already folding towards to ground like some dying flower. Behind him, Morgan heard Hotch exhale in frustration. Rossi's knuckles visibly whitened around his gun's handle. Seaver's eyes widened, but she said nothing, although she flinched when Reid dropped his gun onto the thin layer of sawdust covering the floor.
"Reid." Morgan gritted. Spencer made no outward sign to acknowledge that he even heard the older agent, and Derek clenched his jaw in anger.
"My gun's gone. It's just us now, alright?" Reid's voice was dripping with empathy. Morgan' stomach turned. This monster did not deserve compassion. He deserved a bullet between the eyes.
"They're still here." Miles emphasized. Reid nodded, and Morgan watched his pale skin flush. Sweat collected at the younger agent's hairline when Reid shuffled forward just an inch. Miles, however, noticed his movement, training his gun steadily in Reid's direction.
"You know they won't leave." Reid answered calmly. "But pretend they're not here. It's just you and me." Miles nodded methodically at Reid's words, surveying his thin profile with icy blue eyes.
"Take off your vest too." He demanded. "I want to know you're serious and I can trust you." A strange bout of peace settled over the small wooden box with its concrete floors, half-resurrected walls, and fragmented, white-washed ceilings. Through the oppressive heat, the murmuring and stirring of the usually stealth swat team stationed and waiting outside reached past the thin slabs.
"I can't do that." Reid deadpanned.
"I need to know you trust me!" Miles yelled. Reid hesitated, but then there was a stilted, pained sound the echoed through the room when Reid's hands fluidly pulled at the vest's sides, yanking the bulletproof clothing off with a sickening rip of velcro.
"Reid!" This time it was Hotch's voice that growled outwards, and Morgan set a fiery look to the now unprotected Spencer Reid. Even Miles looked surprise by Reid's actions, and he eyed the FBI agent curiously.
"Are you crazy?" Miles asked in a tone of disbelief. On Reid's other side, Rossi audibly answered in the affirmative. Reid's eyes shot to Rossi's for a moment before resting on Mile's once again.
"I can tell you why you killed all these women." Reid began and Morgan internally groaned. The kid was unarmed and provoking their unsub. At times like these, he wished Reid's brain didn't work on hyper-drive, leaving the rest of the team to play one warped game of catch up.
"You think you understand me?" Miles laughed, but the warmth did not extend to his vacant eyes.
"I know I do." Reid answered.
"Reid, I'm ordering you-" But Mile's stopped Hotch's instructions with a dare that prickled fear and goosebumps onto Morgan's overheated skin.
"Alright then, give it your best shot." Reid flicked his tongue over his dry lips before diving headfirst into mayhem.
"It's the only way you know how to feel sexually gratified. My guess is before you started killing those women you had rich, detailed fantasies about mutilating their bodies." Miles raised his eyebrows but remained quiet.
"But I'm sure you already know that," Reid nodded to himself, and Hotch exhaled angrily. Morgan wished he could send his boss an appraising glance, but Hotch wasn't in his line of view. There was no way he'd risk any sudden movement that could potentially cause Miles to retaliate with a series of flying bullets.
"What you don't know is why, right?" Miles nodded, captivated by Reid's inquiry.
"You do?" Miles questioned, eagerly absorbing every fold in Reid's truthful expression. Reid bit his lip, pretending not to see Rossi's face break into a warning. Seaver's eyes grew to the size of stoplights.
"You usually don't feel anything." Reid rambled as Morgan cringed. "But when you hurt, when you inflict pain on others, it's the only real time you're alive."
"Why?" Miles ordered more than he questioned. Reid's face morphed into a knowing mold.
"There's nothing that caused it really. Maybe it was a combination of genes, upbringing, and your environment, but it's who you are. You're a sexual sadist, Miles."
"A sadist..." Miles played with the word, rolling it off his tongue like it was an attractive foreign language he was attempting to learn before a trip overseas. Reid's head bobbed up and down.
"Can sadism be cured?" Reid twitched slightly, and Miles noticed his discomfort.
"So there's no way to fix me then?" Mile's voice was rising to a strong level of confidence and Morgan's body went numb. He knew what was next, and, judging from Rossi's rigid stance, he could tell the man had accurately assessed the situation too.
"There are some theories-" Reid began, but Miles did not give him a chance to complete the tangent.
"Then you'll understand why I have to do this." There was a suspended moment where Mile's gun pointed directly at Reid's chest. It was an area that would have been covered by Spencer's vest if it was still strapped to his lanky frame. Reid didn't even flinch, straightening his posture to stand to his full height. For the first time, Morgan realized how tall Reid really was.
"Go ahead, Miles." Reid dared in a flat tone. "Nothing's stopping you." A manic grin broke Mile's face into a shadowed form as his finger reached for the metal trigger. Seaver gasped, but the sound was covered by the ricocheting of four reacting guns.
No one said a word when Mile's body sunk to the floor, sending a plume of sawdust upwards in a slow-forming cloud. Hotch's hidden radio crackled to life and the swat team commander's voice broke into the room, piercing through the frozen members of the BAU.
"Do you need our assistance?"
"Not necessary." Hotch mumbled into the receiver with a slight tremble buried behind his words.
Morgan moved first, creaking downwards on aching knees to reach a shaking hand outwards to check Mile's deflated body for a pulse he knew would not be there. Reid watched the red liquid ooze from various holes as blood trickled and puddled around his feet.
"What the hell was that, Reid?" Rossi demanded, managing to find a shard of his normal composure before the rest of the team. From the floor, Morgan watched the older agent shove his gun into the holster clipped to his waist. Hotch and Seaver did the same, but Morgan didn't dare stand to return his gun to its proper compartment. Dried blood stuck to the fingers that had just been pressed to Mile's carotid artery.
"Nothing," Reid shot fire at his coworkers, pushing past a surprised Seaver and a seething Hotch.
"It was nothing." When he exited the door with a gust of stale air, Morgan met Hotch's burning, defeated gaze. Silence weighed the air. Morgan inhaled until his lungs burned with floating pieces of dust.
"Call the coroner." Hotch spoke into his sleeve, glaring at Mile's body before turning on his heels to stomp out the door frame.
"Are you guys alright?" JJ asked before reaching the team, and the faded sound of her concern wafted towards Morgan, pressing water to the back of his eyelids. She jogged closer, and he watched the media liaison's blond ponytail shift from side to side like the even ticking of a clock's pendulum.
"We're okay." Rossi reassured in a small, cracking voice. JJ stopped to catch her breath, clutching her aching ribs. JJ's ponytail was matted with sweat and the humidity caused a few errant curls to wisp her forehead, accentuating her cheeks that were flushed from the heavy summer air and her quick shuffle. The humidity felt so overbearing that Morgan felt his own lungs ache under the weight.
"Reid just ran out of the house. What's going on?" The team exchanged dark looks but no one answered the media liaison's question. JJ frowned and the motion contorted her smooth skin into a set of lines.
"I heard shots. Is Miles dead?" Hotch nodded yes. She puffed her cheeks with collected air, exhaling slowly before marching forward.
"Swats even confused." JJ argued, motioning to the heavily armed team the was just now entering the scene. Their dark uniforms contrasted the bright blueness of JJ's wide, worried eyes. Hotch sighed, beaten.
"We're okay, JJ." Seaver answered in an infliction that wobbled. JJ's unbelieving stare bounced between Rossi and Morgan.
"What happened in there?" She demanded, hands on hips and looking so much like a mother that, if this were any other situation, Morgan would have laughed. Instead, he pressed his lips into a thin line.
"I wish I knew." Rossi admitted, shaking his head bitterly while meeting Hotch's gaze. Three other sets of eyes fell onto the stoic, dark face that was lit by unwinding day. Against the gray surroundings, Hotch looked weary with exhaustion and his upcoming duties.
"I need to go talk to Reid." Aaron told his team. Rage and fear bubbled so quickly that Morgan allowed it to act for him.
"Hotch," His hand rested on the unit chief's shoulder. Under his palm, Morgan felt Hotch's muscles tense involuntarily.
"Let me do it." He suggested. The two men shared a knowing look, Hotch gave him a curt nod, and Morgan understood how upset Hotch was when he did not argue.
"Which way did Reid go?" Derek faced JJ, who, despite being confused still, pointed to a cluster of incomplete homes.
"Come on, Ashley." Morgan heard Rossi's calm, composed voice say when he turned to leave. "Let's go get some water. I'm dying for a cool drink." It made sense that Seaver was shaken. Although she had been on the receiving end of one of his rambled tangents, Ashley had very little experience with Reid's risky negotiation tactics. She hadn't seen his train magic tricks, watched his near-death live feed from a cluttered home in Georgia, had a shot blocked by his tall frame under the oppressive Texas sun, and she hadn't been petrified by set looks directed through the glass doors of an Anthrax-infested lab. Morgan clenched his teeth together again, realizing that this stunt had seemed way worse than any of his past ones.
"Hey," Morgan stopped an older police officer who was downing a bottle of water. "Have you seen Agent Reid?" The man's eyebrows met at a point in the middle of his sweat-encrusted forehead. Behind them, an ambulance's siren wooped as the vehicle came to a sudden stop.
"You mean the beanpole with a death wish?" The office asked. Morgan grimaced.
"Yeah. That's exactly who I mean." The rage threatening to erupt and seep from every burning pore strained Derek's voice with its presence.
"He went behind there." Morgan followed the extended arm down a mound of dirt to another half-finished home glittering in the last bits of sunlight.
"Thanks," he mumbled to the uniformed man before marching down the mound to find Reid.
Morgan managed to half-walk and half-slide down the embankment, slipping on loose rocks during his descent. He could tell that Reid had traveled this way by the long shoe lines etched into the dirt. It was cooler at the bottom of the hill than it was at the top, and Derek paused to catch his breath. Sweat drenched his shirt and Morgan wiped salty water off his face with a rough palm. Reid had to be close.
Training his eyes to the ground once more, he followed Reid's converse shoe imprints around the side of a home and a set of PVC piping. However, tracking the kid was pointless because the familiar scent of vomit permeated the air. Derek knew he found Spencer before turning the corner to reveal Reid leaning against slabs of stacked concrete.
"Watch out, Morgan," Reid said without the faintest trace of surprise. "I'm pretty sure I got sick over there somewhere." Anger sloshed against his veins, but Morgan watched his steps until he stood a few feet away from the younger agent. Reid surveyed his glistening skin, pausing to pass a clammy palm over his own beaded sweat. Behind him, the sun stretched a congealed band of purples and reds across the horizon.
"I figured Hotch would come." Reid mention, snaking a hand through his matted locks. Morgan frowned, attempting to keep his response at a normal decibel.
"Lucky for you then. I'm here instead." Reid tilted his head to one side, studying Morgan with an infuriatingly composed expression.
"So you're going to fire me then?" He asked. The rage Morgan had tried so hard to contain and conceal rocketed upwards before he had any chance of control.
"Fire you, Reid? You're lucky I don't kill you!" Reid blinked, and Morgan growled in frustration.
"What the hell was that, man?" Morgan gesticulated towards the home where Mile's dead body was lining the floor. Reid's gaze narrowed and his lips puckered into a taunt ball.
"What the hell was what?" He argued. "I was trying to end everything without killing someone." The laugh that escaped Morgan's lips was ruthlessly cold.
"It didn't look like that, Reid. It looked like you had no idea what you were doing." Reid blinked long eyelashes that fluttered downward before meeting Morgan's stare. The hazel orbs burned, and Morgan knew he could push.
"I knew what I was doing," he mumbled. Morgan huffed again.
"One of the cops said you had a death wish." Reid hunched his shoulders towards the melting sky.
"Is that true, man? Do you have a death wish? It sure seems like you do..." Morgan's words were harsh and the enraged tone splattered years of anguish off the wooden walls and concrete barriers.
"Are you kidding, Morgan?" Reid spat, laughing with a slight shake but no sound. "We all have a death wish. Only crazy people would do this damn job." It was rare that Reid said the word crazy, and Morgan felt his fury begin to boil with traces of fear.
"Then what the fuck were you thinking?" Reid pursed his cracked lips together. Sweat dripped and burned into his eyes. Morgan held his stare, his chest rising and falling with constricted anger.
"I was thinking that we see too much death." Reid's lips responded too quickly and forcefully, and Morgan caught the cover before Reid could pass it off as the truth.
"Don't lie to me, Reid." He threatened. Reid smiled so tightly his cheeks momentarily pinched with white.
"Or what, Morgan?" He whispered tauntingly. "What are you going to do?" There was a suspended moment when Derek saw his hands reach outwards. He knew by the gruff sound of his labored breathing and Reid's surprised gasp that he had made contact, yet, when he came to his senses, he had no idea how, when, or why Reid was pinned between his arms and the large stone slabs.
"Go ahead then," Reid dared with a dull, vacant expression, leaning forward so Morgan could see the the red bloodshot branches lining the whites of his eyes. "Hit me." Underneath his hands, Reid's body trembled, although Morgan recognized that Spencer was far from scared; instead, his confident, seething tone told him that Reid, in every sense of the matter, was provoking Morgan's easily instigated temper.
Bile rose, shooting into his esophagus, and Morgan dropped his laden arms, stumbling backwards in attempts to catch his balance and oscillating self-control. Reid lurched forward, stopping his propelling body from falling with waving arms. For a moment, Morgan rested his hands and weight on his knees, blasting spurted breaths onto the dust covering his black boots. When he finally drew to his full height after what could have been minutes or years, he was surprised to see Reid watching him with a guarded expression.
"Reid..." Morgan didn't know what to say, and he ran his hand over the base of his tense neck. Reid nodded, swallowing deeply. Morgan watched his Adam's apple rise and bob.
"I deserved that," the younger agent admitted while flicking his eyes to the ground and then back to Morgan's softening gaze. "I'm sorry." Morgan bit his lip.
"What the hell is going on, kid?" The fury left the minute it rocketed Morgan out of the realm of control, and he internally eased. Now, worry trickled ice to each one of his limbs.
"I'm not sure anymore, Morgan." Reid confessed, shoulders drooping and head facing downwards. "I thought I could handle that unsub." Morgan sighed and the sound lingered between the two men.
"You know better than that, Reid. I think you almost gave Seaver a heart attack. You're lucky Hotch didn't kill you himself." Reid nodded in understanding, body sagging with remorse. The sunset signaled an end of another day, but the familiar, old burning in his gut told Morgan that he had been here before.
"I think I want to be let go." Reid stated, meeting Morgan's wide eyes with vulnerable ones. "I think I pushed too far because I, subconsciously, wanted to give Hotch a reason to fire me."
"What about the rest of us, Reid? We're a team." He emphasized, watching Reid's face contort with sadness.
"No we're not. We haven't been in a while." The insinuation stole Derek's breath. He sucked on the thick air, but his lungs remained twisted together. Of course this darkness was behind everything.
"I miss her too, Reid." Morgan mentioned so quietly he wasn't sure Reid heard. The younger agent's body fell against the concrete block and his eyes remained cast downward.
"It's more than that, Moran." Sweat trickled down Morgan back, collecting just above his belt buckle. His stomach lurched violently at Reid's half-confession.
"I can't sleep. My thoughts are all jumbled. My headaches are worse. I see her everywhere." Reid shot a lost look through humidity, and it took all of Derek's stored willpower not to release the fiery pools surging at the back of his eyes.
"You need to talk to someone, Reid. You'll never move on if you don't." Reid nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets before removing them once more.
"It's not really worth it anymore. Talking doesn't help. I'm not sure anything does..." Reid resolutely stared at ground in a way that told Morgan that these voiced thoughts were not new. They had been circling the man's minds for months and it had taken one wild negotiation for the barrier to drop.
"It is, though. She wouldn't want us to lose ourselves, Reid. You know she'd want us to move on and to live. She'd want us to lean on one another for support." What Morgan wanted to say, but couldn't verbalize, was how much Reid's previous words stung. Reid whole body shivered violently.
"I'm not sure I want to try anymore." Reid admitted, staring directly into Morgan's eyes with a look that made his flesh dance. Sweat pooled at the base of Morgan's neck, but he didn't dare move. The world felt crushing.
"Reid-" Morgan began before being interrupted by a strange turn of events. Without warning, Spencer reached for the gun strapped to his waist. Morgan's hand flew to his own weapon, hand hovering about the holster. Reid eyed him for a moment before opening the chamber and dumping metal bullets into the air. The tin ovals thunked against the dry ground.
"Take this," Reid ordered, shoving his glock into Morgan's hands. "This too." In another flash, his credentials weighed Morgan's unsuspecting palms.
"Reid?" Morgan stated, but his tone rose to a question at the end. Burning hazel balls met his confused looks with a steady hold.
"I can't do this job anymore, Morgan." Reid backed away slowly, meeting the stone pile with his back once more. Morgan let the items in his hands fall and the objects clattered emptiness off the molds of surrounding homes.
"Reid..." Morgan was reaching out again, but, this time, his hands meet thick pockets of water-sodden air. Reid had already made it to the bottom of the dirt hill. Whatever was happening felt too strong, too surreal, and Morgan glanced at the discarded FBI badge for strength. His legs worked without his brain, and Derek sprinted to the mound's base before Reid could leave him for good.
"Reid! Stop!" Surprisingly, the younger agent obeyed with a tense set of muscles. One foot sat a bit higher than the others, poised to continue his forward momentum in an instant. Derek heard his breath pass over his lips in jagged gusts. Above the two men, the crime scene cleanup molded together in a fragmented mix of voices, squawking radios, and idling patrol vehicles.
"I'm sorry, Morgan." Derek heard the wobbling voice say, and, although Reid had not turned around to face him, Morgan knew the kid was crying by the way his shoulders heaved. With one stretch of the arm, he could forcibly make Reid spin to see his own teary cheeks, but, instead, the pleading words left his lips in a desperate attempt to set the world right again.
"I can't lose you too."
It was a sentence and a realization that Morgan only thought at his lowest, most insecure moments that usually found him at some dim bar counter, between tangled bedsheets during a sleepless night, in a darkened cemetery by a grave etched with a familiar name, or hunched over a pew in a deserted church as he prayed for some sign or absolution that he no longer believed would come.
Reid stood, petrified to the spot. His higher leg shook with tremors. He wanted to spin around and scream at Derek that he had not said goodbye, but, the thing was, he was never any good at running away. Reid opened his lips, closing them immediately. The older agent must have sensed his hesitation because Reid heard the unmistakable sounds of Morgan's exasperated sigh.
Ghosts swirled around Derek as he moved to flank Reid's side. His father was here, as was Buford, his lost childhood, Elle, Gideon, Hayley, and Emily. Aching shot through Morgan's body, yet he did not look at Reid, preferring the view of the crime scene, which was becoming less active as night approached.
"You don't have to do this alone, Reid." Derek's voice was soft. Reid ran a hand through his hair and sweat droplets scattered in all directions.
"I'm really tired." Spencer admitted. To his surprise, Morgan nodded in agreement.
"Me too, kid. Me too." The gruff voice revealed, and Reid turned to view Derek's cheeks, which were streaked with a mixture of rolling sweat and tears. Turning another gaze to the team stationed around a swat truck, Reid studied his coworkers from a distance as they stood, swigging cool water from plastic bottles while awaiting his eventual return.
"What do we do now?" He asked, poking dirt with his sneaker tip. Loose rocks broke apart and tumbled downwards. Morgan sighed again, titling his face upwards towards the day's diminishing light. A slight breeze tickled his cheeks with gusts of warm air.
"We keep moving, kid. We just keep going." The two men locked eyes and, Reid saw his own reflection in the dark stare. He nodded upwards to the sky and then to the ground, and this assertion was all Morgan needed to know order had been restored.
When Spencer wordlessly headed back towards the house, Morgan released the air in his lungs, desperately fighting the urge to sink to his knees in relief. It didn't take more than a few moments for Reid to collect the few bullets, his gun, and credentials, but, when he returned, his jaw was set into a hard series of lines.
Morgan shifted his gaze to Reid's tear-stained cheeks and flushed skin. The look that met his own was determined, reprimanded, and grateful. He gave Reid a small nod, watching how his angular cheekbones caught the last bit of the sun's hazy light.
"Do you think Emily's watching and looking down on us?" Reid asked, motioning upwards. It wasn't an intellectual phrase Morgan or Reid believed or voiced before, and Derek tried his best to hide his own doubt when he met the fierce stare with an equal one.
"No." Morgan shook his head while Reid's stares burned holes through the dark months behind them. "I think we're carrying Emily with us and she's holding us together." Morgan didn't know if he believed his last words, but it looked like Reid had garnered some strength and composure from them. The younger agent nodded, a determined expression lining his once innocent, youthful expression. Above the two men, the sky blended into an indistinguishable blur of shadows.
"Come on, Morgan. Let's go join the team." Reid said, and Morgan swallowed past the new lump forming in his throat. Together, the two men trudged up the steep hill, waiting for the time where they could once again stand on solid ground.