If he'd ever gone for men, Derek considers, he'd surely never have expected to go for a type so tantalizingly androgynous. So indubitably good. Then he has to take a moment to remind himself that he's never gone for men at all.
Morgan isn't sure when his view of the guy really changes, when he truly starts looking at him differently. He can only be sure of when he becomes consciously aware of it. Maybe he's always harbored feelings for Reid, but if so, Morgan remains ignorant of the fact up until the case in Los Angeles, and by that point he's been working with Spencer for three years. So he really doesn't know what the excuse for his prolonged ignorance is. It's when they catch Maggie Lowe stalking, and killing for, Lila Archer, that he looks at things differently. Up until the case in LA, Spencer Reid was just Morgan's friend; an endearing dork with whom he worked to put the bad guys away. But after they catch the unsub, after they return home to Quantico, things shift.
After hours, one desk lamp on and just the two of them to be illuminated by it, Reid asks him for romantic advice. Advice on how to proceed with a relationship with a woman. Morgan is glad to give him honest direction, more amused than anything else at the novelty of considering Reid in a romantic relationship with another person. It is the first time he's ever truly considered Reid in a sexual way. Not for himself, of course. Because Reid is skinny and awkward and a man. But all the same, telling Reid what to do with Lila makes Morgan very aware that not only does Reid have the potential to be sexually attracted to other people, but that other people have the potential to be attracted to Reid.
Elle had removed the film from the paparazzo's camera and gifted it to Reid to destroy. Morgan remembers hearing her when she'd muttered to Spencer that she'd done him a favor. No one ever gave a second thought to it when the film was dropped somewhere in the house, forgotten in the chaos of more dangerous things. Spencer had disarmed the unsub and the team had flown home the next morning.
So the undeveloped pictures go forgotten, and it is simply by chance that Morgan's the one to close out all the paperwork on the case, including signing for old evidence to be put into storage. The negatives are in one of the boxes that will be schlepped away, and before he can stop himself Derek finds his fingers curling around them. A raised eyebrow is all he gets from the guy working the archives, and Morgan leaves not knowing why he grabbed the film in the first place.
The developed pictures are clear and focused, shot on zoom with the lens of a very expensive camera, but still clearly candid and hurried. Morgan feels guilty looking at what he probably has no right to see. The shots are an extension of what he'd barged in on in LA. Shots of Reid, soaking wet and close to Lila in the pool. Intimate images of his hands on her arms, his lips on her lips. In one photo, steam rises from the illuminated water to surround the two in a gorgeous shot that could sell countless magazines. But the magazines would sell because of Lila's presence in the photos, not Spencer's, and it isn't a tabloid that has printed the pictures… it's Morgan. Derek thumbs through the images, finding that it's the angle of Spencer's jaw in the photos that he likes best; the conflicted pinch of his brow and the grace of his hold on Lila. Derek has never considered Spencer's potential to be a lover of women. But the photographs showcase his unguarded desire, vulnerable as it is, and Derek guesses that if Spencer had been given the opportunity to make love to Lila, he'd have done a thorough job.
Morgan makes himself a voyeur while sitting on the couch in his own home, knowing all the while that he's deliberately allowed himself to do this, to invade the privacy of his friend. Because some part of him knew what would be in the pictures. And guilt eats away at Morgan because he can't lie to himself well enough to conceal the part of him that knows: he wanted to see what he knew all along was in the pictures. It may make him ashamed, but it doesn't stop him from keeping them.
His apology for this slight is that after the case in L.A., Morgan stops making teasing remarks at work about Spencer's supposed lack of a love life. For a while, he stops making many teasing remarks at all.
Derek isn't a stupid guy by any stretch of the imagination. He knows that he is entertaining uncomfortable feelings about his coworker. And he even knows that he is, to the best of his ability, repressing these feelings. He's doing pretty well at it too, until the case in Georgia.
Spencer's abduction ruins all that. Derek will never forget the writhing sickness that infects his gut the moment he learns that Reid isn't around the back of the barn. He's able to inform Hotch of the situation and to continue doing his job as they fight to get Spencer back. He doesn't fall apart the way JJ does, at least not visibly. But that doesn't change the fact that watching Reid over a computer monitor, abused and defiant in his captivity, makes Morgan simultaneously want to rip Tobias Hankel's heart out, and to pull Reid into his arms and kiss every trace of the pain away. It kills him to look on, so helpless to do anything to fix the situation. Yet this very situation gives him a glimpse into the soul of a man who is clearly so much stronger, so much braver than Morgan has ever given him credit for.
Reid had been so brave. After the case Morgan has to remind himself that it was clearly much more than what he's been able to see in the videos. Realistically he knows that the revolver had been pointed at Spencer's face more than what they've seen, that the trigger's nausea-inducing click over into the next empty chamber had been faced head-on more times than anyone on the team wants to imagine. Reid has been beaten worse than what they saw on screen; the lingering bruises and abrasions to his body are evidence enough of that. Hotch says he regrets never having trained Reid on emotional control in the face of torture, but all Morgan can think is that Reid doesn't need training for what comes naturally to a good person like him. And Morgan knows he could never measure up. And he's never met anyone else who could either. Sometimes Morgan gets a strange feeling that there are no other good people in the world, that Reid's the last one left and Morgan has detected him with some special skill. He's persevered, so much kindness in him that even an evil psychopath with a gun can't snuff him out. All Morgan can do is be in awe of Spencer, and to want him even more than he did before.
They go home again, and still Morgan remains professional. He knows how he feels about the guy and he accepts it, but in his mind that is no good reason to go changing the flow of something that works perfectly fine. They all continue coming in to work. Hotch continues lacking a sense of humor and being forgiven for it, Garcia resumes her inappropriate nicknames for everyone, and Morgan goes back to teasing Spencer. For his rambling, his wardrobe, for putting too much sugar in his coffee… but not for anything remotely sexually or romantically-related. Those days of good-natured ribbing are over.
After the case in Georgia, it seems that nothing can diminish his expanded regard for Reid. Not even the things that maybe should. He doesn't feel any different when he walks in on Reid in his apartment bathroom after they've been decompressing from yet another stressful case over pizza and a movie. Seeing Reid's arm held taught and naked as he shoots up should make Morgan's heart seize with horror. And it does. But first it makes his heart swell with emotion for what he instantly knows the strong, beautiful man before him has been willing to struggle through silently and alone in order to continue doing his job. In order to protect everyone else before himself. It stands to follow that Morgan will question himself after tonight. Later he'll wonder: how fucked up is it that he first feels admiration, and only then horror?
A step forward across the tile has Morgan doing what Spencer cannot do for himself. The needle is obscene where it pushes through the skin. Reid's wide eyes on him are startled and clearly ashamed, while Morgan rushes forward and pulls the syringe from his arm and does nothing but shush his angry protests in the tightest hold possible. They sink to the floor. Seeing Spencer like this should make Morgan view him as weaker, as someone who has fallen prey to a vulnerability. But all it does is strengthen Morgan's determination that this is the best man he's ever known, and damn if he shouldn't have realized it sooner. How different might things have been, might the next two weeks of rehab and hell have been for Reid, if he'd only realized it sooner?
The addiction wanes, of course. With an IQ of 187 and too much innate goodness, there is no way that Spencer can let himself continue on the road that Hankel started him on. Morgan never breathes a sigh of relief because he's never been holding his breath. From that moment on the floor in Reid's bathroom onwards, he's always known it would be okay. Just as he's known that he would find the courage to tell Reid how he feels. Eventually.
Eventually turns out to be lot longer than he anticipates. In the course of the following year or two, Reid gains some weight and some confidence to boot. Morgan still calls him 'kid', but now it's obvious that it doesn't fit. Spencer grows, for lack of a better conceptualization, into the man that Morgan has never permitted himself to see him as. At work there is a closeness between the two of them that the team chalks up to deep friendship. Morgan convinces himself that he is the only one who considers it more. He uses the vantage that this closeness affords him to appreciate all the things that a year or two has made clear to him he loves about Reid.
He loves Reid's clothing. It remains academic and anachronistic to his age, but the tailoring gets better and Morgan has to admit that there is no better compliment to Reid's frame than fitted trousers paired with a purple waistcoat. And oh, god the color purple. Spencer has apparently decided that he likes it because there is a shade of grape that begins showing up frequently in his shirts, his ties, and a scarf with which Morgan has rapidly formed an erotic obsession. The best part of all is that Spencer has no idea that it makes him attractive, obviously doing it for no one but himself. But Morgan wants it to be for him. It becomes normal to feel as if he's missed the chance to say how he feels, and so he settles into the ache for a year or two, and does nothing about it.
Reid has long hair and then he has short hair and Morgan likes it both ways. The long because it highlights the delicate, feminine aspects of his features, and the short because it highlights the very opposite. His cheekbones look so damned vulnerable next to eyes so deep with intelligence they could move your soul. And Derek loves it yet knows that for most people, it's passed over for all of the more obvious, more awkward aspects of his gangly genius. Yes, he often has to admit to himself, at some point Spencer has mentally become his genius. He's shrugged that off for a year or two but it's gotten hard now. They worked a case in Miami involving gay men and the tragic consequences of self-denial, and it's been harder than ever to keep from superimposing those lessons onto his own life. He doesn't want to be a smaller version of that tragedy.
Sometimes Derek feels as if he has a superpower, where he is able to do something that others cannot. He sees more than the awkwardness, having learned to look past that a year or two ago. He sees Spencer's wide, unbridled smile and loves it and purposefully plans how to make it appear again. He knows he's wasted half an hour before, simply staring across the bullpen to observe the twitches of Reid's forearm as he reports the fripperies of their investigations. The defined bump of Reid's Adam's apple has the same effect as those muscles in his arm, highlighting a beauty and a masculinity that are only the physical aspect of a nakedness that Derek is more than prepared to see, one or two years after he very first realizes that he might love Dr. Spencer Reid.
If he'd ever gone for men, Derek considers, he'd surely never have expected to go for a type so tantalizingly androgynous. So indubitably good. Then he has to take a moment to remind himself that he's never gone for men at all.
But Los Angeles and Georgia have blown all that right out of the water.