AN:A quick one shot while I've hit writer's block on several of my ongoing series.
"Does it hurt when I do this?"
"Ouch, Emily, stop it!" Reid yelped, batting away Emily's probing finger from his face.
Reid had caught a nasty uppercut to his left cheek on their most recent case and has a really impressive amount of swelling going on. It was nearly level with his nose and still bright red though some bruising was already starting to show. It was going to be truly spectacular when the swelling went down.
"What happened to our precious baby Genius?" Garcia demanded, tottering over to them as quickly as she could on her heels.
Emily and Morgan snickered in reply. JJ glared at them as she tucked Reid's hair behind his ear to expose the injury more. It wasn't as bad as it looked, honest. The cool air did feel really good on the heated skin. Reid just sighed heavily. Those two had been impossible since it had happened. At least Rossi had the decency to smother his humour. He didn't think Hotch was surprised at all. Which was just depressing.
"Want to tell her how you got that shiner, Pretty Boy?" Morgan said with a grin.
"No" Reid responded mulishly, glaring at the man.
He was not recounting this story. Not now, not ever. That just made Morgan's lips twitch.
Garcia looked between the two men and put her hands on her hips before rapidly firing off, "Tell me right now. Why didn't you tell me before now? Shouldn't you be in hospital? I thought you were only there for a consultation and some training."
"Woah, momma," Morgan said, somehow managing to control himself enough to calm Garcia down as only he could. "Nothing dangerous happened, I swear."
"Obviously it did or our little genius would be injured," Garcia insisted.
"I am taller than you," Reid felt the urge to point out but he was ignored.
"He doesn't need the hospital," Emily answered seriously before smirking again. "No concussion."
"Any of you being injured is not a laughing matter!" Garcia said indignantly, earrings wobbling dangerously.
At least someone was on his side.
"He was hit by the Chief," Morgan tried to explain but Garcia did even let him expand on that as cut him off with a shriek.
"What? How could he? Why did you let it happen?" She reeled off in one breath and glaring around her as if the Chief from North Carolina would just magically appear.
Reid took a hesitant step back; he didn't want to be injured again. This one was embarrassing enough and he didn't want to deal with the fallout of an upset Garcia trying to tend to him.
"It was an accident," Emily answered loudly.
Garcia quickly deflated but put her hands on her hips to show she meant business.
"What? Explain!"
As tweedle dee and tweedle dum had burst out laughing yet again JJ jumped in and explained the whole stupid situation. Reid had been walking backwards, explaining a theory to Emily and a bemused LEO when the Police Chief had been animatedly recounting a story to another officer close by. The Chief had been making a lot of large hand gestures. Inevitably, when he was recounting a "perfect throw" he had swung his hand back far enough and with enough force to strike Reid quite forcibly in the face. Thankfully he had missed Reid's eye (the Chief had been wearing a chunky ring) but had hit Reid with enough momentum that he had stumbled. Unfortunately, Reid thought he was going to fall into Emily and tried to swing round so that didn't happen. That made him completely unbalanced and he had fallen straight to the floor with a spectacular crash.
Reid just sulked. It was so embarrassing. Why did it have to happen to him? Chief Peters had been incredibly apologetic and had even gotten him a really good coffee to help sooth ruffled feathers. It didn't help the fact that when Reid had been knocked over, he had basically brought the contents of the three surrounding desks with him. See? Embarrassing.
"I'm never going to that station again," he muttered darkly over everyone's stifled giggles.
"Let me find an ice pack for that nasty bruise," Garcia said to him with a sympathetic look.
See, she could help without even a twitch of her lips!
"Thank you, Garcia," Reid said pointedly, glaring at his teammates as their colourful tech analyst bustled away in a swirl of colour.
They all just smirked at him.
"Told you that you couldn't go two weeks without getting injured," Morgan teased.
Reid frowned at him before explaining, "With our jobs the chances of one of us getting injured is actually closer to once every six weeks. Less if we're in more active shooting scenarios obviously."
"Obviously," Morgan repeated with an eye roll before folding his arms. "But you can't deny that you're more injury prone."
"He's got a point, Spence" JJ said apologetically.
Reid pouted at them. They were exaggerating, being dramatic. He wasn't that prone to having accidents.
"You so are," Emily told him, reading his thoughts accurately.
"You guys get injured too!" Reid complained, wincing as the skin on his face stretched too much - aggravating the swelling.
The two older agents exchanged exasperated looks.
"Yes, when we're meant to," Emily said slowly as if she was speaking to a dense child. "When we're going after unsubs or escaping a fire."
"You know, dangerous situations," Morgan added.
Reid just glared at them, not really having a good comeback. He spun around instead, intending to just walk away from them (nose in the air) and find Garcia so he could get some sympathy. Of course, Reid being Reid, it couldn't happen like that. He caught his foot on someone's chair that had inexplicably been left in the middle of the bullpen and he dropped like a stone to the ground, his bag flying and spreading its contents everywhere as something cracked underneath him. He groaned loudly as he felt a thick, sticky liquid seep through his trousers. It was his recently refilled ink pen wasn't it? He hesitantly turned his knee over, wincing as it throbbed. Yep, there was a dark blue stain on his trousers. That was not going to come out. These were brand new trousers too!
Emily and Morgan couldn't help it, they burst into uncontrollable laughter. Again.