Author's Ramble: So I decided I'd use my love of Criminal Minds to help with writer's block and take writing challenges by Seventh Sanctum ( dot ) net to help me along.
There are no definitive pairings, except those already established in the show. I am not a slash fan in this fandom's case, so please don't read into any of these shorts as being slashy.
Also, each short is COMPLETE on its own. There will be no sequels. I just want to write these things and be done. Which means that they won't be edited very nicely, but what can you do?
Anyways, now that I've scared some of you off with my migraine-induced rant, I hope you enjoy! (Quotes may come before each one, but I was too lazy to dig through my notebooks to find one.)
Challenge: The story is set during an autopsy. There must be an athlete within the story. Throughout the majority of the story, a character must be turned on.
Characters: Reid & Morgan
"Hi, you two must be Agents Morgan and Reid."
The two agents in question cut a quick glance to one another. They had stepped into Point Pleasant, West Virginia's coroner's office expecting to find Dr. Buckingham to be an old, male and possibly British medical examiner.
Reid had assumed this based on Dr. Buckingham's credentials that displayed two doctorates plus graduating with honors from English schools. In his rush to get to the office in time to investigate the latest victim, he hadn't looked at the dates of graduation, which would have clued him in on the doctor's young age of thirty-five.
Morgan had assumed this based on Dr. Buckingham's name.
Neither one had expected the slender, dark haired English woman greeting them to be Dr. Buckingham, the medical examiner who had identified the cause of the latest victim's death.
"Why don't you two glove up, and I'll show you the body?" she suggested, putting her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. "It's a bloody mess in there. Hope you boys aren't faint of carnage."
"We've seen pretty bad," Morgan supplied. It wasn't a sentence he could use to flash the smile that he wanted to.
"I'll let you get suited up."
Morgan was pretty good and discreetly checking out a woman as they walked off, but Reid caught it. He was a profiler after all. Not to mention Derek Morgan's best friend.
"'We've seen pretty bad'? Do you no longer have the ability to formulate a coherent sentence in the English language?"
"Oh, Pretty Boy, for her, I'll make sure my English is spot on."
"Morgan," he warned as he pulled on the plastic gloves. "This really isn't the time or the place."
"Yeah, well with your genius brains we'll have this case solved in no time," Morgan grinned as he too began gearing up for the autopsy. "Then I'll have to ask her out for a congratulatory drink for helping us solve it."
"You never asked Bill out for a congratulatory drink after he's helped us solve dozens of cases," Reid said pointedly. Bill was the main doctor that supplied their autopsy consultations for nearby cases in Quantico. He was a crotchety old man; with a bad habit of not covering his coughs or sneezes.
"Well, Bill doesn't have that hot of a—"
"You boys ready?"
Reid and Morgan glanced up from the act of pulling on the paper aprons to see a beaming Dr. Buckingham waiting for them in the doorway of the operating room.
Inside, they found a sheet that was desperately trying to cover the obese body of Hubert Cummings, the last victim of a string of murders taking place in Point Pleasant. All the deaths had been made to look like suicides from a local bridge over the Ohio River.
The body was bloated, and disfigured. It'd taken search teams four days to find it. It was in bad decay, and as Dr. Buckingham pulled back the sheet both agents had to squint and hold their breath for a moment. Decay had set in quick, not to mention the amount of insects and animals that had access to it.
"Despite the obvious amount of decay, I was able to determine he didn't die from the impact on the water, or from subsequent drowning," Dr. Buckingham said as she pushed aside the flesh of his neck. There were fine ligature marks there, made from a fine, strong line. "He was strangled, and his neck was broken. Even if he hadn't died before he was thrown in, he wouldn't have been able to swim."
"Strangled like the others," Morgan mused.
"But not," Reid interjected. His fingers probed at the thin marks along the fat neck. Dr. Buckingham watched with interest as Reid peered closer towards the corpse, appearing not to notice the stench or the fact his face was inches away from it. His eyes were alight in only the way working his brain could make them. Dr. Buckingham stepped back and watched him move aside the rolls of flesh of the man's neck.
"At all the other scenes, a snapped rope had been left under the bridge to make police assume suicide, and that the rope hadn't been able sustain the weight of the victim's body. The marks consisted with brief strangulation and damage to the spinal cord before the bodies fell into the waters. They also matched the weave of the rope."
"Because of damage to the bodies and no suspicion of foul play the police didn't bother to autopsy the other victims," Dr. Buckingham said. She was staring at Reid in an odd way, an-almost-smile on her lips. The circumstances couldn't allow her to fully smile, as she was still leaning over the body of a man who had once sold her groceries. She had come back to the table to stand beside Reid, her hand reaching into her pocket before accidentally brushing against Reid's side. It still gave the young profiler a queasy sort of feeling, even though it had to be an accident.
"We examined them, but as you said, Dr. Reid, they appeared clear-cut suicides."
"But this time, there was a different material used to strangle, no marks, and certain death before impact," Morgan said, stepping away from the body for a moment to get some air. "So did this guy just mess up or something?"
"You tell me," Dr. Buckingham said with a sigh. "I didn't find anything else unusual about him. Other than the fact he needed some serious bypass surgery…"
"Thank you, doctor, I think that's all we'll need," Reid said, flashing her a quick, nervous smile before turning towards the door. Morgan opened his mouth to protest leaving so quickly (he needed a reason to get Dr. Buckingham's first name, phone number and possibly home address) but couldn't think of anything to say. The female doctor had already given a short goodbye and began pulling up gurney to transfer the body so she could take it back to the morgue.
"Hey, hey, hold on," Morgan said, turning back to the medical examiner. Reid paused outside the door, seeing Morgan through the glass turn back to try and help Dr. Buckingham with the overtly large specimen.
"This'll end well," he muttered, pulled off his gloves and watched.
"Don't worry, I did it before, I can do it again," Dr. Buckingham grunted as she pulled the upper half of the body onto the gurney.
"You can't get all of… that on your own."
"Oh, and you can?" Dr. Buckingham suddenly released the corpse. It flumped back down on the metal table as she put her hands on her hips. Her previously warm chocolate eyes blazing as she gestured for Morgan to give it a go. "Mr. Strong FBI Man aids weak medical examiner and somehow gets her number by the end of it?"
Reid couldn't hear a word of the conversation, but noted Morgan's stunned stare after Dr. Buckingham dropped the body and said something. He stuck his hands in his pockets, and suddenly felt something there that didn't belong.
"I may not be a profiler, but I know guys like you, Agent Morgan," Dr. Buckingham's voice was warning, but no longer nearly as threatening. She returned back to the body, and was able to hull it onto the gurney. "I played the diverse division of rugby in high school and university. I'm strong enough. And I know a thing or two about "big strong men"."
"Well, I hope you know that I didn't mean anything unkind," Morgan said, putting his hands in the air in defeat. "Have a good day, ma'am."
"You too, Agent Morgan."
As Morgan and Reid headed out to the SUV, Reid said innocently, "So, uh, you get her number?"
"Get in the car, smart ass."
Reid smiled and did as he was told. Little did Morgan know as they drove back to the police station that Reid had a rebuttal in mind. He was just too good of a friend to say it.
"Oh, well I guess you didn't get a number because she had already slipped it into my pocket."
"How do you like them apples?" Reid muttered as he stared down at the slip of paper in his palm, displaying the number of a "Shelia Buckingham".
"What was that kid?"
"Nothing."