1x01 – 'Extreme Aggressor'
Whilst Gideon rejoins the team for a case in Seattle, something has happened to make Morgan and Reid uncomfortable around each other.
Reid inched away as Gideon examined the photograph. Morgan stood a mere foot away from him, and they were both horribly tense. Close contact was now a problem between them.
...
Morgan tapped Reid's arm, and the younger genius jumped from the contact. It was the first he'd shared with the other agent in a while, and it was completely unexpected.
However, when Reid looked round at Morgan, he was stunned at just how normal the other agent looked: as though nothing had changed.
"He never stands with his back to a window. When I was between him and a door he asked me to move," Morgan complained. The only sign that things weren't normal between them was how even his tone sounded; he was controlling it carefully.
Reid's brain threw an answer out. "It's hyper vigilance," he explained. Morgan wanted reassuring? Reid could do that. "It's not uncommon in post traumatic stress disorder."
Morgan scoffed, his eyes on Gideon's back instead of Reid's face. How long was it since they'd looked each other in the eye?
"Just how much disorder are we talking about?" Morgan demanded, and Reid was spared answering by the apparition of their boss in between them. He appreciated distance greatly.
"Morgan, it's been six months," Hotch soothed. "Everything's ok."
He urged them both on, and Reid wondered if Hotch knew just how good a father he was going to be.
...
Morgan tossed the ball into the air and caught it easily. It was a rhythmic slap against his palm that was starting to annoy everyone else in the room. Morgan never usually played with a ball during a team meeting – why had he suddenly started?
Reid had a theory about asserting his masculinity, but he was trying very hard to focus on the case instead of Morgan, so he'd only come up with a few thousand supporting reasons.
"Ok, then how about the fact that on one hand, we have paranoid psychosis?" Morgan mused aloud. Reid pushed against the desk and his chair spun round. The hope that it would give him a fresh perspective turned out to be in vein.
"But the autopsy protocol says what?" Morgan continued.
"Adhesive residue shows that he put layer after layer of duct tape over his victim's eyes," Reid replied, continuing to spin. Hotch listened to both of them in silence, his mind trying to make sense of it.
"He knows he wants to kill them," Morgan said, addressing Hotch more than Reid. "But he still covers their eyes! He doesn't want them looking at him. But then he takes the body and dumps it right out in the open! Murder weapon near by!"
The three were shrouded in confusion over the discrepancies they'd uncovered: paranoid psychosis, but there was also behaviour that wasn't paranoid.
Gideon, on the other hand, stood apart from them. He gazed at the board on which all the evidence was gathered and tuned out the ramblings of his co-workers. Various images and words jumped off the board as he gazed at it. Different meanings rushed through his mind.
"Alright, enough," Gideon ordered, and the argument between Hotch and Morgan that had barely started ceased. All three looked round at Gideon. "Hotch, tell them we're ready."
Gideon exited the room, leaving his colleagues in a state of shock.
"We're ready?" Morgan repeated, stunned. He turned to Reid, forceful in his effort to be normal. "Reid!"
The genius looked up, and their eyes met for the first time in what seemed like years, but Morgan was far too outraged to notice the significance.
"You good with this?" he demanded. "We got a woman who's only got a few hours left to live, an incomplete profile, and a unit chief on the verge of a nervous breakdown!"
The door opened and Gideon returned.
"They don't call them nervous breakdowns anymore," he informed Morgan as he picked up a pencil and once again left the room. Hotch's lips tilted up in a smile at the sight of Morgan's undercut expression.
"It's called a major depressive episode," Reid added, rubbing the salt into the wound.
"I know, Reid," Morgan spoke over him, a command for silence echoing in his harsh tone. Reid ducked his head and the nervous tension between them grew.
Morgan sighed deeply, and Hotch frowned at them both. Had he missed something?
...
"Before his Son of Sam murders, David Berkowitz set a multitude of fires," Reid elaborated for Gideon, and was surprised by Morgan's voice close behind him.
"Exactly how much is a multitude?"
It was a question Reid should have expected, but things had grown a little crazy where Morgan was concerned.
"According to his diary, one thousand, four hundred, and …"
Reid blamed his inability to recall the exact figure on Morgan being the one to ask the question. A week or so ago, he'd been fine, but now –
"Eighty-eight," the female detective helping them supplied. Reid nodded his thanks and scurried away, eager for some distance to clear his mind of the distractions that were blocking his neural pathways.
...
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better," quoted Gideon. Reid nodded eagerly and looked round at Elle and Morgan. He scanned his brain for less than a heartbeat.
"Samuel Becket."
Elle assessed him curiously, but Morgan quipped straight back.
"Try not. Do or do not." His eyes flitted between Reid and Gideon, hovering on Reid's fragile features for a moment, and then returned to the silver casing of the laptop.
Gideon looked at Reid, whose mind hadn't even had to consciously think before it provided the answer. Evidently the block Morgan put on his brain did not apply to anything related to Morgan.
"Yoda," Reid told Gideon, who looked at Reid, decided it wasn't worth it, and walked away. Reid looked back at his notebook, uncomfortable as was becoming the norm.
...
"Aren't you on your way back to Slessman's house to help Morgan?"
Reid mentally groaned. He'd hoped to delay being in a house where the only person he knew was Morgan.
He looked back at the printer, trying to think about Gideon instead: his mentor and friend.
...
Spencer Reid raked his fingers through his hair, frustrated at his own inability to concentrate. He wasn't usually this distracted, and he knew both the cause and solution. His avoidance of both was clearly not helping anything, and he couldn't do what Morgan had done: pretend everything was as it should be. There was a woman fighting for her life, and in order to help her, Reidneeded to be able to think clearly.
He slowly ascended to the attic. Morgan's eye flickered up, and instantly grew darker at the sight of his skinny co-worker.
He looked down at the laptop in a blatant display of how busy he was. Reid swallowed and tried to build up his courage. He knew that this was something he had to do, but knowing that and actually doing something about it were two different things.
"Morgan?" he asked timidly. The dark agent didn't look up, and Reid was half-relieved, half-disappointed.
"Mmm?" Morgan murmured. He made a great show of looking at the lists of CD's beside him, projecting that what Reid had to say had better be important to interrupt him while he was so engrossed in his work.
"Shouldn't we talk?" Reid enquired.
All of a sudden, he had Morgan's undivided attention, and decided he preferred it when Morgan had been ignoring him; at least he hadn't been on the receiving end of Morgan's death-glare.
"About what?" Morgan demanded abruptly. Reid struggled to force the words past the lump in his throat. His nerves had crashed through the ceiling of all human emotion all of a sudden.
"Morgan, you kissed me," he mumbled, almost incoherent, but Morgan heard him loud and clear.
He gaped for a moment, and then clenched his jaw. "No, I didn't," Morgan replied, forcing the words out through gritted teeth.
He looked back at the sheet of paper still held in his fists, dismissing Reid and the whole conversation.
Reid stared at him. His nerves were washed away by white-hot anger that blazed across his chest and up, out of his throat.
"You –" Reid managed to stop himself before he said something he knew he would regret. He was a calm, collected person, and he couldn't allow Morgan to infuriate him past that. He counted down from ten, and then continued a little into the negative numbers until he felt he was back in control of his mouth.
Morgan was all tense muscles and brittle bones before him, hoping that Reid would storm away and let him return to repressing the memory. Instead, Reid squared his shoulders, given confidence by his anger.
"I may have graduated from high school when I was twelve, but I didn't miss every experience," Reid spat the words out, surprisingly venomous. Morgan looked up. He'd never heard Reid use this tone before. "I know when someone kisses me, and you kissed me!" Reid finished, and his anger transformed into fear.
Morgan's hands slammed into the table as he shot to his feet, and Reid leapt like a startled cat.
"Damnit, Reid!" Morgan shouted.
An eerie silence hung between them. Reid had burst the dam, and now the flood water had spilled over both of them. They were both waiting for something to happen now: another agent to come running up the stairs to ask about the noise, maybe?
It became evident after a moment that no one was coming. Morgan breathed in deeply, trying to steady his pulse. He hated the sight of an unnerved Reid, and he didn't want to scare him again.
"Look," Morgan began in a low voice that itched of unspoken feelings. "Emotions were running high, adrenaline was pumping, and I just …" Morgan's explanation trailed off. Reid wrapped his arms around his stomach protectively, concerned that Morgan's anger was not yet under control.
Morgan squeezed the bridge of his nose. How could he explain what he didn't understand? "It was a mistake: a nothing," Morgan decided, and his voice was filled with conviction. He met Reid's eyes. "It won't happen again."
Reid nodded, frantic with agreement. "Right. Of course not."
The uneasy silence hovered between them. Neither could think of anything else to say, and yet, there still so much left up in the air. Nothing had been resolved. They stared at each other awkwardly, until Reid couldn't take it anymore and fled the room.
Morgan lowered himself slowly back into his chair. The confrontation had left him feeling weak and helpless.
He rubbed a hand over his bare skull and once again berated himself for his momentary loss of control that had led to his most idiotic act he'd ever committed. And even worse, he'd screwed Reid up as well: Reid, the fragile young man that he liked and wanted to protect from the cruelties of the world. Instead, he'd become one of those who had hurt him.
Morgan sighed. Why had he complicated things?
...
"Come on, I need a password," Morgan mumbled to himself, pacing anxiously. "What am I looking for? What could I possibly be looking for?"
He was so engrossed in his conundrum he didn't even notice Reid had returned until he was approaching the laptop, twirling an unfolded paper clip.
Morgan was about to throw himself back into the confrontation from earlier, until he saw the set of Reid's jaw. This was business.
"I've been thinking about the CD's," Reid told Morgan as he knelt beside the laptop. Morgan was overwhelmed with relief: they needed to stay professional. Such a good excuse to avoid uncomfortable topics.
"Oh, Reid, come on. We tried the CD's," he replied, a little let down that Reid's brilliant brain hadn't come up with anything new. Reid began to fiddle with the disc drive of the computer with the thin length of mettle he'd manipulated. "We searched, sorted and sifted through every one of this guy's head-banging heavy mettle collection. We've got to find something, or this girl is dead," he added, partly for emphasis, but mostly just to keep an uneasy silence from settling.
"I think we may have missed the obvious," Reid replied, his words lazy, as though he wasn't really paying them any attention.
"What are you doing?" Morgan asked, as the disk drive clicked open. Metallica's 'Some Kind Of Monster' was revealed. Morgan pounced upon it. He lifted it out and saw the scratches announcing it to be Slessman's favourite.
"Reid, what made you think of this?" Morgan asked, amazed by Reid's brilliance. Reid held up a thin square object.
"It was the only empty case," he replied. Morgan took it, matching the titles. He'd never been a fan of Metallica himself, so he had no idea what songs would be on it, or which were any good.
"Alright, I'm an insomniac who listens to Metallica to go to sleep at night." He tried not to scoff. He couldn't think of any music less restful. Reid tilted his head to read the song list on the back of the album case. "What song could possibly speak to me?"
He looked round at Reid, whose face was alight with knowledge.
"'Enter Sandman'," Reid replied. Morgan gazed at him, praising his genius and thanking God for it. Reid immediately shied away from the intensity, but it didn't matter.
They had a password.
...
"Because we're watching her right now," Morgan replied, crouching beside Reid. He didn't even notice the proximity: all he could see was the woman on the screen, and all he could feel was a rise of helplessness and rage.
...
"Morgan. Can you show me the last twelve images lined up next to each other?" Reid asked, bending over the seated agent. Morgan glanced round and could smell Reid's shampoo –
He jerked back towards the screen, away from the oblivious Reid. Their talk had obviously enabled him to focus, while it had stolen most of Morgan's concentration.
"Yeah," Morgan replied hoarsely, and tapped at the keyboard quickly. The screen altered accordingly, and the past twelve frames appeared before them.
Almost identical, to Morgan's eye – what had Reid noticed?
"What -?"
"Right there," Reid answered the question before Morgan had finished asking it. He pointed at the screen. "There, you see the light bulb hanging from the wire?" Reid asked, and Morgan examined the pixels.
"Yeah. What about it?" Reid now had his attention focused.
"It's shifting positions," Reid explained. "Like it's swaying. Like the earth is tilting."
Morgan narrowed his eyes and tracked the light bulb throughout the twelve images he'd pulled up … and Reid was right. Well, almost.
"Not the earth. The ocean," Morgan replied, and they both turned to look at each other, faces almost touching. Both reared back, but they had no time to worry about that. Morgan was already dialling Hotch's number. He could examine why his heartbeat had quickened later, when Heather was safe.
...
The images flashed on the screen. Morgan gazed at Heather, wishing that he could step right through the screen and save her –
A dark shadow, and then a coat. There was someone with her.
"Reid, he's inside!"
Once again, Reid bent down beside Morgan, and once again, neither noticed as their heart rates sped up.
"Get Elle on the phone!" Morgan ordered. Reid obeyed as adrenaline began to pump through Morgan's veins. He didn't want to watch this – but how could he look away?
...
"Mighty warrior," Reid supplied. Hotch didn't mind that he had been undercut. It was Reid.
The genius made the walk past and then looked back. "Appropriate," he commented. Hotch and Morgan both smiled, although the latter's was slightly subdued.
...
Reid and Morgan both lay on the sofas, facing each other. Now and then, they'd open their eyes and glance at the other … there was still too much left unsaid for either to rest easy.
...
NB More fallout next chapter =]
