Disclaimer: I do not own, and am in no way affiliated with Criminal Minds or CBS.

Warning: Follows the events of Episodes 2.11, 2.14 and 2.15, so if you haven't seen these, or heard about them, you will be confused.

Every Bit of Nothing

April

He was craving again. It hurt. And it didn't hurt. It was everything on his mind, and yet as soon as he was on it there was nothing on his mind. He didn't think. He didn't feel. It wasn't peaceful or nice, but it wasn't really much of anything other than a mild and very distant "You shouldn't need this, you should be better than this; I'm disappointed" nagging echo at the edges of his conscientious. But with enough Dilaudid the smallest distraction would chase it away, and with a little more the side effects no one thought of like the dizziness, the feeling of loss of control in his throat, the mild deliria that vaguely resembled drunkenness, all went away too, or maybe he just didn't care anymore. So eventually he caved and let himself have it.

But right now he wasn't quite at that point. He was only craving it enough to constantly be thinking about it. And constantly be feeling guilty and disappointed for it. "You're smarter than this," he reminded himself. Even as he did he realized how ritualistic his process, of both thought and actions, after he came off the drug to when he lead up to going back on it, and the moment he chose to actually give in, had become. At first the realization was a stark alarm, now it was just a bitter muse, accepted, almost so settled into place he wasn't sure he ever intended to pull out of it. He was almost out of the self-denial stage, and moving on to simply accepting his addiction…

It went in cycles: He did the drug, came off of it, convinced himself he wouldn't do it again, that of course there were no good reasons, but he had a better reason than most other opiate addicts, that he would be fine now…And he was for a while, but then he started wanting it again…At first it was just a little, a passing thought, but the thought planted the seed and brought on the stream of guilt, and he over-thought the guilt, all the while also thinking, like an obnoxious perpendicular stream of thought that couldn't help intersecting with the others, that the Dilaudid would get rid of the guilt too. Then he would semi-conscientiously try to use logic to talk himself into it. And he knew he was doing it, but he couldn't stop! And it would build and build until it invaded everything in him…He got shaky, he got sweaty, he's knees got weak and his arms got heavy, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't sleep…It consumed him. And he knew what it was! "I am smarter than this!"

And yet…that was the thing about intelligence: He could see everything from all the conflicting perspectives. His intellectual understanding of what was happening to him did not make him immune. At the end of the day he was made up of the same chemical composition as all of his fellow human beings and his body metabolized and catalyzed the little molecules his mind had so much information the same way. So what was it all for? What was the point of everything he knew and understood if he couldn't help himself with it.

"Wouldn't," a little string of thought whispered, slivering across his synapses, just sharp enough to be heard, sending another little cut down to his heart.

Now he was at that point in the cycle, the guilt, verging on the point where soon he would stop resisting. This time he didn't have the usual Dilaudid, instead he had Fentanyl, even worse…so strong it was only used as a last resort to treat pain for cancer patients. He'd found it on the subway, a little prescription package, looking like nicotine patches that had dropped out of some poor unknowing woman's purse; according to the label on the bottle her name was Evelyn Tauscher.

He could have found her, Garcia could easily have tracked her down, it was neither a common prescription nor a common name. He thought about it, but in the back of his mind he always knew he never would, because Fentanyl was an opiate, like Dilaudid; he'd be out of Dilaudid soon. Of course, he didn't know if it would give him the same sort of high, but it would be easier to hide from the team: He could just claim to have a smoking problem in the unlikely event any of them saw…

So now he wasn't only a druggy, he was a thief stealing from a very sick person, stealing the one, very expensive, relief they had from a pain that wasn't all in their head, their memory—unlike his. He was also a druggy, stealing from innocent people, thinking of lies to make up in case he got caught by those around him.

He was a bad person. Morgan had told him to let the experience make him a better profiler and a better person. It had made him a better profiler, but he'd clearly allowed it to make him a worse person. He wasn't just behaving in a morally impermissible manner anymore, his actions were no longer only affecting himself, he was now harming innocent people to feed his addiction. He had gone too far. He knew he'd gone too far. And he knew it because the knowledge wasn't enough to give him the will to stop.

Sitting on the subway, going over all of this for the millionth time in his head, he couldn't help but glance around, like he always did, no matter what stage of the addiction cycle he was in, and wonder if the person missing their patches was sitting in the same car as him today; or if they weren't because their pain was too intense without their medication for them to be able to get up and go about their day…Maybe they were missing work, losing money they probably couldn't afford to lose with the medical bills that were sure to be pilling up for them. Maybe they couldn't take their children to school; maybe he was inadvertently condemning children to essentially raising themselves because of an incapable parent, the way he had to…

Even that thought still wasn't enough to make him give them back though.

He was almost gone again.

This time though, as his eyes blankly passed over face after face, each different, but the same because of the lack of emotion he felt for them, he saw eyes that he recognized. Deep, dark, blue, perpetually wide eyes, both eager and afraid to learn, threatening to be covered by curls, which were longer than Reid remembered.

He felt his lips forming the word "Nathan" before he realized it, but no sound came out. It didn't matter though, because the boy staring back at him understood, his lip nervously jumping up and down in response followed by a quick break of eye-contact.

Reid got up, one hand clinging to the strap of his bag, the other reached out to the overhead bars to steady himself as the train bustled forward, knocking he and the people around him into each other as he tried to maneuver through the ten feet that stood between him and the unexpected person in front of him. He didn't know why he was so compelled to go sit by him…to talk to him, but he'd never known with Nathan. He had the intuitive sense that Nathan was his first something, but he didn't know what: It danced somewhere between his first Luke Skywalker and first Hannibal Lector; his first successor and arch nemesis. "Maybe both," he considered.

"Hi," Nathan said, as he lifted his bag off the seat next to him and slipped it between his legs so Reid could take the seat next to him. He turned his body toward him, knocking knees, ever so slightly, and then pulling them away, just enough that they wouldn't touch, and he could feel his muscles tense to keep them in place.

Reid felt Nathan's knees knock into his, and jerked away in response, but found that at the moment he actually didn't care about the familiarity that touching knees between young men on a train would suggest, and let his legs relax back into the position they naturally fell. He noticed that Nathan kept his pulled away, but barely. Belatedly, he also realized that Nathan was the first to speak, something he wouldn't have expected—good thing he'd learned to stop expecting anything.

"Hi," he finally responded, shifting very slightly toward the boy next to him, but not meeting his eyes…He couldn't stop staring at a little black wad of gum residue on the floor, only half visible because someone's brown beaten-up shoe was covering part of it. He hated it when people were half-way stepping on things…Usually he could ignore it, but if it caught his eye and it just stayed that way, he always wanted to fix it, and right now he was especially sensitive to his own quirks…He was tweaking, as he understood it.

"Something's wrong?" He heard Nathan ask, not sure if it was a statement or a question, not sure if his voice was really showing concern or just confusion. He wouldn't know without reading his body language, and he couldn't do that without looking at him, so he opened his mouth and slowly, only semi-aware, broke himself out of the momentary trance he'd indulged in.

"With you?" Reid asked, intentionally misinterpreting what Nathan had said, more interested in talking about this boy he'd saved, not realizing the stupidity of his own question until Nathan responded:

"Nothing that hasn't always been wrong with me."

Reid followed the way his lip curved up at one side, amused, like it was a private joke between the two of them. And, Reid realized, it sort of was.

He smiled just a bit in too. Ordinarily, his first inclination would have been to apologize, but right now he found that to do so would seem incredibly pointless and insincere: He wasn't really that sorry that he'd said something that had tickled the common dry humor between them. It was a bit like a miniature epiphany, but it wasn't so much a grand enlightenment as it was a minor self-reflection of "When did you become someone who would think himself stupid for apologizing over words spoken too quickly? When did you start to feel like 'I'm sorry' wouldn't be meant and therefore shouldn't be said?" But he didn't actually want to think about it.

For a moment he wondered if they'd settle into that sort of silence that made many people feel awkward—it was a feeling Reid never felt himself, but rather understood that he sometimes made those around him feel it by not displaying outward characteristics of being disturbed by mutual silences. He knew, whether by education or instinct, that Nathan would not be uncomfortable with silence…But he expected him to be eager to talk, because, as Reid did understand, very well, when you have almost no one to talk to you can't help but snatch up the opportunity when a conversation partner turns up.

"So what is wrong?" Nathan asked again, this time with a pointed concern and fascination, which, Reid was pleased to observe, lacked any degree of morbidity…He really just seemed like a friend.

"I've had a lot of rough cases lately," he replied, intentionally being vague and now looking Nathan directly in the eyes.

What was it that Nathan needed from him exactly? Before he thought it was that he wanted him to save him from himself, that certainly seemed to be what all of his actions indicated and words confirmed…But now, a year since he'd last seen him, they were sitting on a train, like they might have been friends, or at least acquaintance of some sort…

Although, Reid realized, there was something that felt almost tangible in their demeanor that would tip any close observer off to some deeper connection than just friends of some sort. It didn't bother Reid though, that figurative wall between them and the strangers surrounding them; perhaps because he was used to feeling it anyway, today he just had company inside of it.

So was that what Nathan wanted too? Someone who could come inside his wall with him for a little while today?

Nathan looked at him for a moment longer, then shifted his eyes away, as Reid expected, but shifted them back just before he spoke, "Do you ever wish you didn't have your job?"

"No." Reid replied, without really thinking about the question. He'd never really thought about it before. This was what he wanted to do. It was a fact, one of the few he had, surprisingly, never felt the need to question; it had never even occurred to him to do so.

"What do you want out of it?" Nathan continued, still looking straight at him.

Reid had the distinct impression the other boy was trying to read his soul. But what were his motives? Was he looking for a reflection of himself in an older, but not much older, successful authority figure? Or was he trying to psychoanalyze him? If so, why?

"I suppose I want to understand why people deviate from healthy behaviors and catch those that do so they can't hurt others again." Once again, it was a memorized answer, words that strung together in his voice but felt like they belonged to someone else; someone his present simultaneously looked on with the fondness of a grandparent and the scorn of a wronged lover.

"No, I mean, what do you want out of it ultimately? Out of life, out of existence?" Nathan repeated, his hands opening, palms upward, making small but sharp movements to emphasize what he said.

"Out of life?" Reid repeated, his eyes sliding back to the speck of gun, which at some point and been uncovered and could now be seen in full, grimy and flattened as he knew it would be. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nathan nod once, and wasn't sure, but didn't really care, who's benefit it was for.

He thought of all the potential, answers biology or sociology or philosophy books could provide to that question. He thought of grand lines of reasoning to support any…But they cut off before they finished, and something that he actually believed at that exact moment was more appealing than logical answers to an illogical question. He laced his fingers together and turned to look at the boy next to him again. "To be happy."

Nathan looked shocked for a split second, then smiled, almost like he was sad, and looked away. "But this job isn't making you happy."

"It makes me happy on some level…It's like the great utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill explains in his work Utilitarianism, human beings are capable of feeling higher and lower happiness, and the intelligent man can only really be satisfied by the presence of higher happiness in his life. Higher pleasures being those which may in some ways cause pain, which is a consequence of enlightenment, but which ultimately cause him greater happiness than base pleasures alone ever could. He—"

Reid stopped, noticing the way Nathan's eyes lit up as he spoke; Nathan had read Mill, he didn't need to explain.

"So you cause yourself pain in your job but ultimately you derive happiness from that which causes you pain…" Nathan summarized, no longer looking at him, no longer smiling, but staring at same spec of gum Reid had been a moment before. "You're like an emotional masochist."

Reid hadn't expected that. He'd never thought of himself like that. It wasn't a real evaluation…It was just an observation by an intelligent, but uneducated seventeen year old with no qualification or background to psychologically evaluate anyone…but it struck a chord. Reid looked away; completely unsure of how to respond…He vaguely wondered why he didn't feel angry.

"I wonder if I'm some sort of emotional masochist too," Nathan continued, his voice wavering slightly at first, but stabilizing as he continued, "because the things that I want I deny myself and I wonder if somehow I could find that never complete but intense balance between happiness and deprivation if I dedicate myself to catching what I sometimes wonder if I'm powerless to become."

Reid didn't look back at him right away, and he wasn't sure if Nathan was looking for his response or if he just wanted to say it out loud, that mingle of fear, hope, resignation and doubt. In those few sentences Reid realized he was dealing with a more developed person now, whatever had happened in the year since last he'd seen Nathan, he'd grown: He spoke with more confidence, albeit still quietly, he maintained eye contact much more successfully than he used to, not only at the most important parts of the conversation—which was a distinctly unusual characteristic, one of the first things he'd noticed about Nathan when they'd met. He was still blunt, but now it seemed more out of it being characteristic of his personality, rather than complete unawareness that others didn't speak the same. Subconsciously, he realized, he'd expected him to be the same the moment he saw him…But how much had he changed in a year? It was more than unreasonable, it was completely ridiculous.

Regardless, he felt a little bit of pride—which he shouldn't have because all the credit really went to Nathan for recognizing the importance of conscientious choice—and envy, because he had been consistently proving to himself that he wasn't strong enough to make all the right choices.

Finally, Reid looked back up; when he started speaking Nathan looked at him, his fingers crossed in his lap, their postures almost identical, although Reid realized his was slightly more dominant, a virtue of his age and foul mood more than anything. "It's not really about happiness then…For you, you've never chosen who you want to be based on your happiness, you're not in the least bit a hedonist by nature, the philosophy only applies to you as much as you want it to."

"You're saying I adhere to an objective standard of morality…But when I asked you what you want out of life, you said 'To be happy'…Don't you think that's really what all people want Dr. Reid? To be happy?"

Nathan had such an intensity about him, it was a little dangerous, a little dark, but it wasn't as lost as it used to be, rather it was running up and down a scale of grey, stabilizing, finding a balance between nature and free will.

"Yes. But I don't think that the pursuit of individual happiness is a justification for interfering with the happiness of others."

"You choose though, as cop, you choose the happiness of the potential victims over that of the criminals…And you can't really determine who derives the greatest pleasure or pain from that decision, so you're not really much of a utilitarian either. You have an objective standard of morality you're running off of. So how would you advise anyone, including yourself to be happy and to be moral, if that which makes you happy is immoral?"

"As I said before, it's not about just being happy, but it's about the type of happiness…Do you really think that the pleasure you would derive from hurting others would outweigh the guilt?"

"No, but even if it did, it wouldn't make it right to me."

Reid looked at him, and, for the first time since he'd started talking to Nathan Harris, remembered the Fentanyl patches waiting for him at home. His stomach felt heavy and his heart felt heavier. "You are a moral person then; a master of thy beast ruled by the self, rather than a self without a master over run by the beast."

"I will spend the rest of my life trying to be," he gave him a resigned smile and that simultaneous hope and doubt was swirling in his eyes again.

Nathan exhaled and Reid felt, rather than saw, a trace of vulnerability and expectation of rejection come with it, and he knew what his question was going to be:

"Will you help me?"

"How?" He asked, accidentally biting his tongue as the train jerked forward, starting up from wherever they were stopped…He hadn't even noticed they'd stopped; it wasn't his stop anyway.

"The hospital my mom sent me to…It encouraged academic study…most of the kids were drug addicts or had eating disorders, and they didn't want to do anything for the most part…So when I showed up and all I wanted to do with my free time, which there was a lot of, was study they really encouraged it and helped me. My mom got in touch with my high school and got them to validate all the credits I got through the independent study program at the hospital…I completed enough that I'll graduate a year early, at the end of this semester…Technically I already have, but my mom wants the cap and gown pictures, so we're just waiting until June. I've already been accepted to George Mason University, not my first choice, but my mom doesn't want me too far away since I won't even be eighteen, and you, know, just in case I need help again…"

It was the safest part of the conversation for him to respond to, and it was inside his comfort zone, so he took it: "That's great you've advanced so much in your education. Do you know what you want your major to be?"

Nathan raised an eyebrow, and Reid realized that, once again, he'd asked a question with an obvious answer, one he'd basically already been given. "Abnormal Psychology."

"And then law enforcement? In profiling?" Reid guessed, already seeing where he would come into the picture.

"Yeah," Nathan responded, nervously looking away again, twisting his hands, and for the first time really seeming uncomfortable. He was really afraid of rejection. "I—you know what I really am. Your team does too but I don't think they'll really remember me by the time I graduate and am applying for jobs. I was discharged from the hospital as cured and healthy," he continued wryly, "…If there aren't reoccurrences my condition will be written off as a teenage phase, and I'll know how to pass any of the psychological analyses need to get into the FBI. I…I'm not sure I'll ever really stop feeling the way I do, in fact, I don't think I ever will, but I don't ever want to hurt anyone. And so I think, instead of killing myself I can at least use it to stop people like me…Because I understand them better than normal people, even people like you who have studied them. So when I'm done with school I," he nervously clanked up and away, "want to work with you."

"Why me? Because I know about your past? Don't you think it would be more beneficial for you to work with people—Oh…" He stopped short, fully grasping what it was Nathan wanted from him.

"Yeah." The boy said, the corners of his lips pulling up into an expression that wasn't really a smile…it didn't convey any type of delight, but rather said, "See, you get it." His eyelashes, noticeably dark against his unusually pale skin, fluttered down and brushed his cheekbones, curved up into his lids, in a way that appealed to Reid's aesthetic senses. The whole picture of him sitting there: Young, haunted, determined, pale, thin, tale, dark eyes, curly hair, tailored dark clothing; the picture of symbolic shades of gray.

"I can't control whether or not you'd be assigned to my team, or even if you'd be accepted to the agency…It's a fairly rigorous processes if you go through the FBI, and they rarely higher civilian professionals. And if you go through the agency you have to do general field work for three years before applying to the BAU." Reid responded, fully aware of the probability that what Nathan was asking would never come to pass.

"I know, but if I do?" And looking at him, the innocence and determination and pain in his eyes, Reid believed, as illogical as it was, that he would.

"Yes."

"You promise." He asked that private little smile back.

Reid nodded and smiled, "I promise."

Nathan didn't look away, like he thought he would. He looked right at him with an intensity that Reid suspected he would never find in someone else. He bit the inside of his lip, his knee twitched, he felt compelled to reach out and touch him, but he didn't understand where the impulse came from; naturally he didn't follow it.

"Thank you."

Reid didn't know exactly what to say at that point…He could make polite conversation, but doing so would feel terribly disingenuous, to the point where just thinking about it made him feel a little disgusted…He could just sit back in silence and wait. He could not ask all the questions he only half wanted to and theorize all of their potential answers. Or he could just ask.

"Why me?"

Nathan shifted, looked surprised, and looked down at his hands, suddenly uncomfortable. Reid knew it would be kind of him to just drop it and accept it, but now that he'd asked it, he really wanted the answer—it wasn't very often in his life he'd gotten the answer to that question.

"Nathan, why me?" He repeated, trying to keep the edge reflecting the strange jumble of emotions stirring inside of him out of his voice.

"You…You're special. I don't know why. There's just something about you…It's not just that you understand me, I understand you back…And I've never understood anyone else before. I don't know exactly what it is I understand or why…And I'm sorry if you don't like me saying that, but it's just how I…That's just the way it is, for me." Nathan still wasn't meeting his eyes, his hands were tense on his knees. He always wore his heart on his sleeve, no matter how hard he tried not to. He was such a contradiction.

Again he didn't know what to say. He couldn't say, 'me too', because the truth was, Nathan was one of the few people he'd ever met who he simultaneously did and didn't understand, at extreme levels. Fundamentally there was something in him that he understood: the fear, the self-searching, the knowledge, the guilt and the self-blame for things that weren't really your fault; who you want to be versus who you fear you're destined to be…But there was the one thing he would never be able to understand: The desire to hurt, the pleasure from other's pain.

Nathan wasn't a textbook serial killer though…So much about him didn't fit the profile, and so intellectually Reid couldn't understand him the way he would ordinarily have sought too. The only way he really knew how to understand him was with some strange intuition about him, the origins of which he wasn't aware, and the existence of which he wasn't sure what to make of. He wasn't comfortable with intuition as much as he was with knowledge; not as comfortable with self-evaluation as he was with the evaluation of others. Trying to evaluate Nathan required dipping into himself though…And that was why he would never forget Nathan like the rest of the team would. Nathan knew that, so perhaps Nathan felt it too.

His knee twitched again. Nathan looked at it. "So do you want to tell me what's wrong yet?"

"Did you find me on purpose today?" He frowned, intentionally ignoring the question and unintentionally glaring at the bright orange umbrella lying between someone's calves a few feet in front of him. It slid forward just a bit as the train began to slow again.

"Sort of," Nathan shrugged, "I figured you probably still took this train, but I decided to start taking an earlier train because the one I was taking before, there's this girl in my class and she always tries to get me talk to her, and she takes that train…And so that's why I decided to take this train, but I did hope I'd see you too."

"Oh," Reid smiled, not expecting that reason at all, "you don't want to be friends with her?"

"She's shallow," Nathan answered, annoyance written all over his face and in his tone of voice…My mom told everyone that I was studying abroad for a year, and she heard that so she thinks I'm interesting now."

Nathan stood up. "This is my stop," he said, not looking directly at him, but moving slower than necessary. He glanced at him, then glanced away, "Is it okay, if, you know, I sit with you again, if we're on the same train?"

"Yeah," Reid replied, a bit surprised, both by the question and the little warm feeling it stirred inside of him—the novelty of feeling wanted never went away apparently.

A small smile graced Nathan's face, he still didn't look at him, and Reid could see the relief and that same cautious joy at feeling accepted, written all over him. He was back to just being a boy who wanted a friend, and looking at him Reid couldn't help but smile too.

"Well, see you, I guess." Nathan muttered, picking up his back, and quickly disappearing into the crowded line of people moving toward the door of the train.

When Reid got off the train ten minutes later he realized he hadn't thought about taking more Dilaudid in the whole time he'd been talking to Nathan…Hadn't craved it, hadn't even really registered the need for it…Not even after he stopped talking to him, not until he was walking down the platform thinking about work again. A whole thirty minutes. That was a long time at this point in the cycle. Nothing had ever distracted him for so long when he'd been at this point before. He hadn't wanted it at all. How strange.

Of course he was thinking about it now…And it wasn't quite as powerful as it was before, but it was still there.

Hi! I'm new to Criminal Minds, and it's fandom…I saw a few episodes and instantly became fond of Reid, saw a few more and became fascinated, saw "Sex, Birth and Death" and became equally fascinated with Nathan Harris and subsequently obsessed with all the possibilities presented by the episode! I couldn't find much fanfiction with Nathan in it out there, but I really like it! I intend to continue this, but want to put feelers out for it before I practically write a novel. If I do continue it it will get dark and then maybe light, maybe not, and will definitely explore bisexual and bi-curious behaviors between the main characters…But Criminal minds is sort of edgy and dark anyway, so at least that shouldn't bother anyone. Anyway, that's a warning for those of you who don't like slash! Also, since I'm new, if there's anything drastically incorrect according to canon (other than Reid and Harris meeting up again, because so far as I know they haven't yet in the series) let me know. Other than that please let me know what you guys think! Since there really isn't established fandom for these characters I'm a little shy, and very curious.