Author Mentions: Hi. This is my latest. Thank you. Song lyrics is Blood Bank by Bon Iver.

Rating: T

Pairing: Reid/Morgan

Disclaimer: I own a teacup poodle, a lovely set of OPI nailpolishes, and an orchid plant. But no Criminal minds.

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That secret that you know, but don't know how to tell

1. When he was 5, his father sent him a Christmas present through the postal service. It turned out to be an Atlas of the World, without a card and the tags still on the book. Though he had not be able to see his father, which pained the inside of him like a stomach ache, it turned out to be the best birthday present he got. His mother, who was in one of her episodes, had left out uncooked cake batter and a new globe for him. Seemingly, she had obviously forgotten she had gone on a whim and bought him the same exact one two weeks before. He didn't tell her.

Since then, he's always wanted to travel the world. Somehow, just to get away from there.

2. When Spencer was ten, he was entered into Las Vegas Public High School. He was barely 5 feet tall, and with his spectacles, he looked like a slightly deranged bug. At first the kids that went to the school thought he was in the daycare center for pregnant students (though that was highly illogical) and then they realized he was a super genius, which they coveted like a prize. Spencer didn't mind the attention, but it soon realized he would have rather been left alone and invisible when the students all found out that he had beaten them in every test. Soon, instead of a privileged, high school very much felt like a prison.

3. Sometimes he wishes he were an artist. That way, something in his life would not be based on scientific fact, statistic or rule. He has a hard time truly speaking his mind, showing his inner true passion, but he contains no type of creative energy.

4. Though blessed with a complex and highly efficient mind, his happiness is brought to his attention by simple things. Ernest Hemingway once said, happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. But Reid thinks this is incorrect, because it would ignorant to deny that he is in fact smart, abnormally so, but he finds happiness in all things. In perfectly browned toast, finding his glasses after a long-lost search, in feeling warmth between the sheets in the morning. Reid knows that if he didn't, the clarity and blunt horror of his job would get him sooner or later.

Gideon was a perfect example of that.

5. When he was twenty-three, he was accepted into the Behavioral Analyst Unit at the FBI under the internship of Aaron Hotchner. He knew it was completely normal to be nervous, as he was going to be in a new place, with a new atmosphere, and new people. He would be working with minds with the same intellect comparability as his and they would not only undermine him for his age but also his lack of social experience. At the end of the day, however exhausting and full of small and variable tests, set by the team, the unsub, the politics of the FBI, as he could keep thinking was, finally I can be accepted.

6. When he was fifteen, and a Chemistry graduate at Caltech, he kissed a girl for the first time. She was twenty two and also graduating with her Bachelors degree. She had long, frizzy hair, that looked completely wild in the sunshine. Her eyes were brown, and her skin was very fair. She was another outcast, intellect, another person Reid could think he could depend on and realize that she was just like those girls at high school. Though they had never had anything more than a friendship, he still thinks about her from time to time. He wonders if she ever thinks about him, and if things had been different if she had known how he felt.

7. Which is why everything in his life was turned upside down when he fell in love with Derek Morgan. He had an inkling he was gay in High School, but he never dared tell anyone. In graduate school, he was sure, because he had done a matter of reading and research on Homosexuality, crossing both isolation, tormented youth, and stunted growth. He seemed to fit all four of those criteria, and instead of feeling blatantly along, he felt like he belonged, somehow, that it was his vice. It made him feel a whole lot less awkward around girls (they were truly never for him anyway) and quite a bit more intimidated by men. At first, when he met Derek Morgan, he was as intimidated as any other man built that size and holding that kind of expression. Except it was worse, but Derek Morgan had a mind, a mind smart enough to get into BAU, and Reid suddenly felt like he had been stripped naked and asked to imitate an animal.

He didn't know if he would ever get rid of that feeling.

8. He sometimes he wished he had told his mother how angry it made him when he had to pick up after her. Because when she was in one of her rants when he was younger, throwing things and trashing the house, he felt really alone. Not alone, when he was at school and could risk getting food poured on top of his head, or alone when he walked home and he saw all the kids who coveted him months ago in their fancy cars speeding over the limit down the street. No, he felt completely alone when his own mother couldn't even recognize him when he would lie her bed and put her to sleep.

She never truly apologized, and Reid never brought it up.

9. Being with Derek Morgan is different than anything he's ever known. Which is a scary thought, seeing as Reid knows a large portion of everything. The touches, the tingles, the nervous breathing, it's all completely new to him. While Morgan had to grow up too fast, especially like this, Reid was always stunted. Sure, he could examine his anatomy and biology text books, and he could know exactly what to predict, but that is nothing compared to what it is actually like.

He doesn't know how to tell Morgan how much that means to him.

10. The second woman he ever kissed was Lila Archer. And she was beautiful and perceptive and artistic and lovable and all wrong.

11. When he's twenty five, Reid isn't sure if Derek Morgan knows the depth of his adornment. Because honestly, the first year they started working together, he was seriously intimidated, and enthralled too, and by the second year, he was seriously in love, and scared. Yet the adrenaline from being released from Tobias Hankel, the edge of the drugs he's trying to so hard to get rid of, the secrets putting pressure on his heart and his stomach and all other organs that actually have no emotional nerve perception. He wants so badly to stop hiding, to stop seeking, to stop lying.

Somehow, Morgan seems to know the next time Reid looks at him. He just knows.

12. And after everything Reid has ever been through, he still can't stop the terror that pierces his throat when he thinks about Morgan driving that ambulance full of explosives. It's a hard memory to recall, mostly because his psyche is protecting itself, but nevertheless he can barely function for that moment, and his eyes seemed to unfocus, because he almost lost everything in that moment. And truthfully, he knows he's stronger than that, he knows he has enough self-preservation not to depend everything wholly on one person. Things change all the time, and people leave all the time, especially those who love them.

His father had taught him that.

13. He honestly loves JJ like no one else he's ever known. Because, yes, she's only eight years older than him, but she feels like she could be the mother he's always wanted. Or the older sister, simply someone who could love him and care for him. It's childish, he knows, and he wishes that behind all the intellectual comments and formulas and facts, he didn't have depend so completely on some people. He makes sure he never lets them know that, because what a burden it could be - he never really felt free until his mother was put into a home. He could never do that to someone else. Reid can feel the motherly glow around JJ when she holds Henry for the first time, her smile more relaxed than he ever had seen it before, like she knew things that no one else did.

He truly missed her when she took for maternity leave.

14. It's easy fight with Derek because once they're a couple (a truly exclusive couple), they can't actually agree on much. Because Derek has such a temper, and really, he doesn't have to get pissed about dropping the milk carton or the radio being on too loud when the car is started up in the morning. And Reid likes to read at night, thanks very much, and he doesn't like when Morgan interrupts to know what he's reading about. It's absolutely horribly when they try to sleep because Derek sleeps like a rock and Reid has to have room to move around. Spencer knows that Derek thinks he keeps too many secrets and Reid knows he's right.

But he doesn't know where to start.

15. So it's in the moments of pure solace and somber love that strike Reid as the ideal happiness. The mornings where inhibitions are lied to rest, and legs tangle together and personal smells (Reid is cotton, Derek is sandalwood) become intertwined; these are moments where everything in the world makes sense and had as an answer. The sun comes through the white drapes and the blankets are encouragingly warm, a warmth that sends Spencer into qualms of smiles, loose kisses and few words.

16. In the midst of his drug use, he would stay up thinking about powerfully wise human beings who had sought help in narcotics. Scientists. Musicians. Philosophers. Because they were remembered and talked about and admired, sometimes because of their dependency. But here he was, in his bedroom with the doors locked and the drapes drawn, high as kite, completely forgotten.

He secretly fears he'll always be forgotten some way or another.

17. Though he had worked at the BAU for three years now, it never seemed to harden his ability to love easily. Perhaps he gotten that talent from Gideon when the man had taken him under his wing, or from Garcia, who seemed to be the lauded light in the office. Or it could have been his mother, who undoubtedly had her issues, but never loved him any less. Once, Prentiss had asked him, "Do you fall in love often?"

And Spencer had wanted to say, Yes. With a book. Or a movie. Or an equation. Sometimes the way Derek pushes air into his cheeks when he's tired, or when people draw pictures in suede couches. Easily it could be when a case is finished or a particularly nice bath.

But instead he shrugged his shoulders.

18. Once in a while, Reid wonders how his life will end. More than often he sits in his study (cluttered in a mixture of technical books, literature and foreign language) and ponders what it will be like - will it hurt? Or simply will he drift off in his sleep? Will he die in the pursuit of saving someone, or perhaps, in the pursuit of killing someone? However, those times of question don't come often - Reid is usually too busy with working or loving or laughing. He hopes though, that someday, he will be able to tell everyone everything and no longer hide what he thinks.

And he hopes he will be able to travel the world.

19. Spencer Reid keeps a lot of secrets.

And I said I know it well, that secret that we know, that we don't know how to tell

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