Disclaimer: Not mine.
Ladies and gentlemen, for your dining and dancing pleasure, tonight we present a little tag to episode 7x16 "A Family Affair". Enjoy the show!
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I Love a Girl Called Garcia
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Reid eyed the team suspiciously as he sat down after coming back from the bathroom. They were smirking. "What? What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked, quickly giving himself the once-over. "Is there something sticking to me?"
"Oh, no reason," Emily said smugly, while J.J. hummed something that sounded like "Maria, Maria," under her breath.
Reid looked at Morgan, confused.
"Sorry, Pretty Boy, it's just that we never pictured you as a West Side Story fan," Morgan chuckled.
"A what fan?" Reid asked with such genuine confusion that they were suddenly puzzled.
"You know," J.J. said, and then she started to sing: "'Maria. I just met a girl called Maria…"' Henry was singing it this morning right after you left."
Reid's brow furrowed for a half-second, then to their collective surprise, he laughed out loud. "Oh, is that where that's from?" And now the smirk was on his face.
Rossi looked from him to the ladies before the light bulb went on. "So how was babysitting last night?" he drawled, having caught on miles ahead of the others.
"Different than I expected," Reid admitted, the hint of a very wicked grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
J.J. shook her head and smiled. "I told you Henry could be a handful, Spence. Watching a child isn't as easy as it looks."
"Actually, Henry was fine. No problem at all. He ate every bite of his dinner and then sat quietly and played with his barnyard set most of the evening. Then I read him a couple of stories before bed and he went out like a light." Reid turned to Morgan and Rossi. "No, it was these three that were the problem children," he said, nodding towards his three female coworkers.
"What?" Emily demanded.
"Hung over pretty bad, were they?" a snickering Morgan asked.
"Oh no - they're hung over now," Reid clarified. "At sunrise, when they came home, they were still… how did my father used to put it? Oh yeah: 'Lit up like Christmas Trees.' "
The ladies' expressions were rendered so simultaneously aghast that Rossi and Morgan couldn't help but burst out laughing so hard that all the heads of the other patrons at the diner whipped around to stare over at their table. "So let me guess: they're the ones who taught Henry the song?" Rossi finally asked once the place had gone back to the normal background sounds of chatter and clinking cutlery.
"Yep. Well, Emily and J.J, anyway. Which somebody might have known if they'd listened to the actual lyrics Henry was singing."
"Oh, oh, please share the lyrics, Pretty Boy!" Morgan begged. "This I gotta hear!"
Reid made a show of trying to remember. "Let's see, it was all a bit slurred, out of tune and definitely off the beat, but I think it went like this:
Garcia! (he recited in lieu of singing) Who brought me a glass of Sangria!*
And suddenly she's here,
And in her hands, a beer,
For meee!
Garciiiaaah!
Say it loud and there's liquor flowing,
Say it soft and there are panties showing,
Garciiiiaaah!
She'll never stop bringing tequila!
For a full minute, nothing was said. Jaws dangling, the female half of the table gaped at Reid with stunned humiliation, while the male half basked in the warm glow of moral superiority and amusement.
"Panties showing?" Garcia asked, her voice a strangled whisper.
"Naughty, naughty, Miss Garcia," Morgan teased. "I see London, I see France -"
"Please stop!" Garcia begged.
Morgan ignored her. "You know, I literally don't think I've ever been this happy!" he declared. "The BAU ladies, drunk as skunks and singing like goonballs. So was that it then?" he asked, turning to Reid.
"Well, it ended kind of abruptly because J.J. suddenly had to dash outside to…uh…hmm, maybe I shouldn't say that part. But don't worry, J.J. - I hosed off the side of your house. Oh, and you probably won't want to use the roses closest to your front door for your table or, you know, anything inside."
J.J. moaned in despair, while on Reid's left Rossi and Morgan bit their lips in an attempt to keep from laughing out loud again. "So what were Princess and Baby Girl doing while J.J. was…uh, fertilizing her flowerbed?" Morgan wanted to know.
"Emily fell over and onto the floor when her load-bearing fellow inebriate ran out," Reid continued, "and then crawled into the living room and, for some reason I couldn't fathom, kept wanting to give me toy cows that she found in Henry's toy box. And Garcia… Garcia was busy."
"Busy?" Rossi prodded.
"Busy?" Garcia repeated weakly.
"I guess you could say that," Reid said hesitantly, all of a sudden a bit reluctant to open this can of worms any further.
"C'mon Kid, you can't leave it hanging there," Morgan told him.
"Yes he can!" Garcia cried out.
Reid glanced from the men to the women. Chivalry put up a gallant fight, but male bonding won out in the end. "Okay, so while Emily and J.J. were doing their rendition of West Side Story, Garcia went around tapping all of us on the head with her pretend magic wand, saying that she 'was there to bring libations to all the good girls and boys of the world.' After that, she was…well, let's just say that I don't think it would be appropriate to discuss her behaviour here."
"And where would it be appropriate to discuss it?" Rossi asked.
"My guess would be a sexual harassment seminar," Reid answered.
"Baby Girl! What did you do?"
Reid whispered in Morgan's ear. Morgan gasped, "Garcia!" and threw a protective arm around Reid. "Don't worry, Kid. I'll shield you from these lecherous women!"
"Nononononononononono!" a horrified Garcia lamented, dropping her head to the table and nearly upsetting her coffee.
Reid went as wide-eyed as an injured fawn. "It was awful, Morgan! And in front of our little godson too!"
Three gazes snapped up to stare at the genius. So far the remorse had been half embarrassed and half joking, but this was a whole new - and much more serious - level of mortification.
"No! No no no no no!" J.J. protested, holding a finger up at Reid. "My son did not see me drunk! Please, please God, tell me my son did not see me drunk!"
"Oh God! Oh God, what did I do? Tell me!" Garcia pleaded.
"Oh, don't you worry, Miss Naughty Thing," Morgan informed her, "We are definitely going to be having a conversation about that!"
"Oh, my little baby G-man saw me dancing around like some kind of… some kind of…"
"Liquor fairy?" Reid suggested.
Garcia looked at him like she was on the verge of tears.
"Sorry," Reid said contritely. "Liquor Santa?"
The ladies glared at him, then hung their heads and started muttering half a dozen "Never again's" and "I can't believe it's".
Reid finally took pity on them. "Look guys, it's okay. Really. Henry didn't understand what was going on. I told him you all had the flu and you were acting silly because you were delirious. Then I sent him in to the other room to watch cartoons while I took care of you. After that, when I finally got you all to lie down, I took him outside and let him play with his soccer ball while I cleaned up. And, okay, he repeated your little song, but I think the worst that'll happen is that J.J. will have some explaining to do to Will - "
"Oh no, Will!" J.J. said with another moan.
"I'm sure he'll just find it funny, J.J," Reid went on, "He's a good guy; he knows you've got just as much right to blow off steam as he does. And after all, it's not as if it's something you do it all the time. And Henry will eventually forget all about this. Honest. Heck, even I don't even remember any of the things that happened to me when I was three."
The ladies were still in misery, but the moaning stopped. The gang ordered breakfast (the ladies talking Reid's suggestion of bacon sandwiches after he explained how the amino-rich bacon would help to replace the neurotransmitters they lost during their binge and therefore lessen their hangovers), and talked about Hotch and Beth, who had gone to eat somewhere else so that Beth and Jack could get to know each other better. When the team was done, and the ladies had split Reid's bill to thank him, they said their goodbyes and all went off in different directions.
Well, almost all.
Reid was cutting across the park to get to the Metro station when he heard J.J. calling for him. "Spence, wait!"
"What's up, J.J?"
"I just wanted to thank you for, you know, everything."
"It was no problem, J.J. Henry's a great little boy."
J.J. smiled with pleasure; praise of her angel was always wonderful to hear, even if it was the only thing to be expected from his doting godfather. "Yeah… yeah, he is," she agreed, a little bashfully though. "And I've got to say, Spence, I'm surprised at how good a job you did."
Just for a second, she saw a shadow of hurt flit over his eyes, but he smiled gamely and said, "Thank you," and then turned to head off to his station. J.J. grabbed him by the arm.
"Spence?"
Reid turned around again and squinted in the sunlight, not quite able to look at her. "You know, just because I've never cared Henry on my own doesn't mean I've never cared for anybody on my own," he said softly.
"I…" J.J. looked at him, suddenly realizing she'd hurt him.
"You and Emily…" He broke off, then sighed. "You both looked so horrified when I made the offer."
"No we didn't," she tried to lie.
"C'mon, J.J. Did you really I couldn't tell how quickly you regretted bringing it up? How quickly you wanted to back out of it?"
"Spence, I…"
"I'm a grown man, J.J. I'm an F.B.I. agent and I took care of my mother for years, but you balked at giving me a job that most people regularly trust to thirteen-year-olds." He smiled sadly as tears came to her eyes. It was almost a whisper as he said to her: "If you were really surprised, well then maybe, just maybe, that's because it's easy to surprise people when they have such low expectations of you."
"Spence - "
"I'll see you tomorrow, J.J." he said kindly, and went on his way before she could stop him.
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* My apologies to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim
So, yeah, the tone changed a little at the end, but I think that's because this was a bit of author therapy. That scene on the plane always bugged me a little. I do understand that J.J. and Emily weren't trying to be mean, but they did seem genuinely appalled at Reid's offer and if they could have gotten out of it, they would have. I also understand that watching kids is hard work, but hey, I started baby-sitting at fourteen, and frankly I'm an idiot with no particular interest in (or rapport with) children, so if someone like me could do it, I'm sure as Hell Reid could have, and so their second-guessing him seemed insulting to me.
Therefore, if Reid seemed a little OOC in this (even while writing it I began to think this was a little too ungallant for his normal behaviour), his slightly weary at the end may explain why. And he was probably up all night worrying about the three, so he's cranky too.
