AN: Okay, so this is the previously named The Reid Effect rewritten COMPLETELY and with a chapter two, because I decided we needed some happy comfort/fluff/Reid getting better.
Please do not read on if an injury to an animal upsets you.
Especially do not read on if an injury to a Reid upsets you.
"We interrupt your regularly scheduled musical selection with an important announcement: never wage a practical joke war against an MIT graduate, because we have a history of going nuclear. Now just sit back, relax, and enjoy the dulcet sounds of me, screaming in your ear."
"Morgan, Reid, you two go check out the Professor's house – it's been empty for weeks according to his landlord. See if he left anything behind when he cleared out."
Hotch glared at Morgan as he spoke. Morgan smiled innocently, redirecting all the irritation his boss was aiming at them. The rest of their team rolled their eyes, their patience wearing thin with the tense atmosphere around the two prank-warring profilers.
Reid almost bolted out the room, head lowered and eyes hidden by dark shades. Morgan took his time, grabbing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. JJ touched his arm as he walked past her.
"Is he okay?" she asked, tilting her head towards the empty doorway. "He's… quiet."
Morgan snorted. "He's just anticipating my next move."
"Morgan." Hotch's voice was a warning.
"Yeah, yeah, Hotch. I'll keep an eye on him. He's fine, you'll see."
Morgan tapped at the wheel impatiently. The streets they drove through were empty, everyone hiding away from the stifling heat of the day. Morgan half wished he could hide away from the heat as well. By the look on Reid's face, he wasn't the only one.
By the time they reached the house they were both covered in a sheen of sweat, Reid drooping miserably as Morgan swung open the car door. The heat was a physical wall, and even the Vegas born and bred agent recoiled.
Morgan chuckled at Reid's glum expression. "Want me to check the area, kid?" Reid hesitated, then nodded silently, slumping back into the seat. Morgan was relatively secure in his assumption that the yard and house would be empty.
He left him there and let himself in with the key the landlord had supplied, wrinkling his nose at the stink of the closed in rooms soaked in the heat of a Georgian summer. The inside of the house was as stifling as outside, and as abandoned as expected. Boring, Morgan hummed to himself, peeking out the front window. Reid was a dark shadow in the car, head pressed against the glass.
He left through the front and travelled along the fence line, keeping half an eye on the SVU containing his partner. In the back of his mind, the ever-present knowledge that he wasn't going to let his skinny weed of a partner beat him at his own prank game. He didn't grow up with three sisters and learn to take things lying down.
Glancing along the tops of the wooden slats into the desolate yard, his interest was piqued by a promising sight.
A sprinkler, laying benignly along the path. Other than that, the yard was mostly bare except for a tangle of overgrown hedging at the back and a lawn slightly gone to seed. The Professor was a keen gardener and the sprinkler was designed to water the entire swathe of lawn alongside the house. It had been kicked up from the lawn by a careless foot and was crookedly pointing directly to the path.
Lying at the perfect angle to douse someone with a startlingly cool shower as they wandered unsuspectingly onto the path. The tap to turn the sprinkler on was on his side of the fence. It was almost serendipitous.
Delightful.
"Hey, Reid!" he called, trying to hide the grin, imagining his friend's face when the sprinkler suddenly drenched him. He managed to straighten his facial expression to something almost resembling seriousness as the young genius popped his head out passenger window, frowning as the heat struck him.
Really, I'm doing Reid a favour, cooling him down in this stinking heat. "Thought I saw something around the back, you wanna take a look, man?" he asked, nonchalantly.
Reid sighed and nodded, irritably exited the car. For a moment, Morgan felt a twinge of guilt. Spencer had been acting off all week, lethargic and glum. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to soak him if he was coming down with something… Of course, if he didn't do this he'd have to come up with something else, otherwise Garcia would never let him forget how the younger agent had gotten the better of him.
She kept changing his ringtone to Reid screaming and after the fourth time, it was starting to haunt his dreams too.
His hand on the tap, he watched Reid open the gate and walk into the backyard, hearing the latch bounce and click shut as it swung behind him. The young agent glanced around, not noticing the sprinkler, before turning back to Morgan, his face quizzical at the apparently empty yard.
Morgan let his hand drop from the tap. He couldn't do it, not while Reid was this down. He shrugged, "I guess not, never mind," and turned, feeling oddly guilty, as though he'd done a great wrong. He heard Reid's footsteps behind him and the slight click of the latch as his friend followed him back to the car.
He didn't hear the attack as the seventy-five pound retriever stalking the agents from the shelter of the hedging lunged at his friend.
All Morgan heard was a strangled cry.
A crack.
And silence.
Spinning around, hand automatically dropping to his hip, Morgan's mouth twitched into an automatic half-smile at the sight of the gold coat of a familiar, friendly breed. He hadn't even seen the animal in his cursory check of the yard.
In the absurdity of the moment, Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan almost failed to react in time as he watched the dog's jaws close around his friend's throat, Reid limp and unresisting under the assault.
The ghost of a smile was still on his lips as he fired three rounds into the animal's chest.
Reid's lanky frame had fallen awkwardly against the gate, pinning it half open against the house. Morgan didn't bother with it, leaping the fence and landing next to the unconscious agent. Reid's sunglasses crunched under Morgan's boot as he landed, head lolling back loosely at a sickening angle that had every one of Morgan's nerves firing in panic.
His throat was a bloody mass of torn flesh, rapidly darkening his purple shirt to a deep black and matting his hair against his skin. Morgan hesitated only a moment at seeing it, before the panic subsided into a clear, distant calm.
Shoving the dying dog aside, there was a bizarre twinge of surreal guilt at the animal's plight even as he stripped his shirt to staunch the gaping wound. Everything moved slowly. His pulse pounded in his ears, his body moving jaggedly.
He didn't think he'd ever forget the green of the grass and the blue sky against the vivid red splashed on the floor, his hands, and the glowing gold coat of the starving and maddened dog. Nor would he forget the way Reid's heart still beat persistently, determined to pump his life out through Morgan's clenched fingers even as Morgan tried to hold it in; or the feel of his skull shifting under Morgan's fingers when he reached a hand back to see if his head was bleeding from the wall.
In every victim from now on, he'd see way Reid's eyes had slipped open, unfocused with blown pupils the same colour as the deep black of his blood-soaked shirt. He'd hear the rattling sound he'd made as he drew strained breaths.
People running towards him, calling something about an ambulance, dragging the dog away. None of it mattered.
All that mattered was holding him here.
He could hear himself chanting his friend's name under his breath as his hands grew sticky and the pulse under his palms slowed. Faltered. His eyes didn't close. Stopped. Blank.
Bright blood on pale skin. His friend unmoving, waiting for the sirens but unable to hear them over the echoing nightmare of snarls and that sudden crack.
It was just a prank. A harmless prank.
He closed his eyes and prayed. Not like this. Not like this.