The Sickness
Now
Reid stood in the underground lab, trying to make sense of the notes in front of him. I'm not going to make it, he thought. I'm going to die here. After all the hard work breaking my addiction, after having to go it alone when Gideon left, after four fucking years, now I'm going to die here. And I can't even fucking say good-bye. I don't know if I dare take that risk.
As the day wore on and there was nothing he finally decided he had to. He couldn't just let go. And so when Morgan stepped away from the door he called Garcia again.
"Hey Reid." The usually bubbly woman sounded horribly.
"Hey. I'm still…I'm still okay. Listen I need…I need you to record something else for me."
"Something else for your Mom?" Garcia pulled up the recording program again.
"No. I need…if I don't make it I need you to get this to Gideon, okay? I know we're supposed to respect his privacy and leave him alone, but if anyone can find him you can and I need…I need you to get this to him, all right? He'll know what to do."
Gideon, Garcia thought, he's saying good bye to his dad. "Okay, I'll find him. Go ahead."
Reid turned his back to the door and let the mask he wore for the world fall. When Garcia heard him again the quavering voice of the boy was gone. In its place was the voice of a man, one who wasn't bothering to hide his feelings this time. "Gwen, I want you to know that I never stopped. I was there every day for you, every day. And if you're hearing this, that means you're okay, and I just wish I was there holding your hand one more time. I love you, and I always will." He heard a noise behind him, put his mask back into place and turned toward the door. "Garcia I have to go."
"Wait!" Garcia called out after him, but the phone had already clicked off. "Who's Gwen? Who's Gwen?" What? What? She took a deep breath. "Okay Penelope, get a grip. He can't answer you if he's dead." She popped open a search program and instructed it to go looking for the name "Gwen", or any variations, in connection with Dr. Spencer Reid. Then she threw it into the background and promptly forgot it was there. She had to make sure he lived to explain who Gwen was and why she'd never heard the name before.
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"Go help Hotch." Oh, this sucks, Spencer thought, this sucks big time.
"Hotch has plenty of people helping him." Morgan frowned as he looked over his friend.
"They need you more than I do."
"Reid, I'm gonna see you off to the hospital."
"I'm about to get naked, so they can scrub me down. Is that something you really want to see?" Please take the hint, Morgan, please take the hint.
Morgan took the hint. "I'll check on you later." He looked over at Dr. Kimura. "Take good care of him please."
Dr. Kimura watched the larger man leave before turning to Dr. Reid. "I hope you're right about this."
"So do I." Spencer started pulling off his clothes. I wanted Gwen to be the first woman I voluntarily stripped for, he thought, the first to see what I built for her. Oh well.
Dr. Kimura watched, noticed something. "Dr. Reid, did you cut yourself?"
Spencer looked at the small nick on his hand. Roses, it would be roses. There was something poetic in living and dying by roses. Maybe she's trying to tell me something. Maybe she's waiting….He took a deep breath. "Keep going."
A moment later Dr. Kimura looked back, found herself looking at an unexpectedly chiseled form. "You didn't need to send your friend away you know. It might not be proper to point it out, but you have nothing to be ashamed of."
"Yeah, well…" Morgan didn't need to know that, Reid thought. "Go ahead." He held his arms out so they could start scrubbing.
"That too, please," Dr. Kimura pointed to the silver ring hanging from the cord around his neck.
Spencer sighed. Of course, "Sorry," he pulled and the cord snapped and he handed it over with everything else.
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Morgan stepped out of the hospital into the afternoon sunlight. Reid was going to be all right. He was still sick as a dog, clearly, but he was awake and begging for more jell-o. This had to be a good sign; things were going to be okay.
Now he just had to get his baby girl cheered back up to her usual self. He flipped open his phone and hit the first number on speed dial. "Hey sweetheart, now that everything is a-okay how about dinner tonight?"
"No, it's not. It is not okay," came the usually sweet voice. Something had wired her right back up top where she'd been while Reid was in danger. "It is so not okay. Just get into the office, please, you have to see this."
Instantly Morgan was on high alert. Garcia never got that upset unless one of their own was in trouble, "On my way."
It seemed like mere moments before Morgan was striding his way down the hallway to Garcia's lair. On the way he crossed paths with Hotch, who noticed how upset his teammate appeared to be. "What's going on?"
"I don't know. But something's got Garcia going." Hotch fell in beside him, was right there when he walked in to the computer room. It looked like Garcia had a case spread out over the monitors, police reports, evidence photos; and in the center a picture of a girl with dark hair and…"Damm, those eyes."
"They're hyperchromic, it's a rare mutation." Hotch leaned in over Garcia's shoulder, to try to make sense of what she was seeing. "Garcia, who is that."
Garcia was shocked, pale, almost in tears. "That's Reid's wife."
Then
If this is desire, Gwen thought, then I want more. She wrapped her legs around his hips to anchor herself as his lips found that hard point through the silk and a wave of sunshine heat claimed her. She rode it, fingers tangling in his hair to keep him there, until it subsided and she could breathe again. Her hearing returned just in time to hear someone yelling outside "Sloan hall is on fire! Sloan hall is on fire!" That drew a broken sound from her throat. Their offices, all their work, years of research, but she didn't want to stop…
Neither did he, but he knew what she was thinking. He was thinking the same thing, but they had years to play together. They had forever, but all their work could be gone in a few minutes. He looked down at her, those blue eyes wide with wonder and passion. "I'll go. You stay here." Crowds and noise and he knew what that would do to her. "I'm sure it's just a trash fire or something, just a prank but I'll go check. You stay here and keep thinking what you're thinking. I'll be right back." He tore himself away from her arms, found shoes and shirt and wallet before claiming one more kiss.
Oh, she didn't want him to go. It was paper, did it really matter? "Be careful. I love you." One more kiss and he called out I love you too as he ran out the door. She rolled over onto her back and watched the light on the ceiling dance as she felt the tingling in her body, the slow cramp of heat as she thought about what would happen when he came back. A few minutes later she heard the door open and smiled up at the light. "Just a joke then?" She rolled over to face the door…
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Sloan hall was in fact on fire. Someone had started a fire in a storeroom, which burned the store of printer toner, which spread a noxious black smoke throughout the building. But it was the other end of the large building, their offices were safe. Spencer was turning to jog back to his apartment when he realized that Jason Gideon was standing behind him.
"Someone's idea of a prank?" The older man asked.
"I guess so. I'm afraid we can't have you for…." The words died in Spencer's throat when he saw the plume of smoke rising from the direction of the housing unit, heard the other alarm go off. "Oh no."
Gideon followed Spencer at a dead run back toward the apartment house. By the time they got there smoke was pouring out of the windows at the far end, smoke that was engulfing the rest of the old, dry, wood-framed building. The apartment door was hanging open, the furniture seen through the doorway knocked over. He just caught Spencer as he tried to plunge into the smoky unit, used all his strength to hold the younger man back as he screamed his wife's name over and over again.
Now
Reid was exhausted. It wasn't just beating off the anthrax; it was having to keep his mask up for all this time. He could barely get to the bathroom on his own, let alone have a chance to truly relax. Even though he knew he was still fairly sick he was considering checking out against orders, just to he could go to his apartment and unwind.
On the other hand, they had very good jell-o.
Morgan stormed into Reid's room, all but slammed he door behind him, and flung the file he carried into Reid's lap. It fell open to the picture of the pretty brunette with the cobalt blue eyes. Morgan watched as his friend froze, and simultaneously seemed to almost ripple and change before his eyes. I've seen unsubs do that, he realized, when they're caught and they know it and the drop the pretense of normal. When his friend looked up at him the puppy dog boy was gone. It was replaced by a man, one who was worn, almost broken under the weight of what he carried. Morgan's anger died in his throat. "Reid, why didn't you tell me?"
"I wanted to, about a thousand times. It was Gideon's idea…."
Then
"This is never going to work." Reid called out from the bathroom. "These people are trained observers, you said so yourself."
Jason Gideon paced slowly around the hotel room. They didn't have that much time before they were supposed to show up at the BAU, so he could introduce the newest recruit. Spencer needed to hurry up in there. "I told you before; they are trained to look for flaws, mistakes, breaks in the pattern. They're expecting a geek, a nerd, a social misfit, some overgrown child who's never had to deal with anything more trying than getting his papers in on time." Not a man who spent the first twelve years of his life being tormented by his peers and caring for a paranoid schizophrenic. Not a man who committed his own mother to an asylum when he was eighteen. Not a man who rescued the woman he loved from the foster care system only to have her kidnapped right out of their marriage bed. Not a man. "So long as you fit that profile they won't even notice you."
Spencer finally stepped out of the bathroom so that Gideon could look him over with expert eyes. His pants were too big, were clearly being held on by his belt alone, which hid the muscles in his legs. His shirt was plaid and loud and also a size too big and with an undershirt underneath the condition of his torso was effectively blurred. His hair was combed back and held there with gel, and thick glasses replaced his usual contacts. The only thing he was missing was the pocket protector; it would have been a bit over the top. He had practiced schooling his face until his expression was a mixture of overconfidence and puppy dog eagerness. In addition he was twitching like he had fleas. "What's with the twitch?" Gideon asked.
"I wanted to hyper stimulate my nervous system, to bring out the autistic tendencies. So I put hot glue on the seams of my shirt to make them more irritating, and I've had three cups of red eye Americano coffee this morning with triple sugar in all of them." Between the constant light scratching and the sugar and caffeine high he was almost shaking like a tree in a strong wind. "Did you know that the story of Kaldi, the 9th-century Ethiopian goatherd who according to legend discovered coffee when his goats got high after eating some beans, did not appear in writing until 1671 and is probably apocryphal? The earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the fifteenth century; in the Sufi monasteries around the village of Mokha in the area now know as Yemen…" *
Gideon let Reid babble for a few moments and then stopped him. "It's perfect. They'll never know. Now we'll give it a few weeks for you to settle in and then we'll start combing the records. Every bit of evidence from every crime in the country can come into that office; all we'll have to do is fill out the right paperwork. We can call it research for some obscure academic journal or something. Those bastards did something like this before, and if we can build a profile we can catch them when they do it again."
Spencer nodded his agreement, but something in that made him pause. "We? I thought you were retired from active duty."
"Yea, well, I like your wife, she's a good cook; makes great French toast. Let's go."
And then we can find her, Reid thought, as he followed his friend and now mentor out of the hotel room. Then we can bring her home.
Now
Hotch walked in just as Spencer was finishing his story. "You lied to us. You lied to the Bureau. You've been funneling resources away from this department to conduct your own investigation. I had Garcia go over your log in records. You've been doing it since your first day on the job. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't fire you and bring you up on charges right now."
Something inside Spencer snapped. "Fire me? I've spent nearly five years fighting the monsters right along with you. I almost died saving this country, this morning. And you want to fire me because I've been trying to help my wife? Go ahead, Hotch, fire me. Charge me. Do whatever you have to do." If he was about to get fired then there was no reason to stay in this bed. He got up and started looking for his pants. Any pants. "But tell me one thing, what would you have done, Hotch, if it was Haley that lost to the monsters out there? If she was taken right out of your bed one day and no one, not one person you thought you could trust stepped forward to help you!? What would you have done!?!" And someone was coming in and it was Emily and now they all saw Spencer Reid, quiet little non-Alpha male Spencer Reid standing tall and strong and angry and yelling at Hotch.
Hotch had been imagining exactly that the entire drive over here, ever since he read the file. The whole mess screamed cover up, not even an arson investigation, the little evidence taken accidentally destroyed in the forensics lab, the investigation closed almost as soon as it opened, and three weeks later the building, their home, leveled to make a parking lot. What would he have done? If he had come home and found Haley gone? "I would have done whatever I could, regardless of the cost." No, he could not blame Reid; Gideon, maybe, for not trusting them when he knew the team, but not Reid. He turned to Emily. "Unless something emergent comes up this is our main case from now on; Missing person, Gwen Ryder Reid." He picked up the file and passed it to the now very confused Emily. "Get Garcia and JJ to help you get started on it. I want everything we can get out of Pasadena PD. Don't take no for an answer. Morgan," Hotch turned to the larger man. "You get to work our witness." Which was what Reid was now, like it or not.
"Emily" Spencer called after her to stop her. He tried to reach the closet to grab his keys from but that outburst had taken all his energy. The world was spinning. Morgan had to help him sit back up in bed. "Take my keys, there's a better file in my desk at home, bottom left drawer. Gideon started the profile."
After Hotch and Emily left Morgan sat and turned to his friend. "Well kid, I've seen some family members do some crazy shit, but never so well for so long. Just tell me one thing, who was the hardest to fool?"
"Tobias Hankel." When Morgan laughed and groaned he replied "Hey, you asked. The only thing I couldn't fool was the Anthrax, I thought it was going to kill me. I'm guessing Penelope told you."
"Yeah, once she started a background check the whole thing came open. She said Gideon altered the first one the Bureau did, way back when. What I don't know is why."
"He didn't want everyone thinking I joined the team just to work on Gwen's case. He thought we'd have better luck if I could gain everyone's trust right off. And he figured that meant fulfilling expectations rather than setting up cognitive dissonance."
"Did you join the team just to work on the case?"
"Yes." There was no reason to lie any longer. "But I stayed past the first year for my friends."
Morgan nodded. "Well, you've proven yourself enough. I just wish you would have told me before."
"I'm sorry. It's hard to know when to end a lie like that."
"Yea, well, no more." He watched as Spencer nodded, then sat up a little higher as Dr. Kimura came in, bearing tray with extra jell-o.
"Here you go." The doctor smiled and put the tray on the table. "Oh, and we had to dispose of your clothing, but I was able to save this." She held up a silver ring in a small baggie. "Given the inscription I figured you'd want it back. We couldn't save the cord though."
Morgan turned to look at her, "Inscription?"
"Amor vincit omnia." Dr. Kimura smiled at his blank look. "It's Latin. Virgil, I believe. 'Love conquers all"
Spencer managed a smile, one of the brighter moments of the day. "Thank you very much. You don't need to worry about the cord." He slid it back on his finger. It was still a perfect fit.
Dr. Kimura watched, surprised. "Dr. Reid, I didn't know you were married."
"It's kind of a long story."
Morgan reached out and stole another cup of jell-o. "Okay kid, start at the beginning."
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Notes: *Taken from the entry on "coffee" at Some dialog from the show "Criminal Minds" episode 4:24 'Amplification'. No copyright infringement intended to either party.
