"Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed." - Irene Peter
When the BAU team happened to have a case in Nevada two weeks after their 20 week scan, Reid and Morgan stayed behind once it was concluded, both taking a long weekend to fly to Las Vegas to visit Reid's mother. If any big cases came up they'd have to head to where they were needed, but they put the thought of that possibility aside. The little time they had meant it was impossible to avoid the first available slot to visit her – the evening they landed in Vegas - coinciding with a time when she didn't recognise who Spencer was.
They sat with her none the less, and said they were waiting to talk to another patient and engaged her in conversation for almost two hours. They avoided mentioning their names so they didn't confuse her, and she asked them about their life, and about Spencer's pregnancy as most people would in casual conversation. Spencer was well-practiced at engaging her even when she didn't recognise him, and masked any negative feeling when she began talking about her son who was "at college". Eventually she got tired and agitated and they made their leave to return to the hotel. Reid was quiet the whole way back, and his pace quickened from the hotel lobby when two women clocked his belly and cooed in his direction.
Morgan opened their hotel door with the cardkey and Reid tried to slip through the gap, realised he wasn't as thin as he once was, and had to wait for Morgan to push it open further. He was too distracted to notice Morgan smiling to himself as he closed the door behind them. Reid turned on the spot, fiddling with the strap of his bag as Morgan closed the distance between them.
"I'm sorry, baby." Derek smiled kindly, putting his hands on Spencer's shoulders. "I know it's hard for you to see her like that."
"Don't." Reid said, shrugging out of Morgan's hold. The man seemed surprised, his hands lingering in front of him as Reid turned away.
"Baby..?" he said carefully.
"Actually, you don't know, do you?" he said shortly. "You haven't even thought about it."
"About what?"
Reid pulled his bag off her his head, throwing it with some force onto the bed. It bounced and fell off the side, but he ignored it on his way towards the hotel window, where he leant his forehead on the glass, noting he had to position his hips further back than he once would have to compensate for his belly. The glass was cool against his slightly damp forehead; it was still warm in Nevada in October, and just walking around hadn't been as easy as it once was with the extra mass of his belly straining against his shirt. He only just fit into his clothes now, he knew he'd need to buy special paternity clothing soon, but for some reason the prospect sounded even worse than regular clothes shopping.
"I'm used to seeing her like that now." Spencer sighed. There was a long pause as he gently rested his stomach against the wall below the window, a slight pressure on his expanse of stomach. "But what if I've passed that onto our fetus?"
"You're past the typical age for a schizophrenic break." Morgan said slowly.
"Even if I don't have schizophrenia, it's been documented to skip a generation." Reid murmured. "And since I'm at twenty two weeks gestation, I doubt there's time to seek elective termination, with the-"
"Reid!" Derek snapped, so suddenly Reid turned around to look at him curiously. "You said you wanted to do this!" Morgan looked horrified, and hurt, and it took Reid a moment to realise what had caused it. "You even told me to stop bringing up abortion because you wanted this, and then you just drop it out there again like this? You said you wanted this!"
"I do!" Spencer's eyes widened. "But schizophrenia is-"
"I don't care!" Derek shouted, holding up his hand. Spencer looked taken aback and fell silent, hands crossing around his chest. "I've been trying so hard to accommodate that you're treating this pregnancy like a health issue that's gonna be over in four months. And yeah, I guess technically it is, and you should get to go through it however you want. But it's like you're forgetting that at the end of that, we're gonna have a baby. I don't care about the schizophrenia, Spencer. If we have a kid who ends up having schizophrenia, then so what? We'll still love them, and look after them. And if they turn out to be ill, we'll apologize every damn day for passing that on. And if our kid is angry at us for that, then we'll let them be. But I want this kid. I know you think of it as a fetus, and that's fine, but it's already our kid to me."
"You have no idea what's it like to spend your life wondering if you're mentally ill."
"You're right, I don't." Morgan agreed.
"I don't blame my mother," he continued, "but we know the risk. I know. It's not fair."
"You remember when I found out you were pregnant?" Morgan said patiently. "At the hospital? The first thing you brought up was termination, because it was practical. Logical. I had to pry it out of you that you were emotionally attached. I think you're doing the same thing now. You're putting processes of rationality, the stuff you're best at, before what you're feeling because you're not so sure about that. In an ideal world we'd be able to make sure our kid had zero risk of schizophrenia. But you're pregnant, and you're right, it's too late to get an abortion. I don't think you want one, Spencer, I really don't. Because-"
"We promised not to profile each other." Spencer said in a small panicked voice.
"Yeah, we did, when we were completely honest with each other." Derek shifted his balance to his other leg, dropping his hip into place. "I'm not saying you've been lying, but... you haven't been talking to me about how you're feeling like we promised we would. And I guess I haven't either."
"Go on then," Reid nodded bitterly, lips tight, "profile me."
Morgan took a long breath in through his nose, knowing this could end badly.
"I think you considered abortion in the early weeks, but I don't think you've even considered it an elective possibly for months. I think you'd have brought it up earlier, brought up schizophrenia risk as reason, if you really wanted to. You're bringing it up now because you think you should, that you should feel guilty for the genetic odds you're passing on. You're bringing it up now because you get to sooth your guilt by lamenting the culpability you have in the risk, but at the same time you know you won't have to choose that, because it's too late by law. You're... you're scared, Spencer. You're empathising with your our unborn child. You feel guilty, and responsible, and you're hormonal, and... you're crying."
He was, turning his face away and muscles stretching as he tried to keep the emotions from playing out across his features.
"Baby.."
"Don't." Reid said, breath hitching as he pre-empted Morgan reaching for him. He hated that Morgan was right, and that he knew it. He hate that he knew he had avoided self-reflecting for months because he didn't know how to deal with the emotions being pregnant was causing him. He hated that he was crying; Derek hadn't seen him cry – tears from pain or laughter not withstanding – since their last big fight, and that was over two years ago. He sniffed and sidestepped Derek's outstretched arm, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands as he stepped around him.
"Spencer-"
"I need a shower."
"We need to talk."
"I think you've said enough." He snapped. His husband might be right, but it didn't make the truth any easier to deal with as he slammed the bathroom door, and didn't lock it – he'd ended the conversation, and he trusted Morgan to honour that and leave him alone.
He could feel the fetus moving as he undressed, sniffing back the tears that were still coming. He prodded his stomach with his thumb, as if that would still the thing, but of course it didn't. He wondered if the raised voiced had disturbed it, and was surprised by the sudden urge he had to comfort it. It was unnecessary, really – the fluid surrounding the fetus and his heartbeat should create regular patterns of sound, movement and sensation that would calm it. He knew it would be several weeks until the fetus had any chance of actually feeling such contact to his abdomen, around the same time movement would be detectable to others besides the host. That said, under the stream of water in the shower, Reid wasn't sure that might not already be the case as his soapy hands glided across his swollen belly. Since first detecting movement weeks earlier, it had slowly become less general and more precise, and now Spencer was almost certain he could tell the difference between when the fetus was awake and moving actively, and when it was simply rolling and moving to get more comfortable in sleep or otherwise.
When he pressed down on the left of his belly, he felt movement on the left too. He drew his hand away quickly, and almost laughed that his reactionary thought to the fetus apparently responding to him was that he didn't want to encourage it. He was five and a half months pregnant and he still hadn't got used to the idea that there was something so substantial living in him, and hadn't been able to dispel the fear that such massive changes to his body would be in vain. The risks were considerable enough that he hadn't been able to move past them; every time the fetus didn't move at the same times he'd been noticing, he panicked. Every time he got random pain, he panicked. Every time someone else saw his swollen stomach and their faces lit up with wonder he wanted to shy out of their sight, seething with jealousy that they got to react so without the accompanying fear and physical discomfort he had to deal with. He wanted to be like the people on the pregnancy pamphlets he'd read, or like the people whose experiences were in the books he'd read; relishing the 'joys' of pregnancy. Instead he felt paranoid and slow on his feet, increasingly huge and limited; he couldn't sleep on his stomach, couldn't drink regular coffee, couldn't even sit and read for more than an hour without having to use the bathroom because his uterus was pressing against his bladder.
Spencer turned his face upwards and moved under the shower spray, hands running over his neck as the fetus continued to move, pressing what Reid assumed was a foot into his ribs, which was only just shy of painful. The movement was reassuring, so much so that Reid anticipated it, despite finding it weird to be hosting something that eventually would be a person. It was already alive, and already human, but if Reid hadn't seen the sonogram images he might not even believe it was happening. The fetus was still moving when Reid was dry and naked, and went back through into the main room of their hotel.
Morgan wasn't there.
He didn't pause to wonder if it was strange that he suddenly felt naked and exposed only because Derek wasn't there, and hurried over to his go-bag and picked out the sweats he wore in bed on cases. After a pause, he reached into Morgan's go-bag and picked out one of the other man's t-shirts too; a navy blue one, and slipped it on. It was loose on him, fitted just a little across the widest part of his stomach, not clingy like his own clothes which he had to concede were almost too small for his expanding belly. He perched on the edge of the bed and felt like crying again; Morgan only stormed off when he was at his angriest, when he feared saying something in a rage he'd regret. Spencer hadn't even considered that his own handling of the pregnancy would have such an effect on his husband; part of him wanted to be angry himself, to fully commit to the idea that Morgan should simply adapt to how he wanted to handle it; a bigger part just wished he wasn't worrying that the pregnancy wouldn't remain viable, with the same intensity he used to worry about his mental health. For the first time in a long time, he wanted to be average.
When Derek let himself back into the hotel room not five minutes later, the first thing he saw was Reid sitting cross-legged near the pillows on the bed, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand again.
"Baby boy," he murmured, crossing over quickly and slipping out of his shoes and jacket, joining the other man on the bed. "I'm sorry." He said, putting the plastic bag he'd been carrying down between his knees. "I thought I'd be back by the time you got out of the shower." He offered as explanation, at the same time he offered his husband a pint carton of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream and a spoon.
Reid suddenly felt stupid; there was no tension in Morgan, no sign he'd stormed out at all, merely gone to fetch ice cream. He knew before the man spoke again that it was an apology of itself, so he opened the carton and dug his spoon in. Derek was doing the same with his own carton – toffee pecan – when he said something.
"I' m sorry I upset you, baby. I shouldn't have ambushed you after we'd just seen your mom."
It went quiet, but not awkward as they both tucked into their ice cream. Reid had been craving sweetness and cold in equal measure; the last time Garcia had bustled through the bullpen with an iced coffee in hand, Spencer had realised he was considering whether he could break into her office and steal it unnoticed.
"You're right though." Spencer said softly, spooning ice cream into his mouth. "I'm scared. I'm really scared."
"What's scaring you, baby?" he encouraged.
"I don't think I'm experiencing normal levels of prenatal attachment. I can't think of it as anything but a fetus; I've tried, tried to think about when it's born, but I panic. First time parents usually experience higher level of prenatal attachment. High levels of prenatal attachment correlate to lower risk of child abuse in the future-"
"Spencer, you're not gonna hurt our kid." Morgan said seriously.
"Low prenatal attachment has been linked to poor parent-infant attachment, and post-partum depression."
"Baby, I'm not trying to say you're wrong about how you feel," Derek said carefully, gesturing with a spoonful of ice cream, "but why do you think what you're feeling is 'low'? What do you think you should be feeling?"
"Physical stimulation..." he murmured, staring down into his carton, feeling a little pink colouring his cheeks. "Wanting to touch my stomach, talk to the fetus and stuff..."
"And you don't feel like you want to do that."
"I... no. I don't know." He whispered. "Sometimes it feels like I want to. But I... don't. I stop myself. I don't know why."
Morgan's shoulders shrugged in a silent laugh, and Reid looked hurt. A soothing hand came out to touch his arm, his husband's dark eyes kind.
"Baby, I don't think you're as unattached as you think." He said.
"What do you mean?"
"For maybe, four weeks," Derek started, adjusting his hold on his carton, "you've been talking to yourself more. When you read, when you're getting your logic on. When you're reading you read passages aloud, and I'm not sure you even realise it. And that started when you were about seventeen weeks pregnant. When most of the science says prenatal hearing begins to develop. And I know you know that, genius, whether or not it was at the front of your mind."
Spencer's brow was creased, spoon lingering in his mouth.
"Where are your elbows, Spencer?"
"What?" Reid said, and instinctively pressed his elbowed inwards, and realised they were pressed against the side of his belly. He looked surprised to register his own body language, and immediately moved his arms.
"You touch your belly at night, too. I like you like the contact – I mean earlier at the window you were pressing your belly against the wall a little, and that's not the first time I've noticed you do that. On tables, desks, walls, just resting your belly against them. And you don't mind me touching it. Last week after we did it – Tuesday, I think – I had my hand on your stomach and I was half asleep. I felt my hand slip off, and then you put it back on your belly."
"Wednesday." Reid corrected, looking with interest at the contents of his ice cream carton.
"The point is, pretty boy," Morgan carried on, extending his spoon and pressing Reid's chin with the cold smooth underside, lifting his face and finding his line of sight, "just because you're not feeling yourself up or wearing belly-shirts to show off your bump, doesn't mean you're not attaching. You gotta do this the way you think is best, baby. But I've known you a long time, I think long enough and intimately enough to say better than anyone else; you would feel better if you try switching off that big old brain of yours."
"I've tried."
"I know, baby." Morgan said. "Maybe we can think of stuff to help you switch off."
"Like what?" Reid asked.
"Well..." Derek sat back against the pillows, and offered a spoonful of his ice cream to his husband. Reid leant forward a little and took it, humming a sound of approval. "When we get back home, we could decorate the nursery."
"We don't even know which room we're going to put it in." Spencer said, offering a taste of his own ice cream to Derek and trying to ignore the little flutter in the middle of his chest.
"The room next to ours." He said, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.
"Right."
"We don't have to if you don't want to." Morgan said, attempting to read his husband's face.
"No, no," he said quickly, "we should. I mean I do."
"Okay." Morgan beamed. "First chance we get, we'll go to the hardware store and look at paint."
"Did you know the practice of assigning colours to the gender of newborns began in the 1920s?" Spencer said, ease slipping back into his voice when he got onto ground he knew.
"Really, that recent?" Derek raised his eyebrows in mild interest.
"And actually until the 1940s pink was considered a colour for boys, and blue for girls. Red was considered close to red, which was a masculine colour, and blue a delicate colour, associated with the Virgin Mary."
"Pink and blue are boring." Morgan said. "My bedroom was blue when I was a kid. Like, baby blue. My mom would never let me paint it navy like I wanted."
"My room in the first house I lived in was taupe." Reid offered. "When we moved the walls were never repainted, so I was in a beige room. But it was bigger, I could get more book in there, so I was happy."
"I bet." Derek chuckled. "I can put up a bookshelf in the nursery, easy. And some shelves. And hey, maybe I'll make the crib."
"Really?" Reid said, mouth around another spoonful of ice cream.
"Yeah really. You don't think I can?"
"I didn't say that." He teased. Leaning back on the pillows with his husband and peering into his carton, wondering if eating this much ice cream in one sitting was going to be something he ended up regretting.
"It'll be the best damn nursery you've ever seen." Derek nodded to himself. "Fancy crib, bookshelf full of books, big-ass chair-"
"Have you thought about this a lot?" Spencer said suddenly, avoiding eye.
"What?"
"About the hypothetical of our child. Which, I suppose is less of a hypothetical now."
"It's-" he exhaled slowly through his nose, wondering if answering was going to completely ruin the light hearted mood they'd managed to create in the wake of their argument. "It's not hypothetical to me, pretty boy. So yeah, I've thought about it a lot."
"I haven't." Spencer admitted. "I mean, I have, before I was pregnant – especially when I'm with Henry, or Sarah and Desirée's kids. But not since I found out. That's weird, right? I guess I thought we'd adopt, so I'd have all the time it took to finalise an adoption to think about what it was going to be like with a child."
"Oh please," Derek laughed gently, "if we'd adopted you'd have been the same. Panicked, worried, full of statistics about adoption failures, afraid to hope in case something goes wrong, like you are now. I know you, pretty boy, and I know you're gonna be an amazing father, however you handle the being pregnant part. And in the end, the parenthood is the bit that matters most, right?"
"I guess." Reid couldn't help but smile at the faith Morgan had in him.
"We're gonna do okay, Spencer." He said, nudging his elbow against the other man. "That much I can promise you."
"Spencer!"
His mother beamed at him, standing up from her chair and taking his face in her hands, smoothing one over his hair.
"Hi mom."
"Derek." She said warmly as she broke away from her son, and he greeted her with a kiss on each cheek, and offered her the flowers they had brought for her. "They're lovely, thank you. Just look at you, Spencer. Sit, sit."
They sat on the couch next to Diana's chair as she put the flowers carefully on the coffee table in front of them, while Reid tried to get comfortable; folding one leg over the other was no longer ideal, and it had got to the point where having his hands in his lap meant essentially hugging his belly. He settled for putting one arm up on the side of the couch and the other braced against the top of his thigh.
"You're glowing, Spencer." Diana cooed, looking proudly at her son. Derek put his hand on the other man's knee, smiling at him when he briefly caught his eye. "How are you finding pregnancy?"
"It's not what I was expecting." Reid said diplomatically.
"I don't think anyone is truly prepared for pregnancy." She said kindly. Spencer smiled; hearing that from his mother was somehow more comforting than the times most other people had said it. "You're still so thin, Spencer," he looked pointedly at Morgan, "are you making sure he's eating well?"
"I am." Derek nodded.
"Are you taking folic acid?"
"Yes. " Spencer nodded.
"And when did you start paternity leave?"
Morgan shifted a little in his seat; he never asked to read what Spencer wrote in his daily letters to his mother, so he didn't realise he hadn't told her he was still working. He had guessed that Reid's mom didn't know quite how dangerous his job could be, but he assumed she had a sense.
"I haven't yet, mom." He said calmly.
"Spencer," she frowned, "I don't like the thought of you doing that kind of work while you're pregnant. This is your adventure, you don't need to go out and find more."
"I'm not in the field." He reasoned.
"But you still carry a gun." Diana said slightly accusingly.
"It's for protection, mom."
"Don't worry," Morgan interjected, "I've been looking after him. He'd not doing anything dangerous."
It was true; Reid didn't feel too restricted working point from whatever police station they were centred at on cases.
"How long are you going to take off when the baby comes?" she pressed.
"I don't know yet, mom. It's too early to say."
"Before you know it the baby will be born," she said knowingly, "if you haven't decided by then, I think you'll know exactly what to do."
Beside him, Morgan could feel Reid tensing as his mother asked a series of questions that were expected small talk about pregnancy, all of which Spencer had to answer with a negative.
"Have you furnished the baby's room yet?"
"Not yet."
"Did you buy a stroller?"
"No, not yet, mom."
"What baby name have you considered?"
"We.. we haven't talked about names yet, mom."
Derek pulled at Reid's wrist, getting his hand out from under his leg and linking their fingers together. He smiled reassuringly at his husband.
"We're just starting to do all the planning, Diana." He said evenly. "It's been a bit of an adjustment, realising we're going to have a kid."
Diana nodded her understanding, continuing to nod as she reached behind her on her chair, finally stopping when she brought out what she had moved for. She held the folded fabric out to her son.
"I had a nurse help me collect this from my things in storage." She explained as Spencer took it from her. Unfolding it, he discovered it was a blanket; pale green and yellow stripes of knitted lambs wool, extremely soft between his fingers. "I knitted that while I was pregnant with you." She explained. "It was something I found helpful when I had difficult days off my medication. It was repetitive and therapeutic. You have to hand wash it, the wool is quite delicate. You had it in your crib until you moved to a bed, and- well," she smiled, "I wanted you to have it."
"Mom," Spencer said, surprised to find his voice a little thick, "thank you."
She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it and smiling kindly at him.
"I loved you from the moment I set eyes on you."
"Not before?" Derek said. Two pairs of eyes slid to him; his husband's were confused, his mother-in-law's were too, and then she frowned.
"Well..." she sounded flustered, offended, but he didn't apologize like he wanted to; he'd take her thinking less of him if he got the response he expected. "When my attachment to my child formed doesn't make me a bad mother, I had a difficult pregnancy, and just because-"
"Mom," Spencer said, holding up a calming hand and giving Derek a look that was halfway between thankful and annoyed, "mom. He's not asking to call your maternal instincts into question, he's asking on my behalf."
"What do you mean?" she looked confused, rubbing her neck anxiously.
"I've just been worried." Spencer said. "That I'm not forming prenatal attachments at the expected rate."
"Oh, Spencer," relief relaxed her face, a gentle chiding glance spared for Derek, "nobody expects anything of you Spencer, it's none of their business. Some parents connect earlier than others, some need to hold their baby in their arms before it clicks. There's isn't a normal way you should be feeling. You're going to be a great parent, Spencer, I can tell. A mother knows these things."
Derek squeezed his husband's hand for good measure, although he had a feeling his mother's words were much more powerful at that moment.
"I can't believe you sold me out to my mother." Spencer said, pushing up the seat rest between their two seats on the plane and not sounding all that annoyed.
"Sorry baby, but I thought if anyone could help you realise you're worrying too much it was her." Derek said softly.
"If my spine didn't feel like it's going to snap any second, I'd be mad at you." He teased, ignoring the occasional gaze at his belly from the young woman sharing their aisle.
"Your back hurts?" Morgan looked concerned.
"It's not so bad sitting down." Reid waved his hand dismissively. Morgan's eyes lingered on him a while, before he leant forward to pull out the in-flight magazine. Reid's hands absently pulled his cardigan down over his belly, straightening the buttons along the curve. He was probably going to have to concede defeat and let Garcia take him paternity clothes shopping.
"Green." He said under his breath.
"What?" Derek looked around.
"Green." Spencer said more surely, the nail of his thumb twitching back and forth over a tiny section of his stomach, as if he was scratching an itch. "We should paint the nursery green. It's a colour without a strong gender bias, it's been documented to be calming and it has associations with growth and restfulness."
Morgan waited until his husband looked at him, big brown eyes below slightly raised eyebrows, apprehensive he was about to be dismissed. Derek's mouth twitched into a smile.
"Green it is then."
"When you moved, I felt squeezed with a wild infatuation and protectiveness. We are one. Nothing, not even death, can change that." -Suzanne Finnamore
