No one could understand nightmares like Spencer Reid. He had them most nights, and no two seemed exactly alike. Lately most of his nightmares involved losing Derek or the baby. But to lose them both, like this…

Spencer shut his eyes, tightly. He couldn't live through this, he couldn't. He waited for Hotch or Prentiss to scream at him, tell him to run, so that he could ignore them. If Derek and the baby were dead, he would die right here, beside them.

But that wasn't what he heard. And at Prentiss' soft, "Oh my goodness." Pure hope forced him to open his eyes.

Some sort of insulation in the boxes beside the explosion was slowly burning away, giving them a few precious minutes to escape. But that wasn't what Spencer was looking at. Derek was lying on the ground, thirty feet below the explosion site. He was obviously unconscious, blood rushing from a wound on his head. But even from here, Spencer could see movement, the tiniest rise and fall of his boyfriend's torso.

"He's alive!" Spencer screamed, leaping towards Derek. Someone he didn't know, one of the cops, stepped forward to restrain him, Spencer didn't even look back, digging his elbow hard into the man's stomach. He wasn't leaving without Derek.

"Prentiss, run outside and call 911," Spencer heard Hotch order, and then the unit chief was beside him. "Be careful, try not to move his neck."

Between the two of them, they managed to get Derek out. It wasn't until the boom of the final explosion that Spencer remembered Perry.

"The fall killed him," Hotch said solemnly, following Spencer's eyes, "There was nothing we could do."

Spencer nodded solemnly, before looking down at Derek. He was barely breathing, a wince on his unconscious face. He had landed on his front, which meant the baby was almost certainly dead. Spencer felt a twinge of pain at that, so intense that it made his chest ache. But Derek was alive, and that the most important thing. If he had lost both of them…

The ride to the hospital was the worst time of Spencer's life. He wished for the hundredth time that he wasn't a genius. That the words spewing from the paramedic's mouths made no sense to him. That he didn't know how badly Derek was hurt. It took nearly the whole ride to convince them that Derek had been pregnant, but somehow the knowledge made the creases on the paramedic's faces even deeper.

The second worst time of Spencer's life had to be the wait in the hospital waiting room. The team was there, and they were immediately given a private room. They stayed there for ten hours. Most of that time was spent with the team staring at Spencer, who was staring at the wall still as a statue.

It wasn't until the doctor, a man in his late twenties, came into the room that Spencer changed back into a human being.

"He's alive, and awake. He's asking for someone named Spencer. We're assuming that's his medical contact, a Dr. Reid?" The doctor said. The team sighed with relief, but Spencer stepped forward.

"Is the baby alive?" Spencer said. His brown eyes, the only trace of color in his otherwise white face, bored into the doctor. The team looked at him worriedly. Had Spencer gone insane?

"Reid, I think your confus-" Rossi started to say, but the doctor cut him off with one word.

"Yes."

It took Hotch and Prentiss to lift Reid's sagging body back into an upright position. "My baby survived?" Spencer breathed, staring into space. A sound, something halfway between a laugh and a sob, bubbled out of him.

"It was hard at first for us to put a monitor on the right place. We've never treated a pregnant man before," The doctor said, chuckling lightly. "But it turns out the fetus is alive. We're not sure what effect this will have on it later, but for now, your boyfriend is still pregnant."

The doctor motioned for Spencer to follow him to Derek's room. Spencer rushed forward, but Hotch grabbed his arm. Spencer turned back on him, his brown eyes filled with a glossy line of tears.

"That's what's been going on?" Hotch demanded. "Morgan is pregnant. How on earth?"

"I'm sorry," Spencer said lightly, "But can we talk about this later? Derek is asking for me."

As soon as Hotch let go of him, Spencer was racing toward Derek's hospital room. The sight of his boyfriend, sitting up in bed and staring at him, nearly made his heart stop in his chest.

But Derek didn't look as happy and relieved as he was. "I'm so sorry, Spencer." It was the first thing Derek said, and the last thing Reid expected to hear.

"For what?" Reid said, sitting on the edge of Derek's bed.

"I killed our baby," Derek whispered, "I didn't mean to, I just wanted to prove that I could still do my job, that I could still protect you, and I failed, and because of that, I lost our child." He swallowed hard, waiting for Spencer to yell at him, or perhaps burst into tears. But that didn't happen.

Spencer blinked, surely the doctors had told him… or maybe they were letting him do the honors. "Derek, baby… you don't have to apologize, even if you had killed the baby."

"You mean I didn't?" Derek asked. His heart was leaping in his chest.

"The baby is still alive, the doctors confirmed it – Derek? Are you okay?" Derek wasn't looking at him anymore, and the expression on Derek's face was a little frightening.

"Yeah," Derek said. His hands were pressed flat against his stomach, and he stared at them, mesmerized. "I just… I didn't think that it was possible for me to still be pregnant."

Another faceless doctor came in, her middle aged face creased with concern.

"It's true, Mr. Morgan. Due to the way your body is set up, the muscle in your abdomen and the fact that your uterus is faced away from the front of your body, the fetus had just enough cushion to sustain the blow. If you had been a woman, the baby would have died. As it is… you're about ten weeks along, aren't you?"

"I think so," Spencer said softly. Derek was silent, staring dully at the doctor as her words sunk in. A tiny smile, hesitant but beaming, began to steal across his face.

"Would you like to hear the baby's heartbeat?" The doctor asked gently. Spencer watched as Derek nodded eagerly, watched as the doctor clipped various monitors to his boyfriend's stomach.

And then the sound.

It was quiet and fast, a mere rhythmic fluttering in the stark hospital room. But it was very distinctively a heartbeat. Tiny, solid proof that their baby had survived.

The tears Spencer had been storing in his eyes finally fell. He looked down at Derek, "That's our baby," he whispered.

"He survived," Derek said softly. Derek didn't really know if the baby was a "he" or not, but at the moment, he didn't care. He stared at the monitors, letting his gaze turn glassy, before turning his head up to Spencer's face. He was met by Spencer's lips crashing down on to his. He let the rest of the world fade away, choosing to concentrate on the feel of Spencer's lips and the sound of his baby's tiny heart.

They didn't even see their team standing in the doorway. The whole team was beaming, their eyes locked on the fiercely kissing parents. No one spared a glance for Hotch, which he preferred. He would rather die than admit the tears that he was smiling through. Marks of relief that, somehow, his new favorite family was miraculously alive.