Okay, so hopefully you all have gone back to Chapter 10 and read my changes! This is my "genius" chapter. I figured out the impossible and I've never been so thankful for taking a boring Drug & Addiction class my freshman year of college than I am now. Read on to figure out why!
Hope you enjoy it & thank you to everyone whose been reading/alerting/favoriting/reviewing and all that other fun stuff :)
An orange haze of sun, cast with peach ribbons, burned above the heads of Morgan and Reid as they made their way down the dirty Miami road in search of any leads on the UnSub. The two agents ambled along in silence, Reid angling his eyes away from the severe rays of light that streamed his way. He fought the urge to run his tongue over his lips for the billionth time just to remind himself that the kiss between him and Hotch did in fact happen.
Morgan glanced at Reid out of the corner of his eye, arching a sharp eyebrow at his teammate's unusual timidity. He hadn't seen Reid that quiet in a number of years and it revved a slightly unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He had barely been able to conceal a grin seeing Hotch and Reid emerge from the elevator earlier in the station, pinks cheek, clothing rumpled and both a bit too flustered to have simply "talked it out" as the young agent had insisted they did. No, Morgan knew that all too debauched manner Reid tended to adopt after mysteriously disappearing with the Unit Chief at haphazard interludes throughout the workday when they were typically grounded for paperwork.
And Hotch who, despite Morgan's strong admiration for him, always seemed to be a seething mass of control and jealously had appeared disturbingly calm, especially given their circumstance with three bodies underway already. Rossi had shot Hotch a look only he could get away with, and then had preceded to turn to Officer Comodoro of the Miami PD as though nothing had happened.
"Hey, what's the matter with you? You're not going to give me a bunch of facts about the surrounding area?" The elder agent jabbed Reid in the ribs, jerking him from his thoughts. "I thought you and your SSA Tall-dark-and-scary handled everything."
Reid looked up from his pensive frowning at the earthy walkway, narrowing missing a harried woman and child rushing past. "Uh, the Alla Patta neighborhood is named after the Spanish word for alligator."
White flashes blurred his vision and he stumbled slightly over the dust and dirt road, short glimmers of his lips pressed against Hotch's short-circuiting the blinding light.
So, so close.
They were so close to being right again. Back to the nights spent buried in bed, flexing satisfied muscles, groaning appreciations, and tending to kiss-swollen lips.
Morgan narrowed his gaze at him. Reid hadn't seemed to hear a word he had said. "You okay, Pretty Boy? Do you have another headache?"
Reid swallowed, squinting behind the large lenses of his sunglasses, and nodded his head downwards. "It's just the light."
More glimmers.
You promised me heaven, and you put me through hell.
Morgan stopped, grasping Reid by the upper arm. "Hey, I can call Hotch if you want and have you assigned to the station if you want?" He murmured gently, despite the smoky heat of passing people and the loud drone of broken conversation. "I'm sure they need you over there anyways."
"I can do my job, Morgan," Reid replied firmly. "I was just thinking too much."
"Well there's a first." Morgan smiled lightly, steering his friend away from a skinned goat head on an outdoor booth and into the shade of a palm tree. "About Hotch?"
I hate how I still love you. I hate how you see right through me.
"Yeah," Reid returned Morgan's smile shyly, his mouth slanting upwards as the pain in his head continued to knife its way into his nerves. "I think… I think everything is going to be okay with us," he nodded to himself as he tugged at the sleeves of his button down.
Stay close.
"Good," the elder agent clapped a hand down on the genius' thin shoulder. "I'm happy for you. You two are addicted to each other, anyone whose not a moron can see it."
Another sharp stab of pain echoed in Reid's mind and the blustering noises of their surroundings became almost too much to bear. His eyes fogged over with black as he attempted desperately to register Morgan's words. He felt strong hands cover his shoulders and the agent's steady "Breathe, Spencer, just breathe through it," smash about his head.
Morgan was right.
They were addicted to each other.
Aaron Hotchner was his addiction to which he was slowly crumbling with withdrawals from.
"Addiction," Reid murmured to himself as his mind carefully cleared. "Addiction," he repeated. He rolled the word around on his tongue, savoring its meaning before it snapped in his head and everything came into razor focus.
"Yeah, addiction," Morgan echoed worriedly, peering at the genius with concern painting his features. "It was a joke, Reid."
"No that's just it, Morgan!" Reid suddenly bolted up from his bent posture, almost slamming his teammate back into the palm tree. "It's was my addiction that has been causing these headaches," his eyes were alert and his tone had quickly submerged itself into one he tended to adopt when discovering something significant during a case. It was a tone Morgan knew and favored too much.
"Hotch is the cause of your headaches?"
"No," Reid flapped a hand at him impatiently. "Dilaudid," he lowered his voice, his brain instantly swelling with rapid-fire images of Tobias.
The vials. The needles. The utter hell he had endured.
"Reid-" Morgan gritted his teeth together at once, his jaw flexing to almost immeasurable pain. "Don't go down that road again, man. Hotch isn't like-"
"Morgan," Reid burst out, "I know that. I'm not talking about an unhealthy relationship." He licked his dry lips before continuing. "Dilaudid, as a prescription, is typically used as a narcotic to treat migraines but can also result in ongoing headaches because it depresses the respiratory system."
"But you're clean," Morgan slowly replied, processing the man's ramble.
"A lack of oxygen coming to the brain causes the high but a build up of the synthetic materials in the drug will start to harbor in the cerebral cortex, which controls awareness, thought, attention and memory, and the occipital lobe, where vision is processed. Going cold turkey on it like I did will cause the body to hold onto what is left of it because the cravings are so severe. That's why doctors recommend slowly weaning off it instead."
Morgan only gave a blank stare.
"The build up can lead to a delayed eruption of migraines once the synthetic materials eventually break down which then leads to severe pain, impaired vision and affecting the brain's ability to adjust to various lighting because the pupils remain frozen from the high."
"So what the hell? You've been getting accidently high this whole time?"
"No, the dosages the cells release are too minute to cause any significant sensation but they will cause me to become hyper-sensitive to light until the drug is eventually flushed from my body. My memory wasn't affected but my awareness was heightened, causing me to become paranoid, and my pupils ability to dilate was hindered." Reid broke off, his heart racing. He exhaled slowly, observing Morgan's faintly skeptical expression. "Morgan don't you know what this means? The doctors I visited are wrong - it's not psychosomatic. It's not...it's not that. I was right."
Morgan forced a smile to break his frozen features. He let out a breath he hadn't been realizing he was holding and then broke into a grin. "So, how long until this clears?"
"By my estimates, about a week. Depending on the dosages I, uh shot up with, and by the number of years have passed. I've been clean for almost four years." Reid smiled lightly, dipping his hand into his pocket and pulling out a small round disk. "My sponsor gave me this at one of my first meetings."
"Well, I'm proud of you, kid. Really." Morgan gave the genius a gentle shove out from under the shading palm tree.
"Thanks." Reid lowered his sunglasses momentarily and breathed out a sigh of relief when the hazy light didn't glare back. He couldn't wait to tell Hotch.
He had done it. He'd ridden out the rocky waves of uncertainty and fear.
He'd solved it.
The unsolvable case.
Deception had proven to be the trait that bred love as opposed to hate and suddenly Reid had to quell the great urge to turn around and sprint all the way back to the station, only to smother his superior in a shower of soft kisses and murmured apologies until both men fused into a tangle of gentle caresses and tender tears of joy.
"We should get going. We need to make a break in this case soon." Morgan's voice tore Reid from his fantasies and he nodded, the trained and determined agent in him spearing his mindset.
They were silent as they continued through the road, the trees becoming thicker and the houses rustier. Reid shivered as he passed by more skinned animals and Morgan threw an arm around his shoulder companionably.
"So," he drawled, "besides the obvious, how are you and Hotch doing now?"
Reid felt his shoulder lower as he closed his eyes, imagining his lover's warm hands on his body. He felt a jolt of desire run through his torso at the thought of what they were more than certainly going to entertain themselves with come evening,
He eyed the table of viciously murdered animals and then turned to Morgan, quipping "A lot better than that goat,"
They were going to make it.
They were going to be fine.
Maybe not perfect,
But them.
Hope I hope I did a good enough job of clearing up Reid's headaches! No the story is not over yet! Still more to come :) And sorry if my explanation for the Dilaudid was confusing...it could also just be Schizophrenia but you know…I just had to get up on my high science horse.
I'm still so lost as to what to name my H/R series, helppppp please! Would you guys even want a series?
Please review if you don't mind
