Suggested theme music for first section: Dance With The Devil ~ Breaking Benjamin

The hands of the grandfather clock in the empty, decaying ballroom were approaching midnight. In the middle of the room there was a woman, pale and slim with silky brunette curls piled up on her head, revealing her slender neck which twisted almost painfully to one side, looking away from the stranger who held her waist so tenderly as they danced the waltz, graceful as two circling swans. She wore an off-shoulder ball gown of sensual red satin which enticed the eye to the violin shaped sway of full, womanly hips. The orchestra soared and fell like the pleasurable kiss of a summer breeze on the cheek, and drowned out the woman's hopeless tearful sobs, and the muffled shouts of her husband as he lay ten feet away on the old wooden floor in his tuxedo, bound by rope and gagged with duct tape. The stranger smiled and closed his eyes in almost erotic appreciation as the music blaring from a stereo approached its climax. She gave in to curiosity despite her fear and turned her head to look at him with dark frightened eyes. Without a warning his eyes snapped open.

"I told you not to look at me, bitch!" he shrieked, breaking their rigidly flawless posture. He stunned her out of her babbled apologies with a slap round the face, then grabbed and twisted her body into his so her back was pressed against his chest. He breathed heavily for a moment, trying to regain self-control. Then he plucked a loaded syringe from his trouser pocket, stabbed it into the side of her thigh and pressed the plunger down. Within seconds the fight drained out of her, and he let go of her to crumple onto the floor like a dropped towel.

Her husband's angry mumbles became an angry roaring of indecipherable threats until the stranger stepped over the woman's weakened body, pausing briefly to gently turn her head so she was looking at her husband, and retrieved a switchblade from his jacket pocket. His male captive fell silent when he saw it. The stranger played with it in front of the man's eyes, tossing it up in the air and catching it a few times, stroking the folded down blade with his finger tip before he pulled it erect, like some perverse mockery of foreplay between the loving husband and wife.

Tears leaked from his captives eyes and he shook his head vigorously as if trying to rouse himself from a nightmare, as the stranger knelt in front of him and started to unbutton his shirt.

"Are you watching my love?" he asked her, smiling with tender insanity. "The man of your dreams is about to give you his heart, so your two souls can be united as one for eternity. Are you excited?"

The wife's paralysed eyes watched impassively as he plunged the blade into her husband's chest and tore the gag away just in time to let his screams echo off the walls of the ballroom. As the life drained out of him, the devil dressed as a man reached for the hacksaw he'd brought, setting it on the man's exposed ribcage. The wife's eyes woke up just enough for her to blink out a tear, which slid down her rouged cheek and fell onto the dusty wooden floor.

Finally, mercifully, the drug enveloped her in darkness.

[end theme music]

...

The team was sitting in the briefing room drinking coffee round the table and listening to JJ briefing them on a new case. Well, most of them were. Morgan was watching the clock, wondering why Reid was more than twenty minutes late for work.

It had been a week since he'd spoken to Reid in his car, and if he'd hoped things would improve with Reid after their talk, he had been severely mistaken. Reid's condition had gone downhill rapidly. To say that he'd been unfocused lately was putting it mildly. He'd been irritable with everybody, his appearance grew more and more dishevelled and his clothes even more uncoordinated than usual. His attention span had decreased so dramatically that sometimes even half way through a sentence he would stop and stare around him blankly as if someone had just wiped his mind.

He drank cup after cup of sugar coffee, sat with his back to the window wherever he could, and wore his headache sunglasses whenever he went outside, even though it was nearly winter. He massaged his temples a lot while he was working, digging his fingers in with so much pressure it seemed like he was trying to drill holes in his skull to reach the pain. His nervous habits like brushing his hair back behind his ear and tapping on the desk increased too, especially when anyone tried to start a conversation with him. He had immense difficulty with eye contact suddenly.

Finally he showed up. His hair was wet at the tips and his heavy black coat was flecked with snow. The team exchanged worried glances at his mumbled apology. They all remembered what it had meant the last time Reid had shown up late.

"Why are you so late?" Prentiss asked.

"Overslept. Sorry." Reid said vacantly. "Won't happen again."

His eyes had dark circles so pronounced he could have passed for a member of the undead. It looked like he hadn't had any luck with the sleeping yet.

He tried to rip his dark red scarf off quickly but somehow managed to get himself tangled up in it, and he got so flustered by being the centre of everyone's attention that his arms flailed for a second like he was battling a python.

That kind of thing would have made Morgan's day once, it was so adorable when he messed up simple tasks like taking off a scarf, all the more so because of his immense intellect. But Morgan was too worried about him to enjoy himself now.

Well okay, maybe a little.

"Jeez, it's snowing already?" Rossi broke the awkward silence. "I'm meant to be driving up to Vermont this weekend."

"Oh? How come?" asked Hotch quickly, and the topic moved away from Reid, who sat down, grateful to have the limelight moved away from him. He stared at the file in front of him like it was written in the language of aliens.

Morgan tried not to stare at him. Luckily he'd had years to practise not staring at Reid, and managed to swing his focus back onto what JJ was telling them.

"There's a suspected serial at the White Star Ski Resort in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. Three couples simply disappeared the night before checkout, and their luggage was taken so at first the hotel assumed they were simply skipping out on the bill, until they reported to the police for the third time, and they realised three couples in nine days can't be a coincidence. The trouble is, no bodies have been found yet so they're finding it difficult to build a case. The resort are refusing to refund guests and shut down while the investigation takes place, so the matter needs to be sorted urgently."

"No bodies? That's going to be difficult. They can't even prove these couples are dead." Prentiss said.

"They'll be found soon enough." Hotch said grimly.

"How can you be so sure?" Prentiss asked, doubtfully.

"Well, where would you dump a body in Deep Creek Lake?" Morgan chuckled.

"You think he's dumping them in the lake?"

"Well if he is then they'll be discovered any day now. How many places are there which rent out boats in that place? One unlucky tourist is about to get a nasty surprise on the end of his fishing line." Rossi remarked.

"Unless he's cut the bodies up and weighed them down." Reid mumbled, tapping on the table with his fingernails and staring bleakly at his reflection in the dark polished wood. "If that's the case they'll probably never be found. That lake covers approximately 3,900 acres and has 69 miles of shoreline."

JJ's PDA suddenly bleeped. She picked it up off the table and read the message. She grimaced.

"He didn't weigh them down. The corpses of Sam and Josephine Keller were just found by two teenage boys and a ten year-old on a fishing trip with their grandfather." She shook her head in disgust.

"Could be what gets him off, spoiling people's holidays, their time with their loved ones." Morgan commented.

"Guys you need to see this." JJ said. "Open your emails."

They all tapped at the screens of their handheld computers and looked at the photos they had been sent. There was a stunned silence. Morgan was used to some disturbing things but this was a whole new level of creepy, not even in a violent way, just in a way that sent a shudder through him.

"Interesting." Rossi said weakly.

"He did weigh them down after all." Prentiss remarked, finally.

"But not to hide them." Hotch said.

The photo had been taken underwater. The bodies of the husband and wife had been tied together at the wrists so they were staring straight into each other's pale, dead eyes. The wife's long dark hair floated in a halo around her face. She was wearing a red satin evening dress, he was in black tie.

Their feet had been attached by a long rope to a concrete block at the bottom of the lake, so they floated, suspended just below the surface as if they'd just jumped in for a quick swim.

"He's displaying them." Reid said.

"In a twisted kind of way it's like he's trying to be…romantic, the way they're all dressed up, holding hands, looking into each other's eyes...like soul mates. Together for eternity." Rossi remarked.

"Did they drown?" Hotch asked.

"They haven't established that yet, but the husband has a pretty severe crack to the back of the head." JJ replied.

"Hm. Blitz attack. That's odd for a killer with such a detailed fantasy." Morgan frowned.

"It could be that he's in a psychotic break and drifts in and out of lucidity. Or it could be that he just doesn't care about the death itself so much as what he does to the bodies afterwards." Hotch said.

"It sounds like you're thinking he could be some kind of necrophile?" Morgan asked.

"Possibly. It's too early to tell yet."

"Well one thing's for sure. We need to get there as soon as possible, or another couple is going to wind up like them." Rossi said.

"This was not how I wanted my first trip to a ski resort to go." JJ sighed, turning off the projector.

"We can head down there today before the snow gets too heavy. But I need to call Strauss first. She wanted me to do a consultation for the forensics department, but I'll tell her we have a case now." Hotch told them, barely able to hide his delight at having a legitimate reason to cause inconvenience to Strauss.

They all studied the case file in silence while he was gone.

Suddenly JJ leaned over and whispered to Morgan;

"What's been up with Reid lately?" The evident worry in her voice mirrored the anxiety he felt.

Reid's head snapped up as he sensed them talking, and he narrowed his eyes.

"He hasn't been sleeping well, that's all. He's in Dilaudid withdrawal remember? That is some mean shit man." Morgan muttered.

"Are you sure he isn't using again?" she asked, glancing at Reid and biting her lip.

"No! I mean yeah I'm sure. It's nothing like that."

"Okay. Thanks." She said.

Reid stood up. He looked like he wanted to say something, but simply pushed his chair back and slunk over the coffee machine to get his first coffee of the day. Something about his posture caught Morgan's eye as he poured himself a mug. He had his fists clenched by his sides, his back was rigid and his shoulders were tensed. His breathing was ragged and he kept giving quiet groans and bringing his hands up to cover his ears.

"Reid? You okay?" Morgan asked.

"WILL YOU ALL JUST SHUT UP? I'M RIGHT HERE!" Reid turned around and yelled at his startled colleagues.

JJ and Morgan exchanged glances.

"Um…none of us were talking, Reid..." JJ said, confused.

"Yes you were!" Reid said furiously. "I heard you talking about me! You have no right to speculate on my private life behind my back! Especially when I'm standing right here!"

"Please, Reid I asked Morgan if you were okay because you don't tell me anything, but that was it, I swear! No one was saying anything while you were getting your coffee!"

"She's right kid." Morgan said.

Reid looked lost for words.

"Oh." He said, in a small voice. He rubbed his forehead with the side of his hand. He sat down, forgetting about the coffee altogether.

When Hotch returned, Morgan stood up before he'd even got through the door and asked him in a low voice if he had a minute to talk outside. Hotch nodded.

"What is it?" he asked when they were outside the room.

"I am seriously worried about Reid, Hotch. I don't think he's up to going on this trip." Morgan said.

Hotch looked up over his shoulder. Morgan turned round and saw that Reid had followed them.

"Hey, look, Reid…"

"I knew it! I knew you were talking about me before!" he snapped. "Please, Hotch believe me, I'm fine. I can do my job."

"Maybe he's right Reid. You do look like you could use a break."

"A break is exactly the opposite of what I need!" he turned to Morgan. "How dare you try and convince him that I'm not up to the job!? Are you trying to get me thrown off the team, is that it?"

"No way! I was just looking out for you man! Why the hell would I want you to get fired?" Morgan protested, feeling hurt.

"Gentleman, may I remind you that we're in a public place." Hotch said calmly, glancing down into the bullpen, where several of the other workers had stopped what they were doing to watch the altercation curiously.

Morgan realised they'd both been talking in quite loud voices.

Hotch seemed to come to a decision.

"Reid, if you're sure you're up to it, I won't make you stay behind."

"Thank you sir." Reid glared at Morgan.

"But I will insist that we bring Dr Young with us, so that you don't miss your appointments with him."

Reid's mouth fell open in shock.

"You can't do that! We're going there on federal business! We can't just bring a random civilian along to a crime scene!"

"Which is why I just phoned to tell him I'm hiring him temporarily as a consultant on the case." Hotch said authoritatively. He rarely used such a commanding tone of voice with his employees, as he respected their opinions, but clearly this was one of those occasions where he was pulling rank.

"I'm sorry, this is non-negotiable. Those are the terms, take it or go home."

Reid forced his face into indifference and nodded, and when he glanced at Morgan as he turned to leave he looked so defeated and betrayed that Morgan lost his grip on the anger he felt at being accused of something he would never do and just wanted to get Reid alone and kiss the hurt feelings out of him.

But then he always wanted to kiss Reid, whatever emotion he displayed. His thinking face, his surprised face, his happy smiling face, his 'I will master these chopsticks if it kills me' face, his 'Imma tell this nice person lots of interesting and obscure facts so that they will want to be my friend' face, and his inevitable disappointed face when said person stopped him from telling them the facts. His face when he was trying not to be scared of the dark, his evil mastermind face when he was flamboyantly preparing some kind of science demonstration/magic trick/Halloween prank to scare the shit out of Morgan, his asleep face, his face when he was talking to Lucy Davies in the hospital, in all its kindness and sympathy and pain, his face when he was looking up at the stars.

It was exhausting, being so in love with someone.

Reid went back into the briefing room.

"What made you so concerned that he wasn't up to this trip?" Hotch asked, quietly.

"He's showing signs of paranoid delusions Hotch. You heard what he said about me trying to get him fired." Morgan said frustratedly. "As if I would ever want him off the team!"

"I know that, and you know that, but Reid doesn't know how strongly you feel about him. If you think about it from his point of view, is it really so irrational of him to believe everyone's conspiring against him when you and I have been watching him like a hawk?" Hotch pointed out reasonably.

"I guess so." Morgan admitted. He hadn't thought about it like that.

"You have to stop waiting for him to show symptoms. If we didn't know his genetic history we wouldn't think anything of his behaviour other than that he's under a huge amount of stress and is dealing with it as best he can."

Morgan felt like an idiot.

"Man, I screwed up didn't I?"

"You're under a huge amount of stress too." said Hotch, as he headed back towards the briefing room. "And you're only increasing it by carrying around all this guilt."

JJ stuck her head round the door.

"Plane's ready guys." She told them.

"Okay, everyone get your go-bags and we'll meet at the car." Hotch said.

Everyone round the table nodded and stood up.

Morgan tried to catch Reid's eye before they left, to apologise, but the young genius looked straight through him.

...

Reviews:

Darcy Nicole - Aww I'm so sorry! I know a lot of you are suffering from the fact that Reid is so unhappy and angry and keeps shutting Morgan out, believe me it's taking all my willpower to maintain it! And actually yes I am toying with the idea of doing an epilogue/sequel of them one day having beautiful chocolate genius babies, even though it's a bit cheesy xD I think I need some cheesy romance to balance out the unbelievable amount of angst in this story.

NazzyWazzy - Oh my, yes, your nice comment totally made me feel better :) and thank you for taking the time to write such a long review! You have no idea how exciting it was to me when it showed up in my inbox, I love proper long comments like that, where I get to hear which parts you enjoyed the most. And I'm really glad you persevered with the story and found you liked it.

reelingthoughts - Welcome! Thank you so much for the compliments. :) I often feel I've bitten off a bit more than I can chew with this story as my first fan fiction, it's been quite a stretch for my imagination and my sense of empathy to imagine what it must feel like for them, so it's nice to hear I'm doing a good job!

Evie Antorcha - Thank you very much (: I can't wait either, but I hope you will enjoy the journey as much as I am.

Criminds - I'm glad I made you laugh with that, lol xD I love you Americans.

also many thanks to LaRieNGuBleR, Tessalationx13, Medeia456, jenny crum and Lizzybeth74 :)