Summary: Episode Tag to 1x18 'Somebody's Watching'. What would've happened if Maggie Lowe didn't back down?
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, nor the premise.
Warnings: Awkward sentence structures, possible grammatical and spelling mistakes. Blood, shameless whumpage and h/c because it's the only thing I know how to write. And angst. God. So much angst.
Read if you dare!
Someone already in the room when he gets there.
Jason stops abruptly at the door, staring at the woman perched at the foot of Reid's bed, using the overbed table as a control centre of sorts. It is so crowded with brown FBI case files and her computer equipment that he has no idea what the original color of the table is.
He moves towards the wall opposite the bed; the woman doesn't seem to see him. Her eyes are glued to her screen and she has her tongue in her cheek, clearly frustrated with something.
"Garcia?"
"Oh!" she jumps rather comically, then regains her composure when he steps forward into the light. "Sir. I didn't see you there."
"It's alright." His eyes flit unconsciously to the agent on the bed. "How is he?"
Garcia's eyes seem to deepen with a strange sort of sadness when she sees him looking at Reid.
"Nothing's change since I got here. Except the oximeter, " she jerked a thumb at the beeping machine behind her. The numbers are mostly stable, except one, "it can't decide if his fever is at 101 or 103."
He pulls up a chair to the left side of the bed, eyes never leaving the kid. The oxygen mask is so big, it looks like it's just about swallowed half of his face. Thankfully, the thin sheets are pulled all the way up to Reid's chest; Jason has heard enough of his injuries to know what roughly what they look like, but if he can't see them he can at least pretend they're not real, and the boy's just sleeping.
"Sir?"
"Hmm?"
"Where are the others?"
"At the station. They're clearing up the place, bringing all the paper here." He murmurs in response. "They don't want him to be alone when he wakes up."
Like the last time.
The girl acknowledges his reply with a nod. Her typing fills the room again as he draws out something from his pocket. The object is cool in his palm and has been his solace for the past 24 hours. But it is probably time it was returned to its owner.
"Sir? What's that?"
"It's Reid's glasses." Jason raises it for her to see, "You don't happen to have a cloth to clean it with, do you?"
A grin spreads across their technical analyst's face, "But of course, Sir. You're talking to the Goddess of everything and anything."
He bemusedly watches as she rummages through her bright pink handbag. She is definitely a very colorful woman, Jason doesn't mind that, but sometimes, the colors can be a bit… bright, to say the least.
But he knows better the question the likes of her, or anyone on this team for that manner. Too many variables.
She digs for so long that Jason is half a second away from telling her it's okay, I'll just use a napkin or something when she cries out, apparently triumphant in her scavenging.
"There you go, sir." She says warmly, passing him a vibrant, silken yellow and green striped cloth. He looks up at her. They match her glasses. Figures.
"Thank you." He cleans the glasses while watching her sit back down. She's gently moved Reid's gangly legs out of the way so that she can sit cross-legged at the end of his bed. Her shoes are lying forlornly on the ground by her bag.
"What are you typing?"
Now it is his turn to ask a question. The whole time he's been here, she's done nothing but type, apart from pausing briefly to talk.
"Nothing much, just the usual. I'm writing up my report, and compiling and entering in all the information we've gathered on this case into our database." Garcia shrugs as he presses the cloth to the cool lens of the glasses. "And I'm also trying to clear some of Reid's paperwork for him."
Jason can't help but be surprised, "You do that for him normally?"
The question takes a moment to register. Garcia's typing stops and she raises her eyes to look at him, then it dawns on her.
"Oh!" she exclaims, waving her hands in front of her, "No, no. I've never done any paperwork for him before. Never!"
She quietens when Jason raises a finger to his lips, then nods his head to Reid, who has not moved the entire time they've been here.
"I just… I've seen many of your reports a billion times pass through the databases. Sometimes when I'm bored, I go in and read through some of them. I know how to write the basic ones." Her eyes go to the boy, and stay there.
"I know I shouldn't be doing it for him, and he's more than capable of finishing it. It's just that…"she hesitates, "this case has taken so much out of him already. I don't want him to be worrying about stuff like paperwork when he wakes up. I know I can't fill in everything, but I can clear a few for him. Lessen his load a little."
"Mmm." Garcia returns her eyes to her screen; Jason notes that, despite her perfectly done make up and bright eye-shadow, her expression is etched with weariness unbefitting for someone her age.
He turns at Reid, and notes, with a twinge of sadness, the lines on his youthful face. Against his gaunt pallor, the shadows under his eyes are stark, permanent.
If it's one thing he's learnt from doing this job, it is that it only makes you older. Every victory drives you, but there are only that many triumphs.
Sometimes he looks at Reid and wonders if his youth would have been better spent doing something more radical, more fantastical. But then another case arrives on his table and the urgency sweeps those feelings to the back of his mind.
"Sir—"
A soft ruffle from the bed halts Garcia mid-sentence and makes them both turn.
Reid is stirring fretfully, his head turning slightly. They watch as he turns back. A small noise, barely distinguishable, rises from the back of the boy's throat. The pulse-ox registers a slightly elevated pulse, beeping more urgently.
"Reid?" the girl says softly as Jason stands, moving closer to the bed to see if the young man was truly waking.
Reid utters the same soft mewl, brow crumpling slightly. Then his eyes flutter open, blurrily.
"Spencer!" the boy does not respond the sound, but instead blinks and turns away, muttering something. Jason strains to hear but it is so soft that he can't tell what the kid is saying.
After a while, Reid's blank eyes fall shut. His breathing evens and his heart rate returns to normal.
"Asleep." Jason glances at Garcia, who looks disappointed.
"Well. At least we know he's still in there." Her tone is quiet.
He settles back in his chair, eyes still fixed on Reid. Watches his chest rise and fall. Watches his breath ghost across the inside of the mask, clouding it. He tries to memorise the look on the boy's face because he doesn't know how many times in his lifetime he'll get to see him look so at peace.
"Sir?"
"Mm."
"You've been cleaning the glasses for the past 15 minutes," he turns his gaze to Garcia. Her own brilliantly colored spectacles reflect flash white with the light from the computer screen, "I think you'll wear a hole in the lens if you don't stop soon."
Jason is momentarily struck by the comment, then he chuckles.
"I'm done." He folds the cloth into a neat square and hands it silently back to her. She takes it.
Leaning back into the chair, Gideon folds up the legs of the glasses. Checks it once over. He feels Garcia looking at him as he sets the object on the bedside table.
There. Good as new.
"It's like you're holding on to a piece of him, isn't it?" Garcia says quite suddenly, breaking the silence. He glances to the woman. She looks him straight in the eye. Her fingers are wrung together, on her lap, no longer typing.
"I know how it feels," she elaborates. "It is like… if you hold on tightly enough to them, that piece that belongs to him, that is part of him, he won't slip away. If you hold on tight enough, it keeps him here. It keeps you here too."
The absence of noise is one that affects him, somewhere deep in his core. Even after Garcia quietly moves back to her typing, even after the beeping and the sound of Reid breathing becomes the only other noises in that small space, there is a calm that is in him. The tranquillity that came from that one observation the woman is astounding.
Jason steeples his fingers together and just watches, allowing the sound of the typing, the beeping and the boy's soft breaths wash over him.
It also strikes him, much later, that Garcia is probably a better profiler than they give her credit for.
A/N:
As you can probably tell, I like Garcia a lot. She gets some of the more important features in the POVs of other people :) and later she has a whole part to herself can't wait omg I'm getting excited over my own story why.
I don't know if I've mentioned this before but Gideon is not one of my favorite characters. I like the way he thinks I just don't like the way he treated Reid sometimes. But over all his personality is the easiest for me to write, next to Hotch.
Ok I got to go now! Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter:D