A/N: Alrighty so a couple of things I wanted to mention:

This is a relatively new story so I wanted to update this one before I head back to my more developed story but because I have three going on right now this one will not be super long. It'll kind of be a series of progressing one-shots that might meld into a continuous plot? We'll see. Either way I have no idea how long this will be, but more is to come.

In this story I introduce the idea that a few of my characters that I created are gay. If there is any homophobic reviews or implied homophobia in the reviews of this story your review will be removed promptly. Please refrain from presenting political opinions, homophobic ideas/opinions, and otherwise politicized topics. This story is not a platform for you to debate on, it is simply meant to be entertaining and provide some nice writing practice for me. Thank you for your understanding!

ps: this doc is titled 'george was not the imposter' in my doc manager and i will not be commenting further on that title decision


I thought back to what I knew about the area.

The town wasn't big - I'd visited it a few times when some family had lived here on my mother's side, but that had been years ago. Even so the town hadn't expanded much since then, so most people knew their neighbors, and since George and Alex lived relatively close, it would be weird for Alex to never have heard of him.

"Shit," I muttered. I pulled out my phone and did a quick google search for recent weddings in the area. George had recently gotten married. I looked at a couple photos of the ceremony and sure enough, a bouquet of white roses sat atop each table during the reception.

"Wait a minute," I zoomed into the corner of the photo, and there stood Sean Mitchell. Of course.

"Wait, guys!" I yelled through the bullpen and waited for everyone to emerge from where they had been hastily packing their bags.

"What, Reid? We need to go, are you coming?"

"No, we don't - that is, we can't apprehend George. He's not our guy."

Morgan stepped in front of me from where he had been standing about five feet away. "What do you mean?"

"Garcia, can you look for any photos you can find of Alex Jones, probably from around his high school of college years? They might've been deleted from social media platforms or from school boards."

"Reid, you need to explain what's going on." Emily was standing against a doorframe, bag shoved haphazardly across her shoulder and tapping her foot impatiently. "Either you need to tell us what you're thinking or we need to leave."

"Right, right, okay. So when I was about eight - I promise I have a point - my mom and I used to visit this town together. She had some extended family and friends here, and even though we didn't live here and only visited maybe twice a year, I knew everyone in a 5-mile radius from where we stayed. This isn't a big town - everyone knows everyone here. So how is it that Alex could really have never heard of George?

"So that's when I thought, what if George bought the white roses for something else? Where do people usually bring white roses?"

"Shit, weddings." Morgan said, running a hand across his face and sighing.

"Exactly. So I did some googling, turns out George Robertson and May Windsor, now May Robertson got married a week and a half ago, and if you look at these pictures, you can see white roses everywhere. And they all have those tags!

"So then I thought, if May and George just got married, where does Alex tie into this? Well, when I had Tam ask Alex if he knew George, his head snapped upwards for a minute before going back down, which was a clear tell that he did in fact know George, even though he claimed not to have. His facial expression when he first reacted was a frown - so I thought maybe they were enemies. But then I thought back to the missing bouquets.

"Garcia, if you look at the messages on his phone - Tam forwarded you his number - I suspect you'll find correspondence that Alex gave George the bouquets for free, because the marriage was a fake to cover up Alex and George's relationship. After George and May got married, though, George probably - in person or over text - broke up with Alex, which I thought was why Alex reported them missing. I thought he probably hoped he could either be reimbursed or get George into trouble with the law as revenge."

"Oh my god, you're right. They had a very heated text conversation in which Alex demanded that the bouquets be returned, and George claimed that they had been but he would not be paying for them? How would they have been returned then? Does Alex have them - is he our unsub?" Garcia paused. "I just got a hit on the photos you asked for. Multiple photos of Alex posing with other men, one with him kissing a man that looks a bit like George but it's hard to tell. Your theory is sound."

"See, the bouquets are what revealed to me the unsub. Look at this photo here - in a shirt that says Roses and Lilies - which is Alex's shop name - Sean Mitchell is standing in the back. Sean probably took them, claiming he would return them to Alex, and just never did - I bet he's keeping them, and that's why Alex reported them as missing."

Morgan took a step back, and I breathed in a bit deeply, a bit out of breath. What's that smell?

"So," Emily started. "You figured that out." Pig hearts. Fish livers.

"Yeah," I said. I saw a man in the corner of the room, Tobias. He was smiling at me. "Good job!" He clapped. "You saved them. Now just do that for me!" The headache was started to get worse - my revelation about who the real unsub is was distracting, but now it was a pounding, stabbing headache. "It helps, I promise." I saw the syringe. That fucking syringe. My vision got blurry, a bit like TV static, and I could hear the team saying things but I couldn't process what it was they were talking about, nor did I particularly care to try. "We can't get away from him." I felt myself fall to my knees, and then stood back up again, somewhat shakily. "He always finds me." I tried to say, "I'm fine, I'm fine," but I don't know if I did. "Tell me it doesn't make it better." I had to leave, I had to get out - I started to make my way outside, taking one of the Advil's with shaky hands and forcing myself down the stairs and outside the building. "Is that a confession?" Once I made it outside I tried to gasp in some air, but it wouldn't work - it felt like breathing through a straw, I could barely think anything except p a i n

I was clawing at my own throat, probably on the ground but I couldn't tell which way was up. It was just a headache, where did this come from? It was supposed to be a headache, why wasn't it a headache?


Emily had begun shouting out orders to the team to get Sean, and Garcia was furiously typing away at her computer to figure out where his current location was. Morgan's eyes never left Reid, though - he looked better, for a while, than he had that morning, but at some point, maybe right after he was done talking it seemed like all of that went away and he looked just as feeble as he had before. Like a dead leaf, it looked like a decent breeze could knock him over. He seemed to stumble a bit, but no one else in the team noticed, not even when he muttered something inaudible and started to hastily exit the bullpen and walk in the direction of the stairs. "I'll be right back," Morgan said, but no one seemed to hear him and he didn't care enough to make himself heard right now.

Reid was stumbling down the stairs like a foal who only just started walking, and for a second Morgan considered grabbing onto him to try and steady his movements, but he seemed suddenly dazed, like someone had pressed the off button and he was just moving on autopilot in some random direction. He tried calling Reid's name a few times, but Reid didn't seem to register the sound.

He burst through the doors, Morgan following closely behind, and for a moment Morgan just stood there, eyeing Reid as he stood, wobbling, on the sidewalk behind the building. The sidewalk was pretty much deserted, Morgan had seen maybe one person walking down it in the three hours that they'd been in the building total that day.

And then he collapsed.

Reid just fell, fell hard onto the sidewalk. Morgan rushed over to try and catch his head and just barely managed to brace the impact somewhat. Reid was scratching at his throat, curling almost into a ball, trying to breathe but not quite being able to? Morgan called an ambulance and held Reid's hands away from his throat, turning him on his side in case he was seizing somehow and waited the short time it took for the ambulance to arrive.


Reid had sort of come back to his senses about a half an hour ago. The doctors spoke to Morgan and said it was nothing to worry about, but that Reid would have to disclose any medical information himself as he was legally not permitted to do so unless Reid gave explicit either written or vocal permission and Reid hadn't said a word. So Morgan and the doctor first went into Reid's room and passed him a form, explaining that it gave permission for his medical condition to be explained to Morgan and Reid signed it without responding. The two then left the room and the doctor began explaining what had happened.

"Alright, well it's likely that Reid either has a severe anxiety disorder or some form of PTSD - perhaps both. In your line of work that's not entirely shocking, but that has made itself known today in the form of a severe panic attack. It doesn't seem like Reid has ever had one before today, so he likely didn't know what it was and felt scared that he might've been seriously ill, injured, or even dying. Many people come into the hospital because they think they're dying due to a panic attack.

You've likely already picked up on the fact that Reid seems to be somewhere on the ASD spectrum. As I cannot professionally diagnose that, that would be up to him to be diagnosed if he chose to be. This is just to say that if he remains nonverbal for a bit longer, even a few days, that may just be a bit of aftershock from the panic attack expressing itself in the form of some perhaps suppressed ASD symptoms. Does that make sense?"

Morgan nodded, and then entered Reid's room again.

He sat on the chair next to Reid's hospital bed and sighed.

"Are you okay?"

Reid nodded slightly.

"Please don't be embarrassed. I know you - you don't like to feel vulnerable, and I understand that. But never be afraid to ask for help, or to reach out when you need it.

"I didn't inform the rest of the team yet because I didn't know if you were okay with that. I know they would understand and try their best to help you and I think you should not at all be afraid to tell them, but if you don't want to, I respect that and I won't contradict your wishes."

Reid whispered a sort of barely audible "please don't," and Morgan nodded.

"Okay Reid."

"Thank you Morgan."

"For what?"

"Being here."