Spencer Reid had three doctorates, five bachelor's degrees, and FBI credentials under his belt—but that did not mean that he was above throwing things. Especially if his target was named Derek Morgan, and the last word out of his target's mouth was "hooker".

"I was working on my thesis!" he sputtered, not for the first time, and Morgan laughed, ruefully rubbing the side of his head.

"Alright, Pretty Boy, I'll buy it," he said, kneeling to pick up the paperback on the floor. "Damn, skinny as you are, you got an arm on you," he said after a moment, setting the book on Reid's desk.

"What's going on?" Penelope Garcia practically glided into the room, fluttering over to Reid's desk and perching on the corner, crossing her ankles. "What makes you say my Boy Genius has an arm on him?"

"He almost killed me with—" Morgan checked the title of the book. "Choke. Because I asked him why he was tired!"

"Yeah, but before that you asked me what her name was! And the her was implied to be a prostitute!" Reid said indignantly.

"Palahniuk?" Garcia said, eyebrows raised, turning the book over to read the back; she was effectively ending the argument. "I read Fight Club and Survivor, but I got halfway through Haunted and quit."

Reid's eyebrows rose. "How can you do your job like you do but get squeamish at a book?" he asked, cocking his head to one side.

"What are you two even talking about?" Morgan asked, his eyes on the book; he made to grab it but Garcia swatted his hand away.

"You wouldn't like it," she said with something like superiority, and he raised his eyebrows, holding his hands up in the defensive position. "Psh, whatever you say," he said, glancing over both of their heads.

"Hey, JJ," he said, then saw the stacks of paper in her hands. "...shit."

"Yep," she said, as though he'd asked a question; she knew what he was swearing for. "New case. Conference room in five."

—

"Four boys," JJ said, hanging out files to each member of the team. Morgan opened his immediately, obviously only half listening to the media liaison as she continued. "All between seventeen and nineteen, all from Ferris, Iowa, all recently came out as gay, all murdered."

"All from the same school?" Prentiss asked, already getting into the case, already trying to make connections, and JJ nodded.

"Ferris has a population of five thousand," she said. "Definitely only one high school. There's no way these boys would have been total strangers to each other."

"Small town," Rossi commented in his quiet, self-assured way, leaning back in his chair; he looked like a businessman, with his fingers laced and his hands behind his head. "Everyone knows everyone else... and everyone else's business."

"All four boys," JJ said, getting back on track, "were found the same way." She hit one of the buttons on her remote: four pictures appeared on the screen, all of teenage boys, all obviously dead, that fact underscored by the point-blank gunshot wounds in the back of their heads. That wasn't what caught anyone's interest, however—each boy was shirtless and the skin of each was horribly marred. Each arm was covered in wounds; it took all of them a few seconds to make out what they said. Reid, naturally, was the first to clarify the words, and to make the connection between all of them.

"They all say the same things, in almost the same places," he said softly. He sat staring, unblinking, at the screen, then shook his head slightly and looked down at his file. "Look—one and two are almost the same, three and four say the same things but in different places..."

"They all say the same things," Prentiss said, her voice slightly flat. "Sinner, abomination, f—" She cut herself short, unwilling to say the word. "Religious overtones, I'd say."

"Oh my God," Garcia said, clapping a hand over her fuchsia mouth. Her eyes widened behind her blue-rimmed glasses, and Morgan was the only one to notice that they had welled with tears. He slipped his hand into her free one and squeezed lightly.

"I'd say you're right," JJ said; she pushed another button on her remote and the images changed to show the same four boys, this time on their stomachs, sheets covering them from the very bottom of their lower backs down, their heads turned to the side.

"Leviticus 20:13," Reid murmured instantly. "If a man also lieth with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." He was looking at the pictures, though he didn't need to; he had memorized the Bible at the age of seven. He looked back to his file, fidgeting with one of the papers for a moment as he added, "King James Version."

There was a moment's silence, then Morgan said, "Have the locals made any connections between them?"

"That's the thing," JJ said. "Like Rossi said—everybody knows everybody else, and I mean everybody. It's going to help us, but it's gonna hurt us, too."

"They're going to want to protect their own," Hotch said, nodding. "Wheels up in ten." He stood; Morgan and Prentiss took that as the signal to stand as well. Prentiss took her untouched file with her; she rarely read through it until she was on the plane, and, though Morgan had already canvassed his own, he took it, too. Within a minute, they were all out of the door, except JJ, who was shutting off the pictures, and Reid; he was still staring at the pictures in his file, a pensive, troubled look on his face.

"...You gonna be alright with this one, Spence?" JJ asked, laying a slender hand on his shoulder; he shook his head and stood, gathering the papers he'd somehow manage to spread into the file folder.

"Yeah," he said, smiling slightly, and it was a genuine one because, profiler or not, JJ Jareau would immediately know if he was trying to lie to her. "Of course. Takes more than that to stop me, you know that."

She grinned, wrapped him in a quick hug, leaving the hint of perfume behind when she pulled back. "Good," she said softly. "I'm glad you're... well, you're handling this a lot better than..."

"Than you expected?" he suggested, tilting his head slightly to one side. He knew what she was referring to, of course; it had been a little less than a month since he was shot by Raymonde Prince of the NYPD—it was November twentieth when the incident, as he mentally called it, had occurred; it was December thirteenth now, and the scars, both mental and physical, were still as fresh as they were when it had happened.

"I... yeah," JJ said, looking at the floor; he bit the inside of his lip and kept his eyes on her as he said, "Look, JJ... I know that just about everybody expected me to relapse, don't pretend that you didn't. And I'm not offended by that, because it's the logical assumption to make, I just—I'm happy that I didn't, you know?" He was stammering, but he couldn't really help that, especially when he was trying to convey how earnest he was about this. "I mean, there's still... stuff I have to get over... but..."

"I know," she said, and he grinned as she pulled him into another quick hug. "Just—promise me you'll talk to me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Promise me you'll come talk to me if you need anything," she said, then repeated, "anything," with more stress on the word. "Me, or Garcia, or Morgan, okay?" She kept her eyes on him, waiting for his response, gauging his body language.

"Yeah," he said after a moment. "Of course. I promise."

"Thank you," she said, looking truly relieved. "Come on, genius, we have a plane to catch." She exited the room with a handful of steps and he was left to walk behind her, trying to figure out why she had included Morgan's name in that list.