Chapter 17

The White Swan Inn
San Francisco, CA

Morgan

After phone calls a tasty dinner happened, thankfully served by an employee and not any kind of submissive or slave. Morgan and Hotch continued to work on paperwork while Spencer and Alice retreated to the library to curl up in front of the fire with books. Little brother was still in recovery mode, Morgan thought, a few nights, or even weeks, off would not do him any harm.

Sometime later Morgan caught sight of Joey motioning him over from the library door. The kid had been in and out, checking on Alice and by extension Spencer on a regular basis. Now Morgan headed for the library and found their two injured birds on the sofa, heads back, legs up, snoring lightly. "I should probably get him to bed." He said.

"I know I should get her to bed." Joey replied.

"Do you know what rooms we have?" Not a clue where Spencer put his key. And Morgan was not frisking him to find it. The front desk had to have multiple copies.

"Miss Alice said Dr. Reid was staying in her room tonight."

Morgan should have expected that. "Which room is that?"

"Five A. I believe Tomás said you're all on the second floor."

That wasn't going to work. Spencer couldn't carry right now and they didn't have the Unsubs in custody and better safe than sorry. "Any rooms free on the fifth?"

"No, those are our private apartments and some office space. But, um, Miss Alice does have a very comfortable couch. I doubt she would mind."

"Hope not." Morgan went and told Hotch what he was doing, bid him good night, and helped get Spencer and Alice up and moving. He and Joey gathered up bags and then took a ride on the old cage style elevator to the fifth floor. Private apartment turned out to be accurate; Alice had a small living room and a separate bedroom and bath. With sleepy waves Spencer and Alice retreated to the bedroom and Morgan got comfortable on the couch.

His little brother was safe with his lady. He had no reason to complain at all.

Too early the next morning Morgan awoke to sunshine and a pillow hitting him in the chest. "Why are you here?" Spencer asked.

"You can't carry." It was still foggy out there. How early was it anyway? Too early. Way too early. Morgan closed his eyes again.

"No one is going to bother us here. Go away."

"You don't know that."

"I'm willing to take the risk. Go away."

Okay, what the hell. Morgan opened his eyes once more and sat up to look at his little brother. He was in likely pajamas, his hair on end. "Why do you want me gone anyway?"

Spencer sighed noisily. "To use language you would understand I can't...get my game on with you here."

Seriously? Seriously? Now Derek Morgan knew what it meant to cope with the aftermath of rape, and having to question your sexuality and needing to prove to yourself that you weren't utterly broken. If Spencer wanted to go there Morgan was not going to say a word. But they were all adults here, and safety trumped healing, at least for now. So he reached down, picked up his noise canceling headphones and deliberately put them on. Spencer sagged, sighed, and retreated to the bedroom

Of course with the headphones on Morgan couldn't hear anyone coming in the apartment, so he took them off as soon as the bedroom door closed. And he very deliberately ignored the sounds coming from the bedroom not too much time later. He was just glad to know that at least in this matter his little brother had come through all right.

Turned out little brother was doing even better later in the morning.

And doing just fine after Morgan left an agent from the local field office on guard duty outside the apartment door, went for a run, and came back to collect his bag.

As he exited the elevator after his shower Morgan was nearly run over by Joey, his arms loaded down with shopping bags. "What the..."

Joey shook his head as the doors closed. "I have no idea."

They still had reserved use of the library and conference room. The café was open; it looked like the party from last night had moved in to the sunny, cozy space. Didn't mean they were having sex on the tables, people were behaving themselves, but Morgan saw a lot of leather and collars and such around. Most people were having breakfast from the buffet. Looked like the team was as well but they were eating in the conference room. He also saw that the fog was starting to burn off; hopefully they would be heading out this afternoon.

Morgan looked up from the coffee pot as Spencer came in. He looked better than he had yesterday, less anxious or something, more comfortable in his skin, kind of taller. Maybe even a little glowy. Morgan could guess why. But there was something there than concerned him. "'Morning." He said. "How did you sleep?"

"Good morning." Spencer replied. He made a bee line for the coffee pot, and started adding the usual amount of sugar. "Quite well, actually. Thank you for standing guard last night."

"No problem. Look, can we talk for a minute?" Spencer nodded, and Morgan took him off to the quiet of the library. "Okay, look, I might be talking out of turn here, but..."

"No, it's all right."

Morgan took a deep breath. "Okay, I used to have a kind of a reputation with the ladies..."

Spencer grinned. "Kind of?"

Yeah, he had a point. "All right, all right. The point is I realized I was chasing all those women because I was trying to prove to...to the guys back on the block, or maybe to the universe, or something that Buford didn't break me. That I was just as much a man as anyone else, and I could prove that by getting any woman I wanted. Now I didn't mess up too much doing that, but I lost a lot of years in a very cold place. You know, you really don't have anything to prove here..."

Spencer stopped him there. "I know, I don't. I appreciate the advice, I truly do, but I think there are enough differences in this situation to make it not apply."

"How so?" Morgan was kind of curious and it was good to get Spencer talking about it.

"Well, for one thing I'm an adult, not a child. That changes the nature of the experience."

"True." Physical development alone would change things.

"For another I was relatively secure in my sexuality before this happened. Someone pubescent or pre-pubescent is naturally likely to still be at the point of questioning that, it's part of human development at that age."

"Also true." Morgan had to think that he would be a lot less confused now than he had been there.

"But most importantly...we're with the BAU. I mean, most civilians would be confused by any encounter with an Unsub, especially one that...intimate and that went on that long. But I had victimology down in the first hour, I knew this had nothing to do with me. Unsubs are just..."

"Yeah, I can see it. Professional detachment."'

"Exactly. Pacify the Unsub, hold out until the team gets there or you see an opening to escape and try not to let it get personal. It never did."

"Never?" Morgan just had to be sure.

"No. It was like riding a roller coaster. Maybe twenty percent of each encounter was...interesting, let's put it that way."

"Interesting?"

"Adult body. It happens. Eighty percent was...painful, humiliating, terrifying or some combination of all three. But when the...the ride was over it was over. There was no lingering emotional trauma. I was just glad it was over, at least for a while. So yeah, last night was not about proving or disproving anything that had to do with the Usub."

"So what was it about?" Morgan was willing to admit that he might have been off-base, but getting his little brother talking was still a good idea.

"Well, without getting in to a lot of detail part of it was actually recommended by the doctor I saw yesterday."

"Yeah, spare the details."

"And part of it was..." Okay, now they were getting in to personal stuff. "...Alice is a civilian. What happened...hurt her a great deal. She needed help...finding a path I guess."

"Did she?"

"Yeah. I don't know if it helped." He looked up in the direction of their rooms. Alice still hadn't come down. "I think it helped. I hope it helped."

"That's not all it was though." Spencer's microexpressions were giving him away. He wanted to talk about something.

Spencer sighed and thought a moment. "I've always suspected...I mean Lila was the first indication and then Maeve hinted at...and after what happened with Alice in captivity...I had a theory that it would be very different with women."

"Different..." Wait a minute. "Did you have any experience with that before?"

Spencer took a deep breath, and gave it up. "No."

Holy hell, little brother had been a virgin. If it happened with an Unsub it didn't count, but from what Morgan had heard through the walls this morning... "Oh I could have told you that." Morgan couldn't help grinning. "It is so different with women."

"Yeah, I know that now." Spencer was grinning too. "I mean, if that was a roller coaster than this is...is...now I know why poets write volumes trying to quantify this. IQ of 187 and I cannot find words."

"Now you know." This explained why little brother was glowing this morning. Morgan was laughing. "Now you know."

"I know. My theory was entirely correct." Spencer was laughing with him. Shared laughter was a good way to help start healing. He lifted his coffee cup, likely to hide the blush he had going with it. "And besides, she asked so nicely."

"Oh, now you're done for." Morgan couldn't stop chuckling. "Once they start asking you can't say no. You're done, it's all over."

"Yeah, I can see that." But little brother was not complaining. "I'm not better." Spencer said. "I need to see a doctor when we get back and I know I need a psych eval and I'm going to have nightmares for a while but...I'm a lot better than I was yesterday."

Morgan nodded. "Now that I believe."