Chapter Text
It had been a long day. Then again, most days were long now that Reid was working in the BAU. He wasn't used to this level of hard work. Sure, he could still hammer out reports faster than anyone else, but his intelligence did not necessarily speed up the process of hunting down unsubs. He did his best, they all did, but at the end of the day there was only so much facts and logic could do. He knew this, of course. He didn't expect working with one of the top units in the FBI would be comparable to his high school biology class, but it was different. The workload was different and his mind was working in different ways to compensate.
At least he was going to get back to his apartment at a reasonable time tonight.
The metro was rocking back and forth. His eyes slipped closed more than once. His head fell forward and then he snapped it back up. He was so tired, he couldn't wait to collapse into bed. No reading tonight, just sweet, sweet sleep. Maybe he should eat dinner first. Did he even have anything in his fridge? Maybe he should order take-out then.
His stop came and he got off, still debating whether he should skip dinner and go straight to bed, or stay up for another hour, eat, and then go to bed. He could see his building in the distance. He could see the lights on each floor, signalling who was home and who wasn’t.
He paused at the enterance. Something felt...off. He looked around, trying to see if there was anyone else on the street with him. It was quiet. There were some cars passing by. Still, his heart was pounding and he couldn't explain the deep-seated fear that had settled into his bones. His mind was screaming at him not to go into his building. But the door was closed. The door was locked. There was no sign of a crime; no broken glass, no blood.
He put his keys in the door and went inside.
'There is something wrong.' His mind was screaming at him again and again.
He looked around, trying to see what had caused him to become so afraid. Nothing was out of place. He went to his mailbox. No mail. That wasn't unusual. He went to the elevator. It came like it normally did. Though it did come from the 8th floor, which was his floor. Usually it came from the 5th floor as Mr. and Mrs. Haddix came home right before him from their cooking class. But he lived in an apartment with a hundred other residents. Someone could have had someone over for dinner. It wasn't strange for an elevator to be on another floor.
He got off, still trying to figure out what was spooking him so badly. The case they were working on wasn't that terrible compared to the others. Was he already losing it? It hadn't even been a year and he was already jumping at shadows.
The hallways to his apartment looked the same as it always did. There wasn't a doormat out of place. He stopped at his door and stared at it. If he really was this afraid, maybe he shouldn't be going in. Maybe he should get a hotel for the night and come back tomorrow morning.
But there was nothing he could think of that would cause him to be afraid. It was probably sleep deprivation mixed with stress. He was not in any danger. He lived in a safe building in a safe part of town where most of the residents were older retirees who enjoyed golfing and cooking classes. He lived on the eighth floor, which was quite a trek for anyone who wanted to merely rob some apartments. The front door was always locked. There was no sign of forced entry. He was fine. He was safe. Now, get inside and order some pizza.
He stuck his key in and unlocked the door. It swung open.
He realized why he had been so easy before.
From the street, he could see all of the apartments that had their lights on.
He turned his light off every morning. It was the last thing he did before leaving for work.
The switch had been flipped to the 'on' position, so it wasn't a wiring malfunction.
On his kitchen table, the books that had been piled there had been removed. Instead, a letter had been placed in the center.
Reid felt his entire body go cold as he read that familiar handwriting that had terrorized him for years.
'Hello' was all that was written on the front.
oOoOoOo
If you were to ask Morgan’s mother what his worst habit was, she’d rattle off a whole encyclopedia. He mixed his darks and his lights when doing laundry. He put his elbows on the table while eating. He didn’t make his bed. He didn’t sweep his floors nearly enough. He didn’t change his hand towel every three uses.
Yes, according to Derek Morgan’s mother, he had a lot of bad habits that turned her hair grey, but the worst one of all was his penchant for falling asleep in front of the TV.
If he was so tired, he should just go to bed.
It wasn’t good for his back.
It wasn’t good for his neck.
What was so fascinating about shows on at 11 PM that made him want to stay up and watch anyways?
So when Morgan’s doorbell began buzzing incessantly, he jolted awake and cursed as he realized what had happened again. The TV was on with two characters showcasing some infomercial miracle product. Clooney was on the couch with his head in his lap.
Derek groaned, wiped the drool from the side of his face and pushed him off. “You know better.”
Clooney didn’t seem to take his admonishment seriously. Didn’t even have the willingness to at least try and look guilty.
“You are getting cheeky.” Morgan yawned and stretched. “Looks like those dog training classes didn’t amount to much.”
Clooney put his head back in his lap and wagged his tail.
“At least you quit peeing on the floor and chewing all my pillows.”
He turned off the TV, deciding that he should at least try to sleep in a bed and maybe brush his teeth.
The doorbell buzzed. He jumped and realized what had woken him up in the first place. He furrowed his brow and went to the button.
It buzzed again.
Was it some drunk person who mistook this for his building? Maybe he should just let it ring.
The clock on his microwave told him it was about 2 AM so it wasn’t unreasonable that patrons from bars were starting to stumble home.
It buzzed again.
He couldn’t help the niggling feeling in the back of his mind that something was wrong. He sighed. He should just deal with it and send whoever was at his doorstep on their merry way.
He pressed the button. “Look man, I think you got the wrong place.”
“Morgan?”
Morgan felt his heart drop from his stomach. What in the hell was Reid doing at his apartment at this time of night?
“Reid?”
“Yeah, look, can I come up?” There was a pause. “Please?” His voice was shaking and he sounded like he was two seconds away from having a panic attack.
“Shit yeah, man. I’ll buzz you up.”
“Thank you.” Another pause. “Sorry if you were sleeping.”
Morgan would have been upset, but there was something off about this whole situation. Something was very wrong, especially since Morgan was pretty sure Reid’s apartment was nowhere near his. Why wasn’t he at home? They had all gotten out of the office at around 8 PM. Why was Reid here nearly six hours later? If it was an emergency, why hadn’t he called anyone?
He turned to Clooney. “Reid doesn’t like big dogs so when he gets here, no jumping on him.”
Clooney cocked his head and looked like he was going to do the exact opposite of what Morgan had asked him to do. He just hoped having a giant german shepherd jump on him wouldn’t give the poor kid a heart-attack.
There was a timid knock at the door. Morgan looked through the peephole to see Reid disheveled, pale, and shaking. He was dressed in the same clothes he had been wearing at the office. In his hands was a pile of papers. He opened the door.
The look of relief that passed over his face when he saw Morgan.
“Jesus, kid. What happened to you?” Morgan didn’t miss the way Reid looked down both hallways, almost as if he thought someone was following him. He also didn’t seem like he was going to step through the door.
He grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. Surprisingly, Clooney did not bark or jump him. Instead, he walked right up to Reid and leaned against his legs. Reid jumped and looked down at the dog, frozen in place.
“Looks like he likes you, genius.”
“German shepherds date back to 1899 and were originally bred to help herd sheep. They’re actually one of the newer breeds of dogs to be developed.”
He still had not moved and was still shaking like a leaf.
Morgan was tired. His neck hurt. He was jetlagged. He really, really did not want to try and pry out information from Reid. But something was wrong. He had to be gentle.
“I’m guessing you didn’t come over here to talk about dog breed facts.” He tried to lead him to the couch.
This seemed to snap Reid out of whatever daze he was in and he pulled his arm out of Morgan’s grip.
“Um, I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t be here.”
“Seriously, kid, what’s going on?”
He looked down at the stack of papers in his hands. He shook his head. “I’m just overreacting to something. It’s fine. It’s fine, I should really get going.”
Nope, Morgan was not going to have that. Reid left work with all of them, presumably went home since he definitely did not have those papers in the office. He then appeared at Morgan’s apartment six hours later? Morgan was not going to let this kid leave until he got some answers.
“I don’t think so, genius. You don’t just show up at someone’s apartment looking like you saw a ghost and then try and brush the whole thing off. Why are you here?”
“It’s really nothing, Morgan. I swear, it was just an overreaction.”
Dammit, he was very close to losing his temper.
“Spencer, tell me what’s going on. If it is an overreaction, then I’d rather know now then let you walk out that door and worry about it for the rest of the weekend.”
Reid looked down at the stack of papers in his hands once more. He looked up at him and sighed. “Just, promise you’ll take me seriously?”
“Yeah, man, I promise.” He was already taking this seriously. Good things never happened after 10 PM as his mother said.
Reid sat on the couch with Clooney following him dutifully. It looked like the Reid Effect had no effect on his dog. Reid spread out the papers on the coffee table and took a deep breath. Morgan could see they all appeared to be letters or notes of some kind. Reid also placed a key on the table.
“Um, okay. So,” he took another shaky breath. Morgan sat down and waited for him to speak.
“Um.” Reid was rubbing the strap of his satchel between his fingers, his leg bouncing up and down. He was hunched in on himself, trying to appear smaller, less of a target. Maybe Morgan shouldn’t be profiling him, but at this moment, he had no choice. He had to figure out what was going on.
He took another deep breath. “So, during my freshman year of college, I started getting these letters--”
If Morgan’s heart had already dropped into his stomach, now his body felt like he had been dunked in ice. Any story that started with that sentence could only lead to one place.
“But then they stopped and I never got another letter.” He reached out and touched a piece of paper with ‘Hello’ scribbled on the front. “At least until tonight and my lights were on in my apartment and I always turn them off and this was on my dining room table which means he was in my apartment but my door was still locked when I came in so he might have actually been there when I came home so I grabbed this stack, which I always keep the a file by the front door and the safety deposit key and I just ran.”
Morgan nodded and reached out to touch him, to give him some comfort, but he pulled away. Reid did not always react to touch well and right now he was rightfully freaking out.
“Okay, kid. Did you try and call someone? Gideon? Hotch?”
Reid shook his head. “My phone’s dead and I don’t have a charger. I was thinking of going to a restaurant or bar and asking them if I could use their phone but everything was so crowded because it’s Friday night that I didn’t want to have someone follow me and not notice.”
That still didn’t explain what the kid had been doing for the past six hours.
“What happened after you left your apartment? Where did you go?”
Reid shrugged and let out another shaky sigh. “I just rode around on the metro trying to figure out what to do. I was thinking of going to a hotel but I didn’t know if it would be safe. I kept switching lines and going to random places just in case someone was following me, but the metro stopped running and your place was the closest so I just came here. Sorry for waking you up.”
“I’m not mad at you, kid. We have to get the team, see if we can’t figure out who’s doing this.”
This caught Reid’s attention. His head snapped up and he actually looked fearful at the suggestion. “No, Morgan. It really isn’t that big of a deal.”
It was a big deal. Stalkers did not disappear for years and then suddenly reappear because they had good intentions. But Morgan could tell Reid was going to make this difficult. He was trying to downplay his trauma, trying to convince himself that he was safe by ignoring the very real and present danger. He’d have to be tricky if he wanted Reid to stay and get the help he needed.
“So you don’t want to call the team?” He was playing dirty, he knew it.
Reid nodded.
“What if Garcia or JJ showed up at your apartment at 2 AM with the exact same story? Would you tell them that it’s no big deal?”
He opened his mouth to argue, but then closed it and glared at him. “That’s a low blow.”
Morgan smiled, glad the kid was finally relaxing at least a little. “Yeah, it is. But you know I’m right. Come on, man, you’re the smartest person we’ve got on the team.”
He blushed at the praise and looked down at Clooney who was still glued to his side.
“You know this kind of thing is a big deal. You’ve probably got hundreds of stalking cases stuffed into that big brain of yours. You know how this turns out.”
His shoulders slumped. “Yeah. I guess. I just-- the last time I went to get help, it-- they told me I was overreacting.”
Yep, that was bound to happen. A lot of police forces didn’t take stalking cases seriously, especially with male victims as they were supposed to be able to take care of themselves.
“Is there at least a file on this case?” He had a feeling what the answer would be.
Reid shook his head. “No. The police didn’t take it seriously, and he- the stalker- disappeared after I got back from spring break so I thought maybe they were right.”
Morgan did his best to look sympathetic. But he was angry. He was angry at a system that always seemed to fail those who needed it most. He was angry at people who thought their victims owed them their attention. He was angry that he even had to be dealing with this shit. Not because he was angry at Reid for coming to him, but because this had happened when the kid was in college. It should have already been dealt with.
“I have everything but one letter. I kept it all, most of its in a safety deposit box.” Reid was staring intently at the key.
“Why don’t you have one letter?”
“It was the first one I got. I thought it was a joke so I threw it out. When I realized it wasn’t, I rewrote it just in case.”
The fact that he had to deal with any of this as a child made Morgan’s blood boil. “When did you finally get a hold of the police?”
“After he broke into my apartment. You couldn’t really tell, but my books had all been rearranged and I was living alone at the time.”
If the last interaction Reid had with the stalker was a break-in followed by a ten year disappearance, that was a very bad sign. They had to work quickly. There was no telling how obsessed this man was or how much danger Reid was in.
“I’ll call the team and get them over here. We need to solve this, quickly.”
Reid looked like he wanted to protest. He was denying his own victimization in a futile attempt to regain control over his life. Morgan wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Reid, we need to deal with this. I know you understand. Let us help you. That’s why we’re a team.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t argue either. Morgan went to grab his phone.
He stared at the screen, his head turning over profiles and stalking cases. It made him sick that one of their own was dealing with this. The fact that it was Reid made things worse. He had become protective over the kid. He knew there was some past trauma that hadn’t been addressed and knew that the kid often felt that he was only useful because of his knowledge. Morgan had been working tirelessly the last year to try and show him that he was cared about. The fact that he came to Morgan’s apartment instead of getting a hotel and trying to deal with this on his own was a great sign. That fact that it took him several hours to come to that conclusion was a slightly less great sign.
He dialed and waited for Gideon to pick up.
“Morgan, what’s wrong?” Gideon’s voice was groggy and Morgan felt bad for waking him up.
“We have a problem.”
“Why else would you call me at two in the morning?”
Fair question. “Did you know Reid has a stalker?”
The silence on the other end spoke louder than any words.
“Apparently, he had one in college but he disappeared. Yeah, well, tonight, he came back. I’ve got Reid sitting in my living room trying not to freak out while also distancing himself from the whole affair.”
Gideon cursed under his breath. “Is he hurt?” He asked, much more awake now.
“No, he’s fine. Shaken up and probably very sleep deprived, but he’s fine.”
“Okay. I’ll contact the rest of the team. I know he’s one of ours, but we have to treat this like we would any other case.”
Morgan looked out into the living room. Reid was scratching behind Clooney’s ear, still looking out of it.
“I don’t know if he’s going to like that.”
“He doesn’t have a choice. If this is a stalker who’s still obsessed with him after all this time, he is in danger.”
Morgan sighed. “I know, man. I just wish this wasn’t the case.”
“Me too. I’ll get the rest of the team and we’ll be over in an hour. Get Spencer to tell you as much as possible so we can start building a timeline and a profile.”
“Got it.”
Morgan hung up the phone and looked out at Reid. This case was going to be a hard one, but he was going to do everything in his power to keep Reid safe.