Chapter Text
Spencer Reid didn’t need a fucking babysitter. He was twelve years old: legally, he was capable of surviving without adult supervision, and besides, he was nearly done with his second year of high school. He wasn’t a fucking baby, and he didn’t need a fucking babysitter. So he didn’t fucking know why Elena put him a stupid fucking program for trumped up babysitting.
He climbed on top of the toilet of the single-user bathroom and pried open the window. Then he sat on the ledge, swung his backpack beside him, and took out a pack of cigarettes. He dug in his pocket for his lighter and—
“Hello?”
“Occupied!” he called back. Rolling his eyes, he put the pack back and hopped down to the ground. He pushed through the door, nearly running into Joshua, one of the twenty-something program coordinators.
“Spencer! I mean—Reid, sorry. I’ve been looking for you. Your mentor’s waiting in room 206, with the others.” He took a step back and leaned against the wall. Reid wondered if they taught that—non-threatening body language with troubled kids—or if that was all Josh.
Reid kicked the heel of his shoe with his toe. “I dunno. I’m on early curfew right now. I might have to go.” Half-truths: he was on early curfew. He didn’t have to go. And he never planned on making it anyway.
“Oh, yeah, at Donna’s home, right? I can totally give her a call. And I thought early curfew wasn’t ‘til six, right?” Josh scratched his shaggy black hair.
Reid shrugged and kicked the carpeting.
“Look, Reid, why don’t you just tell me what’s going on? Are you nervous?”
“No, I just—I don’t need to be in this program, okay?” Reid picked at his cuticles furiously.
“Because your spot could go to someone else? Or what?” Josh slid to the floor in the narrow hallway and patted the ground beside him. Reid sat down, but there was no way in hell he was sitting next to Josh.
“No.” Reid flicked his thumb out. “I just—I just don’t want to, okay? I don’t want someone to, what? Play catch with? Friggin, take me—fishing? I don’t want to meet new people just so—” he stopped. Just so they can leave. Blood from the torn cuticle on his thumb smeared under his forefinger.
"Just so what?”
“Nothing. Can’t you get me out of it?”
“Reid, I don’t think anyone’s going to try to play catch with you, or take you fishing. I do think it’d be good for you to have someone around, just to talk to, that’ll still be there if you go back with your parents, or get moved to a different CBRF, right? So why don’t you at least meet the guy, and if you still hate him after, I can tell Elena we had a mentor drop out of the program.” He spun a ring on his finger.
Reid scowled. “When I go back. And you’ll still be here.”
“I’ll still be here,” he agreed. “But I want you to have a network of support, okay? So is that a deal?”
“I guess.” Reid stood up.
“And I’m introducing you two. Part of the deal.”
“I don’t need to be handed off. I’m not a child.”
“You’re twelve. Twelve. Chi–uld.”
Reid followed Josh downstairs and to one of the classrooms, where a few mentor-mentee pairs were left. And one lone guy. He was tall-ish, and Black-ish. He was stocky and wore a tight-fitting, short-sleeved henley with jeans.
“Hey, Derek Morgan?” Josh pushed his hands into his pockets and leaned against one of the desks. “I’m Josh, but I guess we talked earlier, and this is your kid. Mentee, I mean. Spencer Reid.”
Reid stood back. He nodded.
Morgan smiled benignly and gave a small wave. “Hi, kid. Name’s Morgan. Nice to meet you.” He stuck his hand out.
Reid stepped forward to shake it. “Hi,” he mumbled, the air coming out strained and raspy.
“Cool, cool, cool. Well, I guess I’ll leave you two to it, but you know where I’ll be.” Josh nodded, looked around the room, and walked out.
“Huh,” Morgan said. “Josh’s something, huh?”
Reid nodded. “Guess so.”
“You hungry?”
Reid shrugged. “‘Bout to be.”
“Know any places ‘round here to eat?”
“Gotta car?”
Morgan quirked an eyebrow. “In DC? Yeah. Why?”
“King’s Cafe is a mile away. ‘S okay.”
“Okay, then.” He held a hand towards the door, and Reid led him out and down to the ground floor. He burst into the bright sun, squinting at the basketball court.
“Aye, doc!” Connor Moore shouted, holding the ball to his chest. “The fuck is that?”
“Free meal, man,” Reid called back. Morgan stopped at the driver’s side of his black SUV and turned around. Reid felt his eyes on his neck.
“Fuck, I’d done it for a side of fries, if they’d told us there was gonna be food in it.” He bounced the ball and clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Aight then, go get ‘em doc.”
Reid checked Morgan’s face, but he was unreadable. He felt like he was walking into a trap as he got in the passenger side. He leaned against the window. “Just take MLK to Sheridan.”
Morgan maneuvered out of the parking lot. “Okay, doc.” He looked over at Reid. “Why they call you that anyway?”
Reid shrugged.
“Come on, kid, you gotta give me something. We’re stuck with each other, ain’t we?”
No, they weren’t. Reid would get a fantastic sandwich and a ride home, and then he would tell Joshua it wouldn’t work out, and then he would never have to speak to this dude again. “You a cop or something?”
He did seem like a cop. He held himself like one, all sharp edges and hard lines. He had the car for it, too.
“Nah. FBI.”
“So a cop.” Reid knew how he sounded, but he wasn’t looking to make a goddamn friend, especially not with a cop.
“Behavioral Analysis Unit. We deal more with violent crime, serial killers, than quality of life crimes. We’re part of ViCAP.”
He was trying to say that he wasn’t the kind of cop Reid hated, that he wasn’t the kind that would search Reid and his friends when they walked home from school, that he wasn’t the kind that would put a hold on Reid’s mom whenever cops were called to Reid’s place. Reid couldn’t give a shit if he tried.
Well, he couldn’t if that wasn’t Jason Gideon’s unit, and David Rossi’s, too. He bit his tongue to hold back all his questions. “Whatever.”
Morgan looked at him again, but he didn’t say anything.
“Doc’s ‘cause I have a tutoring gig.”
“They told me you were smart.”
“Yeah? You read my CFSA file?”
Morgan’s fist clenched around the steering wheel. “All the mentors got an abbreviated version of a CFSA file.”
“So, yes.” Reid knew, approximately, what was in that file.
“Portions of it, yeah.” Morgan turned down a side street towards King’s.
Reid swallowed.
“It’s alright, kid. I can’t judge.”
Reid snorted. “Right.”
Morgan parked the car on the street and turned to Reid. “Really, I can’t. I had a record. Juvie, whole bit.”
“You’re an FBI agent.”
“Expunged.” Morgan opened his car door and Reid followed him in. “What do you want?”
“What? I don’t know, uh, I mean—” Reid stammered.
“Kid, I mean to eat.”
“Oh, I guess the number seven with fries and a coffee.” Reid flushed.
“Coffee? Let’s try Coke, huh?” Morgan looked at the menu on the wall above the register. “Anything else?”
Reid quirked an eyebrow at him. Might as well, right? “And can I have an extra side of onion rings, and a chocolate milkshake? And a side of grits, too?”
Morgan studied him, his face still infuriatingly neutral. His eyes raked up Reid. Reid felt stripped down, and he suddenly had the unsettling conviction that Morgan could read his thoughts. “Yeah, sure,” Morgan finally said. “You gonna eat all that?”
“Ye-ah.” He said it with two syllables, with sass lilting the second half up into a challenge.
Morgan shrugged the corners of his mouth down and went to order. Reid sat at a corner booth where he could see the whole cafe and the street. He watched Morgan place the order, then scan the room for Reid. Reid tried to imagine himself from a profiler’s point of view but gave up when his internal monologue turned into a critique of how transparent his behavior was.
Morgan sat across from him. “So: Spencer Reid. What should I call you?”
Reid stared at him, so dumbfounded by the fact Morgan had thought to ask the question he forgot it required an answer.
“I can just go with doc if you want,” Morgan said quietly.
“Oh, uh—most people call me Reid.” This was, in fact, a lie. Almost nobody called him Reid. Not his teachers, certainly not his parents, not the group home managers who drifted in and out of his life. But he had started to hate his first name with such visceral force he had been trying, more now, to get people to start. Josh was the only one who did reliably.
“Nice. Reid. Cool.”
The silence grew awkward, but Reid had no intention of saving them from it. He stared at the box of napkins pushed to the wall.
“Do you—play any sports?”
Great. Here it was. Did he look like he played any sports? “No.”
“Oh.” Morgan clicked his tongue against his teeth, and Reid hoped it wasn’t a habit. "Well, are there any you want to try?"
"Josh promised you wouldn't make me play catch."
Morgan laughed. "Well, I don't have to make you do anything. And there are plenty of sports that don't require throwing, or catching. You ever been climbing? I feel like you'd be good at it."
Reid blushed and was still working out what to say when Morgan said, "Oh, that's our number." He stood and walked to the counter.
It was truly too much food, but Reid knew it was the last time for a while he'd be able to eat as much as he wanted: portions at the group home were already small before the other kids picked his apart, and he avoided school lunches for—similar reasons. He dug in ferociously.
"Anyway, we don't have to do any kind of sports. I just thought it might be a good place to start, since the program doesn't have any strict activities or whatever. What do you like to do?"
Reid was already starting to feel sick and he had barely started in on the grits, but he powered through. "I mostly do school."
Morgan nodded as though Reid had said something profound, and Reid got the feeling of being transparent and looked-through again. "Well, I guess the main point is for me to be here for you, right?" Morgan said finally. "We can figure out what we'll actually do some other time."
There wouldn't be some other time, not if Reid could help it. He shrugged one shoulder and twisted his wrist until it popped.
Morgan winced at the sound of it. "Anyway."
Neither of them spoke. Reid sucked on the chocolate shake so hard a headache bloomed behind his eyes.
"I'm from Chicago. South side," Morgan said, finally. He eyed Reid as though trying to parse whether he knew what that meant.
Reid summoned statistics: gang violence, dropout rates, failing housing projects. He knew what Morgan was trying to say, had been trying to say this whole time. I'm just like you. You can trust me. But Reid knew he couldn't. "'M from here," he said through a mouth of fries. "But you knew that."
"Yeah." Morgan took a fry. "You ain't gonna give anything for free, are you?"
"'Cept that fry." Reid nodded to Morgan's hands.
Morgan laughed again, easy and loud. "Well, I can respect that, I guess. But it won't make this easy, you know."
Reid looked away. Despite himself, he was sizing up Morgan, and the scales were weighing in his favor. Morgan seemed genuinely eager to help the poor disadvantaged kid in the system, and even if Reid resented the pity, it didn't change that Morgan was the first adult besides Josh who wanted the best for Reid in a while. At least for now: Reid knew he would leave, eventually, and that would hurt more than pushing him away now.
"Nothing's easy," Reid said after another moment, looking up from the table of food for long enough to see Morgan's gaze flicker with confusion, or something, before setting back into its easy congeniality.
"Ain't that the truth."
Reid started in on the sandwich, wondering how discreetly he could slip some food into his backpack for later.
"Hey, kid, you don't have to finish all that. You can take the leftovers."
Reid was startled—there was the transparent feeling again. He blinked. "I mean, you bought it. I said I would finish it."
"I don't want you to make yourself sick, Reid."
Reid blinked again, slow. It wasn't as though he had consciously thought Morgan wanted him to overeat and teach himself a lesson, but, well, it was a game of chicken, wasn't it?
"Josh told me you were on early curfew at your group home?"
"Yeah," Reid said. He slurped at the shake. "Fighting."
"Yeah? You don't strike me as the kind of guy who talks with your fists."
"Doesn't fit your profile, Agent?" Reid was testing him again, he knew it, but he couldn't stop himself.
"So you do know what the BAU is." Morgan smiled triumphantly, as thought he had caught Reid in a lie.
Reid raised an eyebrow. "Never said I didn't, sir."
"Don't call me sir," Morgan said. "But are you into FBI stuff?"
Reid shut down. This didn't matter. They were never gonna see each other again. He shrugged.
"Ah, well, if you are, I could probably get you a tour sometime."
Reid cracked a half smile. "You wanna take me to the F-B-I?" He drew out the letters.
"Any reason I shouldn't?" Morgan challenged.
What Reid wanted to say: oh, just the everything. Just the weed in my backpack and the cigarettes in my pencil case and the oxy (not his opioid of choice, but it did the job) taped under his bed at the group home. Just the drugs, and the fights, and his hideous institutional haircut, and all the fading bruises.
"Any reason you should?" he said.
Morgan gave him another slow look, elevator eyes on his torso seeing through him. "What was the fight about?"
"I don't know." This time, it was the truth.
"I don't think it was your fault," Morgan said. "And I've only known you for half an hour."
"And yet I'm the one who has to be back by six." Reid looked theatrically at the space on his wrist where his watch would be if they hadn't taken it while he was held in juvie while Elena found a bed at his new group home three weeks ago.
"Josh got you out of it for tonight, so we have another couple hours."
"What? But—oh." Reid was partially disappointed, but a few hours away from a DC group home never killed anybody.
"We can do whatever you want in driving distance," Morgan said. "But I'll get a box for the food while you think of something."
Two hours. With a car, in DC. No supervision except for a stranger who desperately wanted Reid to like him. It was the most freedom Reid had had since being taken from home. He briefly considered slipping away—how hard could it be? He could get halfway to New York by curfew.
Not with a FBI agent on your six, dumbass.
There was really only one place he needed to go then.