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Spencer was pretty sure that, as far as delusions went, believing he had woken up in the body of his best friend couldn't be a good sign.
And yet there he was - The hands had clued him in right away to who he was supposed to be- that was the wrong word. "Supposed to be" in the way that parents ask kids as they trick-or-treat: What a cute costume from a television or movie franchise I've never heard of - what are you supposed to be? He'd been asked that more than he thought was reasonable because, maybe unsurprisingly, the residents of Las Vegas in 1989 didn't recognize a child with longish hair wearing a red turtleneck and carrying a small model of the solar system as Carl Sagan.
So. Not "supposed to be," but instead who his brain thought he was.
That was wrong, too. He knew he wasn't Derek Morgan. He was Spencer Reid. Doctor Reid, Boy Genius, Pretty Boy, Kid. The son of Diana Reid.
Still, when he went into the bathroom to try to splash some water on his face, a familiar face stared back at him. Kind brown eyes, neatly trimmed goatee, eyebrows in a perpetual tilde shape against his furrowed brow, mouth he was used to seeing form a teasing grin in his direction.
He pressed his fingers- not exactly his fingers, but they were operating at his instruction, so he wasn't sure how else to refer to them - to his (again, not really) face in a way that would have been comical if he were watching it from somewhere else. It was like a terrible movie cliche. When that, predictably, didn't change things, he turned on the water as cold as it would go. A shocking physical sensation could sometimes interrupt a thought process and thus disrupt the delusion. He gasped at the icy liquid on his cheeks and sliding down his neck, soaking into his soft tshirt, splashing harder than he expected, and rubbed firmly at his eyes. The fingers felt similar to his own but not quite right. He tried again, letting out a long, slow breath to try to ground himself. He opened his eyes after close to thirty seconds and saw strong, dark arms braced against the sink.
He felt dizzy. Sick. This was- he was sick. He sat heavily on the edge of the bathtub, fingers curling around the porcelain rim.
None of this made any sense. Delusions didn't usually start this vividly and all at once. Usually they started much smaller and a lot more fractured. At least for schizophrenia. Which meant this had to be something else...right? It could be delusional disorder, but this didn't fit any of the types: persecutory, erotomanic, grandiose, jealous, or somatic. The age would fit, as age of onset tended to peak in mid-30s for men unlike schizophrenia which predominantly appeared in men between ages 15 and 25, but unless he counted this as some very strange version of the somatic subtype, he was fairly certain that couldn't be right. And the somatic subtype almost always involved a person believing they had a medical condition that they verifiably didn't have.
That hadn't entirely reassuring after the doctors had dispelled the notion of a physiological reason for his headaches. He didn't have a headache now, which was a little surprising. Even with the migraines far more under control than they had been, stress tended to bring a sharp tension behind his eyes and at the back of his neck, and this situation was certainly stressful.
It could very well be a tumor, he concluded. It was strange to think that without feeling an intense panic; there were a lot of varieties of tumors and an infinite number of treatment plans with an incalculable number of outcomes. Intense delusions and schizophrenia had a lot fewer potential good outcomes. Temporal lobe tumors were often associated with hallucinations, including intense visual and tactile perceptions. For that matter, tumors of the Pineal Gland came with both delusions and headaches. That sounded likely.
...So the rest of his mind worked fine, he concluded. He could recall everything the way he ordinarily would. This thoughts were organized and clear. There was no brain fog. There were no beliefs of grandiosity, a sense that he had any abilities beyond what he demonstrably used every day. The only fear was directly related to the stimulus of appearing to be in a body that wasn't his own, rather than being directed elsewhere. He didn't believe this was some trick by a government agency (though he laughed mirthlessly at that one; of all the people for whom a shadowy government organization could be involved...)
...or he could have been drugged.
That sent fear rushing through him. Not after everything he'd gone through, all the surgeries and wounds and even Anthrax he'd suffered through with barely more than most people took for a headache just to stay clean. How could this have happened? He couldn't have done this on purpose...right? What had he done last night? Had things been bad? The cravings? All he remembered was sitting in his living room and reading The Cloud Dream of the Nine with a cup of tea. A perfectly comfortable, calm night. He didn't remember being overwhelmed or starting to spiral, no pacing the floor with his hands tugging at his hair...no sign of sharp objects lying around where they shouldn't be. Last night had been fine to the best of his recollection, so what could possibly have happened-
He stood carefully, surprised to realize how much more room he seemed to take up. Not that Morgan was large, but his calf muscles took up more space than Spencer was used to allowing for and bumped uncomfortably against the rim of the tub. The wrong knee felt stiff. He knew that was the most ridiculous thing to get hung up on at a time like this, but he laughed. He couldn't stop himself.
He was standing in his apartment, thinking he was suddenly a strong, muscle-bound Black ex-cop in his early 40s, hoping that he had a brain tumor because it was less frightening than the possibility that he was losing his mind or his sobriety, laughing hysterically because his right knee ached instead of his left.
He was so deeply in trouble.
Who was he supposed to call at a time like this? What would he even say? Hey, Morgan, could you take me to the doctor? Why? Well, I woke up this morning thinking I was you, and when I look at my hands I see yours, and I'm wearing sweatpants but I don't own any. I should probably let Hotch know I'll need a couple days, right?
He walked to the living room, fidgeting uncomfortably as his limbs moved differently than he was used to. His arms weren't tucked in as closely as he expected, it felt like his center of gravity was...not where it should be, he couldn't tell whether it had shifted up or down. Nothing in the other room looked out of place. Books were strewn around like they always were, but there was no sign that he had started to spiral last night and gone out in search of a high somewhere.
Which left him with a tumor or being drugged against his will.
Then a phone rang. Someone else's phone - not his. That wasn't what his ringtone sounded like. He rushed towards the source of the sound - surprised at how much louder his footsteps sounded than he was used to; Morgan always sounded so light on his feet - and found Morgan's phone sitting on his nightstand.
That didn't make any sense. Surely if he were hallucinating the state of his body, that wouldn't extend to technology. He would imagine any number of things that were far more important to him - and to Morgan - than his cell phone. Hell, it would make more sense to hallucinate that Garcia had come over and was trying to make her move than it would to believe that his own cell phone had been swapped for Morgan's.
He picked it up cautiously and saw his own name on the screen: Call from: Reid
Spencer wasn't sure who exactly his tumor-filled and possibly high mind expected to be calling him, but himself wasn't at the top of the list. He nervously poked at the screen to answer the call. "Hello?"
That wasn't his voice. He knew what he sounded like to himself. He knew what he sounded like on recordings that other people had made, as awkward as it was to hear. What he had just heard was definitely not his voice. It was-...maybe it was Morgan's voice? It was hard to tell when it sat much higher in his chest, where Spencer was used to speaking from, instead of the more resonant place that Morgan's voice usually came from.
If his brain was going to think he sounded like Morgan - to go with looking like Morgan, apparently - why would it go through those extra steps? Why not just have him sound like Morgan normally sounded to him, which he knew perfectly well?
"Reid?"
That was his voice - on the other end of the phone. Or very close to what he sounded like on recordings.
Was this some form of DID? Thinking he was two different people at once - himself and Morgan? Was that what it was like for Adam? For Tobias? He had read about the condition of course, both in school and almost obsessively after Georgia. It wasn't unusual for some alters to know about one another and able to communicate in a way, but Spencer was pretty sure there weren't any cases where the portions of the system had literally thought they were calling one another on the phone.
There was another possibility he hadn't considered, which was that he wasn't losing his mind. Maybe something was actually happening. There had been attempts at transferring consciousness for years, but none of the studies had been replicated or even verified by anyone from outside the sponsoring university or organization. And if it was happening...then the only thing that would make sense - if anything made sense, and he was pretty sure it didn't - would be that somewhere...Morgan might be in his body?
(Not like that, he thought to himself, angry at the part of him that could think of that at a time like this. He waited for the warm blush to spread across his face but it didn't come. ...Morgan didn't really blush. Smirk, grin, tease, but blushing wasn't really part of it. The same way he didn't cry, Spencer realized as it occurred to him that his often-wet eyes had remained surprisingly dry despite the fact that he was facing the reality of his long-held greatest fear.)
"Yes? M-Morgan?" It shouldn't have surprised him that his stammer remained intact. That was a nervous response wired in the brain rather than something that could be attributed to differences in the sensitivity of the lacrimal glands. "Please tell me I'm not crazy."
He wasn't sure what answer would make him feel like it was true. If he was having visual and tactile hallucinations and delusions, why wouldn't auditory hallucinations be expected as well?
"If you are, then I am, Pretty Boy." Hearing the nickname in his own voice felt so strange, so wrong, like he was trying to give himself the strangest pep talk.
"I don't know what happened, I woke up and it was like this." Why did he assume that Morgan would know what that meant? For all anyone knew, Derek Morgan had woken up as Spencer Reid and Spencer Reid had woken up as an aardvark.
...an aardvark who sounded like Derek Morgan, he reminded himself. He needed to calm down - he was starting to lose what little logic he might have left.
"Same here. Are you home?"
"At my home, yeah," he replied, looking around the familiar surroundings. But something about that statement felt strange. Who was 'my' in this scenario? It felt like 'my' meant 'Spencer's', but...if one of them currently had the mind of Spencer but nothing else, and if the brain made up such a small part of the body physiologically, which one of them did that really mean? "Or at- how are we defining 'my'? Is it the consciousness that defines-"
"Small apartment, green walls, a million books?" The teasing words were no doubt meant as fondly as Morgan always meant them, but in his own voice it more closely resembled the taunts that Spencer's mind muttered practically every time he spoke.
"Yeah."
"Stay put, Kid, I'm coming to you." That did manage to sound comforting.
"Okay."
Things would be okay. Morgan would get here, they would use their considerable experience and knowledge to figure out what had happened to them, and they would figure this out. They would loop the team in, too - maybe this had happened to them as well? He had no way of knowing at this point, but at least it wasn't just him. It wasn't just him sitting here thinking he was wearing Morgan's body like an enormous hazmat suit. Morgan was somewhere - probably his own apartment - and trying to figure out why he'd woken up in a skinny pale body with unruly hair and headaches and stiffness in the wrong knee and scars all over his-
NO
Because if Morgan were in his body, there he would see- NO.
"Wait!" he gasped out. The room was spinning, and he sat heavily on the bed to try to keep from falling over or throwing up all over his rug.
"What?"
"Don't-...don't look." He was begging now. What if he was too late? What if Morgan had already tried to take a shower or something and seen- "I don't want you to see..." He couldn't breathe. Because there was actually a fate worse than this being an elaborate delusion, and that was it being real and Morgan knowing. Not just literally seeing him naked, which would be mortifying given that he'd had a crush on the man for years and knew there was nothing he could ever bother to do about it...but seeing every part of him. The parts that literally no one saw for a good reason.
"You don't look, either."
The thought of looking anywhere intimate honestly hadn't occurred to him when he had thought it was a hallucination - because a hallucination said more about his own mind than about reality anyway. Now that he knew...or was operating under the assumption, anyway...that this might actually be Morgan's body, he wouldn't dare. It would be a violation under any circumstances, every bit as much as trying to peep at him through the bathroom wall or something. And while he had fantasized once or twice about what Morgan might look like beneath the well-fitting jeans and tight tshirts...he wouldn't invade the man's privacy like that. "O- okay."
"I'll be there soon. Hang in there, Kid." The call disconnected, and Spencer was left sitting on the edge of his bed, trying to figure out what in the world he was supposed to do now. On an average weekend morning, it took approximately 25 minutes for Morgan to get to his place, door-to-door. Hopefully the man was obeying his promise that he wouldn't look.
...He hadn't actually promised that, Spencer realized, swallowing hard, worrying again he might be sick. Morgan had said that he shouldn't look either, which implied that Morgan hadn't looked, but he hadn't actually stated that he hadn't done so. And he hadn't said that he wouldn't do so. He had issued an instruction; there was a difference.
Oh God. Morgan knew, didn't he? He was never going to be able to look at him - even if they could get whatever this was undone and go back to their lives, they couldn't. He couldn't. He was going to have to move to another state and get a new job somewhere.
He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to calm himself. He didn't know that Morgan had seen it yet. And Morgan - presumably in any body - was trustworthy and protective. If Spencer had asked him not to do something, he wouldn't do it. Maybe it would be okay. He would have to make sure that Morgan didn't pay attention while dressing or undressing until this was straightened out, and showering would be a significant challenge, but maybe it would be okay. Maybe no one would ever know.
Morgan's skin was softer than he expected. That was a strange thing to notice, right? Noticing it if he were there to consent would be one thing, but this was the tactile equivalent of reading someone's journal while they were out.
He sat on the edge of the bed, fidgeting. Everything felt awkward and wrong. Twisting his mouth more than twice left his Zygomaticus feeling a little sore - apparently his cheeks were stronger than Morgan's thanks to his nervous habit. Morgan's hands weren't completely different from his own, though much more calloused (to no one's surprise) with less prominent knuckles. And somehow larger than his hands, too, even though he'd always felt like his hands were kind of big even considering his height. His wrists couldn't bend as far as he was used to, and each time he tried, Morgan's watch kept digging into his skin.
How the hell did anyone wear their watch this tight? It was driving him up a wall. He wasn't sure it being loose would necessarily help, because it had a webbed strap and would probably just cause more friction if slid around freely. But a little more room would be a good place to start. (On an unrelated note, why had he not particularly noticed that it was a velcro band before? It made sense from a tactical watch perspective - a buckle could snag, especially on the straps of a bulletproof vest, and there were more obvious fail-points to a buckle. If the prog broke or the webbing tore at the bar...it was just the sort of thing he felt like he should have noticed. He was sure Emily had clocked it - she always noticed those types of things faster than he did. He absorbed plenty of information but didn't always feel the need to recall a particular detail. How often was Morgan's wrist - or his watch - relevant to his day?)
Unfortunately, as he was discovering with everything else, the amount of force that came with each movement was more than he was used to. So when he used the amount of force that he - Spencer - would use to unfasten a strip of velcro that size, the amount of force that correspondeded to from Morgan was practically enough to fling the watch off and across the room.
Not quite. It was almost worse than that. Definitely worse than that.
He jerked the tab free, tugging the outer half of the strap through the square ring and thereby tightening the watch. It slid down his arm towards his hand - not much, barely half an inch, but enough that he saw a thick, dark, raised scar across the width of Morgan's forearm. It wasn't quite straight across, with a couple short tails and detours in the line - enough to show it hadnt been one simple, clean slice.
He understood the science of what he saw. He knew that melanocytes could stimulate the growth and proliferation of fibroblasts, which meant that people with darker skin were more likely to have keloids than people with paler skin. He knew that skin with more melanin increased the risk of post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, which led to a higher risk of keloid and hypertrophic scars as well. But no amount of science could help him understand the placement.
Because this wasn't just anyone. This was the single strongest person he knew. Physically, obviously, but emotionally - someone who was always a rock for the rest of the team. Who was so adept at compartmentalizing and giving people what they needed. Who reassured him time and time again that his fears were overblown - that he didn't need to be afraid of his own mind, that he was too far in his own head, that what he was experiencing was just empathy and would make him a better person and a better profiler. Someone who talked a lot about taking all of the terrible things a person shouldn't have to go through and using them to become stronger. Someone who had himself all pulled together, squared away, in control all the time.
And none of that - none of the things he knew about Derek Morgan as surely as he knew anything - could square with the image of the person who had clearly tried to kill himself. Possibly more than once - he couldn't tell without looking closer, and he refused to look closer.
...he hadn't been especially efficient about it, Spencer noted, the direction was wrong to achieve maximum blood loss. Not that he had ever considered it, except for all the times he had considered it. So maybe Morgan hadn't really wanted to end things; maybe it had just been where he could find to try to make everything stop. He knew that feeling. Or maybe Morgan had wanted to but hadn't known enough. He probably would have been pretty young.
(Not like Spencer, still holding onto old habits a couple years ago.)
If he stepped back to think about it, if he thought about it like a profiler, it wasn't difficult to figure out at all. The rates of self-injury were estimated to be 10-13 times higher in people who experienced childhood sexual abuse than in the general population, with suicide attempts up to 15 times higher.
(Then what the hell is your problem? he thought bitterly. He had a good reason. His made sense. You're just weak and can't handle what everyone else manages just fine. That's what he's always telling you, isn't it? Everyone feels the way you do, but they're not sitting on their bathroom floor with whatever sharp object they can get their hands on, now, are they?)
But it was hard to think about it like a profiler when he could picture Morgan- Derek, the curly-haired kid he'd seen in pictures on his mom's mantle - giving up to try to make everything stop. To think of that young boy who was trying to hold everything together, to never break, never crack, protect everyone around him from...well, everything, but especially from the truth.
Had someone found him? Held him? Told him how much they loved him? Or had he just...stopped the bleeding, gone to bed, and then gone to school the next morning, the way Spencer had?
The knock at the door startled him, and Spencer hurried to tug the watch back into place, attaching the velcro even tighter than it had been in the first place. Anything to help make sure it didn't slip and reveal anything.
...That was what Derek had been telling him not to look at, wasn't it? he realized sadly. It wasn't about modesty and not wanting Spencer to check him out, and it wasn't about reciprocity. It was about knowing what was under there.
Of course it was. That's why you told him not to look, too.
He felt frozen in place, but he knew he had to answer the door. For one thing, if his neighbors saw him - or, well, a version of a person who looked like him - knocking on his door, they would have a lot of questions that Spencer didn't have answers to. He checked again that the watch was secure, no sign of the offending mark visible from underneath the band, then walked to the door. He paused to check the peephole; he hated to think of what would happen if it were one of his friends just dropping by on a weekend. JJ or someone. Instead, he saw a very familiar face looking nervously up and down the hallway - head on swivel, scanning for a threat. That was definitely Morgan in there.
This was too weird. A brain tumor still made more sense than whatever this was.
He fumbled with the lock for a moment, then opened the door as Morgan rushed inside to avoid being seen.
Spencer had no idea what to make of the person in front of him. Standing upright and seeming taller than usual, shoulders back and chest open like he was trying to take up more space (which Spencer never did - the opposite really). Brow more furrowed behind his glasses than Spencer was used to seeing in the mirror. And his hair was a wreck, but that wasn't entirely uncommon. A different kind of wreck. Wearing sweatpants and motorcycle boots and a tshirt that practically hung off his skinny frame.
And he was almost still. Just the slight brush of his thumb against his middle and ring fingers. That was definitely Morgan in there.
"So," Morgan began, then stopped as he seemed not to know what else to say. "...This is fucking weird."
"You mean staring at myself and being shorter?" It wasn't even close to the biggest thing at all, and he wasn't even that much shorter, but the height difference between Morgan and himself was roughly the difference between himself and Hotch, and usually when he saw himself it was in reflection which was at an equal height - or at least designed to appear that way, there could be minor variations based on the angle of reflection. But between being an inch shorter and Morgan standing up so much straighter in his body...
"You slouch," Morgan accused. "Trust me, you have enough lat and delt strength to stand up straight, Kid. Especially in my body." ...Was he slouching? He didn't even notice when he did. He tried to stand a little straighter, which just felt even more awkward. Morgan smiled faintly at his attempt - did Spencer always look like that? He was even more awkward than he thought.
They fell into an uncomfortable silence, Morgan seeming to scan the apartment slowly. Spencer tried to shove his hands in his pockets the way he always did, but it was less comfortable with Morgan's arms and left him feeling like he was trying to collapse in on himself. He gave up and went back to fidgeting instead.
...Had Morgan seen? Had those been the clothes he'd woken up in? Because Spencer had woken up in Morgan's pajamas with Morgan's phone, and clearly Morgan had Spencer's phone and glasses, so it would follow that Spencer's body had been wearing Spencer's pajamas...if the rules to any of this were consistent, and he didn't know if it was. In his mind, he guessed he imagined it was kind of like the Tenth Doctor regenerating into the Eleventh: the clothes all remained intact while everything else exploded into a beam of light and ended with Matt Smith being surprised by his too-long hair.
He really hoped it wasn't the case. He hoped everyone who experienced whatever this was just ended up in sweatpants and a tshirt regardless of what the body had been wearing beforehand. Because if that were true, then maybe Morgan hadn't seen anything. But if he had changed into that outfit, then he must have...
He knew he needed to stop fidgeting with the watch. To stop thinking about it. Stop picturing what he knew was under there. Stop imagining what had led to what he'd seen. Stop drawing attention to his discomfort. Stop-
Spencer could see the face across from him fall. His own face, but not really. "...You saw." His voice didn't sound as brittle coming from Morgan; even now the man had a better control of himself than Spencer ever could. But it wasn't hard to tell how desperately Morgan had wanted to keep him from seeing. From knowing.
"...You saw?" Spencer asked, dreading the answer, but he knew. The expression, the look of deep sorrow in his eyes...he knew.
"Kid..."
"I didn't mean to look. The strap was too tight, and- and I tried to adjust it but it slipped, and I-..."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Spencer's head jerked up. "It just happened - right before you got here."
"No, I..." Morgan gestured vaguely in the direction of his arms - Spencer's arms, the ones covered in signs of decades of terrible coping mechanisms. Maybe he hadn't seen the rest, Spencer let himself believe for a moment. Maybe he hadn't looked down. Maybe he'd been polite like that and only seen the arms because they were easy to notice while changing shirts.
"They're from a long time ago," he lied. Was it lying if he only meant the part that Morgan had pointed to?
It was unnerving to see Morgan glare at him through his own eyes. "Not all of them," he stated pointedly.
No. Nonononononono-
"You could have told me, Reid. I would have understood. I could have helped."
He shook his head sadly. Morgan couldn't have helped because it wasn't the same. One was understandable and could be chalked up to a one-time error in judgment in the name of pain management. It was about desperately trying to get out of a bad situation, made all the more justifiable by the fact that it was almost certainly before Morgan's prefrontal cortex finished developing so that he would have had a harder time understanding the finality of his actions.
The other...
"It's different," he almost whispered. Morgan just looked at him with a strange expression that Spencer couldn't quite read. There were a lot of those this morning; he chalked it up to the fact that someone else was controlling the muscles of what looked like his face, so even macroexpressions were hard to discern. Microexpressions were virtually impossible.
"...You only saw the watch," Morgan concluded quietly.
"You said not to look. I was trying to be respectful."
A faint, sad smile. "Of course you were, Kid. You're good like that."
Now Spencer knew this wasn't something his mind was creating. When his voice spoke in his own head, it was never that kind.
"Reid, I did it, too." He blinked, not quite grasping, because the statement didn't make any sense. "For a long time. A lot. My hips and thighs look about like your shoulder."
Morgan did that? No - no. That was impossible. He would have seen- Morgan didn't cover up the way he did. They'd all seen his abs, his shoulders, his legs in shorts...
...but not his thighs. That would require either nudity or a pair of really embarassing 1980s shorts that Morgan would never be caught dead in. Even in the hotel room in Kalamazoo when the heat had been stuck on so it felt like a sauna in their shared room, Morgan had worn a pair of gym shorts that came to about his knees. If he left a little space to allow for fabric movement, the way Spencer did with his upper arms...it would be entirely possible not to know.
"Yeah," Morgan said quietly, closing off, withdrawing into himself.
"W-when? You were a teenager, right?" he managed to ask.
Morgan shrugged and nodded. "Yeah. And in college, after my injury. And law school a little."
"And..." he fiddled with the watch again, unsure he could speak the words aloud. "When was...?"
"Which time?" Spencer couldn't stop the sharp intake of air at the thought. Of Morgan hurting that much - of a world without Morgan. Of his life without Morgan. "I thought about it a lot more than I did anything about it," Morgan's voice was even, though it didn't escape Spencer's notice that Morgan was using vague verbs. It was the same thing he did when talking about his past - cloaking it in meaningless verbs and pronouns that couldn't convey the depths of what he had gone through, let alone how devastated he had been by it. Things like 'what happened to me' and 'I thought about it' instead of 'I was raped for 7 years' or 'I wanted to die'. That was always Morgan's way when it came to himself. "Sometimes I just wanted to see how close I could get. At the time I thought it was about not having the guts to follow through, but really it was about not wanting to put Ma and my sisters through it."
Even when he was desperate and miserable, Morgan put other people first.
"I'm glad I didn't. It just felt like the option that made sense at the time."
"Of course it did. Rates of self-harm and suicide are up to 15 times higher for..." He knew better than to use the word 'victim' in Morgan's presence. "...people who went through what you did. Even higher for people who experience long-term, ongoing abuse and feel like they can't get away from the person responsible."
Morgan shifted uncomfortably, like he was uncomfortable being lumped in with other people, rendered a statistic. (Technically every person was a collection of statistics, because regardless of which category or number the person fell into within the question, they were a statistical data point. If the statistic was about the percentage of FBI agents who had previous law enforcement experience, then Morgan would obviously be a statistic in that regard - but so would Spencer, because he would be a portion of the data set who did not exhibit the trait in question. That wasn't the point.) Instead, predictably, he deflected. "When'd it start for you?"
"High school."
"So you were...what, twelve?"
"Ten," Spencer replied very quietly. He knew that was strange. He knew that, even for someone who had sped through milestones as quickly as he had, that was early. The average age to start was 13 - so if he thought in terms of grade level, not starting until his sophomore year of high school was actually comparatively late.
"Before or after?" Because of course Morgan knew what else had happened that year and thought to connect them.
"After," he mumbled. "Not right away, it wasn't-..." It wasn't as though his dad had left and declined to take him along and he'd promptly gone searching through the house for ways to hurt himself, but it didn't take someone with his degrees - or with Morgan's profiling experience - to see a link there.
Which was fine for when he was 10. Maybe there was an excuse then. But what had the excuse been for the next 20 years?
"Rejection, anger, shame, no one else to take it out on but yourself?" Morgan asked knowingly.
"Maybe. I don't know." It wasn't a phrase that came out of his mouth all that often, but it did happen. He couldn't explain it. He couldn't even isolate it in his own mine enough to comprehend it, let alone trying to tell someone else. Even someone else who had done the same thing.
"I get it. It's not logical. I know mine wasn't."
"Of course it was," Spencer replied automatically. "A known and ongoing stimulus with a predictable response. Yours is textbook."
The expression from before was back - the one Spencer couldn't quite figure out when reflected through his own facial features. "Reid...are you seriously trying to say that mine was justifiable and yours wasn't?" Of course he was; that was just a fact, wasn't it? When weighing situations against one another, looking at the timeframe, it wasn't a question at all. Why did Morgan make it sound like that was such a strange conclusion to draw? "Kid, you gotta know it doesn't work like that."
"How else would it work?"
Morgan sighed. "First of all...you know far better than I do the pile of trauma you have growing up how you did. Your mom was never well. Your dad left, moved 10 miles away, and never bothered checking in on either of you. You've told me about 3 stories of what high school was like for you, and I just know that for each one of those, there's gotta be a dozen more, right?" Spencer shrugged noncommittally. "Second, you wanted to quote stats about why mine was textbook. I'm pretty sure I read that people with higher IQs are more likely to experience depression."
He was prompting Spencer for a statistic, and they both knew it. "Nothing conclusive. There have been a couple studies specifically among Mensa members that show higher rates of anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders. One of the current theories is psychological overexcitability - essentially a greater tendency to ruminate and worry. There are also environmental factors, such as individuals with higher IQs tending to be more socially isolated, which is itself strongly correllated with depression and anxiety."
"So in other words...not making friends easily and overthinking things? Sound like anyone we know?" When Spencer didn't respond except with a slight roll of his eyes, Morgan continued. "I know you replay conversations over and over again, and I know you tend to assume the worst about how people feel about you. How many times did I have to invite you to grab lunch before you took me up on it?"
Spencer shifted uncomfortably, feeling called out by the statement. He hadn't been trying to say he didn't trust Morgan, it was just that the guy was a classic popular-jock-type who liked to tease him, and he'd been a scrawny kid who practically lived in the library. Those two types weren't friends in his world before he got comfortable at the BAU.
"I get it. Knowing you all these years, I get why. I'm just saying it makes sense that, when that's what's running through your head all the time, it's gonna get scary in there. And painful in a way you don't really know what to do with...and that's the result. Believe me, I get it." He sounded so earnest, trying so hard to be helpful, so genuinely worried for him, but it wasn't that simple. It never had been. Morgan hesitated, then asked, "When were the last ones? I know they looked probably more recent than your knee surgery. What happened?"
"Emily," he mumbled, eyes downcast. Quite a few times in those seven months they'd thought she was dead. And a couple more when she came back because his brain didn't know what the hell to do with the amount of fury and betrayal and anguish involved.
Morgan sighed and nodded. "Yeah, that'd do it. Once, or...?" Spencer shook his head, bracing for the next question. He could count the times if he wanted to, but he really didn't want to. He wanted to admit the number even less. "And before that?"
"I don't know."
"With your memory? Really?"
"No, I remember when, I just don't know why," he muttered, frustrated. Luckily Morgan seemed to understand that answer too well. "It was a Thursday evening. Work was fine, no terrible cases lately, nightmares were the same as they usually are, nothing was wrong, I just..."
"I know." His voice was somber. "I know, Kid. I just hate that I didn't see it."
"I made sure no one did. I'm guessing you did, too. No one actually wants to know about stuff like this. Like hearing the details of any of the traumatic personal history. It's uncomfortable for everyone involved and then everyone knows you're broken."
"You're not broken," Morgan stated quietly but with certainty. "You were hurting and took it out the only way you knew how." A moment of hesitation, then he smiled faintly - though it was more lopsided on Spencer's face, he noted self-consciously. "As deeply fucked as this is, there's something that feels..." He didn't try for a word this time, letting it drop out of the sentence entirely to be replaced with a shrug, but the expression made clear it was a relatively positive sensation. "...about saying it to my own face like this."
"Really? I would have much rather heard it in your voice than in mine."
"Why's that, Kid?"
"You're a lot nicer."
Spencer had thought that was the obvious answer. Anyone who had this in common had to have the same kind of internal monologue he did...right? But Morgan looked so stricken that maybe he was wrong. "Ah, Reid," he sighed sadly with a shake of his head. "Then we've gotta work on that part."
"What is there to work on?"
"Being kind to yourself? Or at least neutral. Trust me, even neutral's a huge step up from the constant stream of everything your mind tells you is wrong with yourself."
"What-...what helped? For you?"
"Time. Perspective. And as weird as it's gonna sound...this."
"What?" Spencer felt like his mind had only gotten crueller this morning than usual; how in the world could Morgan's be better as a result? Unless Morgan was thinking about how much better off he was than Spencer, having way fewer issues and a lot nicer body and far less awkwardness and-
"Because when I realized you were gonna see what I'd done, I went into the same old patterns. Wanting to cuss myself out, insults - pathetic and weak and stupid and- all that. But I couldn't say that to your face." Spencer didn't understand, but Morgan continued. "I couldn't say those things about me when I was looking at your face in the mirror - because I could never say any of those things to you. I could never think those things about you. And if I couldn't say those things about someone who did that to cope when that person was you, why did I say it about me?"
"Why couldn't you say them about me? They're true."
The deep sadness in his own eyes made him feel...uncomfortable. Like it was boring too deeply into him. Like he wanted to go hide somewhere. (How stupid was that? Wanting to hide from his own face?) "Okay, fine," Morgan said, shifting gears. "Face me." He pivoted on the couch, and Spencer followed suit, still not sure where this was going. "Call me all the things you call yourself."
Spencer startled, horrified at the suggestion. "What?"
"All the things you tell yourself about someone who would do that. C'mon - you've got lists of 'em, probably in a half-dozen languages I won't understand anyway."
"I can't."
"Why not? We did the same thing, right? You can take off the sweats and see for yourself if you want. Hell, mine was worse," he added with a grimace and a gesture towards what the watch was covering.
"But you were in pain. I could never judge you for that."
"So were you."
"Yours was worse."
"We have no way of knowing that. Even if we did, what does it matter? How would you even quantify something like that, especially over years? Okay, fine, maybe my teenage years were worse. Maybe, maybe not, but let's just say it's true. I wasn't the one held captive in Georgia. I've never been forcibly drugged with a highly-addictive substance and then had to get clean from it - on your own, by the way, Kid. Do you know how damn strong you were from that? You saved yourself while the rest of us were panicking in a farmhouse." Spencer closed his eyes tightly. "Reid. C'mon - don't shut me out. Listen to what I'm saying."
"I'm trying," he whispered, voice thick as his mind tried to put all of what Morgan was saying into the right voice. Hearing it from himself felt like a self-indulgent delusion, like he was trying to convince himself of his own greatness when he knew it wasn't true.
"I would never let someone talk about you the way you talk about yourself. You are too good for that. I love you too much for that. So whenever we figure out how to get things back to the way they should be, just-...please, Reid. Let me help you."
It was too much too fast, and he could feel his mind trying to race to catch up. Surely this was the easiest way to tell he was delusional. Because even if he were to buy the idea that somehow his consciousness had been placed in the body of his colleague and vice versa, and that they were having a surprisingly calm and open conversation about scars that neither of them had known existed until a few hours ago...the notion that someone who was practically lab-grown to be the perfect man loved him - even after knowing how deeply and irredeemably weak and pitiful he was - was simply beyond the pale.
"I need to lie down," he said quietly, pushing himself off the couch. He felt tiny and pathetic inside the muscular shell, and he couldn't look at himself any longer.