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“C’mon pretty boy, you could join us,” Morgan crooned towards Reid and Elle laughed as the resident genius practically ignored his words, too focused on packing his things up. “I’m sure that pasty pale skin could use some Jamaican sun…”
“No thanks, you guys have fun, I’m going home,” he said absently before heading off before either of them could draw him back.
“Where’s home for Reid?” Elle asked with a furrowed brow as the glass doors swung shut behind him.
“Las Vegas.” Because of course Morgan would know.
“Hm, that explains some things,” Elle hummed. “Is that why you don’t play poker with him?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s cheating and at one point we played for actual money and I owed him like three hundred bucks,” Morgan grumbled.
Of course, he’d been a smooth motherfucker by offering to pay it back in a series of dates and Reid had been rather taken aback like he so often was about romance. It had taken him a long time to realize that those dinners Morgan was taking him on were romantic in nature.
(“For a smart guy, you’re pretty dumb, you know that?” Morgan had said before kissing him)
“Be real, you wouldn’t catch Reid dead in a place like Jamaica. That guy’s idea of a vacation would be getting shut in the Vatican Library for a day.”
Morgan laughed and didn’t disagree, but he was just a little bummed that he was going on a vacation without his partner for two weeks in a tropical locale but he also couldn’t remember the last time Reid went home to see his mom.
“Go,” he’d said when Morgan had voiced his thoughts on going to Jamaica, “have fun, I want you to.” Reid wasn’t worried about the potential for cheating because he knew that Morgan wasn’t the type, which did ease his tension slightly.
They were coming up on a year together and Morgan had a key minted and was trying to work up to asking him to move in with him.
He was sure his partner had a pretty good idea of what he was up to since he’d caught him building a large bookshelf but Reid had refused to comment on it.
Morgan wasn’t sure if he’d mention their relationship to his mother who had good days and bad days, a sharp contrast with Fran Morgan who was positively delighted that Morgan had a partner, even if it was a male one, and between his mama and his sisters, he was getting hounded left and right to bring him home to meet the family.
Which he was certain that Reid wasn’t ready for.
Respect.
“They’d have to drag him out of the Vatican after the two weeks,” he said to Elle before the silence got too long and she became suspicious.
“Undoubtedly. Ready for sun and fun?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Morgan grinned.
“Oh, Dr. Reid,” was called over to Spencer before he could enter the day room his mother was sitting in by the window, “someone delivered this to the desk last night for you.” The woman manning the sign in desk held out a thin package towards him.
“What?” His brow furrowed as he approached to take it from her, ripping it open without finesse, taking in the smaller envelope with his name on it.
Within it was a single skeleton key and a note that said ‘She will die unless you save her, Dr. Reid. Call Gideon. He knows’.
But he didn’t call Gideon first.
He called Derek.
“You didn’t get a…weird package on vacation, did you?” he asked once Derek picked up.
“We got a headless body and Elle got arrested but apart from that, no,” Derek snapped and Spencer winced, but he apologized immediately. “Sorry, baby, that’s not directed at you, I’m just tired and Hotch had to fly in with some bureau lawyers to sort it all out. We’re about to fly out to Virginia. Did you get something, too?”
“Nothing like you guys, just a skeleton key and a note to call Gideon, but I wanted to check on you first.”
“You’re sweet, baby.” Spencer’s cheeks burned.
“I’ll get on the next flight back, too,” he said. “I’ll see you when I get there.”
“Did you at least get to talk with your mom?” Derek asked, because he was so kind.
“Didn’t get the chance,” Spencer muttered.
“Damn. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Spencer cut him off. “I’ll see you all when I get in.”
He cast one last glance towards his mother where she was sitting and reading unaware of his presence. He’d rehearsed it so many times in his head, how to explain to her that he’d been in a relationship for nearly a year now -the one thing he’d never mentioned in his letters- even if she’d never personally meet Derek.
Well, he would have to save it for another day, he supposed.
When Spencer made it back to the FBI, he had to take a moment to calm Garcia down because evidently, she’d been in a prolonged state of a panic attack (“Gideon called me stupid, Reid, stupid! And he’s so right! What was I thinking?!”) but Spencer, who wasn’t that big on being touched, gave her a hug that she sank into and got her to calm down (“You are right what the doctor ordered, sugar”) enough to tell him where the others had gone to confront Frank Giles.
Luckily, he was able to hop in one of the CSU’s trucks as they were heading over, since he’d left his car at his apartment’s parking lot.
“The hour be none?” he could hear Hotch asking.
“Well, midnight is zero-zero-hundred hours in twenty-four hour time,” Derek pointed out. “Would that be none?”
“Midnight wouldn’t cast a shadow,” Hotch countered.
“Hour be none…”
“Three PM,” Spencer interjected as he entered the room. He catalogued everyone, looking them over for any injuries that neither Derek nor Gideon had alluded to, but they all seemed fine, pissed off but whole. He noted Derek doing the same. “Garcia told me where to find you guys.”
“Three PM?” Gideon prompted.
“It’s medieval,” he explained. “The days used to be broken into hourly intervals. The canonical hours of the breviary. Prime : 6 AM. Terce : 9 AM. Sext : 12 noon. None : 3 PM. And Vespers : 6 PM.”
“Reid, don’t ever go away again,” Elle declared with a grin and a smile couldn’t help but bloom on his face.
“I don’t know how you two do this.”
“Do what?” Spencer asked absently, considering the assorted evidence they’d all been sent and trying to find the connection that linked them. He could feel a migraine blooming and Derek’s solution of massaging his temples was not an option at work, sadly, and he’d already taken a Tylenol.
“Do this job,” Hotch said, “and maintain your professionalism so well that I wouldn’t have even known if you both hadn’t told me.”
Spencer turned in his chair to meet his unit chief’s eyes. “Well, this is work,” he said slowly, a bit puzzled, “why wouldn’t we be professional?”
Hotch’s mouth twitched. “You could loosen up a little; would it be so bad if anyone else knew?”
“No,” Spencer conceded, “but I don’t want anyone on the team questioning our objectivity. Derek just doesn’t like people knowing his business; he about threw a fit when Desiree and Sarah called me to get the quote ‘deets’ of our relationship.”
“Desiree and Sarah?” Hotch probed as Spencer underlined 1963 next to the baseball card Gideon had been sent.
“His sisters. They like me, as far as I can tell.”
With his back turned he missed how Hotch hid a smile.
“Besides, he’s building a massive bookshelf so clearly he’s thinking about asking me to move in with him,” Spencer hummed, toying with his marker and squinting.
“Are you interested in that?”
This was becoming so personal that it was making his skin itch. “Can we talk about the case?” he nearly begged and that made Hotch chuckle.
“Find anything?”
Spencer jumped before squinting back to Elle and Derek.
“Hey, pretty boy, you left these on your desk, figure you probably need them.”
Derek slid the glasses across the table and Spencer fumbled to grab them.
“That’ll help,” Spencer admitted, relieved and Elle snorted.
“Baby, maybe you need to go home, too,” Derek said gently after watching Spencer pinch the bridge of his nose too many times. “That brain of yours is no good if you don’t let it rest from time to time.”
“I know,” Spencer said, though Derek’s usual way to get it solidly offline would definitely result in a severe talking to if not a suspension if they decided to engage in it at work. “Ever would it be night, but always clear day to any man's sight…”
“That poem from the music box is going to drive you nuts before anything else will.”
Spencer opted not to comment on that and the potential for schizophrenia swimming around in his DNA.
“There’s something familiar about it but I can’t remember where I heard it from,” he said, his thoughts distant, trying to recall it.
“That’s a first, something you can’t remember,” Derek teased.
“My eidetic memory is mostly related to things I read,” Spencer explained, “I think I heard it somewhere, I just am not sure where.”
“Which leaves us where?” Hotch asked as he came back into the room closely followed by Gideon.
“It leaves us nowhere,” Derek said.
“Forget about the clues, go back to victimology,” Gideon said. “Rebecca Bryant missing out of South Boston, Virginia. You can get there in a few hours if you hurry, take JJ. Find out everything there is to know about this girl.”
Obviously, that was directed towards Derek, not Spencer.
“You got it,” Derek said, heading off without a glance back.
Gideon’s confidence in Spencer being able to figure out what the clues meant did mean a lot to him as he and Hotch left him on his own, but the whole situation was giving him another migraine.
Spencer sighed and winced, dimming the lights.
Where had he heard that poem?
Really, he should’ve involved Garcia much sooner because Spencer was very firmly anti-technology, or as much as he could get, but it took her little effort to find what he was looking for.
The Parliament of Fowls by Geoffrey Chaucer which led him to The Collector by John Fowles.
Now they just needed to find a library that had a copy of the version that was published in 1963.
“Remember this the next time you decide to step outside my instructions. Agent Greenaway did not have to die like that.”
Of course it was another poem.
“The path to the end began at his start
To find her first calm
Her long broken heart
She sits in a window
With secrets from her knight
Is it adventure that keeps
Him out of her sight?”
Garcia’s brow was furrowing. “It’s another puzzle?”
But a horrified realization sank down inside Spencer.
No one but him knew that Gideon collected baseball cards or that JJ used to collect butterflies, they were things he had undoubtedly written to his mother about…his mother who sat in a window, who called his letters his ‘adventures’.
He lurched for a phone.
“Reid?”
“I need to be connected to the field office closest to Las Vegas, Nevada,” he said into the receiver.
“One moment please,” said the operator, shortly followed by, “You’ve been connected to the FBI field office in Las Vegas.”
“Hi, this is Dr. Spencer Reid from the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico. Look, I need my mother picked up and brought to Virginia in protective custody as soon as possible.”
“Mother?” Garcia asked, confused, but he ignored her.
“What’s the requisition reason, agent?” the man on the other end asked, no nonsense.
“Don’t say ‘I think’,” Derek had told him once. “It makes you sound younger. Say ‘I have reason to believe.’”
“I have reason to believe you’re a jerk,” Spencer had said to him and his partner had smirked, rubbing his thumb along the line of his jaw.
“And I have reason to believe you’ll still kiss me,” he’d replied, leaning in to do just that.
“We're searching for an unsub who shot one of our agents today, and I have reason to believe that he knows my mother, and that she may be in danger.”
There was a moment of silence as his request was taken into consideration and if it was decidedly worth the expense on the behalf of the bureau.
“What is the name and the address?”
“Her name is Diana Reid. She’s a patient at the Bennington Sanitarium in Las Vegas,” he said before thanking the man and hanging up.
“Reid?” Garcia pressed. “Why are you having your mother brought here?” Concern glittered in her eyes, already reddened from crying over Elle, still fighting for her life on the OR table.
“I don’t know how he could know that unless he knew her personally,” Spencer said absently.
“Know what?” she asked.
“She sits in the window, she calls my letters my adventures, I write her one every day—”
“That’s sweet,” Garcia said like she was trying to reassure him.
“I guess it depends on why I write her,” he said, trying not to linger on ‘her end’ and ‘his start’ and think about how she’d gone off her medication when she was pregnant with him and how her mental state had been on a steady decline since.
“What do you mean?” Her smile fell slightly.
“I write her letters so I won't feel so guilty about not visiting her,” Spencer said, finally looking back to her. “Did you know that schizophrenia is genetically passed?”
“Oh, honey,” Garcia said sitting down beside him. “Is this why you’re always so anxious about your birthday when it comes around every year?”
He shrugged. Men were typically diagnosed with it in their late teens to early twenties, so it was still a present worry. “Patients with schizophrenia showed a significantly higher frequency and intensity of migraine attacks on the Migraine Disability Assessment scale…I started getting them a few months ago.”
“But is it the only symptom you’re experiencing?” she asked. “Or are you having similar stuff to your mom?”
He shook his head. “Morgan thinks it’s probably because I’m over-reading and if I slowed it down it might be better.”
“Maybe you want to listen to Morgan on this one,” Garcia said kindly.
“But we need—”
“We need you, even if you’re not as fast as you used to be,” Garcia countered. “You’re having one right now, right?”
Spencer nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose again.
“Okay, I’m going to turn out all the lights and you’re going to rest your eyes for a little bit—”
“But the case!”
The look she threw his way was severe. “Morgan and JJ are at Rebecca Bryant’s house, it’ll be a few hours before they make it back here…at least take one hour.”
Well, he supposed that was more reasonable.
She let him sleep for nearly three.
Diana Reid was tall and had Reid’s smile but that appeared to be the only likeness to Penelope’s discerning eye. She had short blonde hair and blue eyes and trying to imagine Reid with that combination was going to give her one of Reid’s headaches.
At least he was looking better since his brief nap. He was keeping his glasses on, though, which she hoped was helping.
She certainly didn’t seem schizophrenic, at least not how the unsubs with that particular disease were when they caught them, but diseases could be managed with the right combination of medication and whatever she was on was doing the trick.
Hopefully.
As far as Penelope could tell.
“I can’t believe she’s real,” Diana said, almost marveling.
“What do you mean?” Penelope couldn’t help but ask.
“Whenever he talked about Rebecca, he never said she was his daughter. He said all his children died in the fire,” she said. “He spoke of a Rebecca, more in the abstract. I really thought she was a metaphor, not an actual human being. An ideal.”
“A grail,” Reid agreed. “He thinks he's the Fisher King.”
“Who does?”
Was it just her imagination or had Reid winced as soon as Morgan came through the door with JJ? What was that all about?
“Randall Garner, our unsub,” Reid said to them.
“He believes you're all modern-day knights of the round table,” Diana realized, making a circular movement with her finger to indicate the round table that they always sat at.
Morgan’s brow furrowed and he looked to Reid with a question on his lips.
“Uh, Derek Morgan, this is my mother, Diana Reid.”
“Ma’am, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Morgan said after taking a second to rally. Even JJ was surprised by her presence in their meeting room. There was definitely something more to how earnest Morgan was about meeting Reid’s mom.
But what did Penelope know? She wasn’t a profiler.
Luckily, they were all distracted by Hotch coming in and saying “So where are we on finding this son of a bitch?”
Or Penelope would’ve definitely been reading way too far into whatever the hell that was.
The good thing was that Elle had pulled through and it had been decided that after the completion of the case that they would all go back on vacation for the rest of their allotted two weeks.
Most of Elle’s would be spent recovering the hospital, but she was in far better spirits knowing that they’d gotten the guy, if only at nearly the expense of her life. Elle was generally good at rolling with the punches.
Then it was time for Spencer to be getting his mother home.
“How would you feel if I joined you?”
Spencer paused. “You don’t have to,” he said immediately. “I kind of sprang her on everyone—”
“When am I going to get the chance to meet your mom, Spencer?” Derek pointed out. “And on a good day, too.”
He winced. It would be far easier for Spencer to meet Fran Morgan than Derek meet Diana Reid. “I’m the one that forced her into that place the moment I turned eighteen,” he mentioned. “I know it was the best place for her but it took her a really long time to forgive me for it.”
Derek cupped his cheek. “Yeah, you did what was best for her, that’s hard to do no matter what age you are.”
“I’d really like it,” Spencer admitted, almost shyly, “if you’d come with, if only for a day or two.”
“I can swing that,” Derek promised.
“Mom, there’s someone I want you to meet,” Spencer said quietly after the plane was coasting through the skies. “I introduced you earlier, but Derek Morgan is my partner.”
She considered him across the seat from her, her grip tight on her son’s hand. He was a sharp contrast to Spencer in every possible way, and the faint smile and the glance he cast towards him was impossibly warm.
It made her heart throb in her chest.
“Partner as in work?” Sometimes her meds made her brain fuzzy.
“As in domestic or romantic,” Derek corrected for her.
“What a relief.”
“Huh?” Spencer said baffled.
“I worried you’d never find anyone,” Diana said, patting his arm. “Hard to measure up to that brilliant mind of yours.”
Derek chuckled as Spencer flushed. “Mrs. Reid—”
“Oh, call me Diana, dear—”
“Diana,” Derek said, trying not to laugh at the strangled sound Spencer made, “would you believe that your son didn’t realize we’d been going on dates for a month?”
“How was I meant to know?” Spencer burst out, embarrassed as his mother laughed.
He tried to remember when was the last time he’d heard her make a sound like that.
Long enough that he’d practically forgotten.
He opted to memorize the sound.