Chapter Text
Spencer inhales sharply when Derek finally lifts his hand away from the scarring. He focuses everything he has into blinking away the rapidly forming tears in his eyes.
God he hated this. It’s so stupid. There were thousands of people out there who never even meet the person of the name on their skin, and thousands more who were born without one. Or worse, people like Hotch who had settled down only to have their entire life uprooted when their second half is taken away from them.
So, why is he any different?
“You don’t deserve this,” Morgan says quietly. His voice is thick in the space of the small washroom, almost drowned out by the soft patter of fingers against keyboards from all the rooms surrounding the hallway.
“Don’t pity me,” Spencer gripes. Derek blinks twice, shifting one step further from Spencer until the small of his back hits the rows of sinks. “I don’t want your sorrow. I want an answer.” He peels back his sleeve, ignoring how the sensitive patch of skin complains beneath the fabric.
“I don’t pity you. I don’t feel sorry for you in the way you think I do.”
Spencer looks upwards, craning his neck until he’s staring right into Derek’s eyes. He is calculating in a way that feels as though he can see past everything Morgan has built walls to hide. The prolonged exposure stretches on until Spencer’s shoulders finally seem to relax and he looks away, dropping his head again.
“I just don’t understand why I – why I can’t just be normal.” His voice is weak, and he trails off on the last word because he knows what Morgan will think of him.
You aren’t normal.
And although it hurts to believe that is what his teammate could think of him, he knows it’s true. He’s years younger than the rest of the team, spent his school years as an outcast thanks to his age, intellect and mutilated soul mark.
“Don’t say things like that,” Derek says sadly.
“I just want to know who’s supposed to love me,” the kid murmurs. His head is still hung, and the most Derek can do is wait patiently to meet his eyes.
He couldn’t imagine living his entire life without true companionship – without the validation that you could love and were loved by someone. Morgan had his father until he was ten and both his sisters as well as their mother. From his late high-school years all the way through college and his earliest years in the BAU he had continual relations with women – and a few men – that made it incredibly clear he was worth their time, despite the interactions lasting no more than a night.
Spencer – he had nobody. His father left, which consequently invalidated the ten years he had with the man, he was a social outcast, his mother… well, his mother’s love deteriorated along with her illness until some days she hardly recognised him as her son. The kid never spoke of any romantic interludes.
So, of course the poor kid was hanging onto threads, desperate with the need to know who could be inclined to love him above anything else, who was destined to be there for him as nobody else ever had.
I just want to know who’s supposed to love me.
Spencer looked utterly defeated, red-rimmed eyes and an unsteady lower lip only solidified that fact. He didn’t want to know because he had to understand everything, he wanted to know because he needed a companion.
Morgan could live for years knowing the kid matched the name on his thigh, understanding the pull he had for the younger man. But Reid had nobody and no clue if there was even somebody out there for him.
“I’m sorry,” Derek conceded. The now familiar harsh press of guilt throbbed against his ribcage.
Spencer rubbed the heel of his palm against one eye, pushed back his hair and took a shaky breath inwards.
“’S not your fault,” the kid pointed out. He expected there to be bitterness in the words, but in its place was resignation.
As if Spencer had accepted being loved was simply not for him.
And if that didn’t hurt more than physically tracing the wound himself, Derek was lying.
“Spencer, it – it’s actually a pretty common first name.”
The kid huffed on a gentle laugh, letting the hand that had previously pressed against his eyes run along the curve of his neck.
“You sound like me,” he jokes.
“I figured you spelled Reid without the ‘i’ when we first met.” Spencer frowns, his brow line lowering as he picks apart what Derek is saying.
“R-e-e-d, you mean?” Morgan nods his affirmation, hooking two fingers into the belt loop of his pants and toying with the buckle absently. “Okay…” the kid punctuates, clearly not following.
Derek keeps quiet and motionless for a long moment, waiting until Spencer turns to occupy himself with the faucet before unbuckling his belt.
The kid is entirely distracted until the tinkling of metal against metal has his attention again and he swivels to investigate. “Morgan!” He blanches, snapping violently to turn and stare back at his reflection, doing everything he can to avert his eyes when the sound of his co-worker’s zipper fills the room.
His cheeks flush a dark red and he covers his face with one hand again, still facing away from Derek. “Shit – Morgan, what are you –”
“R-e-i-d made… well, it makes a big difference, I guess.” Spencer jolts when Morgan lays a hand against his shoulder blade, resting gently in invitation for him to turn back around.
Derek has one side of his pants shoved down to his knee and the other hiked halfway up his thigh. Beneath the line of his boxers, not even an inch away from where his femoral artery must be, is a patch of dark, scrawled lettering.
“You don’t need to do this to make me feel better,” Spencer mumbles, squinting from where he stands beside the sinks to make out the script.
“Actually, I think I should’ve done this a lot – a lot earlier,” Derek responds. “That’s why I apologised. Not because I pity you, kid.”
“Mhm,” Spencer hums, leaning forward from where his hands brace the porcelain to read the curled lettering.
Spencer Reid is swirled across the man’s darker skin in an array of elaborate cursive and slanted letters.
Morgan guesses the kid’s face has paled by roughly three shades when he blinks back up at him. His eyes are wide and owlish, like an animal caught in headlights. He licks his lips once – a nervous habit Derek has picked up on – and opens his mouth to speak.
“I’m not playing,” he interjects before Spencer can get a word in edgewise. He smears one finger across the marking, pressing down hard enough to crumple the divisive belief that he would ever toy with the kid’s emotions like that.
He waits patiently for Spencer to gather his bearings enough to do anything other than swallow thickly and blink several hundred times in the space of a few seconds.
This was it he told himself. I’ve waited over thirty years for this, I can hold out a little longer. He spent the first twelve years of his life wondering if this ‘Spencer Reid’ would be female or not – funnily enough, statistics weren’t in his favour with over ninety-six percent of ‘Spencer’s’ being male.
His thirteenth, fourteenth and majority of his fifteenth years were spent wishing he didn’t have a name on his skin, wishing there wasn’t somebody out there destined to put up with him, especially after the youth centre. After the cabin. He spent the remainder of his high-school and early college years trying to ignore the fact that there was.
From twenty until twenty-eight, he was indifferent. Fate or no fate, he was stable. He could live his life with or without someone ingrained into his every molecule, it was merely a matter of whether he felt towards them what he was supposed to, and if they could return it.
He wasn’t overtly hopeful, working the way he did with half his time in various states on a case was hardly the ideal situation if he were to find somebody.
But then there was Spencer.
Of course, when they had first met, he had thought nothing of it. There hadn’t been some resounding realisation, he didn’t look at the kid and know there was something special there. In fact, he’d viewed this Doctor ‘Reed’ – or so he’d thought – as any other co-worker, minus the confidence and years of experience.
But things were far from his initial impression of the kid now.
He was half paranoid Spencer was going to pass out on him judging by the colour of his skin and the faraway look in his dark eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he apologises, hoping to prompt the kid back into reality. “I shouldn’t have let this go on so long,” he glances back towards the door, painfully conscious of the fact that Rossi was still stuck in an office with William Reid.
“Did you know that eighteen-point-forty-two percent of the American population who have met their second half categorise themselves as platonic mates,” Spencer babbles.
Despite himself and the situation he is tangled amongst, Morgan grins.
“I don’t think I fit that statistic, Pretty Boy,” he says in return. Spencer flushes darkly once more, squirming in his place as Morgan hikes his pants back up and pulls the belt through its buckle. “Not for a while, at least.” He forces his grin to loosen into a mellow smile as he rests his own frame against the sinks.
Spencer is quiet a moment, picking at the edge of his nails and staring at the grout between the floor tiles like they hold knowledge he desperately wants to partake in.
“Are you – did you… were you disappointed?” His voice is so soft Derek has to lean forward to make out the broken question the kid spent minutes trying to force out. His expression must read as puzzlement because Spencer repeats himself. “Were you unhappy, I mean. When you realised, we were – I was supposed to… I don’t know.”
“No,” he answers immediately. Shaking his head and straining to meet the kid’s unpredictable gaze, he corrects, “I could never want more than this.” Morgan gestures to the space between the two of them, “this is – it’s right. You get me?”
From the look on Spencer’s face, Derek assumes not, but he expected as much. The kid had spent his entire life without secure, loving relationships, not to mention the constant unknown of whether he was ever fated to be loved. So, he didn’t envisage the revelation would change much of the bleak, dismal outlook Spencer must have on life and affection.
“You know that I – that I’m not good with… with this,” Spencer says unsurely. Derek nods, because he does know that the kid has always struggled coping with too many of his emotions at once. “But I don’t, I guess I don’t want to – to mislead you.” He’s dragging the soles of his work shoes against the tile, keeping his head downcast as he speaks.
“Spencer,” Morgan prompts. He waits several seconds until he’s sure the kid won’t turn away from his eyes again. “This doesn’t have to change anything,” he points out carefully. “I’m not going to expect any different of you.”
“You aren’t?” Spencer ventures, skepticism blazing in his expression.
“’Course not, kid.” Obviously, Derek wasn’t opposed to developing what the two of them had, but he also didn’t want to press the two of them in a direction they couldn’t come back from pre-emptively.
Spencer nods his understanding, lips pressed together. Morgan can’t help but outstretch one hand and wrap it around the junction of Spencer’s shoulder and neck, squeezing once. “That isn’t to say I would be averse to things progressing on their own, okay?”
“Yeah,” the kid mumbles. There is the hint of a smile emerging at the corner of Spencer’s mouth, and it effectively settles the writhing guilt that had previously lodged itself in the pit of Derek’s chest. “Thank you,” Spencer says gently. Two fingers from his right-hand fold upwards to rest against the hand Morgan still has laid over his shoulder. They curl around to hook into his index finger for a moment, pausing briefly before dropping away again.
Progress, Derek counts.
----
By the time Rossi has run out of gas along the sentiment of the company’s city council investigation, William Reid has probably only broken his eye contact with the door to his office once or twice.
He half understands the man’s discomfort, but it’s hard for him to sympathise with a man who contributed this much to their youngest agent’s abandonment issues.
Dimly, from the hallway he can hear Morgan speaking with the receptionist, and he doesn’t hesitate to wrap up his time with the businessman in front of him.
“Thank you, Mr. Reid. We’ll be in contact.” It’s habit to assure that, but Rossi highly doubts any of their team will bother to follow up with the man. The investigation doesn’t hold any weight for the FBI, or at least not enough to significantly matter.
“Weren’t you here about my son?” The man asks, shifting upwards from his chair as Rossi stands himself.
He bites back a retort on the fact that William was hardly the boy’s father, and Spencer was hardly a son as a consequence of such.
“Not exactly. Doctor Reid is consulting on this case with us, we aren’t speaking with your department because of him.” He turns the handle of the office door, surprisingly grateful to be out of the small space with the man. The lie doesn’t faze him in the slightest.
Morgan looks up from the curved reception desk and gives him a curt nod, his gaze not even bothering to pass over William who exits his own office.
“Hey, Spencer,” the man greets with less unease in his tone than beforehand. He runs a wary eye up and down over Morgan, before focusing his attention on Spencer who stands at his side.
Derek can feel the length of the kid’s body stiffen up all over again, even if he’s only standing three inches away. “Can we have a quick word?” William asks, his head tilting to the side in indication of a very obviously private chat.
“We actually have a multitude of cases to work on and leads to look in on. I’m sorry, I don’t have time for conversing,” Spencer replies evenly. Morgan holds himself in place, wanting so painfully to offer a reassuring hand at his arm.
To his credit, William nods soberly in understanding at the kid’s words, not pressing him any further.
“Good to go?” Rossi asks. Derek looks to Spencer, who loosens himself and nods in affirmation.
“Yeah, ready.”
Derek cautiously allows himself to rest one arm around his shoulders again as they exit the building and pass through the parking lot. He is pleased to note the impressive amount of tension Spencer had held in his posture beforehand has retreated largely.
Rossi regards them both with a careful once-over, his eyes squinting in an emotion vaguely reminiscent of calculating, like one of them would regard a suspect. But there’s compassion there somewhere, and Spencer might be too busy – trying not to lean so harshly into Morgan’s arm that they both topple over – to notice.
Morgan can see it, at least. There is a sense of knowing, of understanding, that is shepherded his way from Rossi’s gaze.
----
The three of them leave in the respective vehicles they arrived in, and Derek finds himself in a much more comfortable silence with Spencer in the passenger seat at his side.
Rossi takes a two-part flight with a layover in between, claiming he has a ‘colleague’ to catch up with. Morgan doesn’t press for details, – doesn’t want to be regaled with his co-worker’s love life – and instead happily agrees to let Hotch know once himself and Reid arrive back in Quantico.
They retrieve what little luggage they have from the hotel – go-bags and not much more – before circling back to the public airport. Rossi’s flight is immediate, while Morgan and Reid spend an extra hour wandering the building.
Derek is content to watch the kid zip through several paperbacks from various bookstores, slowly nursing a coffee as he goes.
“Almost wish we’d held out for the jet and gotten Hotch to pull a few strings,” he complains as the two of them stand in an endless line for boarding.
“Do you know how much budget cutting we’d have to do for the next month?” Spencer replies, swinging on his heels with one hand wrapped around the strap of his satchel.
“Please,” Derek laughs. “You tellin’ me a couple cases worth of doubling up for the night isn’t worth four blissful hours of uninterrupted flight time?” Spencer raises one eyebrow, a smile breaking through his façade.
“No,” he mutters. “Nothing wrong with sharing a hotel room, I guess.”
Derek snorts humorously, waiting for Spencer before sidling onto the plane and slipping into the seat next to his. They spend quarter of an hour waiting as the rest of the passengers board, talking idly about the case and newer ones they could potentially consult on.
When the overhead announcements have finished – which is an unfamiliar occurrence on their own jet – the plane starts rolling down the runway. Halfway into take-off, Derek moves his hand to the divider rest between their seats, knuckles tightening around the small grip bar.
His head is pressed back into his seat, eyes shut as if the stress in the rest of his body weren’t ruining his calm veneer. Spencer wasn’t oblivious, he knows the slightly older agent has never been a fan of taking off and landing, but things seem tenser in a public plane than a cushy private jet.
Instinctively, he places his own palm against Derek’s taught fingers, resting them gently on top as an attempted reassurance.
Spencer’s ears pop as they reach altitude and he hardly notices as Derek flips his hand and intwines their fingers for a brief moment, tightening his grip before loosening up again.
Nothing was changing between them at a drastic pace. More so, the relationship was developing in its own right, and neither of the two agents seemed to oppose the idea of such.