A/N: This is it, you guys- the final chapter of my overgrown baby. It's been a wild ride, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it. I am immensely grateful for the warm and positive feedback I've received for this story, it's been amazing.
And to the reviewer who wondered- there are two beds in the other room, Rossi and Garcia slept separately. This is not, I repeat, not, that kind of fic.
Chapter 19- The Morning After
"The things which the child loves remain in the domain of the heart until old age. The most beautiful thing in life is that our souls remaining over the places where we once enjoyed ourselves"
Kahlil Jibran
"Morgan, if that's your hand on my leg you're a dead man."
The voice penetrated Morgan's sleeping mind and he carefully flexed both hands, testing what they were on. Fabric in both cases, it felt like. Why was Emily pissy, then? And how could she wake up annoyed?
"Not mine." He muttered. There was something heavy, but pleasantly warm and soft, on top of him, so he was careful not to disturb it when he moved.
"Mine, sorry." There was a rustle, and something moved, but Morgan froze.
"Hotch, say that again?" There was something strange going on.
"Say what?" Slightly louder and less mumbled, and Hotch seemed to realize what Morgan meant. "Oh."
"Oh." Morgan sat up abruptly, dislodging the person draped on him (Emily, as it turned out), and making her tumble to the floor from the bed that was suddenly way, way too small.
"Hey- what the hell?" She glared up at him and froze as well. "Oh." She looked down at herself, Tinker Bell pajamas and all, and breathed "Oh, thank God."
"Missed them, huh?" Morgan smiled, lightheaded with relief at how much deeper, how normal his voice sounded. He agreed with her general sentiments though, stretching his legs hesitantly- and encountering somebody else's on the way. Damn, the bed really was too small.
"Morgan-" Hotch sounded a little choked. "Could you- I can't move them."
Morgan looked over to his left and could help a surprised burst of laughter- Hotch, fully grown as well, was pretty much buried under Reid and JJ, all three of the cuddled together and extremely tangled, in each other and in JJ's long nightgown.
"Is it all of us?" Emily asked from the floor, and Morgan reached down to help her up.
"Yeah, it is. Sorry Hotch, but you three are kinda cute like that. I think I'll wait for Garcia and her camera to come…"
"No!" With a shove, feeling only a little bad about it, Hotch forced his way up- and pushed Reid off the bed as he did. "Oops. Shit, sorry Reid."
"Wha?" The young (but not, thankfully, as young as he'd been the previous night) agent blinked, reached for his glasses and overshot by a good margin, as his arm was longer. "What's going on?"
"We're-" Emily's voice cracked, "We're back to normal. Back to- to us."
"We are?" Reid finally located his glasses, discovered they no longer fit, being too small, and cursed softly. "Ok, we are. Can somebody get my bag please?"
"Here." Emily got to her feet, swayed a little at the no longer accustomed height, and passed him his bag. He fished out his glasses and put them on. A cautious swipe of his tongue on his front teeth confirmed that the braces were gone. Relief flooded him. "Hey Morgan-" Emily had noticed it when Morgan had reached for her, but he didn't seem to've noticed himself, "your cast is gone."
"Huh? Hey, yeah." His left arm was perfectly fine, and the blue cast had disappeared. Other than that, he noticed he was wearing an adult-sized set of the clothes he'd gone to bed with, which meant- yup. "That Tinker Bell outfit looks good on you, Em." He grinned and she scowled, tugging self-consciously on the hems of her shorts, which barely reached to mid-thigh.
"Shuddup." She reached up and pinched him, and he pulled back with a hiss.
"What was that for?"
"Wanted to make sure we weren't still asleep." Emily explained, and Morgan pinched her right back, prompting her to slap his hand.
"You can't prove you're not asleep by pinching me- that makes no sense."
"Well, now we've proven we aren't dreaming." She glared at him.
Reid picked himself up off the floor, his mind spinning in tight, almost hysterical circles. "Are you sure? I mean, I'd be willing to write off the past week as a terrible dream, but we were clearly under a Finding Nemo bedspread, here, and-"
"Reid? Shut up for a sec." That cut him off- and the words were Reid, no different from the previous day or from two weeks ago, which was actually reassuring. It meant they were still themselves.
"Why're you guys so noisy…?" JJ had somehow managed to sleep through that entire conversation, people falling off the bed and all. She turned over and reached for Hotch, who took her hand and reached over to shake her shoulder.
"JJ, wake up- we've changed back." She was definitely back to her old (older?) self, albeit still with her hair in pigtails and wearing the long nightie. She groaned and pressed against him.
"No time f'r jokes, Hotch…" But he didn't feel right anymore- more solid than bony, and larger, and- what was she lying on? Aw, hell. They weren't joking. JJ jerked awake and sat up fast enough that the world tilted and shifted wildly. One hand reached for her chest, and she blushed and put it down quickly when she realized what she was checking. "We're back?"
"We're back." Hotch confirmed. And he was still in shorts and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, and feeling more uncomfortable about it by the second. "And still in Disney World, as far as we can tell. And it's…" He checked his watch. "Only seven. We could just go back to sleep, and hope we're still ourselves when we wake up again."
"I'm awake. And legal." Morgan said slowly. "I'm not wasting time sleeping. Uh, Rossi and Garcia?"
"I'll go get them, I guess." Reid stood up and tried a careful step, aware of his suddenly long limbs. "And I was just getting used to being shorter, too…"
"Oh, you're complaining?" Morgan was too happy to complain, but JJ was looking a little wistful, and Hotch- Hotch wasn't looking at anybody, actually, as he'd rested his head on his drawn up knees, a position much more suited to his teenaged self than to the adult they knew, taking a moment to himself. Morgan chose not to comment on that, giving him the measure of privacy he could. Reid was already at the door to the adjoining room when it pushed in and he found himself nose-to-nose with Rossi. The older agent was on his mobile, and almost dropped it when he saw Reid.
"Thanks for letting me know, Chief. I'll call you back, ok?" He snapped his phone closed.
"We've changed back." Reid informed him, even though it was obvious.
"I can see that." Rossi looked from him to the others, and took two steps that allowed him to drop into a chair. "That was Chief Matthews on the phone. Ryan Shane died in the ICU about two hours ago. He never woke up."
There was a short silence, until JJ spoke. "Good."
"Yeah." Rossi agreed, a little thrown by this supposed return to normal. "So…You're back to normal?"
"As far as I can tell, yes." Reid reported. "Granted, we should probably verify properly, check that we regained all the muscle memory, full functionality of all our-" he coughed and blushed a little, "Never mind. Have you asked Matthews about the- the victims? Their bodies, did they change back?" They all stared at him, wondering how he could even be thinking about the case right now, and he shrugged. Not like he could really control it when his mind engaged in anything that would keep him from remembering that it had felt really nice to share a bed with four others. It was a defense mechanism. "We know the runes made the spell last beyond their death, but I doubt Shane would've thought to extend it beyond his death, if there's a difference in the runes. And I think there might be."
"Ok, I'll call him." Rossi stood up. "And wake Garcia up. You five…Might want to get dressed." He looked pointedly at Emily's pajamas and she glowered at him. "Take a few minutes to get yourselves together."
"Gee, we never would've thought of that ourselves." Morgan groused and dashed for the bathroom. Reid's sensibilities aside, there were certain things he really needed to verify that had been restored to their former- well, he called it glory, and several past lady friends had agreed.
In the room, Reid was rummaging through his bag for adult clothes, and Emily stretched, testing out her regained reach. JJ touched Hotch's shoulder lightly and he jerked, surprised. "You ok?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. I just-" He wasn't sure what to think. Waking up with the others had felt so good, and his first thought when he realized things had changed was 'we can't keep doing this', and that angered him. Five minutes as an adult and already responsibility and the constraints of appropriate behavior were stifling him. Absurdly, he already wanted to go back. "It's not fair." He didn't even care that the others could probably hear him, they were good at ignoring this kind of thing. To his surprise, he felt arms around his shoulders. To his even greater surprise the bed dipper slights as two more pairs of hands joined, until they were all crowded together.
"It's not fair." JJ agreed softly. "But we missed being adults, didn't we?"
"I sure did." Emily spoke just as quietly. The bathroom door opened- none of them looked up, but after another moment there were five people in the bed again, huddled together to keep from flying apart.
"I missed being me, but I'm going to miss this as well." Reid expressed Hotch's feelings perfectly. Hugging as adults felt so awkward, everything too long and curved and ungainly. It didn't feel as natural as it had. They were all tense around him, aware of the awkwardness.
"We could try doing this- as adults, I mean." Bless JJ's attempts at cheerfulness. Morgan answered for the rest of them, though.
"No, we can't. And soon we won't want to, either. We're- too grown up and fucked up for it." And didn't that just suck. "No more sharing beds."
"No more food fights or movies." Now Emily sounded really glum.
"We can still watch movies." Reid corrected her. "And- look on the bright side- at least none of us are within a pedophile's target preference anymore." He meant that entirely seriously, but JJ still slapped the back of his head.
"You guys look like somebody's died." Garcia stood in the door connecting the two rooms, giving them a puzzled look. "I mean- somebody has died, but that's good news for a change. Are you all ok? Physically, I mean, all there?"
"Yeah, we're fine." Hotch replied as they broke up the huddle, exchanging oddly guilty looks. "Just…Getting used to this."
"You all look like this is a bad thing, you guys- yesterday all you wanted was to be yourselves again." She sat down. "You should be thrilled, you can all go home now."
Going home seemed like an exceptionally bleak prospect. Still, being too miserable over it would be in bad taste, wouldn't it? Garcia was right, they'd wished for this. Morgan nodded. "You're right, baby girl. I'm gonna get dressed."
They were all silent as they dressed, taking turns in the bathroom. Reid had to admit that he felt a lot safer, more confident, in his button down vest and khaki trousers. While dressing he'd recited complex equations to himself, making sure he still had them in his head, and found that he could access all his memories- and that the ones from his childhood were again pleasantly fuzzy. It was better that way.
"The cuts on my stomach are gone. Like they were never there." JJ reported, coming out of the bathroom and dressed once more like herself. Reid couldn't help smiling. "I'm going to call Will, let him know we're ok." She'd only texted him the previous two days, too rattled and exhausted to explain.
"I should call Jess and Jack." Hotch patted his pockets, looking for his phone.
"Hold on with the calls." Garcia returned, followed by Rossi. "Until we get everything figured out."
"Matthews checked with the morgue- all four victims have turned into adult-sized corpses overnight. The ME may never recover from the shock." He smiled thinly. "But the families will have closure at least, and the case will be much easier to write up now." Especially since, with Ryan Shane dead, it wouldn't come to a trial.
"That's really great." Emily smiled, and JJ nodded. "Guess he really didn't plan on dying before they did, or didn't care what would happen to them."
"He didn't even care much what would happen to them when he was alive." JJ pointed out, remembering the clammy touch on her skin with a shudder.
"I've let Strauss know we've recovered." Rossi continued his report, "She says we still have the week off and to get our heads straight before we come back. You two ladies would normally need to be cleared by psych, after what you've been through, but it'll be pretty hard to explain to a Bureau shrink…" He looked at them all, seeing the stunned, lost expressions, the stances of people still in shock, or in trauma, and shook his head. "I think we should probably all go through psych before we get back to work, but fortunately she didn't ask me."
"That's good, Dave. The last thing we need right now is a shrink digging around our heads." Hotch was glad Morgan had said that, because he felt exactly the same. He didn't want to talk about it, possibly ever.
"So…we're going home?" Reid asked uncertainly, looking around the room.
"Not so fast, boy genius." Garcia held up a finger. "Or is it grown man genius now? No, sorry, the other one sounds much better, I think I'll keep using that. Anyway, since you all look glum enough that you could depress the entire Disney staff, here's what we're going to do." She listed out on her fingers. "JJ, you call Will and see if he and Henry can get on the next flight down here. Hotch, you do the same for Jessica and Jack. He can miss a few days of school. Uh-uh, no talking yet." She said when Hotch opened his mouth to respond. "Next, I'm going to get us a few more rooms, because two are clearly not enough anymore. And then we're going to have breakfast. And then we're going out to the Magic Kingdom, to do everything we didn't get to yesterday."
"But-"
"But nothing. We've paid in advance for a three day pass, and I'm not letting you waste it. The machines won't care how tall you are, they're fingerprint-based, and yours haven't changed enough to matter." Garcia was determined, and a determined Garcia was a force to be reckoned with.
"But we can't-"
"Can't what?" She turned on Emily. "Do you have pressing plans?"
"No, but-"
"Morgan? Anywhere important to be tomorrow?"
"Not really, but-"
"Reid? Plans?"
"I have a lecture to prepare for Thursday?" He tried weakly, then shrugged. "I'd rather go to the Magic Kingdom, though. I'm sure Space Mountain will be different from an adult perspective."
"Hotch, you said you wanted to bring Jack here. We'll all help." Garcia turned her best pleading look on JJ, who tilted her head.
"I've been away from home too long. If Will's willing to fly with a toddler, I'll be happy to have them join us here."
"See? Then it's settled. Dave?" Finally, she turned on the oldest agent, who raised an amused eyebrow.
"Yes? I don't even need to go into the park, you kids can take care of yourselves now. But I will anyway, it might be fun."
"Great." Garcia grinned. "Did Strauss say Hotch was back in charge?"
"Uh…No, actually, she didn't." A smile started to show on Rossi's face, as well as on the others.
"Then-"
"Consider everything Garcia said a direct order." He nodded. "Starting with breakfast. I think this calls for champagne to celebrate the fact that you can all drink it legally."
"And coffee." Reid reminded him. "Lots and lots of coffee."
"Amen to that." Morgan grabbed his phone and wallet. "Hotch? You ok?"
"I'm fine." Maybe, if they were here and not at the office, they could try to relax for a few days more. And Jack would help him retain the childish joy in everything. Slowly, he could feel the tension drain out of his shoulders- just a little. "Guess I have a phone call to make."
"That's the spirit! Come on, let's get coffee and champagne and pretend we're all adults." Garcia grabbed her blue teddy bear and tucked it under her arm. She was wearing a Disney t-shirt, looking like she was ready to play tourist with a vengeance.
"Hold on." JJ flipped her phone open and started dialing. "We need to look a little less like the FBI or we'll scare people. I'm going to change." She had a pair of jeans in her bag, somewhere. She absent-mindedly grabbed her pink elephant with her free hand, waiting for Will to pick up.
"Right." Reid held up his Disney shirt, now several sizes too small. "More shopping?"
"More shopping." Emily said firmly. "But you can have some coffee first."
"Coffee…" The dreamy look on Reid's face made them all laugh, and as the left the room Hotch looked back on the cheery bedspread and the mess of pillows, and thought that maybe staying for a few days wasn't a bad idea after all.
Without consciously thinking about it, he handed Emily her stuffed bat toy, and took her hand. She laced her fingers through his, smiling a little.
"We're still family, you know."
"Yeah." He squeezed her hand. "I know."
-FIN-