I don't own Criminal Minds or any of the characters mentioned here. No profit was made from this work of fiction.

This is for enticing_affair over on Livejournal, who is amazing by every definition of the word and consequently the only person around who can get me to finish writing something. She got me into Criminal Minds a few months ago, and while writing it was certainly a struggle, I feel it was completely worth it.

The prompt is entirely hers and I wish her a very Merry Christmas!

"It is a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old." -Mark Twain

As a kid, Derek Morgan spent several years of his life destroying what little respectability he'd had. He would scribble over it with paint on sidewalks and the walls of buildings. He would make sure the right message was sent through the bruises and cuts of other children. And if the first two ways didn't work, he sealed the deal by shrugging out of an authority figure's grasp and taking off down an alley.

The chill of handcuffs on his wrists is a memory he hasn't shaken to this day. He never talks about it. Not with anyone. But it shows.

It shows in the way he outruns everyone on the team just to get to an unsub first. It shows in the way he grabs them-these sadists, liars, rapists, murderers-by the backs of their necks just a little too hard before placing them in the back of the nearest police vehicle.

Derek Morgan will do any amount of good to counteract the things he did as a kid.

To accomplish this, Derek Morgan acknowledges every rule, stipulation, and law set in place. He believes in doing things by the book, and has ever since the first day he walked through the doors of the BAU.

But the saying about old habits and their tendency to linger applies to every human. Morgan's humanity is one of the few things that keeps him from adopting the coldness of agents who've worked the job for too long. He knows its value.

He also knows its downside. Because at the end of the day, Morgan's only a man.

And he's a man who also believes in taking things into his own hands, even if that means sidestepping a few rules along the way.

To be a profiler, one has to adapt. To be a profiler, one has to perceive.

There was one thing Morgan perceived very early on. Teamwork meant a lot of things in his field. It almost always decided the official outcome before it came to pass. It established a greater chance of success. It represented a plethora of options-for profiles, victimology, hypothetical situations and their stressors. Teamwork kept all of them grounded and, as Rossi often said, from doing something stupid. (Usually.)

If Morgan had to be certain of one thing, it would be that he had team members he could rely on for almost anything.

Now what Morgan took a little longer to understand was that the potential for camaraderie tended to fizzle out after several days on location and a six-hour trip back to Quantico.

It wasn't so much for a lack of friendship, but

"Hey, Emily-"

"Morgan, the answer is no."

It's damn near impossible to get a favor after hours.

He crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head at the floor. She hasn't so much as blinked her gaze away from the computer screen, and he was right to assume this would be difficult. "Why do I have to be asking for something? Can't a guy hang out with his colleague at her work station?"

She stops typing mid-sentence and finally turns to look up at him. The stripe of red across her nose and cheeks is starting to peel, and Morgan is reminded of just how horribly Yellowstone National Park treated Prentiss this week. They all had their share of scrapes and bruises from the experience, but she definitely got the shit end of the stick. This was going to be a tough sell.

Still, for all the annoyance her face shows, she's obviously curious. Otherwise she would have ignored him from the start.

She gives him a once over, and Morgan braces himself for what he knew was coming.

"You're leaning on the edge of my desk in the hope of coming off relaxed and accessible. Unconsciously, you want my brain to understand this and mimic the behavior to increase the chances of my acceptance of your sales pitch. You know this probably won't work on its own and so you call me by my first name, which even you admit is laying it on a little too thick, however it still serves the purpose of piquing my interest and so you feel justified in your decision."

Morgan bites the inside of his lip and has to look away to keep the smile off his face. He catches JJ's eye through the window of her office and shakes his head because this is almost verbatim of what she said would happen.

"Finally, the plastic bag you've got stowed just out of eyesight serves as a last resort because you're reluctant, yet not completely against outright bribery. So let's get this over with before you start calling me sweet cheeks or dollface. What's in the bag?"

Morgan's beginning to see why people hate profilers, although no amount of lip-biting can hide his amusement at this point. "Okay, now you know all that wasn't completely necessary."

"Neither was your Mr. Cool Guy routine," she remarks, "I think you left a trail of sleaze all the way over here. You haven't been exchanging emails with Viper, have you? Enrolled in his online class?" She smiles a little too wide and Morgan feels secretly vindicated in the wince that follows.

And is it really a surprise that he condemns intimate relationships with other agents? The potential for verbal abuse is staggering.

"Oh, you got jokes?" he slides off her desk and retrieves the bag because yes he is willing to bribe, and doesn't find it all that terrible if it tips things in his favor. He dangles it in front of her face, then yanks it back the second her hand reaches up. "Mr. Cool Guy might not give you this bottle of aloe vera, after all."

She scoffs at first and appears ready to turn back to the computer and end the conversation there, but Morgan's smile is persistent, indicative.

He watches her eyes follow the outline of the bag, sees them narrow just a little bit when she thinks she knows but can't be sure. "What else is in there?"

When she reaches this time, Morgan hands it to her.

He knows he's won when she peeks inside and then looks away mouthing a swear. "That's not even fair."

It's not, and that's what's so great about it.

He'd found it purely by chance, back in Wyoming. The owner of the bookstore had been nice, if not a bit eccentric, but in the good way. Kind of like Reid, if Reid was short, about seventy, and seemed to care more about the concept of books than about reading them.

One of the victims, a local teenager, had worked there prior to being found half-decomposed in one of Yellowstone's campgrounds. Out of the eleven bodies found and identified, he'd been the only one from the area.

All in all, there was little to collect from the place. Nothing stood out about this kid to make him the target of a personal attack. And, more importantly, his victimology shared no link with the others who were killed aside from where they were murdered.

Morgan would call the entire visit a waste of time had he not glimpsed a sandy spine looking so out of place among a sea of encyclopedias.

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter House 5.

"This is a first edition."

He hasn't heard Prentiss' voice go that soft since she held Henry for the first time. Her fingers slowly glide across the glossy cover letter by letter. And, as much as Morgan wants to gloat, he knows better than to say he got it off the guy for fifteen bucks.

After reading the back cover maybe three times, she finally looks back at Morgan with apprehension.

His smile is huge, and grows wider when she glances over at his desk, at the stack of folders reaching nearly the same height as Morgan's portable lamp-which in itself was rather large for something considered "portable".

She winces again, and this time it has nothing to do with her sunburn. "This is really gonna suck."

Morgan nearly smashes into Hotch when exiting the elevator, then tries to apologize for it by reaching for one of the three boxes he's juggling. Of course Hotch shrugs him off. He wouldn't be Hotch if he didn't.

Once they're safely loaded into the elevator, Hotch's hand doesn't move from where it's holding back the door and his eyes don't leave Morgan for a second. "You're leaving early."

It's not Hotch's nature to pry into other people's business, so Morgan's a little wary of why he suddenly needs an explanation.

"I've just got some stuff to take care of, that's all." His answer is deliberately vague, but to keep it from seeming that way Morgan shrugs a shoulder and places his hands in his pockets. All efforts are ruined, however, when he can't stop himself from getting defensive, "Is this about the paperwork? Because I've got it covered."

Hotch's face is cemented. No further reaction comes for several long seconds, and Morgan holds his gaze, willing him to save the lecture for later because they both know what this is really about.

At last Hotch's hand unblocks the door, his voice low and secretive, "Sort out what you need to and get some rest. I limited your involvement on this case. I can't afford to do it a second time."

The metal doors clank shut, and Morgan is left alone in the parking garage with nothing to look at but his own tight-lipped reflection.

Going to Reid's apartment isn't a good idea for a few reasons. For one, it forces Morgan to go out of his way on his drive home. "Out of his way" meaning down several narrow side streets and difficult-to-navigate one-way roads that otherwise could be easily avoided.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it's pushing the boundary of a profiler's number one unspoken rule.

Privacy.

With a job that demanded anything and everything, your home became the only place you had that was entirely yours, a place where you could simply live and try to forget about whose remains you examined that day or what horrible actions an unsub committed right in front of you.

Your home is the only place you can be yourself, and that's why it goes without saying.

Team members' homes are off limits. No questions asked.

Morgan knows firsthand what it's like to have profilers in his childhood home, sifting through childhood memories they have no business knowing. He knows how it feels to be utterly exposed and unable to do anything about it, to have his privacy trampled on.

He knows all of this, and that's probably why he watched Reid from his car when he drove him home from the hospital. Because as guilty as it made him feel to see his team member lean heavily on the door while he fumbled with his keys, Morgan knows the boundaries and he respects them.

He isn't sure when he decided to make this exception, but it probably has a lot to do with the phone call he made over a week ago, after learning Reid's recovery would require an indefinite amount of time.

"No, you need to talk to him, Hotch! Tell him he can't keep doing these things that put his life at risk!"

"Morgan, right now the most important thing is his recovery. Whether or not I have a discussion with him upon his return is a personal matter, and I trust you know that."

"'Upon his return'? So, what? You wait until he's back in the field where he can pull a stunt like that again? He almost died, Hotch! Or don't you remember putting the case before his life by keeping him in that room?"

"...Listen, if you need some time off-"

"Man, I told you to pull him out of there! You didn't see the look on his face. He was terrified! And you just left him there!"

"Arguing about something that has already happened is pointless. What's done is done and it can't be changed. The only thing I can tell you is that proper action will be taken to ensure it does not happen again."

"Hotch!"

"Take a walk, Morgan. Go outside. Clear your head. I need you rational tomorrow. If you can't be, then don't even bother coming in."

Yeah Morgan thinks he knew right then, amid the throbbing of his knuckles and the dent in his sitting room wall.

That he'd break every rule in the book if it meant keeping a team member safe.

If Hotch won't talk to Reid, he will.

When Reid answers the door, it's only after insistent knocking on Morgan's part.

He opens it slowly, suspiciously, and his body fills the gap it creates to block view from the hallway behind him. He looks nearly the same as the day he was released from the hospital, like a zombie from the horror novels Morgan read as a kid.

Coupled with the fact that it's nearly a week and a half later causes something hard to settle in Morgan's stomach and whatever speech he'd prepared to fade from memory.

Reid blinks hard and harder still. The sky's overcast but he still can't seem to focus. "Morgan?"

The dark rings around Reid's eyes are rather telling and his skin hasn't yet let go of its sickly paleness. A week's worth of hair has taken residence around his jaw and upper lip. It's not a lot, but still enough to make him nearly unrecognizable.

Morgan had circled the block twice, going over all he planned to say and how he planned to say it, but nothing comes to him now. Not when Reid looks like this-like he's escaped death, but it's still right there at his heels.

Morgan shifts at the top of the steps, leans more of his weight on the railing. He says the only thing that comes to mind. "You, uh...you just getting up?"

"No, no I-" Reid's eyes dart to somewhere behind him, to where Morgan knows his neighbor is out walking her dog. It's only for less than a second, and then he's glancing at his upturned wrist, at his watch that has been knocked askew from more tossing and turning than actual sleep. He licks his lips against the cold air, looks back to Morgan. "What did you, uh-what are you doing here?"

Morgan fingers the keys in the pocket of his jacket, knowing his car would still be warm if he were to leave now. He's starting to think Hotch was right. Maybe he should have just waited for Reid to come back.

Again, Reid spares a second to track the movements of his neighbor. Judging by her footsteps, Morgan can tell she's crossed the street and is walking slower as she nears them. To listen in, most likely. This part of town suits people like that.

When Reid's eyes whip back to him, Morgan realizes he's still waiting for that answer.

I was in the neighborhood is probably a line better suited for the girls he picks up at the bar, but he says it anyway because he can't think of an honest response.

Predictably, Reid doesn't scribble his phone number on a napkin or offer to buy him a drink. Instead he frowns in perplexity, the top right of his upper lip curling to reveal a tiny sliver of teeth. It's the same look he gives the evidence board when something doesn't quite add up, though usually there's also a writing utensil of some sort hanging from his mouth.

And it's a small thing, really, but it does something to ease the tension in Morgan's gut nonetheless. Because beneath the untrimmed facial hair and baggy, unwashed clothes Dr. Reid is still in there.

Somewhere.

It's enough to know that, and enough for Morgan to let go of his keys and maybe consider staying a while after all. "You gonna let me in?"

With measured steps and rigid, straight-backed posture, Reid does.

Morgan suspects it has more to do with avoiding a scene in front of the entire neighborhood than an actual desire for company, but he takes it and follows him inside.

Reid's coffee-making skills are a lot like his handwriting: sloppy and urgent. Morgan understands wanting to document a thought before it eludes you, but that coffeepot wasn't going anywhere.

He could make a comment, just to see Reid turn away from the counter and frown at him again. He doesn't. Being allowed inside had involved a lot of trust, and being kicked out within the first five minutes would likely reduce the chances of it happening again.

So instead Morgan rests his elbows on the kitchen table, one hardly ever used by the looks of it, and cocks his head toward the flowers just beneath the windowsill. "You have visitors?"

Reid stops dumping sugar in the mugs long enough to peer over his shoulder. He looks first to Morgan, then to the window, and finally settles on the floor, half amused and half embarrassed. "Uh, no...Actually those came from your mom."

Morgan feels both eyebrows shoot up his forehead. "I just told her what happened two days ago. When did she send them?"

Reid turns back to the task at hand, but not before Morgan spots the beginnings of an awkward smile. "...Two days ago."

Morgan can only shake his head with a disbelieving chuckle and look away.

He tackles the Reaper through a window and gets an earful and a smack to the back of the head, but Reid willingly locks himself in a room with a WMD and gets flowers?

Subconsciously he adds his mother to the list of people he needs to sit down and have a talk with.

As an afterthought, he also makes a mental note to stop talking to her about Reid.

In the moment of silence that follows, Morgan can't help but restlessly flick his fingers against each other on the table. He's probably as uncomfortable being in Reid's house as Reid is having him there.

The fear of unintentionally profiling a team member weighs heavily on his mind.

And as much as Morgan works to keep his eyes trained on Reid's back, his peripheral still manages to take in the pile of chopsticks wrappers just off to the right, and how their abundance matches the number of forks sticking out from the basket of Reid's open dishwasher.-because as much as he practiced, Reid still hadn't mastered the skill, and-

And that would be profiling.

Morgan sighs quietly and runs a hand over his face. He refocuses on the windowsill because it seems the only safe place to look. "That cactus didn't come from her," plants were a safe thing to talk about, right? "You miss Vegas so much you had to bring the desert to DC?"

Reid merely shrugs. "It's the only living thing that can survive on its own for long periods of time. It may not be a pet, but I guess it's still something to come home to."

Morgan feels a stab of guilt as he thinks of Clooney, and of the old woman next door who takes care of him while he's away. She always smiles and understands. Clooney doesn't.

He takes the proffered mug with a mumble of thanks. It's entirely too sweet for his preference, but he sips it anyway, eyeing Reid from over the rim.

He watches Reid take a seat across from him. He watches him continue to stir until the sugar dissolves completely. And he watches him wolf the whole thing down in one go. Because that's what Reid does. He goes through three cups of the stuff before Morgan's finished with his first.

"I take it you're not as sick as you look." When Reid's eyes narrow unexpectedly, he adds, "What?"

Reid polishes his cup off, then sits further back in the chair. "I'm just trying to figure out if that was meant to be a backhanded compliment."

Morgan chuckles and takes another sip. The sugar really is too much, and so he sits his cup on the table for now. "I'm only saying it's hard to call you pretty boy when you've got a shrub hanging off your chin." He pauses for just a second to let a broad smile cross his face. "I didn't even know you could grow facial hair."

"Actually one in fifteen men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five are said to have minimal to no hair growth on their jaw and upper lip, with testosterone being a main contributing factor. And yet, unlike male pattern baldness, there seems to be no direct genetic correlation."

In response to Reid's raised eyebrow, Morgan puts his palms up in surrender. "Okay, you caught me. I came here for the statistics. I confess."

Reid's smirk endures the trip to the counter and back. He gulps down half his refill, and Morgan watches the heat chase the paleness from his face and color his cheeks pink.

"In that case, statistically speaking, out of the two people in this room one is wondering what's going on with your chin."

Instinctively Morgan cups his jaw, stroking the thin lines of hair at the sides. He'd already received similar comments from Rossi, Prentiss, JJ, and Garcia, so at this point he was prepared. "Kid, I don't expect you to know this, but it's what the ladies go wild for."

"Yes, I recall you saying the same thing when you started shaving your head."

"Was I wrong?"

Reid doesn't grace him with an answer, though Morgan detects the slightest eyeroll before he raises the mug to his lips again.

With nothing else to do, Morgan follows suit.

For a while, they just sit there. Silent. Reid stares at the empty cup in his hands and Morgan watches the color slowly drain back out of his face.

At the same time, Morgan also feels the tension from earlier creep back into his stomach. Wordlessly, he reaches across the table to snatch Reid's mug. "I thought you'd have come back by now."

"...I tried," Reid's eyes remain trained on Morgan's hands. "I tried coming back the day after, but Hotch shot me down."

"The day after? Reid you could barely stand up when I dropped you off."

Reid frowns, but still doesn't look up. "I called him and I-I couldn't stop coughing. Like I kept trying to hold it back, but I just...couldn't."

"You've seemed okay since I got here."

"Yeah, I'm fine now," Reid's annoyance is apparent, and at last his eyes flicker up to Morgan's where they stay, even as he plucks his mug deftly from Morgan's fingers. "Thing is Hotch hasn't felt it important to answer any of my calls since."

Morgan crosses his arms on the table and leans in, "Kid, he's giving you an opportunity to rest. You've worked the job long enough to know that's something that doesn't come along very often."

"I think it's pretty obvious I'm not getting any rest around here. If I'm stuck taking pills that keep me up, why not spend that time where I'm needed so I can actually do something productive?"

At this, Morgan can only close his eyes and exhale. Reid was exhausting, even in this state. "Look I'm not saying you're not needed. Hell, it took Rossi over an hour to draw up a geographical profile this week, and we spent two days digging through the unsub's house to find something, anything to tell us his location. Everyone knows you can probably cut the time for both of these things in half. But Reid, I'm here telling you right now that you won't be able to do any of these things. Not when you're like this."

Reid finishes filling up his third cup and turns just in time to see Morgan gesturing at the coffeepot. He glances at it, then shoots Morgan a rather bored look. "I'm always 'like this', so that's a pretty poor argument. And according to a recent study, the average American consumes nearly three and a half cups per day, so I'd have to classify myself as normal."

It's times like these where Morgan wants to just grab Reid by the shoulders and shake him until whatever loose object rattling in his brain clinks back into place. And every time Reid says dumb things like this, he gets that much closer to actually doing it.

Luckily Reid stays at the counter and the distance lessens the urge, so Morgan is able to reel in his temper and simply clutch the elbows of his leather jacket instead.

"Reid, you-"

The shrill ringing of his cell cuts him off, and part of Morgan is grateful because he's not too sure what he was going to say, anyway. He stands to unclip the phone from his belt and stares down at a number he doesn't recognize, then answers it anyway.

"This is Morgan."

"Derek? Where are you? You said you were going to pick me up a half hour ago."

"Oh..." And for the first time Morgan looks out the window and sees it's been dark for quite a while. Feeling Reid's eyes on him, he turns to face the opposite wall and lowers his voice, "I'm sorry sweetheart, I lost track of time."

The worst thing about the next five minutes isn't that he has to do damage control to salvage a dinner date. It's that he has to do this in front of Reid, who can hear everything he's saying and probably a good portion of the names he's being called through the phone.

Because, to be honest, he's already rescheduled with this girl twice. And it's not that he doesn't like her, it's really not. She's great, and gorgeous, and amazing.

But Morgan's head just hasn't been with it lately, for whatever reason.

"No, that's fine. I understand. Another time. Definitely."

Morgan takes probably more time than is necessary to clip his phone back at his waist before turning around.

Reid's staring at him with his lips pursed and Morgan sighs. "Go on, say it."

"'It's what the ladies go wild for'."

"Shut up, man."

The next time Morgan talks to Reid, it's a few days later.

He shuffles his feet, skidding his heel along a few sprigs of grass peeking out from beneath decade-old asphalt. Reid takes forever to answer the phone, and when he finally does it's with more of a mumble than actual words.

"What would it mean if I cut off a transgendered man's genitals and then sewed the remaining skin back together?"

"That you're some sort of unlicensed surgeon in Thailand? ...Wait, is this for a case? Where are you?"

"Just answer the question, Reid." Morgan casts a cautious glance over his shoulder, to where local PD gather around the latest victim. They'd only just arrived on the scene, the caution tape still in the process of being rolled out. "We've got four bodies, all transgendered and all dumped within a one-mile radius of a popular nightclub. Unsub number one neutralizes the victim with drugs, while the second slits the throat and disfigures the body. The dismemberment is done post-mortem, and the stitching comes last. Black thread in a zigzag pattern over the eyes, mouth, and groin. Mean anything to you?"

"Eyes and mouth could actually be a crude allusion to the idea behind a shrunken head, where the warrior engaged in the process to physically trap the spirit inside to prevent it from leaving its vessel and haunting him."

"So what? You're saying we've got a couple of guys out here afraid of drag queens?"

"Not necessarily. It's probably more out of hate than actual fear, and the second unsub sees the act as punishment, which would explain why he went through the extra trouble of removing the groin. It's very likely he considered the victims as undeserving of sexuality, even in the afterlife, so the dehumanizing would have seemed perfectly logical. Considering this and the resurgence of shrunken heads in pop culture, he's probably highly religious and somewhere in his forties to fifties. His partner would be someone close to him, someone he trusts, likely younger and subservient."

Morgan sighs into the phone. "Pretty boy, I dunno what I'd do without you." He snaps it shut halfway through the next influx of questions and looks off to the west, to where Reid lives just ten minutes away. If he found out they were nearby, Morgan would never hear the end of it.

"You know..."

Morgan starts, then whips around to see Rossi standing maybe ten feet away.

"You know," he says again, stepping closer and folding his hands in front of him, "discussing a case to an outside party is considered compromising evidence and can get you suspended, right?"

Had Rossi not looked as if he'd been standing there for several minutes, Morgan would have denied everything. Over his shoulder, it's apparent the rest of the team has arrived. Hotch is instructing JJ over by their car, probably about the press conference he needs to take place as soon as possible. Prentiss' attention is divided between examining the body and listening to a man recap how it was found.

He refocuses on Rossi, and is thankful they're out of earshot because he can feel some of his temper slipping out. Since when was Reid considered an 'outside party'? "You're gonna quote the book at me when I'm doing all I can to prevent another murder?"

"I'm not saying your intentions are bad. Even back when I first started out, there were times when agents bent the rules for the safety of themselves and for others. We all find ourselves at that crossroad at least once. It makes it seem okay if it's for the greater good, and sometimes it is."

"So?" Morgan's not really sure where he's going with this.

"So I'm saying out of all of us, you were the first to arrive on the scene. As a team, we haven't even gone over whatever new evidence has come into play here." He pauses when Hotch gestures them over, then waves a hand in understanding before making his way back toward the side of the building. His last words are cast over his shoulder, "Ask yourself if you were a little quick to make that call."

Morgan doesn't realize he's biting the inside of his cheek until a metallic tang coats the tip of his tongue. It's probably the worst habit he has, and the only one from childhood he's been unable to break.

He watches Rossi's back and smooths a thumb over the phone still in his hand. It takes another head-jerk from Hotch to get Morgan moving, and he does so with a jog, pointedly shoving all thoughts not case-related from his mind.

Thanks to a certain turn of events, when Morgan next finds himself standing in front of Reid's house it's only a couple of hours later. The door opens so fast that he actually takes an involuntary step back from it, and then lowers his shades to cock an eyebrow.

Reid's hair is dripping wet, to the point where it's creating little puddles on the floor. The only thing keeping his pants up is the hand bunching the fabric at his waist.

Morgan gestures to Reid's naked torso, "What, you can't put clothes on before you answer the door?"

Reid lets go of the doorknob long enough to brush several strands of hair from his face with a towel. He fixes Morgan with a look of exasperation. "Do you hear the way you knock? I figured if I took any longer, you'd have kicked it in."

Morgan shrugs. It's not the first time he's been told that. "Give me a key and it won't be an issue."

Reid chooses to ignore him and retreats back inside his house, leaving the door wide open.

Always one to see an opportunity, Morgan walks in and shuts it behind him. He leans against the hallway wall opposite the bathroom Reid's disappeared into. "I don't know why you're getting all dressed up. You're not going anywhere."

Another minute ticks by before the door swings open. Reid appears still in the process of aggressively shrugging a vest on over his white dress shirt, his damp hair trapped beneath it and glued to the sides of his face. "Did you really think I wouldn't find out where you were?"

"No, I knew you would," Morgan admits, because Reid isn't the type to just let things go. "But I was hoping you'd be smart enough to stay out of it."

Reid stops halfway through looping a belt about his waist to untuck his hair and grace Morgan with another one of his squinty, are-you-serious looks. "You call me up and essentially read me the case file through the phone, and then you come here and tell me to stay out of it?"

Morgan bites the inside of his cheek again, and the sharp burst of pain reminds him that it's the same spot from earlier. The entire ride over here had given him time to think about what Rossi had said, that yeah, calling Reid was probably a really dumb thing to do.

But then again, as soon as Garcia phoned him an hour ago in a panic, he knew he'd made a mistake.

"Reid." He steps forward into the bathroom only to be bodily shoved aside. For his own sake, he doesn't follow Reid into the kitchen, parking himself at the edge of the hallway instead, stance wide, arms crossed. "You lied about Hotch letting you in on the case in order to get an address from her."

"JJ was on the local news," Reid snaps, too busy shoving papers and books into his bag to actually look up. "I think I have a right to be involved when it's happening in my own neighborhood."

"I can understand that," and Morgan does, probably more than anyone, "but I still can't let you go down there."

Reid loudly gulps down the last of his coffee before tossing the mug carelessly into the sink, and then slips his shoes on without tying them. "I'm failing to see how you'll be able to stop me."

"Reid," Morgan watches him shoulder the bag, and shows exactly how he plans to stop him by blocking the entire hallway, along with all of Reid's attempts to brush past him. Eventually he loses his patience and barks, "Reid, listen to me!"

To his credit, Reid does, or at least he stops pushing against Morgan long enough to step back and give the illusion that he's going to.

It's the first he's stood still long enough for Morgan to get a good look at him, and now that Reid's shaved he can see the way the side of his jaw juts out from being clenched. And whether it's because he's just showered or not, Reid's skin color does look better.

Reid looks better. A lot better, in fact.

Enough to where Morgan has to revise what he's about to say.

"Look, if it was up to me I'd let you go, but it's not. You go marching down there and Hotch is gonna know exactly who's responsible for leaking information. Now it's my fault you know what you know, and I would gladly take the heat for it because I realize I should've never called you, but if you show up at the precinct you'll be taking Garcia down with us."

"Not if you man up and take responsibility for the whole thing. I can't stay in this house anymore!"

"Wait." Reid starts for the door again, and this time Morgan grips his shoulder so hard he can feel the bump of a collarbone under two layers of fabric. His other hand points a finger in Reid's face, which does an overall better job of halting him because any closer and it would be up his nostril. "Wait!"

Reid turns his head and sighs heavily through his nose, lips pushed together hard. "Morgan, you're really starting to piss me off."

"I know," Morgan agrees, because Reid hardly ever gets worked up enough to curse, "I know." He lowers his hand, but keeps the other firmly planted on Reid. "...I'm sorry I called."

Reid scoffs at the wall. "I'm sorry you called, too."

"I guess I..." Morgan's gaze drifts to Reid's tie. It's plain. Black. And the collar of his shirt badly needs to be popped from the vest, so without thinking he slides his hand over and tugs it out. First one side, then the other. "I dunno. I guess I wanted you back as badly as you wanted to be back."

The confession is unexpected for both of them.

Reid's openly staring, like he's waiting for the "what I meant was...", but Morgan does nothing to recant...because it's not exactly false. He doesn't add anything either. He can't without running the risk of embarrassing himself further.

So he just sort of focuses on Reid's collar again, smoothing his fingers down fabric that's already as flat as it's going to get.

Morgan notices Reid's jaw start to unclench, his anger fizzling out, though the tense lines in his neck remain.

Another moment goes by before Reid blinks and clears his throat. "Back in the hospital, when I was-well...I remember I kept waking up and I'd forget where I was or what had happened. I'd...I'd try to get words out and they wouldn't come. And I remember my body shutting down, and all I could think about was how I joined the FBI to make a difference, and that I was going to die before I could."

Morgan doesn't think twice about sliding his hand back up to Reid's shoulder, the width of his palm allowing his thumb to rest hotly against Reid's neck. He leans in close, and closer, until Reid has no choice but to look at him. "Reid you know we make a difference every day. Whether we feel it or not, somebody's life is always affected by what we do, for better or worse. You'll have your opportunity to come back, but don't rush it just to chase a feeling that may not even come. Nothing else is gonna happen to you if you wait those few extra days."

Reid tilts his head in thought and Morgan feels wet hair glide against his knuckles. "It's theoretically impossible to be certain of that."

"Kid, a previously unclassified strain of anthrax couldn't take you out, and you're trying to tell me you're afraid of, what? A few dust mites?"

Had Morgan not felt the surge of heat against his hand, Reid's flush would have gone undetected. He grins in the face of it, thumb reaching up to graze Reid's pulse for a fleeting second before Morgan finds himself pushed back.

"Uh, so if I-I mean...," Reid fingers the strap to his bag from his new position several feet away, clearing his throat once more, "I'm not necessarily agreeing, but if I stay here for now could you at least update me on what's going on?"

Truthfully, there really wasn't much to tell. Garcia traced the victims' credit cards to confirm they had all visited the popular gay club Cobalt just hours before each time of death. Hotch and Rossi went to narrow down the list of bartenders while he and Prentiss had been assigned the task of combing through hours of security cam footage.

Morgan's about halfway through this recap when his cell goes off.

"What do you have for me, Garcia?"

"Well aside from my radiant and infinitely charming personality pouring through your speaker, it appears one of our baddies got caught with his hand in the cookie jar."

Morgan closes his eyes in preparation, voice lowered. "Tell me we don't have another body."

"No. Nobody else was hurt. Surveillance footage showed the same guy, Brian Cabreau, revisiting the scene of each crime in the specific order they were killed."

"Sicko gets off on reliving the events. He has to come back to enjoy the sensation at least one more time."

"Normally, yes, but this guy didn't resist at all when the police found him. He went willingly and didn't say a word."

"So he's either remorseful or so cocky that he thinks we can't pin anything on him."

"I'd bank on the first, angelfish. He cried the entire ride back to the police station. Hotch says he should be able to extract a confession from him within the hour. Getting him to rat out baddie number two looks to be a whole different ballgame, unfortunately."

Morgan sighs into the phone. They were so close. With one unsub in custody, there was no telling what the other would do. The common pattern shows when a killer loses his partner, it just speeds up the devolving process that much more. If they didn't catch the second one soon, things were going to get ugly.

"Thanks, baby girl. I'll get there as soon as I can."

Morgan doesn't have Hotch's level of patience. He'll break this guy in half if he has to.

Blindly, he makes for the front door and grips the knob before remembering where he actually is and turns back around.

Reid is still standing in the kitchen with wet hair and wrinkled clothes. He's still gripping the strap of his bag and looks ready to follow Morgan out the door.

There's no time left for arguing. Reid's coat hangs from the rack next to where Morgan's standing and Morgan's ready to toss it to him and call it a day.

But then Reid pulls the bag off his shoulder and lets it dangle heavily at his side. "Catch him by tomorrow," he says, "or I'm coming down there."

Morgan nods and accepts it for what it is.

A challenge.

Ask any of his old friends in Chicago and they'll tell of all the things young Derek Morgan did, of all the things young Derek Morgan said, solely because he was dared to. Eat that cockroach. Do a backflip off of that wall. Go make that nerdy kid with the glasses cry.

He threw up the cockroach.

The backflip earned him a mild concussion.

And for the record, the nerdy kid didn't cry. Not that day and not the day after either.

Morgan never turned down a dare, but his success rate was a little sketchy.

Morgan knows this, and that's why it's unsurprising to him when his latest tangle with an unsub gets rather...messy.

Reid, on the other hand, did not grow up with Morgan and is thus unfamiliar with his back history.

So when he shows up on Reid's front steps for the third time, injured and soaked to the bone with rain, Morgan isn't quite prepared to be sized up and then roughly tugged in by the wrist. He's barely clear of the door before it's slammed shut behind him.

Reid wastes no time. "What did you do?"

The coldness finally catches up, causing Morgan to involuntarily shiver, but he's quick to turn it into more of a shrug, ignoring the way Reid's wide eyes flit up and down between his arm and his face. "You told me to get him, so I got him. With about..." he uses his good arm to angle his watch upward, "an hour to spare."

"You were shot!"

"It grazed me," is Morgan's correction. He angles his elbow out to glance down at his bicep. The tape along the bottom is warped with rain, losing nearly all of its adhesiveness and the gauze is starting to curl upward.

"You were shot!" Reid says again, because apparently he didn't think Morgan heard him correctly the first time. "And you walked here!"

"Yeah," Morgan affirms, his tone clipped. He doesn't bother asking where Reid keeps his tape since he knows he won't get an appropriate answer. Instead he slips past Reid and heads into the kitchen to start pulling open drawers. Profiling be damned.

He hears Reid shuffle in behind him. "Eighty-three percent of on-the-job FBI deaths are a direct result of gunshot wounds. Sixty percent of those agents were documented as having been shot, or in your words 'grazed', by bullets on at least one other prior occasion."

Morgan clenches his teeth, but doesn't stop sifting.

The more Reid talks, the more his arm throbs. The more his arm throbs, the more Morgan regrets coming here in the first place. For all of the interest Reid showed for the case yesterday, he sure didn't seem too concerned with how they tracked the second killer down.

Morgan moves on to another drawer, one filled with pens and what appears to be old Halloween candy. "I think you're missing the overall picture here. A couple of stitches, Reid, that's all it is. I'm willing to sacrifice a few drops of blood if it means a murderer is being put away."

And it completely makes sense in Morgan's head, but it only seems to rile Reid up further.

"No, you can't just shrug it off because you're Mr. Tough Guy, Morgan, that's how you wind up part of the statistic! You...you always do this! You always act first and think later! Just like that time with the ambulance! You're always too busy acting like this-this macho, cocky guy, and in the end it's just going to get you killed!"

Reid's right at his back now, and Morgan thinks he took it well when hearing this same speech from Hotch and Rossi and Prentiss back at the hospital. He'd nodded and admitted that, yeah, maybe he should have just waited a little longer to rush in, because it was obviously not the right course of action to take.

Morgan took the lecture in stride three times, but something about the fourth-something about Reid being the one throwing all his faults out there-has his blood boiling in a matter of seconds.

The drawer is slammed shut and the muffled sound of rattling pens fills the kitchen.

He turns on Reid in one fluid motion. "Hey, I got the guy! The same one you've seen them talk about on the news! The one who caught his son putting on makeup when he was four and then brainwashed him into thinking he didn't have a right to be who he was! This sick son of a bitch was mutilating the dead and forcing his son to watch, to become a part of it! I made sure he would never have the opportunity to do these things again. Why isn't that good enough for you?"

But Reid isn't backing down, even if Morgan has effectively backed him against the counter. "It's not good enough because the first seminar after joining the FBI dedicates three full hours to going over the most important process for any field agent facing a life-endangering situation! Morgan, the first thing to do when facing an armed threat is to-"

"To secure the scene! You think I don't know that? You think I don't-" Morgan cuts himself off, teeth clamping down on the inside of his lip, eyes level with Reid's. "You know what? Don't even make this about me when it's really about you. You wanna talk about securing the scene? Okay, let's talk about how you failed to do that a couple of weeks ago! Look at you! Look at where you are now because of what you did! Look at what you went through! All because you rushed in without thinking!"

Morgan waits for Reid's eyes to widen. He waits for him to realize that for all of his stats and genius, for all of his eidetic memory and PHDs-through it all Reid's just as guilty as he is.

Breaking the rules is something every agent did. It's the last thing they'll admit to and the first they'll point out in others.

Morgan's admitted his guilt three times over, now it's time for Reid to do the same.

But Reid doesn't. His posture doesn't slump in self-reflection, it straightens to challenge Morgan's in height. His eyes don't widen in realization, they narrow with sudden suspicion.

"That's the real reason you've been coming here. To yell at me like I'm-like I'm some sort of child that needs to be scolded for playing too close to the street." When Morgan says nothing in response, Reid crosses his arms over his chest. "That's it, isn't it? That's why everything's always 'kid this' and 'kid that'. Well, I'm not your subordinate! You're not Hotch, Morgan!"

The comparison proves the final nail in the coffin. Morgan launches at Reid, pinning him hard against the counter, and suddenly he's just yelling. "Hotch? Hotch has to look out for the well-being of the team as a whole! He keeps us in line for the sake of each other, and for himself! Because it's his position as Unit Chief that obligates him to do these things! He hasn't sacrificed several hours of his time just to come here and make sure you're still breathing! I have! No one else. Just me."

Just him.

And Morgan doesn't know how Reid can stand there with unwavering conviction. Even in flannel pajamas and boxed in by Morgan's shaky hands at either side of him, even with Morgan's chest bearing down on his folded arms, Reid's mouth remains the same thin line.

It's all the same. Just like that day at the park when he was eleven. Except he'd shoved the nerdy kid with glasses up against a tree instead. Make him cry, they'd said. He'd been trying for two days. Words weren't working. No matter what he said, the kid would always return it with a bored stare, as if he only saw Morgan as a mild form of entertainment. Morgan remembered shouting himself hoarse, throwing every insult he could, trying to goad a reaction. Anything. Anything at all.

And then...

And then Morgan's tongue is in Reid's mouth and he doesn't know how it happened exactly, or why, just that he'd wanted those lips to loosen.

Except they're loose now, more than they've probably ever been, and Morgan still doesn't pull back. He presses forward even more, until the granite countertop squeals beneath their combined weight and Reid's hands come out to grip him hard by the upper arms.

The pain in his bicep is nearly overwhelming, and Morgan thinks this is about the time the nerdy kid pushed him away and ran for it.

Reid doesn't push him away. He meets Morgan's tongue, sliding against it, along it, past it, everywhere. He jams a leg between Morgan's, and brings his hips forward while the rest of him falls back.

It's so fast and so much that Morgan's head spins and it takes him nearly ten seconds to realize Reid's mouth is gone, that he's leaning back on his elbows staring up at him with big eyes and kiss-red lips. He licks them and Morgan feels a sharp tingle pull at his groin.

"You know," and Reid has to clear his throat because it's up an octave higher than usual, "you know there are also seminars which advise against any type of fraternization between FBI agents. We just-uh, we just had one last month, if you recall."

"Mhm." Morgan does recall. And he's used that excuse on himself plenty of times in an attempt to reel in his hormones and keep pleasure far far away from business. But now that Reid's under him, now that he can run his lips over Reid's jaw and down his neck like he's doing now-

Now that he's heard Reid make that low sound from the back of his throat, there's just no going back.

"Just...just-ah!" Morgan's goatee leaves a trail of red irritation in its wake, but Reid leans into it anyway. "Trying to give you an easy out."

Morgan pulls back far enough to look Reid in the eye. He doesn't grin and he doesn't conjure up a sleazeball line. He just pivots his hips forward, dragging denim tortuously along the tented front of Reid's pajamas. "I'm not going anywhere."

That turns out to be a flat-out lie because Morgan finds himself somewhere else entirely just seconds later: Reid's room.

Anthologies and printed stacks of police journals wind up in a pile on the floor, along with Reid's laptop and a number of other things previously found atop Reid's bed.

Morgan presses his bare torso all along Reid's equally naked back, thrusting. Just thrusting, not caring. Not analyzing when he decided he wanted this or how exactly Reid fell into the equation. Just feeling.

He feels his knees being swallowed up by the mattress. He feels his cock straining hard against the front of his jeans. And he feels Reid's through flannel pants, a steel rod surging up and out from under his body.

Morgan palms the outline from base to tip, stenciling the fabric to feel even more, stretching it tight, feeling the wetness ooze through. He rubs a finger through it.

There's so much. It smears down his hand.

Their hips meet repeatedly, and Reid howls into his pillow, hand coming up to press Morgan's harder between his legs. He squeezes it, and together they stroke. Once. Twice. And then Reid tugs him away.

All of Morgan's weight shifts to his bad arm, tangled in the blankets next to Reid's head. It trembles violently, but the pain is so distant, eclipsed by the shower of sparks pulling Morgan's stomach taut.

When Reid works his pants halfway down his legs, Morgan's next breath stalls and he buries his face in the valley of Reid's spine. The nightlight to the left flickers briefly, disturbing the darkness around them just as a hand tugs his own back into place, over sticky, uncovered flesh.

Wet heat floods the inside of Morgan's zipper, and Reid grinds back against him like he knows. Morgan groans out a swear, immediately answered by Reid's breathy yeah.

Morgan's hands never fumble during sex, but he's not sure what else to call his desperate tuggingpullingyanking of his belt because Reid's body is so hot and he just wants. Wants everything. All at once.

His jeans barely make it around his thighs before his cock slips out, already protruding through the slit of his boxers. It's good enough. Better than good enough. Morgan doesn't move forward, he pulls Reid back. And suddenly they're naked and pressed together. His cock glides between Reid's cheeks in a slippery catalyst of ohfuckohfuck.

"Jesus Christ," comes Reid's whispered assertion.

This is where the religious man in Morgan would stop. This is where he'd reassess. This is where he'd take offense.

Morgan normally does all of these things, but tonight he presses closer, thrusts harder, and silently urges Reid to say it again. And again. And again.

Reid doesn't, but his periodic grunts escalate into sounds that are longer. Louder.

Morgan watches one of Reid's arms raise up to pull the sweaty hair from the back of his neck. Light shimmers off the glass plate of his watch. It's past midnight and Morgan thinks normally he'd be curled up in bed next to Clooney right now. Instead he's in bed with Reid.

God, he's in bed with Reid.

He can't control it. Low in his gut everything twists impossibly tight. Morgan's head tilts back, mouth wrenched open, the sound building in his chest but not surfacing. Everything clenches. Everything strains. And then everything rushes out at once.

The last thing he sees are Reid's hand-drawn star charts lining the ceiling. After that, his eyes fall shut and every vowel in the English language punches past his lips. He comes, hot and heavy on Reid's back, in thick spurts that he should rightfully feel guilty for.

He doesn't.

Reid finishes himself off several seconds later. He's quieter than Morgan, his entire body vibrating with stuttered curses and ending in a pronounced groan that sends a residual shudder down Morgan's cock.

They lay side by side in silence afterward, calming their heart rates and drying the sweat on their skin. Morgan's pants are rezipped and Reid's waistband has been tugged back into its rightful place. The nightlight still flickers and casts awkward shadows around the room.

For the second time Morgan feels his eyes slowly drift shut while gazing up at a sketched version of Orion's Belt. The pulsing in his arm stings badly. If he had to guess, he'd say at least one of the stitches had ripped, but it's still not enough to encourage him to move.

He doesn't have to look to know Reid's hands are folded over his stomach, his thumbs ticking against each other in thought. "Hey, Morgan..." he pauses, deliberates, "Derek, I-"

"Hey, don't make it a big deal," Morgan says, though he's smiling. "Just rest that big brain of yours for once."

Morgan also knows Reid well enough to know Reid's brain never rests, but he takes the hint and says nothing further.

Their next case sees Reid back in the thick of things, and they actually catch the unsub early on.

Morgan hears about three double-blind studies on three different topics. He hears about what percentage of the population drives white sedans, and the subsequent breakdown between age, gender, and race. And then there's also the typical Star Wars reference thrown in there.

Things are back to normal, or at least as normal as they'll ever be, and it's this feeling of contentment that motivates Morgan into tugging Reid's legs across his lap during the jet ride back. Because he's not doing a very good job of sleeping when he's scrunched up in the seat next to him, flopping around every five minutes in search of a comfortable position.

Naturally, Reid protests, saying it's not necessary, but Morgan's arms tighten where they lay across his shins.

"I just had these dry-cleaned," Morgan says, gesturing at his pants, to where Reid's shoes previously pushed up against them. Of course it's a lie, but, "Trust me, it's better this way." He glances around first, just to make sure...then lowers his voice, leans a little closer. "Go to sleep, Spencer."

Reid's nostrils flare and his scarf clashes horribly with the sudden coloring of his face. His eyes stay on Morgan, who leans back in his own seat, headphones on.

And he does go to sleep, eventually.

"There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances." -Leon Trotsky

Thank you to anyone who reads! Please let me know if I missed any spelling/grammar/etc mistakes because it's my first time posting on this site and the formatting sort of ran some words together here and there. It would be very much appreciated! Happy holidays, everyone!