Agents with Kids (Spencer Reid x reader)

Part 32

The race is on to figure out where Chad Brown is. Garcia is typing as fast as humanly possible to find his address while you hover in her doorway trying to dry your tears.

"My love, I know we are living through a nightmare right now, but it ain't over til its over. I need you to talk to the Fort Detrick team."

You nod, before realizing she isn't watching you. Her eyes don't even leave the screen. It's oddly comforting to see her in her hyper-focused mode.

You need to speak up. You need to be present. You need to be that focused on the case.

"You got it." It comes out shaky, but at least it comes out.

You count your steps on the way to the conference room where most of the Detrick staff has set up. You know that what happens in the field depends on the rest of the team- on those in the field and Garcia. It still doesn't feel right to walk away. Halfway to the conference room, you have to start counting again. You'd lost focus.

This time, General Whitworth drops whatever he's doing when he sees you. His whole team stops to listen.

"We have identified the unsub as a student from the University of Michigan that consulted with Doctor Lawerence Nichols after his departure from Fort Detrick." With dozens of eyes blinking back at you, it occurs to you that many of these people knew Nichols. Some probably worked alongside them for years. This isn't usually your part...announcing deaths. "We have agents on scene at Nichols home. They believe he died two to three days ago and we are treating his dead as suspicious."

The room is still for a beat.

Then every person in the room starts speaking. Half of them speak amongst each other and the other half are barking questions at you.

Your shaking voice won't cut it. You try to breathe in with your diaphragm and put on your best "FBI agent" voice.

"The BAU needs any material you have on "Chad Brown". If he visited on a high school trip, contacted a lab member, or submitted an application, we need to know." There. All done.

You don't stick around for questions to start again. There's so much emotion and chaos in the room as they process the death of Nichols and snap back into work mode. The BAU has plenty of emotional devastation to chew on right now of its own.

The walk back to Garcia's office was grim, but she gave you a smile a mile wide when you opened the door. She smacked a key with one perfectly manicured finger, muting herself.

"Reid found the cure."

Your chest is just as tight with nervousness as before, but now you're lunging at Garcia.

"Patch me in! Patch me in, Garcia!" Your hands shake as you grab at her sweater, begging. She stares back at you with wide eyes and you hear her smack two keys. Unmuted and on speaker, Morgan's voice rings through.

"Yeah, they're hosing him down now. All right. They're checking out brown's house." He must be on the phone with JJ after briefing Hotch, Rossi, and Prentiss.

It's muffled by distance, but you hear him. "Go help hotch." Your heart squeezes a little tighter at the sound of Reid's voice. You hang on their every word.

"Hotch has plenty of people helping him. He needs you more than I do. Reid, I'm gonna see you off to the hospital."

"I'm about to get naked so they can scrub me down. Is that something you really want to see?" Reid snarks in that way of his that almost sounds sincere.

"I'll check on you later-"

You're interrupting before you can stop to think. Normally, you always trust your team's judgement, but today you're practically shouting "Derek Morgan, you had better stay with him until his ass is in a hospital bed, I swear to-"

Morgan and Garcia begin soothing you in near unison.

"Alright, baby, I'll stay!"

"Oh honey, Morgan won't let anything happen to him"

"-I am turning around though." Morgan huffs. You think you can hear more protesting from Reid, but you tune it out as you take your first deep breathes in a while. He's alive, he's dying, but he's still alive. That's good. That's fine.

You take the chance to float on good news for a while and head back to the Detrick group. They still look rattled. Impressively, they've already found a number of applications from Brown. You leafed through them in the doorway.

All rejected.

You give a curt nod to those in the room and turn to leave. You make it a step out of the office before you nearly get knocked on your ass.

"Oh god- Are you?- Oh my god-" Anderson's familiar awkward panicking is instantly recognizable. Luckily, he'd grabbed your upper arms when he'd crashed into you, so you didn't have to die of embarrassment in front of the Detrick people.

"I'm fine, Anderson." You give him a reassuring smile. He doesn't look any calmer. Instead, he starts scrambling to reorganize the papers in his hands.

"Dr. Nichols wrote a-" He starts to announce to you. Now it's your turn to grab his arms as you try to discreetly drag him out.

You feel bad for shushing him, but he'd rushed into a situation far tenser than he knew.

"Nichols is dead. Those people are grieving and they really don't like anything that implies their man was involved." You try to give him the cliffnotes.

"Oh. Oh-I didn't know-" You raise your eyebrows and he gets the hint. "He wrote a classified study commissioned by the senate. It simulated a mock anthrax attack on the D.C. train systems. Now, he emphasized the main line--the red line-- as most vulnerable to an attack."

You scan the papers he thrust towards you. "Does Hotch know?"

"Not yet, I thought the general could get them to him-"

"Anything he can do, Garcia can do faster. I'll get them to her." You start to take off, before remembering to call over your shoulder "Good work, Anderson!". You can't see him well, but you catch a glimpse of his nervous smile.

As you had suspected Garcia was spectacular at distributing the information. From the faxed report that Anderson had handed out, she throws together a diagram of the train system vulnerabilities and has the entire team on call as she flips through the pages and rattles off a summary to them.

She's spectacular in her delivery. In another life, she's probably a beloved debate teacher. Like the "Dead Poets Society" but with more facts and more pink.

The team starts to profile and decide if the unsub really will attack the mainline.

Morgan's cuts in.

"Reid's in trouble. He got way sicker on the way to the hospital. He's in respiratory distress."

Hotch immediately takes control. "Listen, he's with the people who can help him the most. I need everybody's head here right now."

But you're not experienced at this part. You're not a profiler. You swing by your desk and get your phone and your keys.

Flipping through speed dial, you find what you're looking for.

"Hey, Morgan. Listen- go help Hotch. I'm on my way to the hospital, I'll stay with him." You end the call before he can convince you not to and get in the elevator.

A/n: What is there to say other than straight up my b for not writing during the semester. Life is always crazy but its definitely extra crazy this year. On the bright side, I saved my GPA this semester and my nephew was born just a couple of hours ago, so it wasn't all bad. ty for sticking around. Next ch will be out on 1/2/21