Title: Choices and Other Gambles
Author: Sam
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pairing: Reid/Morgan
Rating: FRT - slash, violence
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made.
Summary: We all have choices we have to make.
A/N: Prompted on comment fic - Criminal Minds, Morgan/Reid, choices.

***

Choices. They defined a man, built him up, made him the man he was; the one he was going to become.

It’s what made an awkward geek magician wannabe turn to the FBI to become a profiler. It’s what made that agent follow the string of clues to a small house just outside of L.A., most likely the home of a sociopathic serial killer who liked to kidnap cops from the streets, only to return them to the exact spot the had taken them, broken and bleeding and seconds from death.

It was what made that sociopath a sadist, calling each officer’s partner, telling them where they could find their bodies. So far, none of the responding had been able to save them which was the main reason behind the call.

For Spencer Reid, it’s in what made him become a profiler in the first place. It’s also what allows him to take the bullet meant for Morgan.

It (and the adrenaline) is what allows him to accept the pain and then ignore it, rolling up on his good shoulder, revolver already in hand, target already in sight, bullet already hammered and passing through the barrel, on its way to ending the unsub before Raemond could take aim again. At Hotch. At Rossi. At Prentiss only a few feet away, her aim hampered by a bad angle.

Headshot. The bastard had on Kevlar and was shooting armor piercing bullets. Another choice, for both of them.

Choices. Like blood, they are what define you and make you who you are. Unlike blood, you can chance them; make them; base them on who might have died if you had made another. Chosen another way.

Spencer only now felt the pain, spiking in hot and insistent as Morgan gently took the gun from his other hand - the part of his brain not holding the pain at bay while running through consequence scenarios noticed that it was his left - handing it off to Hotch before pulling Spencer into a hug that somehow managed not to jostle the injured shoulder at all.

They were in the middle of the street, surrounded by local police and FBI, news crews already jogging up to the scene, no doubt with radios and scanners going wild in their vans, trucks and headquarters over a police shooting in downtown L.A., so Spencer just donned a stronger version of his ‘junior FBI geek’ persona and buried his face into the shoulder holding him up.

Later, knowing Morgan - after the hospital and the bandages and the cautions over pain pills and antibiotics - Morgan would bath him and hold him and shake over another near miss and Spencer would sooth him with his good hand running over the older man’s leg, his back resting on the broad chest easing some of the ache a gunshot would produce, even on painkillers.

Choices came to all of them, and getting involved with Morgan wasn’t one Spencer was going to regret. Not here in the quiet darkness of their hotel, not there in the public hustle and bustle of the office, and not on the brittle, sharp-edged streets where unsubs held guns they were in no way loath to use.

It was just who they were.

 

End