InsaneJournal

Title: Letters to Mom.
Characters: Dr. Spencer Reid/Derek Morgan.
Rating: PG, for some kissing and a bit of language.
Summary: "All day long, Reid’s been playing with something, and it’s driving Derek absolutely up the wall."
Word Count: 805
Prompt(s): "congratulations" from my 20_fics tables.
Disclaimer: Reid and Morgan belong to Jeff Davis and CBS, which is to say: not me.
A/N: General spoilers through all of season two.

All day long, Reid’s been playing with something, and it’s driving Derek absolutely up the wall. They’re between cases, for the moment, finally blessed with the time they need to fill out all the paperwork they incurred during all of their other adventures – that’s what Reid’s mom calls them. His “adventures.” It would be easy, Derek thinks, for Reid to find something to write to her on any of their normal days – “Dear Mom, Today we went out to Arizona. There’s been a series of arsons that just turned lethal and we need to investigate it, and, by the way, Gideon keeps beating me at chess. He says that I need to think three moves ahead.”

“Dear Mom, We worked a case with identical twins today. One was kidnapped and this man who worked with their father – he’s a District Attorney, by the way; very important man, and a very difficult one – was obsessively in love with both of them. Can you believe that? I mean, statistically, obsessive love isn’t that uncommon, but can you believe that?”

“Dear Mom, It looks like a set of kids were murdered using Native American war rituals, but it looks sketchy to me. The way they set it up is completely accurate, but it doesn’t look right.”

“Dear Mom, I had to protect a famous actress from a murderous stalker today. Her name is Lila and I think she might like me. We kissed in the pool when she pulled me into it, and I had to exploit that to make her stalker back down; at least I managed it without anyone getting hurt. That was an accomplishment, I think, and it’s rather worth having my picture splashed all over the tabloids. They’re all lies, anyway, because I like her alright, but I’m with Derek.”

What does Reid tell his mom about the two of them, Derek wonders. How can you tell your schizophrenic mother – whom you last saw in the flesh when you had to send men to take her from her nice, safe sanitarium and put her in protective custody; to whom you send letters every day, but whom you institutionalized almost as soon as you turned eighteen – about how, not only are you not going to be having grandchildren any time soon, but you’re in what could be called “an item” with one of your very male coworkers? “Dear Mom, Tonight, Derek tried something new with his fingers and it made me scream.”

Is Reid’s mother even interested in him having grandchildren? …God, who could even tell?

But for all they have together, Reid hasn’t explained a thing about whatever it is he keeps turning around in his fingers. It’s round and it’s red, and that’s all Derek’s been able to see. Through all of the shenanigans – Garcia’s flirting with the whole team; Hotch reminding everyone that they have work to do, and Gideon reminding Hotch to take it easy; JJ running around, bringing in lunch and her sharp humor, collecting everyone’s paperwork along with her own, harassing Reid about that little thing in his hands…

As the day winds down, and still no new cases have come in, Derek gets ready to take Reid out – that’s a rare pleasure, being able to actually take him out – and, with practiced nonchalance, walks over to his boy genius’s desk. “Hey,” he says easily. “You ready?”

Reid’s playing with that thing again, and there’s a brief delay between Derek talking and Reid looking up. “What? …Oh, yeah, let’s get going.”

“Hey, Reid,” Derek asks, indicating it and trying not to show the fact that he’s been looking at this thing all day. “What’s that?”

“It’s nothing, it’s just…” Abruptly, Reid looks down to it again, a bit surprised, and purses his lips. For a moment, Derek’s sure that he did something wrong – God, if he’s upset Reid tonight, he’s not sure what he’ll do – but then Reid looks back to him and smiles, holding up the little red thing. …What’s that written on it? “Ninety days,” Reid says bluntly.

“…What?” …How the Hell did Derek miss that?

“It’s been ninety days,” Reid repeats, anxiously fingering the badge again. “Of sobriety, or, well… since I last used the drugs, I mean. It’s just an NA thing – and an AA thing; actually, all the Twelve-Step groups do this or some variant of it. It’s supposed to be a rite of passage, because, statistically, if an addict makes it to the ninety-day mark, there’s a significantly reduced chance of relapse, so they give out badges for it, and I got mine today, and–”

Derek interrupts Reid’s rambling by leaning down for a kiss, and he thinks he knows how the letter to Mrs. Reid should go today: “Dear Mom, Today I made it to ninety days of sobriety, and Derek subsequently rocked my world.”