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Sometimes Derek thinks he has a sixth sense, and that it relates entirely to Spencer being in some kind of danger.
Which is why, the second he watches the man run into that building, his stomach clenches.
He immediately runs after, fully intending to grab him, pull him back, but he's too late.
Spencer slams the door in his face, and he's stood staring, almost pleading for him to open the door again.
“Morgan, get- get back! Get back! Get out of here!”
“What are you doing? What's wrong?” Baby, let me in, please.
He shakes his head, eyes wide and sad.“Believe me, get back.”
“Reid, open the door!” Why won't you let me in?
“I'm- I'm sorry.” He sighs. “There's white powder everywhere.”
Oh God.
No.
This can't be happening, he can't have been-
Anthrax.
Spencer's been exposed.
He's been infected.
Fuck.
***
He's talking to Hotch as soon as he can. He wants to talk to Spencer, try and reassure him, but he knows that no matter what he says, Spencer knows the truth. He knows what he's facing, and nothing Derek can say will help that.
“Morgan, how's Reid?”
“There's white powder in the room and the air was blasting.” He's trying not to pace, trying to keep his cool and failing miserably. Someone says something about a decon team, but he's not listening. “I should have been right there with him.”
He should be in there, and Spencer shouldn't.
“Morgan, there's no time for second guessing.” The words are harsh, but when Derek looks at him, half-ready to hit him, he sees the sympathy in the other man's eyes. “What do we know?”
He sighs. “Nichols is dead. Blunt force trauma to his head. Reid thinks he's been dead two or three days.”
Whitworth nods. “Well, then he couldn't have been responsible for the attack.”
Derek turns to Hotch again, hardly hearing the other man. “Reid took cipro today, so he's gotta be okay, right?”
His boss shrugs. “I don't know. It was precautionary.”
Precautionary.
Because this wasn't meant to happen.
None of this was meant to happen.
Whitworth decides to contribute to the conversation again. “It's not helping patients at the hospital.”
He can't hit him. He can't. “Yeah, but they didn't take it until after they were exposed. Reid took it before.”
“Yeah, but we've never tested this strain on a cipro-ready subject. We just don't know.” At that moment Hotch's phone rings.
“Reid.” He puts it onto speaker.
“Hotch, I really messed up this time.”
Derek goes to speak, but Hotch puts his hand up. Wait.
“Reid, we need to get you out and to the hospital.”
“No. I'm staying right here.”
The hell does he think he's doing? “No, you're not, Reid.”
“I'm already exposed. It's not gonna do me any good to stop working the case.”
Whitworth nods. “He's already infected. Now, if Nichols created the strain, he may have also created the cure.”
“My best chance is to stay here, see if there's a cure, try to figure out who killed Doctor Nichols.”
He looks at Hotch again, pleading. “Come on, Hotch, say something to him.” Don't let him do this. Don't let him try and sacrifice himself again.
“He's right. His best chance is inside." Hotch takes a look at Derek and flinches, just the tiniest amount, before talking to Spencer again. "We're gonna get a suit and mask into you right away.”
“Don't bother. It's not gonna do me any good. I'm already infected.”
“We'll do whatever we can, Reid.”
“I know.” A pause. “Can you pass the phone over to Morgan for a moment, please?”
Hotch nods, and walks away, talking to Whitworth about next steps.
“Baby.”
“Derek, I'm so-”
“Hey, hey, baby boy, don't go apologizing. I'm not mad, I'm worried. And I'm sorry I'm not in there with you.”
The voice on the other end of the phone laughs, a little wetly. “I'm really glad you're not. But I need you to stop worrying about me, and work out how to stop this happening to anyone else.”
“No promises that I won't stop worrying - I always worry about you. But I'll do my best.” He drops his voice, because this part is for Spencer's ears only. “I love you. Come back to me safe, yeah?”
“I love you, too. And I'll try.”
“Thank you, baby. Now go use that brain of yours to save yourself for once, yeah?”
“Y-yeah. I will. Talk to you later.”
The line goes dead, and with it so does Derek's heart.
***
When he calls again, he's on with Penelope as well.
His baby girl, and his baby boy.
His heart falls into his feet when the first thing he hears is coughing. “Hello.”
“How's it going in there, kid?”
“I've seen better days.”
“Well, you got me and Garcia.”
“Hey, Reid.” She already sounds like she's close to tears. The two people he loves the most in the world apart from his blood family, and he can't comfort either of them.
It's a sick fucking joke.
Reid coughs again, harder this time, and he has to stamp down on the panic, hard. “Reid, stick with me. Listen, Prentiss and Rossi don't think the partner was a coworker. Can you tell us anything else about him?”
“I…I've already been through everything.
“Come on, now, kid, I know you're not thinking straight, but the Spencer I know wouldn't stop looking.” He sounds harsh, even to himself, but everyone on this call knows that all it means is he's worried.
“All right, all right.” He clears his throat. ‘I see a, uh, a framed photograph of Dr. Nichols teaching. I see a... I see a binder with syllabi. Course assignments going all the way back to the 1970s."
“All right. So he kept a scrapbook of himself as a professor. That tells us that he values himself as an educator.”
“A teacher. I saw something earlier. I didn't- I didn't make a connection to it or to the partner, but he has a study on anthrax. He has an annotated bibliography, table of contents. It's formatted like a thesis and has writing in the margins in red ink, like the way a teacher grades a paper. Now, Nichols wouldn't have let just anyone in here, but he may have opened his lab for educational purposes, as a teacher.”
“So the partner must have appealed to him as a student. Nichols is helping him with his thesis.”
Babygirl hops in. “I- I can look up local PHD students."
“Yeah, check the sciences. Biochemistry, microbiology.” It'll give her brain something to focus on, stop her from breaking down the second they're off the call. He hopes, anyway.
Her voice is stronger with something to do. “Cross-checking with names of former employees or customers with grievances at the bookstore.” There's a pause, and she sounds miserable when she comes back. “Nothing, my doves.”
Then Spencer coughs again, and he's all Derek can think about. “Listen to this. ‘This country is woefully unprepared. Every household should have a two month supply of cipro. Hospitals are in need of bio-safety level four decon wings.’"
It's eerily familiar. “That's verbatim to what we heard from Nichols. The partner's adopted Nichols' views as his own.”
“The chapters are on setting up triage and mobile emergency rooms. I don't think this paper was written by a science student. It's about city preparedness and response.”
“So, Garcia, check with students in the social studies-- public policy, urban planning.”
He can tell she's already on it. “Hot to trot. There's a Chad Brown, school of public policy at UofM. Matches a Chad Brown, former employee at the book front.”
Finally. “That's gotta be him.”
“Totally. He's been in the doctoral program on and off for five years. Nix on a steady job. Was slapped with a restraining order from his former girlfriend and has been arrested and released twice at protest rallies in D.C. I'll tell Hotch.” She hangs up, leaving them on their own again.
“Kid, you did real good. Now get the hell out of there.”
Spencer hardly manages to get a “bye” out between the coughs, and Derek finds himself pleading.
Let him be okay.
God, please, let him be okay.
***
The second Spencer's in decon, he talks to Hotch. “I'm going to the hospital with him.”
“Yeah, you are. You're gonna keep an eye on him and feed back to the rest of us.” He pauses, and looks at him sympathetically. “He's going to be okay, Derek.”
“I hope so.”
And then Hotch really, really looks at him.
“I'll have some paperwork for you both to read and sign when he's fit to come to work again.”
All he does is nod and walk away.
***
“They're checking out Brown's house,” is the first thing Derek says when he sees him again.
Naturally, Spencer's response to seeing his boyfriend is to try and send him elsewhere. “Go help Hotch.”
“Hotch has plenty of people helping him.”
“He needs you more than I do.”
Now that's a lie, and they both know it. It's not even a good attempt.
“Spencer, 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?”
He raises an eyebrow, like it isn't something he sees on a regular basis - just this morning in fact, bathed in weak sunlight and in much less stressful circumstances - and he can see the humor in Spencer's eyes too as he says it.
He knows he's trying to reassure him, and, damn it, it's working.
But he takes the hint. The fewer people looking at him right now, the better “I'll check on you later.” He looks at Kimura. “Take good care of him, please.”
And he walks towards the waiting ambulance.
***
Doctor Kimura looks at him for a moment, before sighing and just waving Derek in. “You can't catch anthrax from other humans, even when they're contagious.” It's awkward for a moment, until Spencer looks at him.
“Derek- what-”
“I'm here.” He takes hold of his hand, trying not to panic about the fact that it's hot. “I'm not leaving you alone.”
He's never known Spencer to have anything but freezing cold hands.
“But I flee...Feel fin. I feel- I fleel fin. I–”
He takes a look at Kimura again, and her eyes say everything that he doesn't want to hear.
“Driver, faster.”
***
At the hospital, he's asked about his relationship to Spencer before they let him sit in with him.
“You're his partner?”
“Yes.” FBI partner, boyfriend, whatever - let them wonder. He doesn't care.
Spencer, being brilliant as he is, managed to find Nichols’ inhaler, and Kimura is testing the contents to see if it's the antidote as Derek sits by Spencer's bedside, both hands wrapped around the pale, hot hand next to him as the ventilator breathes for him.
It's a precaution, they said when he asked why - taking the pressure off of his lungs to give them more time to test things, to find a treatment that works.
And he doesn't know what else to do, so he prays.
It's still a touchy subject for him - the last time he prayed for something, his best friend got shot, and he doesn't dare let himself think about the dozens, hundreds, thousands of times before that when he just prayed for it to stop - but he does it, holding onto Spencer's hand like it's something holy in itself.
Where Penelope is his god-given solace, Spencer is his hard-won truth.
And when Kimura comes in, smiling for the first time all day, he thinks he might have been heard.
***
The hours of waiting for him to wake up are some of the most painful of his later years.
He's there when they wean him off the ventilator.
He's there when they place the nasal cannula and promise him that it's just to support him.
He's the one the doctors speak to about possible long-term issues - lung damage, asthma, chronic fatigue - and he tries to not let himself panic again.
It's only when Kimura comes in and tells him that he should expect Spencer to wake up very soon that he finally relaxes.
“He'll be fine, Agent Morgan. And he's very lucky to have you.”
He watches her leave, before leaning over and brushing some of the hair out of his eyes and pressing a kiss to his forehead.
“C'mon, pretty boy, wake up for me soon, okay?”
He might be imagining it, but he thinks Spencer is smiling when he pulls back.
***
He briefly flutters awake when they come in to do another round of vitals - his blood pressure and heart rate are returning to normal, thankfully - but Derek doesn't leave his side; he does laugh, though, when Spencer's eyes very briefly poke open, take note of the bright fluorescent lights in the room, and immediately squeeze shut with an annoyed grunt.
The waiting does mean, though, that he gets a bit hungry.
And, well, there's a pot of Jell-O just sitting there, staring at him.
It's not Spencer's favorite flavor, which Derek will be sure to stock up on when he's out (because no way is he letting him out of his sight for the next few days) on the lime.
The problem is that after a while, he gets hungry again, and there's another pot of Jell-O brought, and it is lime, which happens to also be Derek's favorite…
So, naturally, the exact moment Spencer wakes up is when he's taking his second spoonful.
“You're eating Jell-O?”
His voice is a little weak, his throat obviously sore, but Derek thinks it's the most beautiful thing he's ever heard.
“Hmm. Hey, kid.” That's when Kimura comes back, and Derek's sure he sounds like a kid on Christmas when he smiles at her. “Hey, doc. Look who's back.”
“Is there any more Jell-O?” He goes to move, to try and pull himself a bit more upright, but Derek puts down the cup and holds his shoulders, moving him so he doesn't jar anything, just as Kimura goes to stop him from moving as well.
“Hey. Not so fast.”
“What happened?” Derek can tell that he's going to have to explain everything the doctors said and did around him over the next few hours.
But right now, all he can feel is pure relief. “You're gonna be all right, kid. And we got Brown. It's over.”
“How's Abby?” Of course. He cares more about her than himself right now.
That's what his boyfriend is like - putting everyone else before himself.
He's going to have to break him of that habit.
Kimura smiles. “She's on the mend. So are the three others. You were right about where to look for his cure.”
“Why was Doctor Nichols making anthrax in the first place?”
Derek smirks, unhappily. “He was a brain scientist downgraded to working on the flu. Brown comes along asking for help on his thesis…”
“Would have been more than happy to share his knowledge.”
“There was no indication that Nichols had any idea what Brown was planning.”
“His strain and its cure are getting locked up in containment at Fort Detrick, with all the other bio-agents people don't know about.”
“Hmm. Really. What else do they have locked up in there?”
Kimura smiles. “I promise you, you really don't want to know.”
Spencer coughs, and Derek turns to him immediately, fully prepared to fuss. “Anthrax, of course, botulism, the plague, a variety of hemorrhagic fever viruses, Hanta virus, and a few natural poisons, to name some of them.” He looks at Derek, and smiles softly. “I just need some water, I'm fine, promise.” He pats Derek's hand with the one that doesn't have the cannula in, before lying back down a moment. “Thanks, Linda.”
“Couldn't have done it without you, Spencer.” She looks between them, and smiles. “I'll leave you both to it.”
She walks away, and Derek very gently rests his hand against Spencer's jaw, noting the way he curls into it. “I'm just glad you're going to be alright.”
“Well, studies on the victims of the Amerithrax attacks suggested-”
Derek kisses him on the mouth quickly, mostly to shut him up, but also because he can and he needs to. “No. No statistics right now. You'll be alright. I'm gonna make sure you are.”
Spencer pouts, but gives in. “Fine. Can you start by getting me some more Jell-O, since you've clearly eaten it?”
“Anything for you, baby boy.”
With that, he presses another kiss on his forehead, and goes off to find a nurse, totally oblivious of the bright red blush and stupid smile that he leaves on Spencer's face.