Chapter Text
"Babygirl," Derek Morgan shakes his head in mock dismay. "Tell me you aren't listening to that?" He's leaning back precariously far in his chair, tapping a pen playfully against his own knuckles.
The affronted expression on Penelope's face is not mock . She yanks her outstretched arm back to her chest, the music playing through the small Bluetooth speaker temporarily muted against her bosom. "Take that back."
Derek lets out a playfully exasperated sound, springing back to a normal sitting position. "I can't even understand it, Mama."
"You don't speak Korean?" Spencer Reid intones from the desk in front of Morgan's, his chair spinning around to face the duo. He's wearing a signature gingham button up, along with a humorously smug expression.
"Why would I speak Korean?" Morgan questions both geniuses dubiously.
Garcia's arm has unfurled from her midsection, allowing the lively music to continue to pulse through the pill shaped speaker in her hand.
"70 million people worldwide speak Korean." Reid's head bobs ever so slightly to the tempo of Garcia's newest craze; a popular K-Pop band that she's determined to convert Morgan to.
"Penelope, you don't even speak Korean."
She sends him a radiant smile. "I don't need to, sweetness. I can feel the lyrics." She allows herself to sway, the fuschia dress she's melted herself into twirling soundlessly around her knees.
" Call me pretty and nasty," Reid translates in synchronization to the boppy song, his eyebrows furrowing together as he listens closely. " Cause we are going to get in my love. You can bet it on black."
Morgan's own eyebrows have risen halfway to heaven, his eyes wide. "Well."
Emily's head appears around Garcia's standing form, her black turtleneck a startling contrast to Garcia's bright attire. "Never thought I'd hear Dr. Reid request to be called nasty. " There's a playful lilt to her lips.
"The lyrics don't make a lot of sense," he offers, shooting Garcia an apologetic smile. "Still, uh, a good song."
Derek chuckles, running a hand across his smooth scalp. "Who's this band, again?"
Garcia turns her smoking gaze back to him, indignation still flaring in her nostrils. " Blackpink. They're amazing, Derek Morgan, and I will take no sass."
Emily has abandoned her work, leaving her files and desk behind to join the current conversation. She plops down on Reid's desk, only barely allowing him time to shift his own files aside. "Should have known. K-Pop bands are the new boy bands."
She clicks her lips in Garcia's direction, a comfortable smile playing across them.
"If you want amazing," Morgan argues, nonplussed, "You guys need to check out Nas." He's begun to recline again, absentmindedly, his back angled.
Penelope groans aloud. "Expand your horizons, chocolate thunder!"
He holds up both hands, palm towards her. "Horizons expanded. I just don't think they hold a candle to Nas. The man's a lyrical genius."
Reid is distractedly nodding, his ears still half tuned to the speaker continuing to jut out jaunty tunes in Garcia's grasp. "I agree with Morgan. Especially in regards to the way he weaves the fluidity of metaphor in and out of his songs."
Garcia scoffs, sending a dirty look Reid's way. "Geniuses are supposed to stick together, you know."
"What about you, Prentiss?" Morgan cocks his head in her direction. "You spend your free time listening to jazz? Or Funk?"
She breathes out a laugh, coy. "Free time? What free time?"
"JJ likes Rage Against The Machine," Reid supplies, his gaze darting up to her closed office door. She remains inside, shifting through endless reports and pleas for help.
"Hotch is a sucker for the Beatles." Emily shrugs her shoulders.
"Rap?" Morgan continues, throwing the questions Emily's way."Folk? Dubstep? " His eyes rise humoredly with the last option.
"I'm all over the place," she finally allows, pulling her legs in to sit cross legged on the edge of the desk. "But not dubstep."
Derek chuckles. "Alright. Give us one."
Emily deliberates, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling before circling back to him. "Siouxsie & the Banshees."
"Who?" Reid's gaze flicks from hers over to Garcia, who lets out an appreciative gasp.
"Of course. Our little goth."
"It was a tragic, tragic time for Emily Prentiss." She clicks her teeth, casting a look to Penelope. "It successfully pissed off my mother, though."
"I like 'em." Morgan shrugs, his shoulders loose.
"How about you, Reid?" Emily pulls her leg out from under, allowing her to companionably kick his. "What do you listen to in all your free time?"
"The classics are good." It takes him no time to deliberate. "Bach, Mozart. They're all good."
"Booooring," Garcia draws out. "We need to expand your horizons, Boy Wonder."
Reid frowns, his lips pulling together in that way that means he's feeling ridiculously ostracized. "Classic music is not boring."
"It's certainly not Gaga!" Garcia argues.
"Opera," he adds hopefully. "I enjoy the opera as well."
Garcia merely scowls. "That's it. You have homework."
Indignation flashes across his face, as well as a rare kind of competitiveness. "Homework?"
She nods. "All the pop icons. Starting with Michael Jackson and Prince, working your way up to Beyonce and Rihanna."
Reid opens his mouth to presumably argue, his entire spiel cut off by the sound of Hotch's office door opening.
His usual somber expression is even more morose than usual, and he immediately finds Morgan's eyes across the bullpen. "John Harlow wants to talk."
*****
"Why now?" Derek asks, his good natured expression now darkened by distrust. "He's been incarcerated for years now."
"Four years, sixty-two days," Reid contributes.
Hotch's frown deepens, and he thumbs his chin thoughtfully. "Apparently, he's decided to share his story."
Hotch has made his way directly to Morgan's desk, in lieu of pulling the team into the conference room. It's a silent answer to Morgan's unspoken question; What does this have to do with him?
"Why now?" Morgan repeats, still slanting back in his chair.
"Who's John Harlow?" Emily's gaze travels across all of their faces, landing on Reid's.
"He wouldn't talk then," Morgan practically sneers, his voice betraying more emotion then he meant to let through. He can feel Hotch's appraising eyes traveling over him, and he hates it.
"John Harlow was a cult leader who the BAU apprehended before you arrived," Reid tells her. "He manipulated his followers into killing for him. They managed to murder fourteen people before the BAU was able to pinpoint the killings to the members of Harlow's cult-"
"Called themselves Agents of Peace," Hotch interrupts, his voice gruff with gravitas.
"Like Charles Manson?" Emily questions skeptically.
"Similar," Reid allows, nodding his head. His hands wordlessly tapping along to his voice. "Unlike the Manson family, though, none of Harlow's followers survived. Most of them committed suicide before we could apprehend them. The two we did catch managed to hang themselves in prison before being tried."
"Damn." Emily shakes her head, raven locks twirling.
Morgan swallows thickly. "One of the last things they did, really what led us to them, was the kidnapping of a young kid. Emmalee Duncan."
The name burns his throat the same way it did four years, sixty-two days ago. The same sorrow lingers in his chest, intensified by the years.
"Did you find her?" Emily asks, her voice soft in a way that means she already knows the answer.
"No." Reid frowns in Morgan's direction, though he quickly tries to hide it. Morgan catches it regardless. "John Harlow refused to admit where she was, or if she was even still alive."
The lump is back in Morgan's throat, thicker than before. "I tried interviewing him for hours. The bastard was a steel trap. He didn't let anything, and I mean anything, out."
"Even Gideon couldn't get an answer out of him," Reid adds. It seems even years of distance can't dull the hero worship in the genius's voice.
It was a nightmare that Morgan hadn't suffered in awhile. Young Emmalee, her dark hair and even darker eyes, trapped in some dark place starving to death. Dark.
He shivered, hiding it quickly by rising from his chair. "What's he want, Hotch?"
Hotch sighs. "He's requested you, Morgan. Apparently, he'll only tell his story to the agent that arrested him."
Anger bubbles in Morgan's belly. "He wouldn't talk then. Not when we had a chance to save her. Why should we now?"
Hotch meets his eyes, holding them for a moment before Morgan has to break his gaze away, scoffing.
"To bring closure to her parents," Hotch tells him. "And closure to the parents of every other death that Harlow was responsible for."
Morgan draws in a stuttering breath. "Fine. I'll talk to the bastard."
Hotch nods stiffly, his gaze flicking towards Reid's desk. "Take Reid with you. Consider this a custodial."
Morgan catches Reid's eye, unable to suppress an amused grin as the kid's face breaks out into an excited smile.
"Roadtrip," he announces to Morgan.
"I-" He points his finger in Reid's direction, "Get to pick the music."