Elysium, 19/21
Title: Elysium
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Morgan/Prentiss
Genre: Romance/Angst
Summary: They thought that it was only going to be one night. They were wrong. An unexpected pregnancy leads Emily and Derek to reevaluate their lives.
Author’s Note: This chapter would not be possible without the assistance of the amazing yellowsmurf6 . Give her a round of applause, ladies and gents. Only two chapters left!
Chapter Eighteen
‘So we have an unsub that’s kidnapping his victims once every three weeks and killing them after two,’ Morgan said, staring at the file in front of him. ‘What does he do in the one week gap?’
‘He could be preparing for his next kill,’ suggested JJ.
‘Sure,’ Rossi nodded. ‘One week stalking the victims to make sure he knows the routines - which means he already has another one picked out.’
‘Garcia, what connections do we have between the victims so far?’ Hotch asked, directing his question towards the laptop on the table.
‘Nothing so far, oh mighty one. I am trawling through their lives like a businessman in the red-light district, so unless my mad skills have been compromised, I should be able to find something to link these ladies together.’ Morgan heard a knock over the speakers. The technical analyst’s head jerked away from the screen, looking towards the door. ‘I will be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, my darlings.’
Morgan strained his ears trying to overhear the conversation Garcia seemed to be having, but the connection was not the best. There was something that sounded like…squealing.
Seconds later, Garcia returned, the expression on her face half excited, half terrified. ‘Emily’s in labor,’ she told them, and Morgan felt his heart seize up. His fiancée was about to give birth to their first child, and he was however many thousand feet high in the air flying across the country. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be happening.
His head turned slightly towards Hotch, the Unit Chief’s face as stoic as ever. ‘The one thing I regret more than anything is missing Jack’s birth,’ he said, and Morgan nodded. From Hotch, that was a damn good endorsement.
‘You’ve got this?’ he asked a little uncertainly, his heart racing a thousand beats a minute.
‘We’ve got this,’ confirmed Rossi.
Morgan gave a shaky sigh. They were still three hours out from Seattle; even if he had a direct turnaround, it would be at least nine hours until he made it back to D.C. There was a chance he might miss the birth anyway, but he had to try. In any case, there was no way he was going to miss the aftermath. The job had almost cost them everything already.
At the airport, the rest of the team disembarked, and Morgan was dismayed to find out that the jet had to be refueled. He stepped off with them, clenching his fists. JJ gave him a grimace. ‘Good luck,’ she told him. ‘She’ll say a lot of things that she probably doesn’t mean, and don’t let the screaming bother you either. Everything will be worth it in the end.’
He stepped back onto the jet, his whole body tense. He found the co-pilot - Steve? Sam? - sitting in one of the chairs, nursing a bottle of coke.
‘They don’t like it when I drink on the job,’ he grinned. ‘We were expecting to stay the night in Seattle, but getting you back to see your kid born is way more important.’
Morgan took the seat opposite Steve - it was almost definitely Steve. ‘You have kids?’
Steve nodded. ‘Three of them. All complete terrors. Best thing that ever happened to me. Cheryl wants to be a pilot just like her daddy, and Ricky wants to be a garbage truck driver, and Simon can’t quite talk yet, but he crawls like a madman, so I’m thinking he might end wanting to be a bulldozer.’
Morgan laughed, in spite of himself. It was clear that Steve was trying to keep him distracted from the tension, and on some levels it was working. He couldn’t quite get the thought out of his head that Emily was going through this unspeakable pain alone.
Well, not alone.
There would be doctors and nurses, and maybe Emily’s mother had made it to the hospital, but the main thing was that she was going through it without him.
Steve bid him farewell, and Morgan stared at his phone for a good minute, deciding whether or not he should try and get through to the hospital. It was a no-brainer.
After twenty minutes, he finally made it through, and found himself talking to Ambassador Prentiss, who had, apparently, made it to the hospital.
‘Can I talk to her?’ he asked, and was passed over almost immediately. ‘Hey, girl.’
‘Hey.’ Emily’s voice was shaky, and he could hear the strain from that single word. ‘Baby’s early.’
‘So I hear. I should be there within a few hours. I’m so sorry, Em.’
She gave a protracted whimper. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay. Just please…try to get here.’
‘I will. You try and keep that baby inside of you a little longer.’
‘I don’t think I have the strength to hold on that long.’
‘You are the strongest person I know - you are going to be fine, and our son is going to be fine. I love you so much. Don’t forget that.’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Emily told him. ‘But I think I’m feeling a little hostile towards you right now.’ She gave a short laugh that was trembling, and high, and almost nothing like her regular laugh. ‘You are definitely having the next child. Either that, or I’m asking for better drugs. These really don’t feel like they’re working.’
His heart almost snapped in that moment, and he felt like he would have done anything to somehow cross the country in a manner of seconds just to be by her side. To know that he couldn’t was more frustrating than any difficult case, more frustrating than any narcissistic unsub.
Rather than inflicting any property damage, he let his fist punch down on his leg. ‘I am so sorry, baby.’
‘You know you don’t have to apologize about that.’ She took a breath. ‘Maybe apologize for knocking me up instead. If his size is anything to go by, your son is going to be a hell of a footballer.’
He didn’t bother telling her that size wasn’t everything when it came to football - what she was trying to tell him had absolutely nothing to do with sport.
Steve poked his head into the cabin, making a gesture that told Morgan they were ready to take off. He had been too preoccupied with Emily to pay attention to what was going on around him, but apparently the refueling had finished.
‘I gotta go,’ he told her. ‘The jet’s about to take off.’
‘You commandeered the jet to get back to me? Mr. Morgan, I am impressed.’
‘Emily, I would move mountains to get back to you. I will be there. That is a promise.’ He said his goodbyes, and hung up the phone, leaving him in a silent, empty jet. Remembering Clooney, he sent Frank a brief text message, knowing that there was absolutely no way that he’d be making it home tonight.
Soon, the plane started to vibrate, followed by a persistent whir that told him that they were about to start takeoff.
He had a book in his bag, as well as an iPod full of music, but he didn’t have the patience for either of those activities. Intermittently, he paced the jet and stared at the walls, knowing without a doubt that the five hours he spent in the air would be the longest of his life.
It felt like years later when they finally touched down, and Morgan grabbed his bag and ran, only half surprised to see Agent Anderson waiting for him.
‘Agent Hotchner called ahead,’ Anderson told him. ‘Let’s get you to the hospital.’
Vaguely, Morgan wondered just what percentage of Bureau resources were being spent on getting him to Emily, but he dropped that though almost immediately, far more concerned about the traffic, the speed of the SUV, and every other little thing that was impeding his progress. He tried calling the hospital again, but this time, could not get through.
‘Just hold on, Em,’ he muttered, gripping the handle above the passenger’s side door. ‘I’ll be there soon.’
Anderson shot him a sympathetic look, and stepped on the gas just a little bit harder.
Once they got to the hospital, it took him five minutes to find the maternity ward, and another five to find Emily’s room. He stepped inside, and if he was out of breath from running around the hospital, if he was exhausted from two back-to-back flights, then it was chump change compared to what Emily had been experiencing. Her body was covered in a thin layer of sweat, her hair falling in wet, stringy clumps. Her eyes were closed, and breaths were coming in short, sharp gasps.
‘Emily,’ he breathed, and her eyes snapped open.
‘Derek.’ She broke out into a grin, which faltered quickly, as another contraction ripped through her. ‘This is taking forever,’ she told him, once it had passed, with a pout that was ridiculously endearing. He sat down in the empty chair beside her bed - one he suspected that her mother had provided, and gripped her hand.
‘I’m here now,’ he told her, his gaze deadly serious. ‘I’m not letting go.’ In some ways, he felt older, more responsible, than he had ever been before. It was kind of scary.
If it took a long time for him, it must have felt like eternity for Emily. He’d never witnessed childbirth before, having been in Vegas for Henry’s birth. According to Garcia, JJ’s labor had taken fifteen or so hours, a time span he couldn’t quite comprehend until now.
Seven hours later, the look on Emily’s face was a little less endearing, a little more heartbreaking. There were tears rolling down her cheeks, and she’d moved beyond irrational anger, which terrified him more than anything else.
According to the nurse, it was still a while before anything significant would be happening, so when Emily told him to go outside to get some fresh air, he only argued briefly before complying. Part of him wondered if he was smothering her; if she wanted a little bit of space - something that had been in short supply over recent months. After three years of being apart, it was like making up for lost time.
Noting the voicemail message on his cell, he called Hotch, wondering if there was some kind of profiling insight that the team needed. Truthfully, he was far too tired, far too wrung out to be thinking about profiling.
As it turned out, though, it had nothing to do with profiling. ‘How’s Emily?’ JJ asked, which meant that he was on speakerphone.
He shook his head, knowing that they couldn’t see it. ‘Still going strong, but it’s taking its toll. Does it usually take this long?’ The question was mostly directed towards Reid, who, unsurprisingly, had a ready answer.
‘For women undergoing their first childbirth, approximately two in ten labors will last longer than twenty-four hours.’ Morgan blinked, unsure that he’d heard Reid correctly. Twenty-four hours? That was a whole day.
More than anything, that revelation reinforced the fact that he needed to be back inside ten minutes ago.
‘I’m going to turn my phone off,’ he told them. ‘I’ll give you a call when…when he’s here.’ The words seemed wrong in every way, yet he couldn’t think of another way to describe it. “When it’s over” seemed a little too blasé. After all, this was a day that he was going to remember for the rest of his life. This was the day that the last nine months had led up to. Maybe this was the day that his whole life was leading up to.
It was with a renewed strength that he returned inside, smiling when Emily’s eyes lit up.
‘How’s the case going?’ she asked, no doubt eager to take her mind off the pain.
‘I don’t know,’ he told her honestly. ‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Oh,’ was all she said, gripping his hand once more. It was another hour before things really started to happen, and if it had been moving too slowly before, now it seemed too fast for Morgan to fully take stock of the situation.
He was vaguely aware of his heart pumping away like a jackhammer as they moved Emily to the birthing room. Vaguely aware of the way her hand squeezed his. Each time she screamed, it was as though someone had stabbed him in the heart.
Eventually, though, an entirely different scream pierced the air, and it was the most beautiful sound that Morgan had heard in his entire life. Maybe, in three or four weeks, things would be different, but now, that cry meant that he was a father. He stared down at his son, still covered in what Morgan could best describe as goop.
‘And we have a healthy looking baby boy,’ the nurse announced, and Derek could not even hope to prevent the grin that split his face from ear to ear.
Christopher Matthew Morgan.
His son.
‘Is he okay?’ Emily asked, wincing as she tried to straighten up and see.
‘He’s fine,’ the nurse provided. ‘We’ll just cut the cord, then check baby boy over, and then you can hold your son.’ Emily gave a sound that was half gasp, half laugh, but fully exhausted. Morgan brushed his hand along her cheek, damp with sweat.
‘You did good.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
Morgan watched with curiosity as the nurse cleaned the baby down. Chris’s caramel skin looked soft and wrinkled, his nose and lips and cheeks pudgy. Morgan knew what Reid said about parents finding their own children more appealing than the offspring of others, but goddamn this kid was the cutest thing he had ever seen.
At Emily’s behest, he accompanied the nurse to the attached room, where she weighed Christopher. He seemed small, which worried Morgan at first, especially considering the fact that he was two weeks early, but the nurse pronounced him at a healthy seven and a quarter pounds. She performed a variety of other tests - many of which Morgan was not entirely sure of their function - but in the end, all he really cared was that she pronounced him as healthy.
For Morgan, that was all that mattered. That was all that mattered the first time he took his son into his arms - he was so light, so fragile. He could close his eyes and imagine the boy at preschool, on a swing, playing football. He held his future in his arms, and it was the most amazing thing in the universe.
‘You can feed him now,’ the nurse told Emily, as they returned to the birthing room. ‘It will help with the birth of the placenta.’ It didn’t take a profiler to notice the anxiety lift from Emily’s body, as though she had expected him to run off with her child.
Emily gave a shaky breath as she took the boy into her arms, skin against skin.
‘Wait,’ Morgan said quickly, pulling out his phone. He snapped the very first picture of mother and child together - something that Garcia would no doubt be eager to have printed on a t-shirt.
Emily let her nipple brush against the infant’s cheek, and he quickly suckled onto her breast. Her expression changed quickly. ‘God…this feels weird,’ she breathed, though from her tone of voice, what she meant was “amazingly weird.” She grinned. ‘Somehow it’s not quite the same as when you do it.’ She brushed the dark curls that adorned Chris’s head. ‘You don’t have to watch this,’ she told him. ‘And you definitely don’t have to wait for the afterbirth.’
‘I want to be here,’ he told her.
‘Or,’ she countered. ‘Or, you could go tell my mother that she has a grandson.’
He gave her a mock pout. ‘Are you kicking me out?’
‘No, I’m relieving you of your partnerly burden. You’ve been by my side for the last ten hours - I’ll be fine for ten minutes.’
Morgan conceded defeat. After all, he was itching to call his own mother as well - not to mention the fact that the team’s attention would be distracted until he called them with news. It was all just so goddamn surreal.
He stepped out into the hallway, Ambassador Prentiss standing quickly as he shut the door behind him. All the times he had met Emily’s mother, she had been elegant and dignified - the picture perfect diplomat. Today, she looked like a mother - simultaneous anxious and overjoyed at the events occurring.
‘It’s a boy,’ he told her, even though that was news that had been revealed months previously. ‘Seven and a quarter pounds, with a nice set of lungs on him.’
‘What’s his name?’ Elizabeth asked, with that urgency that seemed unique to grandmothers.
‘Christopher Matthew Morgan.’
He saw her spark of recognition at his son’s middle name, but she said nothing, instead giving a wide smile that seemed almost incongruous with the personality that he knew.
‘They’re still waiting on the afterbirth,’ he told her. ‘But I think they want to move her back to her room pretty quick.’ He held up his phone. ‘I was just gonna go…’
‘Of course,’ the Ambassador nodded, with quickly regained composure.
Outside, it was cold, but there was a warmth in Morgan’s heart that no winter could ever put out. Still, he tugged his coat around himself as he called his mother.
‘Sweetie, is something wrong?’ where the first words Fran spoke, at which point Morgan realized that it was almost a quarter past one. Quarter past midnight in Chicago, but definitely too late to call for some trivial matter.
‘I just wanted to call and say that I have officially given you a grandbaby. So you can quit nagging me.’
Fran immediately set upon asking him a series of questions, ranging from the name, to the height of the nurse that had delivered him. Morgan answered the questions as best he could, but unlike Reid, he did not possess an eidetic memory. Still, he should have known better than to expect that it would have been a short conversation - it was almost twenty minutes later when he hung up, citing his need to get back to Emily, who was almost certainly wondering where he was by now.
There was still one more thing that he had to do, though. Opening the picture of mother and son that he had taken earlier, he added the caption, “Christopher Matthew Morgan, born January 8th, 1:04am,” and sent the message out to five very important people.
They weren’t blood, but they were family.
No matter what.
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Morgan/Prentiss
Genre: Romance/Angst
Summary: They thought that it was only going to be one night. They were wrong. An unexpected pregnancy leads Emily and Derek to reevaluate their lives.
Author’s Note: This chapter would not be possible without the assistance of the amazing yellowsmurf6 . Give her a round of applause, ladies and gents. Only two chapters left!
Chapter Eighteen
‘So we have an unsub that’s kidnapping his victims once every three weeks and killing them after two,’ Morgan said, staring at the file in front of him. ‘What does he do in the one week gap?’
‘He could be preparing for his next kill,’ suggested JJ.
‘Sure,’ Rossi nodded. ‘One week stalking the victims to make sure he knows the routines - which means he already has another one picked out.’
‘Garcia, what connections do we have between the victims so far?’ Hotch asked, directing his question towards the laptop on the table.
‘Nothing so far, oh mighty one. I am trawling through their lives like a businessman in the red-light district, so unless my mad skills have been compromised, I should be able to find something to link these ladies together.’ Morgan heard a knock over the speakers. The technical analyst’s head jerked away from the screen, looking towards the door. ‘I will be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, my darlings.’
Morgan strained his ears trying to overhear the conversation Garcia seemed to be having, but the connection was not the best. There was something that sounded like…squealing.
Seconds later, Garcia returned, the expression on her face half excited, half terrified. ‘Emily’s in labor,’ she told them, and Morgan felt his heart seize up. His fiancée was about to give birth to their first child, and he was however many thousand feet high in the air flying across the country. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be happening.
His head turned slightly towards Hotch, the Unit Chief’s face as stoic as ever. ‘The one thing I regret more than anything is missing Jack’s birth,’ he said, and Morgan nodded. From Hotch, that was a damn good endorsement.
‘You’ve got this?’ he asked a little uncertainly, his heart racing a thousand beats a minute.
‘We’ve got this,’ confirmed Rossi.
Morgan gave a shaky sigh. They were still three hours out from Seattle; even if he had a direct turnaround, it would be at least nine hours until he made it back to D.C. There was a chance he might miss the birth anyway, but he had to try. In any case, there was no way he was going to miss the aftermath. The job had almost cost them everything already.
At the airport, the rest of the team disembarked, and Morgan was dismayed to find out that the jet had to be refueled. He stepped off with them, clenching his fists. JJ gave him a grimace. ‘Good luck,’ she told him. ‘She’ll say a lot of things that she probably doesn’t mean, and don’t let the screaming bother you either. Everything will be worth it in the end.’
He stepped back onto the jet, his whole body tense. He found the co-pilot - Steve? Sam? - sitting in one of the chairs, nursing a bottle of coke.
‘They don’t like it when I drink on the job,’ he grinned. ‘We were expecting to stay the night in Seattle, but getting you back to see your kid born is way more important.’
Morgan took the seat opposite Steve - it was almost definitely Steve. ‘You have kids?’
Steve nodded. ‘Three of them. All complete terrors. Best thing that ever happened to me. Cheryl wants to be a pilot just like her daddy, and Ricky wants to be a garbage truck driver, and Simon can’t quite talk yet, but he crawls like a madman, so I’m thinking he might end wanting to be a bulldozer.’
Morgan laughed, in spite of himself. It was clear that Steve was trying to keep him distracted from the tension, and on some levels it was working. He couldn’t quite get the thought out of his head that Emily was going through this unspeakable pain alone.
Well, not alone.
There would be doctors and nurses, and maybe Emily’s mother had made it to the hospital, but the main thing was that she was going through it without him.
Steve bid him farewell, and Morgan stared at his phone for a good minute, deciding whether or not he should try and get through to the hospital. It was a no-brainer.
After twenty minutes, he finally made it through, and found himself talking to Ambassador Prentiss, who had, apparently, made it to the hospital.
‘Can I talk to her?’ he asked, and was passed over almost immediately. ‘Hey, girl.’
‘Hey.’ Emily’s voice was shaky, and he could hear the strain from that single word. ‘Baby’s early.’
‘So I hear. I should be there within a few hours. I’m so sorry, Em.’
She gave a protracted whimper. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay. Just please…try to get here.’
‘I will. You try and keep that baby inside of you a little longer.’
‘I don’t think I have the strength to hold on that long.’
‘You are the strongest person I know - you are going to be fine, and our son is going to be fine. I love you so much. Don’t forget that.’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Emily told him. ‘But I think I’m feeling a little hostile towards you right now.’ She gave a short laugh that was trembling, and high, and almost nothing like her regular laugh. ‘You are definitely having the next child. Either that, or I’m asking for better drugs. These really don’t feel like they’re working.’
His heart almost snapped in that moment, and he felt like he would have done anything to somehow cross the country in a manner of seconds just to be by her side. To know that he couldn’t was more frustrating than any difficult case, more frustrating than any narcissistic unsub.
Rather than inflicting any property damage, he let his fist punch down on his leg. ‘I am so sorry, baby.’
‘You know you don’t have to apologize about that.’ She took a breath. ‘Maybe apologize for knocking me up instead. If his size is anything to go by, your son is going to be a hell of a footballer.’
He didn’t bother telling her that size wasn’t everything when it came to football - what she was trying to tell him had absolutely nothing to do with sport.
Steve poked his head into the cabin, making a gesture that told Morgan they were ready to take off. He had been too preoccupied with Emily to pay attention to what was going on around him, but apparently the refueling had finished.
‘I gotta go,’ he told her. ‘The jet’s about to take off.’
‘You commandeered the jet to get back to me? Mr. Morgan, I am impressed.’
‘Emily, I would move mountains to get back to you. I will be there. That is a promise.’ He said his goodbyes, and hung up the phone, leaving him in a silent, empty jet. Remembering Clooney, he sent Frank a brief text message, knowing that there was absolutely no way that he’d be making it home tonight.
Soon, the plane started to vibrate, followed by a persistent whir that told him that they were about to start takeoff.
He had a book in his bag, as well as an iPod full of music, but he didn’t have the patience for either of those activities. Intermittently, he paced the jet and stared at the walls, knowing without a doubt that the five hours he spent in the air would be the longest of his life.
It felt like years later when they finally touched down, and Morgan grabbed his bag and ran, only half surprised to see Agent Anderson waiting for him.
‘Agent Hotchner called ahead,’ Anderson told him. ‘Let’s get you to the hospital.’
Vaguely, Morgan wondered just what percentage of Bureau resources were being spent on getting him to Emily, but he dropped that though almost immediately, far more concerned about the traffic, the speed of the SUV, and every other little thing that was impeding his progress. He tried calling the hospital again, but this time, could not get through.
‘Just hold on, Em,’ he muttered, gripping the handle above the passenger’s side door. ‘I’ll be there soon.’
Anderson shot him a sympathetic look, and stepped on the gas just a little bit harder.
Once they got to the hospital, it took him five minutes to find the maternity ward, and another five to find Emily’s room. He stepped inside, and if he was out of breath from running around the hospital, if he was exhausted from two back-to-back flights, then it was chump change compared to what Emily had been experiencing. Her body was covered in a thin layer of sweat, her hair falling in wet, stringy clumps. Her eyes were closed, and breaths were coming in short, sharp gasps.
‘Emily,’ he breathed, and her eyes snapped open.
‘Derek.’ She broke out into a grin, which faltered quickly, as another contraction ripped through her. ‘This is taking forever,’ she told him, once it had passed, with a pout that was ridiculously endearing. He sat down in the empty chair beside her bed - one he suspected that her mother had provided, and gripped her hand.
‘I’m here now,’ he told her, his gaze deadly serious. ‘I’m not letting go.’ In some ways, he felt older, more responsible, than he had ever been before. It was kind of scary.
If it took a long time for him, it must have felt like eternity for Emily. He’d never witnessed childbirth before, having been in Vegas for Henry’s birth. According to Garcia, JJ’s labor had taken fifteen or so hours, a time span he couldn’t quite comprehend until now.
Seven hours later, the look on Emily’s face was a little less endearing, a little more heartbreaking. There were tears rolling down her cheeks, and she’d moved beyond irrational anger, which terrified him more than anything else.
According to the nurse, it was still a while before anything significant would be happening, so when Emily told him to go outside to get some fresh air, he only argued briefly before complying. Part of him wondered if he was smothering her; if she wanted a little bit of space - something that had been in short supply over recent months. After three years of being apart, it was like making up for lost time.
Noting the voicemail message on his cell, he called Hotch, wondering if there was some kind of profiling insight that the team needed. Truthfully, he was far too tired, far too wrung out to be thinking about profiling.
As it turned out, though, it had nothing to do with profiling. ‘How’s Emily?’ JJ asked, which meant that he was on speakerphone.
He shook his head, knowing that they couldn’t see it. ‘Still going strong, but it’s taking its toll. Does it usually take this long?’ The question was mostly directed towards Reid, who, unsurprisingly, had a ready answer.
‘For women undergoing their first childbirth, approximately two in ten labors will last longer than twenty-four hours.’ Morgan blinked, unsure that he’d heard Reid correctly. Twenty-four hours? That was a whole day.
More than anything, that revelation reinforced the fact that he needed to be back inside ten minutes ago.
‘I’m going to turn my phone off,’ he told them. ‘I’ll give you a call when…when he’s here.’ The words seemed wrong in every way, yet he couldn’t think of another way to describe it. “When it’s over” seemed a little too blasé. After all, this was a day that he was going to remember for the rest of his life. This was the day that the last nine months had led up to. Maybe this was the day that his whole life was leading up to.
It was with a renewed strength that he returned inside, smiling when Emily’s eyes lit up.
‘How’s the case going?’ she asked, no doubt eager to take her mind off the pain.
‘I don’t know,’ he told her honestly. ‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Oh,’ was all she said, gripping his hand once more. It was another hour before things really started to happen, and if it had been moving too slowly before, now it seemed too fast for Morgan to fully take stock of the situation.
He was vaguely aware of his heart pumping away like a jackhammer as they moved Emily to the birthing room. Vaguely aware of the way her hand squeezed his. Each time she screamed, it was as though someone had stabbed him in the heart.
Eventually, though, an entirely different scream pierced the air, and it was the most beautiful sound that Morgan had heard in his entire life. Maybe, in three or four weeks, things would be different, but now, that cry meant that he was a father. He stared down at his son, still covered in what Morgan could best describe as goop.
‘And we have a healthy looking baby boy,’ the nurse announced, and Derek could not even hope to prevent the grin that split his face from ear to ear.
Christopher Matthew Morgan.
His son.
‘Is he okay?’ Emily asked, wincing as she tried to straighten up and see.
‘He’s fine,’ the nurse provided. ‘We’ll just cut the cord, then check baby boy over, and then you can hold your son.’ Emily gave a sound that was half gasp, half laugh, but fully exhausted. Morgan brushed his hand along her cheek, damp with sweat.
‘You did good.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
Morgan watched with curiosity as the nurse cleaned the baby down. Chris’s caramel skin looked soft and wrinkled, his nose and lips and cheeks pudgy. Morgan knew what Reid said about parents finding their own children more appealing than the offspring of others, but goddamn this kid was the cutest thing he had ever seen.
At Emily’s behest, he accompanied the nurse to the attached room, where she weighed Christopher. He seemed small, which worried Morgan at first, especially considering the fact that he was two weeks early, but the nurse pronounced him at a healthy seven and a quarter pounds. She performed a variety of other tests - many of which Morgan was not entirely sure of their function - but in the end, all he really cared was that she pronounced him as healthy.
For Morgan, that was all that mattered. That was all that mattered the first time he took his son into his arms - he was so light, so fragile. He could close his eyes and imagine the boy at preschool, on a swing, playing football. He held his future in his arms, and it was the most amazing thing in the universe.
‘You can feed him now,’ the nurse told Emily, as they returned to the birthing room. ‘It will help with the birth of the placenta.’ It didn’t take a profiler to notice the anxiety lift from Emily’s body, as though she had expected him to run off with her child.
Emily gave a shaky breath as she took the boy into her arms, skin against skin.
‘Wait,’ Morgan said quickly, pulling out his phone. He snapped the very first picture of mother and child together - something that Garcia would no doubt be eager to have printed on a t-shirt.
Emily let her nipple brush against the infant’s cheek, and he quickly suckled onto her breast. Her expression changed quickly. ‘God…this feels weird,’ she breathed, though from her tone of voice, what she meant was “amazingly weird.” She grinned. ‘Somehow it’s not quite the same as when you do it.’ She brushed the dark curls that adorned Chris’s head. ‘You don’t have to watch this,’ she told him. ‘And you definitely don’t have to wait for the afterbirth.’
‘I want to be here,’ he told her.
‘Or,’ she countered. ‘Or, you could go tell my mother that she has a grandson.’
He gave her a mock pout. ‘Are you kicking me out?’
‘No, I’m relieving you of your partnerly burden. You’ve been by my side for the last ten hours - I’ll be fine for ten minutes.’
Morgan conceded defeat. After all, he was itching to call his own mother as well - not to mention the fact that the team’s attention would be distracted until he called them with news. It was all just so goddamn surreal.
He stepped out into the hallway, Ambassador Prentiss standing quickly as he shut the door behind him. All the times he had met Emily’s mother, she had been elegant and dignified - the picture perfect diplomat. Today, she looked like a mother - simultaneous anxious and overjoyed at the events occurring.
‘It’s a boy,’ he told her, even though that was news that had been revealed months previously. ‘Seven and a quarter pounds, with a nice set of lungs on him.’
‘What’s his name?’ Elizabeth asked, with that urgency that seemed unique to grandmothers.
‘Christopher Matthew Morgan.’
He saw her spark of recognition at his son’s middle name, but she said nothing, instead giving a wide smile that seemed almost incongruous with the personality that he knew.
‘They’re still waiting on the afterbirth,’ he told her. ‘But I think they want to move her back to her room pretty quick.’ He held up his phone. ‘I was just gonna go…’
‘Of course,’ the Ambassador nodded, with quickly regained composure.
Outside, it was cold, but there was a warmth in Morgan’s heart that no winter could ever put out. Still, he tugged his coat around himself as he called his mother.
‘Sweetie, is something wrong?’ where the first words Fran spoke, at which point Morgan realized that it was almost a quarter past one. Quarter past midnight in Chicago, but definitely too late to call for some trivial matter.
‘I just wanted to call and say that I have officially given you a grandbaby. So you can quit nagging me.’
Fran immediately set upon asking him a series of questions, ranging from the name, to the height of the nurse that had delivered him. Morgan answered the questions as best he could, but unlike Reid, he did not possess an eidetic memory. Still, he should have known better than to expect that it would have been a short conversation - it was almost twenty minutes later when he hung up, citing his need to get back to Emily, who was almost certainly wondering where he was by now.
There was still one more thing that he had to do, though. Opening the picture of mother and son that he had taken earlier, he added the caption, “Christopher Matthew Morgan, born January 8th, 1:04am,” and sent the message out to five very important people.
They weren’t blood, but they were family.
No matter what.