Chapter 1: Pilot

Spencer Reid and his roommate Derek Morgan were walking down one of the busiest streets in Quantico, Virginia.  The two men were also-co workers who worked for a living at the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.  Today, they were making a decision to each donate a kidney to the donation bank.  

But Reid was just making the walk to the bank even more awkward.  

“Did you know that if you didn’t have mucus in your stomach, it would completely digest itself?” he asked.  

Morgan, who had been drinking an orange soda, suddenly felt like he was going to throw up his lunch.  

He spit the orange soda out, and almost started choking.  

“Spencer, do you have to make every conversation awkward?” Morgan asked.  “Now I don’t even want to eat dinner.”

“I just wanted to have a conversation with you, Morgan.  You know that I’m a very scientific person and I just can’t help it.”

“Think before you talk.  You just can’t say that kind of stuff when someone’s eating.  People don’t want to hear that while they eat food.”

“I think I just thought of a great idea for a t-shirt.  I’ll put a picture of a stomach on it.”

Morgan looked down at the shirt he was wearing.  He would walk around in his underwear if he had to-he sometimes was tired of hearing Spencer’s random and useless facts.  

The two men reached the donation bank and opened the door.  Bright sunlight shone through the large windows, making the room seem warmer than being outside.

A Hispanic woman sitting at the front desk looked up from the large stack of folders she had been sorting through once Morgan and Reid walked in.  

“Can I help you?” the woman asked.

“Yes, is this the Genius IQ Donation Bank?” Morgan questioned.

“If you have that have of an IQ, I don’t know if you should be here,” the woman replied.

“Yep, this is the place,” Spencer quickly said.  

The receptionist handed the two men some papers.  “Fill these out.”

“We’ll be right back,” Morgan replied.

“Go ahead, take your time.  I’ll just go back to these folders.”

As Spencer and Morgan took their seats in the waiting, the latter noticed that his friend was looking slightly uncomfortable.  It appeared as though Reid didn’t want to be here.  

“I shouldn’t be here.  I don’t think I can go through with this,” Spencer confessed.

“No, this was your idea and you decided to come here.  You decided on this so we could get a better Internet connection signal,” Morgan replied.  

“What’s the protocol for leaving?  I still feel uncomfortable.”

The two men set their unfinished forms on the front desk and headed out the front door.

“Bye,” the receptionist said, continuing to go through the folders.

“Bye,” Morgan and Reid replied.  They pushed the door open and walked down the street back to their car.  

***

They arrived back at their cozy little apartment building.  They were required to climb four flights of stairs everyday to go up to their apartment because the elevator was broken and no one had bothered to fix it.  As they reached the fourth floor, they noticed that there were moving boxes on the floor and a blond woman was looking through her furniture for something.  

“You still mad about the donation bank decision?” Reid asked.

“No,” Morgan replied.  He couldn’t take his eyes off the blond woman because she was just too pretty.  

“Want to hear an interesting fact about the digestive system?”  

“No, not really, not after the disturbing one you told me an hour ago.”

But of course, Reid didn’t listen to his best friend.

“You can actually live without your stomach,” Reid said.

“I don’t really care, but you can?  That seems impossible,” Morgan replied, while still looking at the new neighbor.

“Yea, my father had to have his stomach removed after getting diagnosed with cancer when he was twenty.  They couldn’t get a transplant, so he has to have a special routine when he wants to eat.”

“Looks like we got a new neighbor.”

Reid noticed the blond woman, who was still looking through her furniture.  “A nice change from the last one.”

However, the woman looked up from digging through her furniture and saw the two men.  

“Hi!” she said.

“Hi,” the two men responded.

“Hi?”

“Hi?  We don’t mean to interrupt anything, but we just wanted to let you know that we live across the hall,” Morgan said.  “I’m Morgan and this is Spencer.  But you can call him Reid if you like.”  He almost started stuttering on his words.  

“That’s really nice,” the woman replied.  She seemed to look at them like:  Are you two gay?

“We live together as roommates, but we’re both straight if that’s what you’re wondering,” Morgan continued.

The woman’s facial expression changed.  “Thanks for clarifying.  I was thinking that, but now I’m good.  It was nice to meet you both.  Maybe we can go grab a cup of coffee sometime?”

“Yes, that would be great,” Reid said.  

He turned away from their new neighbor and started walking towards his apartment.  

Morgan quickly caught up to his best friend.

“Reid, that was really rude of you.  Shouldn’t we invite her over for lunch?”

“We were going to start watching season three of Blue Bloods,” Spencer replied, hurrying over to the door to unlock it.  

“Haven’t we already watched all the episodes?   I remember watching the season finale yesterday,” Morgan said, looking around in his gym bag for something to eat.  After running two miles and awkwardly spending fifteen minutes in a donation bank, he was getting hungry.  

“We haven’t watched the episodes with commentary.  And you know how much I love commentary,” Reid said, unlocking the door and heading inside to turn on the TV.  

But Morgan was still wanting to invite the pretty neighbor over for a meal.  He didn’t care if Reid was rewatching an entire season.  

“I want to be a good neighbor, Reid.  I’m inviting her over.  Then, I’m grabbing Mexican food out of the fridge,” Morgan said.  

“We never invited our previous neighbor over.  I guess he was too creepy.”

“He wasn’t creepy; you just didn’t want him coming over because you didn’t want to make any more friends.”

“Why should I need more friends?  I’ve got a Twitter page that has six-hundred followers.  I think that’s more than enough friends for a lifetime.”

“Yes, I know you have 600 hundred followers, yet you’ve never met one of them.”

“That’s why I’m awesome.”

Morgan rolled his eyes in annoyance.  “I’m going to invite her over whether you like it or not.”

He walked out of the apartment and across the hall to the woman’s room, where he knocked on her door.  

“Hi again,” she said.  

“Hi,” he replied.  “I know that moving’s a stressful thing,, but we have some Mexican food in the fridge if you want to come over and have some.”

“I’m getting hungry, and that sounds like the perfect thing.”

The woman followed her neighbor across the hall, where she found Reid getting the food set up on the kitchen island.  

“What do you guys do for fun activities around here?” she asked.

“Well, today we tried getting kidneys removed for money,” Reid replied, which earned him a  very creepy look from Morgan.

Ten minutes later, the food was ready to be eaten.  While Morgan scooped the food onto three plates, the woman looked around the apartment.  She saw pictures of some of the crime scenes, which were slightly disturbing to look at.  

“Wow, Morgan, this is some…very interesting stuff you have,” she said.  “Doesn’t it creep you out seeing that this is how some people’s lives end?”

“Yea, some of those cases just haunt my dreams.  But I’ve learned to live with it,“ Morgan replied.  He brought her a plate, and she found a place to sit…which would turn out to be the one spot in the entire apartment where no one but Reid was allowed to sit.  

“Um, miss, that’s where I sit,” Spencer said.  “I didn’t catch your name earlier.”

“My name is Penelope, but you can also call me by my last name, which is Garcia,” she replied.  “Sit next to me.”

“No, only I can sit there.”

“What’s the difference if you sit somewhere else?”

“The difference?” Reid shrieked.

“Oh no, not again, here we go,” Morgan said, quickly stuffing some of the rice into his mouth.  “You don’t want to know why you can’t sit there.”

“Yea, I’d rather not,” Garcia replied.  

Reid stopped himself from saying his ridiculously long speech.  

Garcia continued talking.  “Want me to move?”

“No, you’re fine,” Morgan said.  He turned his attention to his best friend.  “Reid, just find somewhere else to sit for today!”

But Reid wouldn’t listen.  Instead, he just walked around the apartment, looking for another place to sit and eat his food.  But, he was looking confused.

“Reid, sit down!” Morgan snapped.  

The other man screamed from being startled.  

Morgan turned his attention back to Garcia.  “I’m sorry for that, it’s just that we don’t get a lot of company over here this often.”

“Hold on a minute, Hotchner and Rossi come over all the time,” Reid interrupted.  He had grabbed his plate of food and managed to sit down at his desk chair.  

“That was Tuesday night.  It’s now Saturday.”

“Of course i remember, how could I not forget our friends coming over here to play Scene It?:  The TV Edition.”

“Scene It?:  The TV Edition?  What’s that?” Garcia asked.  She sounded quite interested.

“It’s a trivia game that you play with friends.  It asks different questions and shows you clips from TV shows.  I think that’s enough about us, what about you?”

“Well, I have four brothers, and my parents have been dead since I was eighteen.  I love computers and once tried to hack the CIA, but was arrested by the FBI.  I was offered to work as their technical analyst or go to jail.  I chose the FBI.  I still currently have that job.”

“Wow, you tried to hack the CIA?  Why?” Morgan asked her.  

“I wanted to learn about Princess Diana’s death.  I couldn’t find anything, so I thought the CIA might have some very interesting info.  I also love playing computer games and hanging out with friends.  Um, that’s pretty much it.  The story of Penelope Garcia.”

“If that was being turned into a movie, I would go and see it.  It sounds really awesome.”

“My life was pretty awesome until I fell in love with a jerk guy.  Even though now I hate his lying, cheating guts., I still love him.  It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” both Morgan and Reid said.  

“And now I feel totally disgusting from moving and I can’t even take a shower because the thing doesn’t even work.  Why would I get an apartment that doesn’t have a working shower?”

“You can use ours; it works,” Morgan replied.

“Really?  That’s so nice, you guys.  I’m starting to feel very welcomed into this building.”

“Come with me, I’ll show you how it works.”

Garcia followed him down the hall, while Reid went over to the front door to greet whoever had just knocked.  

“This is unbelievable and just awesome,” Aaron Hotchner said, holding what appeared to be a TV show disc in his hand.  

“I don’t even know how you got it, but it’s just wonderful that you found it after all this time,” David Rossi replied.

“Guys, not now, this is not a good time,” Morgan said from the hallway, having to excuse himself from helping Garcia.  She had quickly picked up on how to work the shower.

“What’s awesome?” he continued.

“Hotch found a season one DVD of CSI signed by Jorja Fox herself in 2001,” Rossi said.

“It’s before she fell in love with her boss and the two of them started a very weird relationship,” Hotch replied, picking up where his best friend left off.

“That’s awesome, but now is really not the time for you two to be here,” Morgan interrupted.

“Why?” Rossi asked.

“I’d rather not explain.”

“Morgan’s got a woman over,” Reid said, causing his roommate to blush red.

“Yeah right, is your mother back in town making an early Christmas turkey dinner?” Hotch piped up.

“Hotch, I told you not to bring that up!” Morgan said, continuing to blush.  “And no, my mother’s still in Baltimore.  We’ve got a new neighbor that just moved into the building today and I invited her over for lunch.  I’m letting her borrow the shower.”

“Hold on, there’s really a new neighbor here?  But why am I picturing disturbing thoughts right now?”

“Could you not say that?” Morgan said.  “And no, we’re not going out.  I just barely met her.  But she’s really nice.”

However, Garcia couldn’t figure out how to turn the shower on.  So, she left the bathroom and hoped to find Morgan.  But then, she spotted him talking with two other men.  

“I was having trouble turning-Hello?” she asked.

“Aaron Hotchner, Supervisory Special Agent, BAU,” Hotch said.  

“BAU?  What’s that stand for?”

“Behavioral Analysis Unit.  That’s where Reid and I work,” Morgan explained.   

Garcia walked up to him and pulled him aside.  

“My TV is at my ex-boyfriend’s house, and I forgot to grab it, would you mind getting it?  I have the address,” she said, handing him a piece of paper.

“I don’t mind.  I’ll take Reid with me.”

After Morgan and Spencer left the apartment, Hotch and Rossi helped themselves to the leftover Mexican food, still warm from the microwave.

The two men sat down on the couch, and Garcia sat in Reid’s spot.  She hoped he wouldn’t mind.

“So, you guys work with Morgan and Reid at the BAU?” Garcia asked.  However, Rossi looked at her blankly for a second, shoved a mouthful of rice into his mouth, then looked away.  

Garcia was confused.  “Do you speak English?  Or do you, but it’s not your first language?”

“He speaks English, but he just can’t talk to women unless he’s drunk,” Hotch said.  

“Really?  Why?”

“I’m not sure exactly.  He always seems to have been that way.”

***

Morgan arrived at the address that Garcia had given him.  He and Reid walked up to the buzzer, and Morgan agreed to do the talking.

“Yes?” a voice asked after the button was pushed.

“Yes, this is Spencer, and I’m Morgan.  We’re here to pick up Garcia’s TV.”

“Get lost,” the voice snapped.  

But the two men weren’t leaving without keeping their promise to Garcia.  As a couple of Girl Scouts managed to push several buttons, the door opened and Morgan shouted to Reid to grab the door.

The two men ran inside and down the hall to the address that had been given to them.  

Morgan agreed to do the talking again, and knocked on the door.  

A tall man with glasses opened the door, looking slightly tired.

“Yes?” the man asked.

“I’m Morgan, and this is Spencer.  From the intercom outside.”

The man was getting angry.  “How in the world did you two get in the building?”

“We’re geniuses,” Reid quickly lied.  However, it was half-true.  Reid was a genius with a 187 IQ, but Morgan didn’t nearly have that high of an IQ.  

“Tell him about how high our intelligence quotients are,” Morgan said.

***

Morgan was feeling guilty for dragging Spencer along with him.  Though they were forced to give up their pants, they managed to have Garcia’s TV being shipped to her new apartment tomorrow morning.  

They entered their apartment and found Garcia, who was getting along quite well with Hotch, but not with Rossi because he was still sober.  

She noticed Morgan and Reid walking through the doorway with no TV and no pants.  

“What happened?” she asked, running over to them.  

“Your ex sends his regards for your TV.  It will be shipped to your apartment tomorrow morning,” Morgan said.

“Thanks guys.  How about you go get some pants, and I’ll grab my purse.  Second lunch is on me.”   

“Sounds good.”