Habit

This is my first ever fan fiction, I welcome all constructive criticism. I own nothing.

Trigger Warning: drug addiction - Cassidy

Bzzzz…bzzzz… bzzzz…

Reid woke up groggily, it was just past 5:00 AM. He picked up his phone and saw it was Garcia. A case already? he thought. They had just gotten back from one the night before.

"Reid" he answered. Garcia's always chipper voice chimed through the other end,

"Good morning 187, sorry to wake you from your sweet slumber, but Hotch needs everyone in the conference room in an hour— you can leave your go-bag there, this creep is running around in our lovely city". Reid had started to pull a shirt and tie out of his closet,

"Alright, see you there". Garcia said goodbye and Reid continued getting ready.

Reid sat his bag down next to an empty chair at the round table. Hotch greeted him,

"Good morning, thank you all for coming in so quickly, and for the early hour as well, at least we don't have to fly across the country for this one. Garcia—" he trailed off, letting her brief the team as usual.

"Alright, crimefighters, we've got six bodies in the last 3 months" Morgan looked up from his case file and said,

"All ODs?" Garcia replied,

"That is correct. We've got Ben Clarke, James Ritter, Emma Armstrong, José Salas, Ryan Li, and Rhea Morrison. Their ages range from 22 to 48 years old."

"That's quite the diverse bunch, the unsub doesn't seem to have a preference for any one race or gender" Rossi spoke up, "were these possibly victims of opportunity?" Morgan was still focused on the MO,

"Wait, I'm sorry, why are we thinking these are homicides? Seem like pretty cut and dry overdoses to me. Says here in the file that most of them all had faded track marks on their arms, so they had a history with drug abuse". Hotch answered this time around,

"According to their family and friends, pretty much all of them had been sober for at least four years— José Salas had been clean for over 15 years— and they were all very involved in various narcotics anonymous programs. The only one who wasn't was Ryan Li. His parents said he had just gotten his 90 days and was really excited about it. James Ritter just got engaged, Ben Clarke just had twins, none of them had any obvious reason to relapse like this and overdose right away." JJ decided to contribute to the discussion,

"So this unsub goes around to local NA meetings and just pick people who've been successful within the program… maybe this guy is also an addict who hasn't had that same success and is taking out his frustration on others?"

JJ's theory makes sense Reid thought. He was quiet during the briefing, understandably because of the method in which this unsure kills his victims. Reid had been clean for over eight years, and though these kind of cases didn't affect him as much as they used to, he still became a little uneasy when drugs were mentioned. His silence certainly didn't go unnoticed by the others; Morgan gave somewhat frequent glances over to the young doctor, as did their unit chief. It was an unspoken understanding amongst the team of Reid's past issue with drug use. His friend's would definitely be keeping a watchful eye on him.

"JJ, you and I are going to go talk to the families, Morgan and Reid, you'll be going to the coroner's office, and Rossi I want you to visit some of the local NA meetings around the area, see if you can't find out more about the victim's recovery". Everyone gathered their jackets and headed out to begin solving this case.

Sorry, this is really short, but I have like the next five chapters all thought out, hopefully I'll get those churned out as soon as possible. Please let me know what you think! Thank you so much for reading :D - Cassidy