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Morgan's Hardware - Monday, 10/26

...Morgan was not in a good place this morning.

Between what'd happened to Reid (okay, he was just shot in the knee, the kid'd be all right, he didn't like it but it could have been much worse) and what'd happened to Hotch (...it couldn't get much worse) over the last few days, Morgan was only barely ready to deal with other human beings let alone customers.

But he had Clooney with him today, and he had this store and he had the house to work on and hopefully, it would be enough to pull him out of the funk he'd been in since he'd found out that !@#%ing ^@#$@#$#@ had used his ID to mess with them.

Besides, it didn't matter where he was. He could work on leads for the Boston Reaper just as well here as he would back at the office in Virginia.

Morgan's Hardware and Repair
Home improvement supplies - Plumbing - Electrical Work
Painting - Custom Carpentry - Installation - Signs Painted/Constructed
Now Hiring!
The store was open.
[and OCD free]

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Castiel would point out that he wasn't another human being. Not that this probably helped with Morgan's ability to deal with him, today.

Nevertheless, there Castiel was, just inside the door, and even smiling just a little. "Derek. How are you?"

Shitty.

"I'm all right," he said in between petting Clooney's head and peering through a couple of reports.

The dog padded over to sniff at Castiel; the angel might notice that it looked a lot like what Morgan had become during that strange week and a half.

"What about you, Wings? How's things?"

Castiel did notice, though he made no effort to try and determine what the resemblance might mean as he bent just enough to place his hand on the dog's head.

"I'm well, as always." You know, when he didn't have a gremlin attached to his leg and he wasn't busy being the emoest angel ever. "And your friends in the Bureau? They're well as well?"

Check it, Cass was learning small talk.

Either that, or Cass had learned that Morgan was absolutely crap at admitting when there was something wrong.

"They're... not as good. Couple of injuries this time around."

Injuries. Injuries. What the Reaper had done to Hotch wasn't an injury, it was the closest thing to decimation you could do on a single human being. The whole thing was a fricking mess and he wasn't going to stop until he could fix it, goddammit.

"What about you?"

Castiel frowned. "I'm sorry for that." He didn't offer to help, though, as he knew there was nothing he'd be allowed to do. "My . . . friends are good. The festival this weekend allowed Dean to visit, again."

Hey, Homecoming could totally be a festival. Especially when the person using the term was a couple thousand years old.

"There was a festival?"

And he'd missed it? Not that it really ranked with the rest of the crap, but crap.

"He doin' good?"

"I believe it was called 'Homecoming'." A bit of a bittersweet name, when you thought about it. "He is . . ." Confused, a little belligerent, overflowing with surface confidence to hide any self doubt. ". . . Dean. He seemed somewhat insulted that I said I'd prefer to be an angel than a human."

"Homecom--man, okay, now I know what you're talking about," and a little smile managed to light his face. Distraction was occasionally necessary and while he knew he had to get working on the research, he had to admit it would be best to put the whole thing down if only for a few minutes.

"You have fun?"

Castiel thought back over the weekend, from the gremlin's attack to arguing with Dean on the beach, to dumping Sam into the tank of water. "For some of it, yes." He tilted his head. "Why do people take pleasure in hurting one another?"

Yeah, that distraction mighta just gone bye-bye.

Dammit.

"That's..." he leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his coffee, leaning sideways to extend his hand. Clooney got the hint and came over for petting. It was as much for Morgan as for the dog.

"How deep you want me to go with that explanation, Wings? Cause it ain't an easy answer. And I'm wondering what made you think of the question."

"I was speaking with Sam Winchester at the 'dunk tanks'. He told me that sending a friend unexpectedly into the water was fun because people enjoy seeing each other get hurt." Castiel frowned. "He also said it was only fun if both the dunking and the dunked were having fun, implying it's based on empathy, but that seems entirely contradictory."

He breathed out with relief. Okay. Dunk tanks. Nothing serious.

"You're not really talking about people getting hurt, sadism, you're talking about something a little smaller. Schadenfreude. And it's not so much enjoying the pain of others as enjoying the fact that it's not you being, un, embarrassed or having something crappy happen.

"If you want to go the sociological route, people say that it happens because folks feel better about themselves because whatever it is didn't happen to them. Psychologically, it's linked to a lack of empathy. Supposedly, it's more prevalent in men than in women, but that gets kinda murky when you start digging into the meat of the study."

"But the shared experience of entertainment requires empathy."

Really, and Sam was saying that angels didn't make sense.

"But empathy isn't simple," he pointed out with a little smile.

"Someone in a dunking booth, they get their enjoyment out of knowing that they're going to make someone else happy. Someone coming to a dunking booth knows that the person in there isn't really getting 'hurt' and that they're prepared for it when and if they get dunked. It's... it's an understanding that it's all just a game. "

"But they are still allowing themselves to draw entertainment from the suffering of others. Even if it is illusionary."

"But if it's an illusion, is it really suffering?" he argued.

Castiel just stared at Morgan for a long moment.

He sucked at existentialism.

Morgan rubbed his face.

"Because the people who go to the booth go there knowing that no one is really getting hurt, they aren't enjoying anyone's 'suffering' just the fact that someone's willing to get dunked in water for a while. If they went there thinking someone was going to be hurt but that was an illusion, that'd be something different, but since everyone understands that no one is really getting hurt, I wouldn't say anyone is getting pleasure out of anyone being hurt."

He took a breath.

"Understand?"

Not really, no.

Castiel nodded his head, anyway. "Humans are very strange."

He looked down at his paperwork.

"That we are, man, that we are."

Castiel cocked his head, as though trying to work out some sort of puzzle. "Are you certain you're alright, Derek?"

He glanced over at Castiel for a moment before letting his head fall into his hands.

"No, man, I'm... I'm really not all right, but that doesn't change the fact I've got work to do. I'll be all right once we catch this guy" and he tapped the paper with two fingers, "the Boston Reaper. He did a number on a friend of mine and hightailed it. So not much else to do but work."

Castiel nodded slowly. "I assume," he said, choosing his words carefully, "that you don't mean an actual reaper. They very seldomly go rogue for no reason."

That got a headtilt.

"What's an 'actual' reaper?"

"A being tasked with the duty of escorting souls from the mortal plane to their destined afterlife, visible only to the dead or the dying."

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