fic: progression (criminal minds)
morgan/reid, nc-17, ~8900
includes non-graphic allusions to child sexual abuse, and sex of the healthy variety
side piece to comprehension; beta by angeldylan628
canon through 4x24; includes au spoilers through 5x12
Dr. Spencer Reid gets a clue. Or, seventeen things that happen during the development of their personal life.
Reid is not a virgin, and he isn’t as inexperienced as most people think he is.
His real problem is that so many of his early sexual encounters had been punch lines in jokes he hadn’t even understood (all of them, actually) that he had become predictably suspicious of any efforts made by others to engage him socially. As an adult, even when he was reasonably sure there was no malice in someone’s attempt to socialize, he rarely felt the bravery needed to pursue any kind of relationship.
So when he begins to wake up heated and aching in the middle of the night after the anthrax, his first stubborn impulse is to steadfastly ignore the sudden way the world had tilted under his feet.
Except this is Morgan, who he trusts possibly more than anyone else in the world, who circles him after a close call and keeps him company in the hospital and brings him food. Who never blinks at the quirks that Reid can’t help even now and knows exactly when to stop teasing, who protects him so easily that Reid often doesn’t even realize he’s being protected and touches him constantly for no reason.
He might watch Morgan too much now, stare at him when he’s sure no one else is looking, but he can’t help himself once he puts pieces together, once he understands looks and glances he’s willingly dismissed for months.
Then comes the day Morgan stares at him too hard too many times through the day but breaks eye contact every time Reid returns it, his expression wary and increasingly alarmed as the hours tick by.
The world tilts again, and Reid, no longer bedridden, reacts.
This is more important to them than it would be to people without their history:
They’re still half-asleep, and Reid’s trying to make sure he has everything, keeps one eye on Morgan as he goes through his bag a last time and then zips it shut. “It’s impossible for us to be late for our flight,” he says, which is a lie and isn’t at the same time, but Morgan shrugs like he doesn’t care in a way that promises he does, looks tight and tense near the door. “Last time you let us sleep in.”
“We need to get going.” Then, helplessly protective he adds, “You can sleep on the plane.”
Reid has everything, he knows he does, but he checks the dresser again before he finally heads for the door and then stops in front of it. Ostensibly to shift his grip on his bag and go through his mental list again but really because it puts Morgan in front of him and because the door isn’t open yet. So he stands where he is, his thoughts scattered and focused all at once, and simply considers what it is he wants to do.
Morgan just stares at him too warily, something expectant and submissive in his expression, and Reid acts on impulse, oddly sure of himself.
Hooks a hand behind Morgan’s neck and clumsily slants his mouth over Morgan’s.
There’s an immediate tension in the other body, a hand dropping automatically to push him back, and he lessens the force behind the contact instantly. Breaks the awkward kiss and pulls away until he’s stopped, until Morgan has a palm curled at the nape of his neck and is drawing him back, suddenly possessive.
Morgan has him then, tightens his grip and keeps him close, and only distantly is Reid aware of the vague tremor that he can feel in the heavier body. Of the way Morgan starts to push him away not once but twice only to weaken both times and shift his grip to keep Reid where he is, lick slow and easy into his mouth.
“Later,” is muttered into his mouth as fingers knead the back of his neck and he’s left nodding too easily, the distracted touch making him react more than he expects. “We’re talking later.” Morgan pulls away a little too hastily, flexes his grip in a way that seems possessive but then drops his hand. “Stop smirking.”
“I’m not,” he swears, but Morgan just snorts and fine, he might be a little too pleased over how shallow Morgan’s breathing is when he yanks the door open, jerks his head in an order that’s slightly too nervous.
Reid obeys without hesitation, and Morgan follows him effortlessly out of the room and to the car.
Emily catches him in the hallway when he gets into work the next morning, suddenly every bit as intimidating as she’d been when Reid had first met her years before, and he goes willingly when she practically straight-arms him into Garcia’s empty (why is it empty?) bunker.
“Reid-” She stops and breathes out, looks world-weary in a way that causes a twist inside him. “Derek’s in the closet.” He opens his mouth because so is Prentiss, but she shakes her head, looks confident and dismayed all at once. “I don’t mean that he’s closeted just on a social level, it’s more than that. He’s only had experience with one man in his life.” Emily hesitates for a moment, unable to hide her concern. “That’s what he said the few times we’ve talked about it, Reid. He thinks of that as his experience.”
There are too many things wrong with that concept for even Reid to easily process.
“So he doesn’t-”
“He does,” she cuts him off, and he’s a little too relieved by the sureness in her voice, by the fact that he hasn’t already ruined it completely. “He does, he is interested, believe me. Whatever you did to him, he almost walked into three walls and forgot his phone before I got him to his car.” That gives him pause, a sudden urge to ask for more information that he hurriedly stifles because Emily looks too tense. “And thank god one of you did something, he would have just kept…” She trails off, gaze irritated and pitying, and he’s acutely aware of the fact the fact that Morgan is Emily’s closest friend, that she has shown to be fiercely protective of him in a way she isn’t of the rest of them. They don’t even bother to hide the connection anymore, communicate in smiles and glances in a way that the rest of them even now often miss, and if anyone would know… “This isn’t a joke, Reid.”
“I know it isn’t,” and he’s so swayed by the obvious warning that he honestly isn’t aware of the irony.
There had been one relationship that he knows now could have been something, but he’d ruined that before it had gone anywhere without even meaning to. Been too guarded to enjoy the small handful of times he’d let the older man into his bed and kept pushing until the other man had given up his interest, drawn back and shifted his attention to keeping their clumsy friendship intact.
Reid’s problem has always been mental instead of physical- and she must see it on his face because tension leaves her shoulders, her arms, more than he’d even realized she was feeling.
“He isn’t confused,” she explains after a moment, an odd mix of care and sympathy and something suspiciously close to a threat on her face. “He’s just rattled right now. He’s thirty-six years old, Reid, and I’ve only just managed to convince him that this isn’t something that someone did to him twenty years ago.” This is Emily vulnerable for her friend, for the kind of connection denied to her in her childhood. “I need you to know that.”
“Okay.” He means it, finds himself standing his ground as she watches him, weighs his assurance.
Finally, finally, the last tension eases, drains away, and he can breathe again. “I know,” he assures anyway, one last time, “I know it’s not a joke” because this, at least, he knows.
By the time she lets him out of Garcia’s bunker, Morgan’s at his desk sorting through his work. Spotting Reid as soon as he enters the bullpen, he doesn’t even try to hide his stare, watching Reid skirt the other desks to reach his own and then glancing suspiciously at Emily loitering innocently near the coffee maker.
Emily brings Reid his first coffee that morning, and Reid brings her a second one when he gets a refill a half-hour later.
When Morgan’s eyes narrow with embarrassment that even he can read, Reid pointedly stares right back at him until he looks down, apparently deciding that there’s nothing to be worried about.
This is how he learns that Morgan dislikes blowjobs:
Their first date isn’t planned and takes place only a week after Prentiss not so subtly threatens him.
None of them have really slept in days but are too awake to sleep anyway, get off the plane and then break off into groups without conscious thought- Hotch heading to his office, Rossi close behind him, and JJ already on the phone as she heads out the door, brilliant smile lightening her face as she’s filled in on the time she’s been gone. Prentiss slips off after a last few words with Morgan, and Reid follows Morgan to his Sedan without a second thought when he hears the word “take-out” in the offer for a ride home.
The second the food is passed to him, he’s digging through the bags and pointedly ignoring the entirely too amused chuckle from the front seat because Morgan is just as bad when it comes to take-out.
By the time Morgan parks at his curb and cuts the ignition, Reid is halfway through the stir-fry. It’s pulled out of his hands a minute later, Morgan digging into it with an equal intensity, and he manages a glare even as he searches for the satay. Around a mouthful of vegetables, Morgan prods, “Do you even know what a home-cooked meal is?”
“Do you know how to make a home-cooked meal?” Morgan doesn’t answer, doesn’t quite meet his eyes, and Reid feels just bad enough that he offers the satay in a silent apology before he attacks it himself. “At least it isn’t McDonalds.” Morgan snorts, looks disgusted- they have similar feelings when it comes to the larger fast food chains. “And Asian cuisine offers a variety of health benefits compared to Western-”
“Spencer.” He obediently focuses on the carton of rice in front of him, knowing the desperate quality in Morgan’s voice. “Besides, we’re men,” Morgan absently adds beside him, tone a little too easy, “we’re allowed to eat crap food if we want to.” Reid stifles the urge to bring up the fact that neither of them do anything with their kitchens outside of store condiments and that Morgan is what Garcia defines as a “food bum.” Instead he watches Morgan out of his peripheral vision because now that the hunger’s abating, he’s just realized that they’re sharing the front seat of a car. “And JJ eats worse than either of us, anyway.”
“Prentiss is almost as bad.”
“She’s getting better,” Morgan defends shortly, focused intently on his food, and then goes silent for a moment, expression considering as he works through their meal. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” he offers after another minute, but doesn’t glance at Reid as he picks through food but doesn’t take another bite. “If we do anything, you can’t go down on me, kid.” He finally looks over, sitting too calm and too stiff, and then adds a little too easily, “I’m not comfortable with it.”
He’ll discover quickly enough that Morgan’s more than comfortable with going down on Reid, will realize that he’s startlingly eager to apply every trick he’s learned or even heard over the years to make Reid lose all ability to think- but now there’s a visible tension in his back and his gaze is murky.
Reid wonders if Morgan has any idea how much weakness he’s displaying- and then is sure he has no idea because Morgan would be somewhere else, anywhere else, if he did.
“Okay.” Morgan still watches him, wary, but he means it. “Okay.”
A last wary flickering glance, nervous energy obvious in every inch of Morgan’s body until he puffs out a noisy breath, jerks his head around to stare out the windshield. Finally: “He has to be okay with it.”
Reid might sputter. Maybe. Just a little bit. “Clooney- He- No, he tried to eat me.” Morgan looks at him, all anxiousness gone, worry replaced with amusement. “He tried to rip my arm out of its socket. No.”
No.
Clooney is as large as he remembers from their one jarring meeting years before, a black and tan shape that comes at Reid the second he sees him, movements jerky and too excited. “Morgan-” A palm on his back keeps him from staggering back when Clooney hits his legs full force. “Um.”
“He’s not going to eat you,” Morgan tells him firmly but grabs the dog’s collar, draws him enough away that Reid drags in a nervous breath. “Give him one of the dog treats.” The dog snuffles closer, ignoring the way Morgan clucks his tongue. “Reid, he wants a treat-”
His voice might squeak, a little, when he sputters “Morgan” too desperately and skitters away from the dog again. He ducks around the couch but the dog follows, bouncing two steps and voicing a single, too-loud bark as his teeth snap an inch from Reid’s leg. Well-acquainted with this reaction from the first time Mrs. Peterson’s toy poodle had spotted him across the street so many years before, only the knowledge that Morgan so desperately loves this dog keeping him from throwing his bag in a sudden burst of panic, he ducks away.
The dog follows, teeth brushing his wrist, and Reid jolts backward several steps only to smash into another body.
“Reid, babe-”
Babe?
But Clooney comes at him again too eagerly and Reid smashes into the body behind him a second time. There’s a muffled swear, choked and too amused, and then Morgan’s got his arm, keeping him on his feet as he pushes Clooney back gently. “Kid, you’re giving off mixed signals- Stop, he thinks you’re playing with him.”
“He’s following me-”
“Because he thinks you’re playing with him.” There’s a hint of amusement in his voice, but his eyes are serious when he looks at Reid, a glint of unease unmistakable as he smoothes a hand over the dog’s skull. Clucks his tongue in an order that the dog immediately follows, back half dropping to the floor and front half following as he settles obediently. “No wonder dogs hate you, you play hard to get.”
“Excuse me?” He can’t help the embarrassment, the way his voice goes too high-pitched.
“Hard to get,” Morgan explains, palm swiping too lightly down Reid’s tie, brushing from his shoulder to his elbow with something close to nervous tenderness before it drops away. “You don’t just tell him off and you keep skittering… That’s not what you do with dogs, man.”
“You know how dogs feel about me.”
“Clooney’s not your average dog.” His tone is easy, light, completely sure of what he’s saying. Somehow needling in a way Reid’s never heard. “You just need to think on his wave length.”
“He’s a dog.” Reid can’t help the dirty look he shoots the hand that catches his arm, the way his feet stick for an extra moment when Morgan opens his bag, pulls out the box. “No,” he says with strength that surprises him when he fully understands what’s happening. “No, I’d really rather not.”
“I’m not going to put up with my two favorites boys driving each other crazy in front of me.”
“I’m not-”
“You’re a tease.”
“I’m not-” but Reid doesn’t even finish his complaint because the dog is now wide-eyed, still on the floor but obviously desperate for the contents of the box being pushed into Reid’s hands. He tries again, “This isn’t a good idea,” but Morgan nudges him forward, gives a short whistle that has the dog on his feet in a fraction of a second and edging forward. Clooney wavers just before he reaches the men, glancing twice at his owner cautiously before his tail flicks one way and then another with renewed interest. With Morgan at his back and Clooney in front of him, Reid stands frozen, stiffening up as the dog snuffles closer.
“Don’t,” Morgan warns and he scowls helplessly but manages to hold his ground even as he twists his bag around as a feeble shield between himself and the dog. “Dog treat,” is ordered close to his ear and he finally obeys, pulls one of the stupid treats out of the box and almost throws it to the floor before Morgan makes another warning sound, this one a little sharper. Blowing out a breath, he holds out his palm the way Morgan had explained a half-dozen times in the car, resisting the urge to snatch his hand back when the dog gets closer. “Don’t freak out,” Morgan instructs, tone persistent and sure behind him, but he holds his breath until the dog steps back with the treat between his teeth, devouring it eagerly. “See? It’s fine.”
Reid doesn’t answer, a little confused.
Because Clooney’s now sniffing his feet and ankles after he’s finished with the treat, pausing to shake himself only to nose inquiringly at one of Reid’s knees. When he can speak again, nervous and unsure: “He tried to bite me last time.”
“He thought you were playing with him,” Morgan insists calmly, flexing his palm indolently into the skin at the base of Reid’s back. It’s enjoyable, shockingly so, and Reid thinks, without much focus, that he wants the motion to be repeated when he’s not wearing so many layers. “What?”
“Nothing.” Reid studies the dog at his feet. “What is he doing?”
“You’re boring him.” Morgan’s grinning, it’s in his voice, Reid can always hear it- and maybe that’s another sign he had missed, disregarded because it had always seemed constant. In front of him, Clooney snuffles one last time at his thigh, tail jerking pleasantly, before he promptly turns away, butting playfully at Morgan’s leg and then trotting away to flop happily on the floor in front of the television. It’s an odd image, and he’s too curious now that the nervousness is gone.
“What is he doing?”
“We’re usually watching our soaps by now.” An odd beat of silence, Morgan shifting slightly behind him. “It’s only the Young and the Restless.” When he turns in the heavy silence that follows, studies Morgan curiously, the older man just quirks his mouth into a smile that almost manages to hide his anxiety. “Some people knit,” he insists, and again, there’s a wary question under everything else.
“I actually know how to knit,” he admits, and misses the hand on his back when it drops, when Morgan turns away looking relaxed, apparently assured that “his boys” will be able to get along.
This is how he ends up shoving Morgan down and climbing onto him despite the fact that Spencer Reid is not a commanding figure by any stretch of his own imagination: Morgan discovers his neck.
Physically hypersensitive to a point that it had been a near-constant frustration in his childhood, Reid somehow doesn’t actually know about this erogenous zone until Morgan licks his pulse experimentally.
Reid comes gravely close to slamming a knee in the other man’s crotch.
Only dimly aware of the way Morgan’s grabbed hold of his leg, he stares blankly when a hand braces against the arm of the couch and brown eyes study him too intently, the frantic stutter in his chest completely foreign. “Fine,” he feels the odd need to assure, and feels horribly exposed by the fact that his tie is gone and the top two buttons on his shirt have been opened. “It’s fine, I’m very…” and then, “Derek?”
Morgan simply grins slow, expression one Reid hasn’t seen before but can too easily interpret, and Reid hunches down into the cushions without thinking, shivering when a thumb presses into the hollow of his throat. He manages only a pathetic-sounding, “I’m just a little-” before Morgan nuzzles the spot where his neck joins his shoulders, and he’s rocking up persistently for more before he realizes what he’s doing.
Another button’s undone but he’s completely focused on the breaths puffing below his ear, the slow graze of a mouth that refuses to settle, let him catch his breath and stop moving now that he’s started. Too quickly he’s grinding up with increasing annoyance because Morgan is not close enough, because he keeps hesitating and pulling back and won’t stop asking if he’s okay.
When fingers finally brush his belt only to jerk away, hover over his hip instead, he snaps.
And swears.
Morgan jerks back immediately, wide-eyed, because Spencer Reid does not swear. Because swearing is vulgar and meaningless, a simple fact drilled in by his mother, and because it sounds juvenile as well and it’s already hard enough to be taken seriously. Because even when he’s tried to do it to fit in socially, he very honestly can’t make himself. “Did you just-?”
“Fuck” slips out of him a second time in something that’s an awful mix between a whine and a groan, and he shoves at the body hovering not close enough over him and then shoves harder. Morgan loses his balance in his shock, falls back, and he’s scrambling without thought in a near-hysterical need to touch. Morgan’s body feels different under his hands, looser and surer, and Reid dips to mouth the skin of his jaw, bite the spot under his ear until Morgan goes docile under him.
He almost breaks his thumb fighting with his belt before Morgan’s helping him, unbuckling it easily and starting on his pants. “Shirt,” Morgan orders and he obeys without thinking, managing only two more buttons before he simply twists it up and off, nearly wrenching his shoulder in the process. Fingers spread to skim up his sides and then pull at his skin as they slip back down and it’s still not enough-
Reid bucks instantly, without thought, when fingers curl loose around his cock.
The grip is too light at first, overly cautious, and he instinctively manages not to shift his weight until it turns curious, until fingers suddenly flex tight and stroke from base to tip. “Oh, god-”
Morgan draws him down in a silent order and he obeys eagerly, palms sliding to clutch at Morgan’s shoulders as teeth close over his pulse almost delicately. “Easy,” is chuckled roughly into damp skin, delighted and too amused, “you’re so fucking easy.” He groans helplessly because it’s good, presses his forehead into Morgan’s throat and just moves, thrusting fast and frantic into Morgan’s hold.
“Don’t stop,” he gets out between pants, “please don’t stop,” because someone had gotten him close once and then stopped because it had been hilarious to them, but Morgan’s palm presses reassuringly into his back, kneads the skin, and that somehow is what undoes him completely.
His orgasm shocks through him brutally sudden, better than anything he can remember as he pulls at Morgan’s shoulders, groans soundlessly into his neck. The body under his is warm, trembling with laughter, hands startlingly tender on his skin.
When he collapses right onto Morgan, only vaguely guilty about the muffled grunt that follows, he almost hums at the fingers that thread into the hair at the back of his neck, at first tenderly and then a bit more insistently. He can feel Morgan’s erection against his stomach, and reaches after a dazed minute to palm him through the denim, grinning with satisfaction at the low sound of pleasure it draws out of him.
“Don’t do that,” he orders when Morgan squeezes his ass in a silent demand- but doesn’t push his hand off, instead shifts back just enough to start on his belt buckle, last anxiety burned away as Morgan eases back, relaxed and trusting. It gives him ideas, too many ideas, ones he lists in his head and memorizes in the same moment and at twenty-eight he finally understands wanting to get someone off this badly years after dismissing Ethan’s quiet comments-
Movement on the other side of the room makes him freeze.
Clooney, wandering in from the hall, hesitates long enough to cast him a slightly frightened glance before he shakes himself roughly, darts into the kitchen and doesn’t return.
“I think I just traumatized your dog.”
“We’ll have a talk with him later,” Morgan returns shortly and grabs his hand, sets it where he wants it in an unmistakable order. “Reid-” He doesn’t get any farther, Reid swallowing the rest of his demand as he presses him down into the couch, dog completely forgotten because he enjoys this so much.
The next time he’s over, Clooney is glaring at him from the far corner and Morgan informs him that the dog is now refusing to come near the couch, something that’s “never happened before.”
It takes two boxes of dog treats but Reid eventually earns forgiveness.
It’s frighteningly easy to share his life with Morgan.
They’re so close already that nothing much changes in their professional lives.
Because they still share their hotel room and keep each other fed through long hours, and Morgan still drives while Reid counts miles and exits. There’s a greater weight in his chest in the harder moments because now he has Morgan to lose, but he’s at least self-aware not to think about what he’s capable of if he’d ever be pushed. Because Morgan is as overprotective as he’s always been, and he knows exactly what that protective streak can push Morgan towards, remembers Emily’s bruises and his own lack of any surprise that it had been Morgan, of course it was Morgan, who had come rushing in to get him out of La Plata.
Sharing a single bed in their hotel room is their one concession.
“Hey.” Half asleep, Reid hums an assurance that he’s listening but doesn’t lift his cheek from Morgan’s chest, sleepy-content where he is despite the fact that he’s still wearing his shoes and they hadn’t even taken the time to pull the covers over them when they had collapsed. “This doesn’t really fit with my reputation…” Reid can’t help a smile, doesn’t even try to hide it; the fact that Morgan rambles as bad as the group says he does when he’s this tired is a recent discovery. “We should be in here having kinky sex.”
“Sleep.”
“That’s all we’re doing.” Short nails scrape his scalp absently. “We sleep and we eat, that’s all.” Reid is reasonably sure one adult man should not find another adult man so adorable. “I thought this was going to be harder.” Morgan shifts clumsily, strokes a palm down Reid’s hair the way he does when he’s almost asleep. “We’re boring. We even have a dog.”
“You have a dog.” He reaches up, slips a hand over Morgan’s eyes. “Go to sleep, baby.”
It’s possible that Reid doesn’t hate the term of endearment as much as he says he does.
Possible.
He has a bad night.
It’s been a while since it hit him in such a way- but now it strikes before he’s prepared for it, and he’s completely overcome in a matter of minutes. His work is quickly pushed away, his coffee is eventually set to the side to get cold, and he spends the next two hours moving restlessly from the living room to the bedroom. Too awake to sleep, too vigilant to relax, he holds out for another hour with the blatant stubbornness that had seen him through the last two decades.
Morgan knows- but he doesn’t know, and if he does-
When he goes into the kitchen and realizes he’s starting to re-alphabetize his condiments, he gives up for the time being because he doesn’t want to be here, alone, with things in his head. After this, he grabs his coat and scarf, stuffs a handful of randomly-selected work into his bag in a bad show of productivity and is out the door in less than five minutes.
Once there, however, he waffles some more.
His thumb hovers over the doorbell for a moment before it drops stubbornly to bury itself in his coat, before he takes a nervous step back but then stills again, utterly torn.
Neither of them allows much of themselves to settle into their homes, early on because their emotional survivals had depended on it and later because their training went deep. But Morgan’s house somehow feels better than where he lives, feels right the few times he’s spent the night. It smells better than his place, feels warmer, and he wavers but doesn’t turn tail yet, too anxious to have something for him to actually turn and leave.
When the door opens a minute later, he moves forward without thinking, ducks to settle against Morgan’s side the second his arm lifts to bring him close.
Something hits his leg, Clooney obviously excited to see him, but he doesn’t even startle because the relief he’s feeling is overwhelming, tension building over the last hours dissipating as a hand slides under his shirt to touch him, steady him. The door is closed, locked, and he stays where he is, face buried in Morgan’s neck, fingers tight in his shirt, because Morgan smells so good.
“I just- I had a bad night,” he offers even though Morgan doesn’t ask, and then can’t stop. “It hasn’t been so bad but- when it gets bad-” Morgan is already lifting his bag off, has his coat half-open, and a relieved breath shudders out of him. “I can’t sleep at home like this-”
Morgan kisses him, exhausted but constant, and that’s that.
Reid wakes up hours later only because the body against his doesn’t feel right.
When his fingers twitch, mind hazy, he finds fur instead of the broad expanse of bare skin that he’d woken up repeatedly to resettle against through the night. Not Derek takes too long to pierce the fog despite the keen sense of loss that had disturbed him and it takes even longer to open one eye, focus slowly on the furry shape that’s stolen Morgan’s previous spot.
Dog. Canis lupis familiaris. Clooney.
What he can see of the dog is flopped down on the covers that have been tucked securely around Reid, heavy body further keeping the warmth gathered through the night. He looks alert enough (Reid has an image of Morgan telling Clooney to stay and guard him that pulls a reluctant snort of amusement from his throat) but something in the line of his back suggests annoyance.
“No biscuits,” he feels the need to inform the dog, vaguely guilty about this fact but feeling too comfortable and too secure where he is to go find some.
Clooney just snuffles in response, gives himself a shake that rocks the mattress and lifts his head to peer towards the door, apparently considering. After several seconds, he drops his head back to the bed and studies Reid with a single-minded kind of attention, gaze intent.
The focus is peculiar.
“No biscuits,” he repeats slowly, and closes his eyes as Clooney shifts closer, snuffles again. “Don’t,” Reid insists without opening his eyes, and manages not to startle when the dog noses the top of his head. “Clooney-” The dog sneezes on him and he grunts, torn between amusement and exasperation, unwilling to draw his arms from his cocoon long enough to push Clooney off. “Stop it.”
The door opens and he draws further under the covers as the bed dips and the dog is pulled away, as Clooney’s informed, “Mine first, get your own” in a ridiculously possessive tone. When he blows stray hair from his face and cautiously opens his eyes, Clooney is slipping out the door and Morgan is staring down at him, obviously fighting a grin.
“You sicced him on me.”
“He’s a guard dog.” Morgan drops wallet and phone to the dresser, peels off his jacket and tosses it over a nearby chair without looking. “You needed guarding.”
“FBI agent.”
“Precious commodity.” The t-shirt is stripped off, dropped to the floor with an indifference that makes Reid’s eyebrow snap up. “If you can’t drag yourself out of bed to get a dog off your head,” Morgan draws his belt free of the loops, starts on his jeans, “you’re not in any shape to shoot someone.”
Childishly: “He tried to eat my head.”
“If Clooney wanted to eat you, he could have.” Morgan somehow eases under the covers without lifting them, inches until he can press the heel of his hand into the base of Reid’s spine. “And if you cut your hair, he’d lose interest.” When Reid opens his mouth, a little baffled because this doesn’t fit what Morgan’s said before, he adds, “I didn’t say to cut it, I’m speaking for the dog.”
When the movement settles, when he’s wrapped up again under the covers and in Morgan’s hold and is breathing him in, he finally prods, “Where did you go?”
“You needed clothes.” Fingers thread through his hair, tug lightly, and Reid noses the skin of Morgan’s collarbone, oddly smug about the fact that only he’s allowed to do this. “I grabbed your laptop too, it’s downstairs.” There’s a vague mine building in the back of Reid’s mind but he stifles it (barely). “It’s only the weekend,” is added carefully but Reid can’t summon any unease.
He doesn’t want to leave yet anyway.
“When did you get that one?”
Pausing with his arms lifted half over his head, shirt stretched open in front of him, Morgan stares at him with an almost comical expression of confusion. “What?”
“The lion,” he prods because he’s curious, and this is the only tattoo he doesn’t know about, “on your arm.” Reid knows about the others, knows that his father’s initials were marked in ink a year before he was of legal age to get a tattoo (“my mom almost shot me herself when Des ratted me out”) and that he had another laid into his skin the day after he left the bomb squad. “When did you get that one?”
Momentary hesitation meets his question, murky emotion flickering in the back of Morgan gaze before the shirt is drawn quickly over his head. Before fabric covers the ink and Morgan is reaching for his jacket. “Second year of college. Got it after I blew out my knee. Needed something to mark the occasion.”
He’s lying.
Reid accepts it.
It’s both easy and difficult to guide Morgan through this.
Easy because despite his own inability to make a relationship work, he still has more and better experience with anal sex. Difficult because it’s quickly becoming impossibly hard to think right now, and he needs to have enough rational thought to be aware of everything going on.
But there’s the brush of an open mouth over his, Morgan excited but still unsure, and he forces one hand to release the sheets, loops a trembling arm around Morgan’s neck and draws him down.
“God-” A ragged breath that catches at the end of the word and a thrust that makes Reid’s toes curl, and then Morgan is dragging in a shuddering breath at his neck. “God, you smell good.”
It’s a ridiculous comment, a fact that Reid recognizes even with his cock trapped between them and his body shaking, because he knows for a fact that his breath still smells like garlic and Dr. Pepper. Because he’s sure that Clooney’s already devoured the rest of the take-out because even the best training has its limits in which case Morgan will rant about the damage done to the dog’s diet for a week.
But there’s a grin on Morgan’s face, something reassured and delighted in his voice, and Reid tightens his legs around his waist. Matches the next thrust and feels more than hears the groan of pleasure as Morgan pushes deep, flexes a tightening grip into the skin of Reid’s hip and obeys the tacit order. Adjusts his rhythm until Reid’s other arm locks around his middle and his fingers slip-slide against sweaty skin, until he can only pant into Morgan’s mouth and shake and nod because he can see the question Morgan won’t let himself ask.
“Good,” he somehow manages because he needs to say it, “it’s good, don’t stop-” A mouth slips at the corner of his mouth, Morgan becoming more playful as his thrusts grow more frantic, as the tension in his back finally changes. “Don’t stop, don’t-” He stutters, actually stutters as Morgan licks a line up his throat and flexes his grip again and keeps moving.
Muffled into his neck, grin in the tone unmistakable: “Prostate, right? Lights a guy up like a Christmas tree?” and fine, maybe he had rambled a bit in his attempts to keep Morgan calm, maybe.
Right now Reid doesn’t care, twists slightly between one jolt of pleasure and the next and mutters, “More” without thinking.
There’s the short laughter, surprised but eager, that comes in response before his mouth catches Morgan’s again, tongue stroking into the other’s mouth with more force than he’d ever trusted himself with before. Because Morgan’s taught him this, more experimentation than Derek himself will admit to being open to, and Reid uses it against him readily, grinning at the startled groan that he swallows.
“Don’t stop-” Fingers twitch into his hip, quiet desperate sound stifled at the back of Morgan’s throat, and he’s grinning too broadly into the next kiss, manages “keep going” until he suddenly can’t talk anymore. Until his body arches, his breath catching in his throat as he scrabbles blindly for a grip on Morgan, the last thrusts coming steady but frantic as words tangle in Reid’s throat.
He might enjoy this too much, the way he already knows the strain building up in the body over his, the odd mix of innocence and experience that he’s completely sure Morgan’s never shown to anyone else.
Overcome, Reid manages to smooth a shaking palm over his shoulder as Morgan tenses in a last moment of uncertainty that doesn’t last, and then shudders into his orgasm with a final rock of his hips.
More awake than he should be after sex, startlingly protective with Morgan burrowing so trustingly into his neck, Reid squeezes his arm reassuringly and all but cradles him until an uneasy tension begins to build in Morgan’s back. Until he mutters, “Clingy” with a forced grin in his voice and pulls away to discard the condom, awkward movement a tell of how badly he doesn’t want to break the physical contact.
“It’s fine,” Reid assures, voice frayed but stronger than he expects it to be, and the words must work because Morgan’s mood shifts again, one arm skimming around him possessively. His hair is swiped back from his face, a thumb pressing for a moment at his hairline as Morgan studies him intently. “What?”
“You have to do something with your hair before I take you back to Chicago.”
Something in the back of his head informs him, flatly, that this line of thinking is dangerous, is something to worry about, to panic over, to push away before it breaks him because it will, of course it will.
But this is Morgan and the fear’s become a fragmented, harmless thing, easily dismissed for the first time in his life.
Reid finds himself shrugging as he raises his hand to tap fingers across Morgan’s knuckles, and is helplessly amused at the way Morgan’s eyes catch the sometimes-useful skill left by peer abuse and coins. “It’s fine,” he assures with utter certainty that’s foreign, “it’s fine, she’ll be fine with it.”
It’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with you.
Half asleep, greedy for contact when he wakes up without it, Reid makes the mistake almost five months in, scoots under the covers without thought and plasters himself around Morgan’s back. He clings a little too tightly and breathes into his neck before Morgan is fully awake, and then tightens his grip when Morgan’s shoulder twitches once strangely before he can stop himself.
The reaction that follows, well hidden as it is between the startle response and the too-quick twist under the sheet before the touch is returned, assures him he’ll never make the mistake again.
The fourth time he wakes up tonight, Reid lifts his head from his pillow in a mix of irritation and acceptance, reads the clock with something close to disgust and then slides closer to Morgan. Listens to his breathing long enough to measure it (more a heavy doze than anything else) and then trails a blunt nail along Morgan’s shoulder blade before waiting, watching.
Before Morgan, too many of his attempts at relationships had been utterly humiliating. His solitude had so become the norm that he’d at first been intimidated by the others’ presence around him- and then had come to yearn for it all hours of the day even as he’d attempted to hide the craving, rein his need in.
There was no need to hold back now, not when things fit together like this.
After a minute: “Morgan?”
When there’s only a shivering breath, Morgan stretching and then resettling, he blows out a breath and asks, bluntly, “Are you awake?” He considers for another moment before pushing Morgan in the back with a palm- even though the breathing in the dark has already changed. “Morgan.”
The chuckling sigh that he gets in return answers the question even before Morgan rolls, tucks his arm under Reid’s head in a silent offer for Reid to do whatever he wants.
“Christ, you’re clingy.” Said like Morgan doesn’t have a palm curled around his shoulder, isn’t drawing him down faster than Reid can decide what it is he even wants to do.
He still refuses oral sex. (Reid doesn’t ask.)
Penetration, on the other hand, is something Morgan finally manages to disconnect from his history long enough to look at from a different perspective and decide he might want to try. (“You sure as hell seem to like it,” had been his exact words, Clooney twisting between his legs as Morgan tried to wrestle the rope toy from him, and maybe I trust you enough to try it had gone unsaid but not unnoticed.)
After so many months Reid is more than eager to ease him into it the way he has everything else.
Because he’s becoming startlingly protective of this side of Morgan, world-weary trust that’s hidden so well from almost everyone else but willingly exposed to him, and the urge to shield it, guard Morgan so that it isn’t crushed now that it’s exposed, is shockingly intense. The feeling adds an extra level of understanding (and more than a little sympathy) to Morgan’s previously exhausting overprotective streak and that, somehow, is even more exhilarating, the knowledge of how much he affects Morgan.
For days, Reid considers saying, I care about you more than I once thought I wanted to, but can’t force himself to admit even that. Instead there’s a break after a difficult case that has them sharing the house for a full weekend that stretches through Monday and into Tuesday, their only official work being their signatures on the papers that are always waiting for whatever time and energy that they have left after cases.
On Tuesday night, Prentiss complains a little too insistently to only them about her date from Saturday (refusing to admit that she’s been out with this woman three times in the last month) on the other side of the table in the corner of the bar, and on Wednesday morning, he’s pressing slick fingers inside of Morgan.
Morgan doesn’t loosen the instinctive grip he has on Reid’s nape, doesn’t let go of the ability to jerk him back if he breaks his promise (“you don’t suck me off,” stated for the hundredth time needlessly) but his breathing’s already gone ragged and there’s a grin in his voice when he orders, “More.”
His fingers curve, press, and Morgan stutters, rocks his hips and repeats the command.
Reid grins helplessly at the startled “Jesus” the pressure causes, grazes teeth over Morgan’s side but pointedly doesn’t let his mouth drift farther down even if he wants to, badly. “Jesus-” He presses a kiss to the inside of Morgan’s forearm in a moment of weakness he can’t be ashamed of. “More-”
There’s a fragment of a memory then, Ethan in love and frighteningly vulnerable as he mutters, “I just want to give you this” into his neck like it had been the most important thing in the world and Reid finally gets it years after the fact.
“It can be good.” A quiet assurance as he slides and strokes, listens to the eager noises of pleasure. “Derek-”
“Yeah.” Fingers flex at his nape, tighten. “Yeah.”
Brown eyes study him, nervous but trusting, and he gives whatever Morgan is willing to take.
Reid will never tell Morgan how draining he sometimes is.
Because he’s getting better, has relaxed from how he was when their relationship started and no longer fights quite so hard to overcompensate around them the way he instinctively had for years. But even now he’ll hesitate when things are going well, draw back in a moment of uncertainty to check on Reid, to make sure he’s fine, nearly paranoid in his certainty that he’s somehow hurting Reid.
What’s worst is that it always happens when things are at their best, when Reid is eager and strung tight and so close until Morgan’s focus stutters, until the comforting weight of his body is drawing away.
On too many levels, in too many ways, it’s almost too much for Reid to handle.
It’s not fair, he knows, even if it’s also a completely natural reaction for a person starved for contact comfort outside of the too-warm sweaters he’d sometimes worn for reasons that had nothing to with the weather in the years before the team embraced him. And it’s the one thing he goes out of his way to avoid letting Morgan pick up on, something that’s easier said than done with someone as perceptive as a profiler.
But Reid stays composed each time the occurrence comes up, blows out a slow breath and strokes trembling hands as calmly as he can across sweat-slick skin. Promises when his voice sounds stable, “Fine, I’m fine, keep going” until he feels the tension shift under his hands, until Morgan’s focus finally changes and pleasure is spiking under his skin again.
The mood always passes, burned away as Morgan gets him off with an open enjoyment, and he quickly enough learns how to handle the mood swings- but he goes out of his way to keep his irritation from Morgan.
None of it is his fault anyway.
A week before Atlantic City, JJ corners him in a conference room.
“You’re scaring the police officers,” she informs him as she slips in and closes the door a little too firmly behind her, “and Morgan keeps flirting with the lead investigator.” A coffee is set near the board where he’s working, another stack of files placed beside that. “Did you two finally have your first fight?”
“We’ve had six fights and none of you have ever been able to figure out when we have them,” he returns without hesitation, so quietly frustrated by things he can’t change that he’s left somehow completely sure of himself as he presses another pin to the board. “And he’s not flirting, he’s distracting himself until Prentiss gets back with Rossi.”
“Okay, what is he distracting himself from?” Reid doesn’t answer, focused on making sure the red pushpin is in the correct spot, and JJ breathes out beside him, obviously prepared to stay until she gets an answer. “Spence, you have bitchface.”
The absurdity of the comment breaks his mood for a split second, has his head swinging around to stare at her in utter confusion. “What?”
“Bitchface,” she explains, touching his forehead before prodding, more quietly, “What’s wrong?”
He holds onto his stubbornness the way only he and his mother can, checks the other pins and the notes even though he knows they’re all correct. When he hears the slow breath beside him, knows JJ is opening her mouth to keep pushing where she’s right to push: “He’s dead.” Silence greets the words, uncertainty, and his control wavers a little too much. “Derek only found out when Sarah called last night.”
Reid knows the exact moment JJ understands, feels the sudden spark of anger so skillfully hidden even he’s only barely able to pick it up, can read it only because she’s let him see it before. When she finally speaks, he’s vaguely impressed by the calm because even he isn’t this good. “Did he suffer?”
Quite a bit, actually- the guards hadn’t reached him nearly as quickly as they could have.
Still, he blows out a breath because he can’t do anything else (anything) and finally takes the coffee, fiddles with the lid but can’t swallow any down. “Not enough.”
It’s normal for people to have the emotional equivalent of a security blanket.
Clooney is fourth in a line of living, breathing security blankets that have been at Morgan’s side since he had graduated college so many years before. Reid now knows about a Rottweiler named Hoffman later adopted by Sarah when she had left home herself and Harris, a pit-bull kept for three years; rarely, he’s heard quiet mentions of Bergman, a particularly beloved shepherd that Morgan was still grieving, killed from Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus just a month before Clooney was adopted.
It’s obviously comforting to Morgan that a hundred pounds of overprotective Rottweiler-Shepherd is waiting when he gets home, is highly trained and fully capable of protecting him should any problem arise.
Nine months in, Reid isn’t there when Clooney spends the night at the vet’s, and Hotch predictably forces Morgan home where he calls Reid up to keep himself company. And where they’d usually get off the phone after half an hour, tonight he lingers until Morgan’s words begin to trail off by themselves, until he can hear the tiredness in Morgan’s voice and knows he’ll sleep through the night.
Because he’s still not completely sure why Morgan stares at him across the room with soft heat or is so easily comforted by the barest mutter of assurance in the middle of the night, but it’s become habit to slip to the house with Morgan to huddle under the covers after cases that are too difficult and he’s stopped cringing fearfully when Clooney sneaks into the bed when Morgan is nearly comatose with the rope toy that’s his favorite to stare at Reid longingly in a silent plea. Because Garcia insists he looks like “the stray cat the tuna factory adopted” and thinks “the whole thing is the most adorable thing ever” and usually he hates being called any form of “adorable,” but Reid still finds himself unable to be anything other than pleased with the change.
“At least he won’t be wearing one of those stupid cones on his head…”
“I still haven’t gotten to see that.”
“He’d never forgive you.” In the background, Reid can hear the muffled sound of the television and knows that Morgan is still perched restlessly on the couch, feet bare and Glock on the table in front of him. (If Emily weren’t busy, Reid is sure he would have shown up uninvited at her home the way they refused to admit he sometimes did.) Stalling hundreds of miles away, Morgan prods too easily, “You still haven’t told me what you want for dinner.”
“Whatever you want.”
He says it just to annoy Morgan, and it works, at least to judge by the muted sigh that comes through the connection and the warm certainty that Morgan has just rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and looks pained. “That isn’t an answer, kid.”
“I’m good with anything.”
“Unless you aren’t-” Reid opens his mouth, a little flustered, “then you glare at it.”
“I don’t glare at my food.”
“Sure you don’t.” Derek is close to passing out, exhaustion unmistakable in the weight of his words as he keeps himself talking, but he’s grinning and it’s impossible to miss. Reid smiles helplessly himself, drained after hours of conversation with people who hate him because he’s smarter and younger and yet unwilling to get off the phone. After another moment: “I hate these fucking trips of yours.”
Always, but I really hate it this time.
Reid is too aware of the fact that it’s dangerous to feel this much.
He had learned the lesson early on and had it drilled in further before his eleventh birthday between don’t use the stove when I’m gone and pretending he didn’t sometimes go into his parents’ room just so he could insistently, uselessly, tug at the sleeves of the shirts his father had left hanging in the closet.
But in love, frighteningly vulnerable, he just promises, “We can grab Thai when I get home.”
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
- Bob Dylan
includes non-graphic allusions to child sexual abuse, and sex of the healthy variety
side piece to comprehension; beta by angeldylan628
canon through 4x24; includes au spoilers through 5x12
Dr. Spencer Reid gets a clue. Or, seventeen things that happen during the development of their personal life.
Reid is not a virgin, and he isn’t as inexperienced as most people think he is.
His real problem is that so many of his early sexual encounters had been punch lines in jokes he hadn’t even understood (all of them, actually) that he had become predictably suspicious of any efforts made by others to engage him socially. As an adult, even when he was reasonably sure there was no malice in someone’s attempt to socialize, he rarely felt the bravery needed to pursue any kind of relationship.
So when he begins to wake up heated and aching in the middle of the night after the anthrax, his first stubborn impulse is to steadfastly ignore the sudden way the world had tilted under his feet.
Except this is Morgan, who he trusts possibly more than anyone else in the world, who circles him after a close call and keeps him company in the hospital and brings him food. Who never blinks at the quirks that Reid can’t help even now and knows exactly when to stop teasing, who protects him so easily that Reid often doesn’t even realize he’s being protected and touches him constantly for no reason.
He might watch Morgan too much now, stare at him when he’s sure no one else is looking, but he can’t help himself once he puts pieces together, once he understands looks and glances he’s willingly dismissed for months.
Then comes the day Morgan stares at him too hard too many times through the day but breaks eye contact every time Reid returns it, his expression wary and increasingly alarmed as the hours tick by.
The world tilts again, and Reid, no longer bedridden, reacts.
This is more important to them than it would be to people without their history:
They’re still half-asleep, and Reid’s trying to make sure he has everything, keeps one eye on Morgan as he goes through his bag a last time and then zips it shut. “It’s impossible for us to be late for our flight,” he says, which is a lie and isn’t at the same time, but Morgan shrugs like he doesn’t care in a way that promises he does, looks tight and tense near the door. “Last time you let us sleep in.”
“We need to get going.” Then, helplessly protective he adds, “You can sleep on the plane.”
Reid has everything, he knows he does, but he checks the dresser again before he finally heads for the door and then stops in front of it. Ostensibly to shift his grip on his bag and go through his mental list again but really because it puts Morgan in front of him and because the door isn’t open yet. So he stands where he is, his thoughts scattered and focused all at once, and simply considers what it is he wants to do.
Morgan just stares at him too warily, something expectant and submissive in his expression, and Reid acts on impulse, oddly sure of himself.
Hooks a hand behind Morgan’s neck and clumsily slants his mouth over Morgan’s.
There’s an immediate tension in the other body, a hand dropping automatically to push him back, and he lessens the force behind the contact instantly. Breaks the awkward kiss and pulls away until he’s stopped, until Morgan has a palm curled at the nape of his neck and is drawing him back, suddenly possessive.
Morgan has him then, tightens his grip and keeps him close, and only distantly is Reid aware of the vague tremor that he can feel in the heavier body. Of the way Morgan starts to push him away not once but twice only to weaken both times and shift his grip to keep Reid where he is, lick slow and easy into his mouth.
“Later,” is muttered into his mouth as fingers knead the back of his neck and he’s left nodding too easily, the distracted touch making him react more than he expects. “We’re talking later.” Morgan pulls away a little too hastily, flexes his grip in a way that seems possessive but then drops his hand. “Stop smirking.”
“I’m not,” he swears, but Morgan just snorts and fine, he might be a little too pleased over how shallow Morgan’s breathing is when he yanks the door open, jerks his head in an order that’s slightly too nervous.
Reid obeys without hesitation, and Morgan follows him effortlessly out of the room and to the car.
Emily catches him in the hallway when he gets into work the next morning, suddenly every bit as intimidating as she’d been when Reid had first met her years before, and he goes willingly when she practically straight-arms him into Garcia’s empty (why is it empty?) bunker.
“Reid-” She stops and breathes out, looks world-weary in a way that causes a twist inside him. “Derek’s in the closet.” He opens his mouth because so is Prentiss, but she shakes her head, looks confident and dismayed all at once. “I don’t mean that he’s closeted just on a social level, it’s more than that. He’s only had experience with one man in his life.” Emily hesitates for a moment, unable to hide her concern. “That’s what he said the few times we’ve talked about it, Reid. He thinks of that as his experience.”
There are too many things wrong with that concept for even Reid to easily process.
“So he doesn’t-”
“He does,” she cuts him off, and he’s a little too relieved by the sureness in her voice, by the fact that he hasn’t already ruined it completely. “He does, he is interested, believe me. Whatever you did to him, he almost walked into three walls and forgot his phone before I got him to his car.” That gives him pause, a sudden urge to ask for more information that he hurriedly stifles because Emily looks too tense. “And thank god one of you did something, he would have just kept…” She trails off, gaze irritated and pitying, and he’s acutely aware of the fact the fact that Morgan is Emily’s closest friend, that she has shown to be fiercely protective of him in a way she isn’t of the rest of them. They don’t even bother to hide the connection anymore, communicate in smiles and glances in a way that the rest of them even now often miss, and if anyone would know… “This isn’t a joke, Reid.”
“I know it isn’t,” and he’s so swayed by the obvious warning that he honestly isn’t aware of the irony.
There had been one relationship that he knows now could have been something, but he’d ruined that before it had gone anywhere without even meaning to. Been too guarded to enjoy the small handful of times he’d let the older man into his bed and kept pushing until the other man had given up his interest, drawn back and shifted his attention to keeping their clumsy friendship intact.
Reid’s problem has always been mental instead of physical- and she must see it on his face because tension leaves her shoulders, her arms, more than he’d even realized she was feeling.
“He isn’t confused,” she explains after a moment, an odd mix of care and sympathy and something suspiciously close to a threat on her face. “He’s just rattled right now. He’s thirty-six years old, Reid, and I’ve only just managed to convince him that this isn’t something that someone did to him twenty years ago.” This is Emily vulnerable for her friend, for the kind of connection denied to her in her childhood. “I need you to know that.”
“Okay.” He means it, finds himself standing his ground as she watches him, weighs his assurance.
Finally, finally, the last tension eases, drains away, and he can breathe again. “I know,” he assures anyway, one last time, “I know it’s not a joke” because this, at least, he knows.
By the time she lets him out of Garcia’s bunker, Morgan’s at his desk sorting through his work. Spotting Reid as soon as he enters the bullpen, he doesn’t even try to hide his stare, watching Reid skirt the other desks to reach his own and then glancing suspiciously at Emily loitering innocently near the coffee maker.
Emily brings Reid his first coffee that morning, and Reid brings her a second one when he gets a refill a half-hour later.
When Morgan’s eyes narrow with embarrassment that even he can read, Reid pointedly stares right back at him until he looks down, apparently deciding that there’s nothing to be worried about.
This is how he learns that Morgan dislikes blowjobs:
Their first date isn’t planned and takes place only a week after Prentiss not so subtly threatens him.
None of them have really slept in days but are too awake to sleep anyway, get off the plane and then break off into groups without conscious thought- Hotch heading to his office, Rossi close behind him, and JJ already on the phone as she heads out the door, brilliant smile lightening her face as she’s filled in on the time she’s been gone. Prentiss slips off after a last few words with Morgan, and Reid follows Morgan to his Sedan without a second thought when he hears the word “take-out” in the offer for a ride home.
The second the food is passed to him, he’s digging through the bags and pointedly ignoring the entirely too amused chuckle from the front seat because Morgan is just as bad when it comes to take-out.
By the time Morgan parks at his curb and cuts the ignition, Reid is halfway through the stir-fry. It’s pulled out of his hands a minute later, Morgan digging into it with an equal intensity, and he manages a glare even as he searches for the satay. Around a mouthful of vegetables, Morgan prods, “Do you even know what a home-cooked meal is?”
“Do you know how to make a home-cooked meal?” Morgan doesn’t answer, doesn’t quite meet his eyes, and Reid feels just bad enough that he offers the satay in a silent apology before he attacks it himself. “At least it isn’t McDonalds.” Morgan snorts, looks disgusted- they have similar feelings when it comes to the larger fast food chains. “And Asian cuisine offers a variety of health benefits compared to Western-”
“Spencer.” He obediently focuses on the carton of rice in front of him, knowing the desperate quality in Morgan’s voice. “Besides, we’re men,” Morgan absently adds beside him, tone a little too easy, “we’re allowed to eat crap food if we want to.” Reid stifles the urge to bring up the fact that neither of them do anything with their kitchens outside of store condiments and that Morgan is what Garcia defines as a “food bum.” Instead he watches Morgan out of his peripheral vision because now that the hunger’s abating, he’s just realized that they’re sharing the front seat of a car. “And JJ eats worse than either of us, anyway.”
“Prentiss is almost as bad.”
“She’s getting better,” Morgan defends shortly, focused intently on his food, and then goes silent for a moment, expression considering as he works through their meal. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” he offers after another minute, but doesn’t glance at Reid as he picks through food but doesn’t take another bite. “If we do anything, you can’t go down on me, kid.” He finally looks over, sitting too calm and too stiff, and then adds a little too easily, “I’m not comfortable with it.”
He’ll discover quickly enough that Morgan’s more than comfortable with going down on Reid, will realize that he’s startlingly eager to apply every trick he’s learned or even heard over the years to make Reid lose all ability to think- but now there’s a visible tension in his back and his gaze is murky.
Reid wonders if Morgan has any idea how much weakness he’s displaying- and then is sure he has no idea because Morgan would be somewhere else, anywhere else, if he did.
“Okay.” Morgan still watches him, wary, but he means it. “Okay.”
A last wary flickering glance, nervous energy obvious in every inch of Morgan’s body until he puffs out a noisy breath, jerks his head around to stare out the windshield. Finally: “He has to be okay with it.”
Reid might sputter. Maybe. Just a little bit. “Clooney- He- No, he tried to eat me.” Morgan looks at him, all anxiousness gone, worry replaced with amusement. “He tried to rip my arm out of its socket. No.”
No.
Clooney is as large as he remembers from their one jarring meeting years before, a black and tan shape that comes at Reid the second he sees him, movements jerky and too excited. “Morgan-” A palm on his back keeps him from staggering back when Clooney hits his legs full force. “Um.”
“He’s not going to eat you,” Morgan tells him firmly but grabs the dog’s collar, draws him enough away that Reid drags in a nervous breath. “Give him one of the dog treats.” The dog snuffles closer, ignoring the way Morgan clucks his tongue. “Reid, he wants a treat-”
His voice might squeak, a little, when he sputters “Morgan” too desperately and skitters away from the dog again. He ducks around the couch but the dog follows, bouncing two steps and voicing a single, too-loud bark as his teeth snap an inch from Reid’s leg. Well-acquainted with this reaction from the first time Mrs. Peterson’s toy poodle had spotted him across the street so many years before, only the knowledge that Morgan so desperately loves this dog keeping him from throwing his bag in a sudden burst of panic, he ducks away.
The dog follows, teeth brushing his wrist, and Reid jolts backward several steps only to smash into another body.
“Reid, babe-”
Babe?
But Clooney comes at him again too eagerly and Reid smashes into the body behind him a second time. There’s a muffled swear, choked and too amused, and then Morgan’s got his arm, keeping him on his feet as he pushes Clooney back gently. “Kid, you’re giving off mixed signals- Stop, he thinks you’re playing with him.”
“He’s following me-”
“Because he thinks you’re playing with him.” There’s a hint of amusement in his voice, but his eyes are serious when he looks at Reid, a glint of unease unmistakable as he smoothes a hand over the dog’s skull. Clucks his tongue in an order that the dog immediately follows, back half dropping to the floor and front half following as he settles obediently. “No wonder dogs hate you, you play hard to get.”
“Excuse me?” He can’t help the embarrassment, the way his voice goes too high-pitched.
“Hard to get,” Morgan explains, palm swiping too lightly down Reid’s tie, brushing from his shoulder to his elbow with something close to nervous tenderness before it drops away. “You don’t just tell him off and you keep skittering… That’s not what you do with dogs, man.”
“You know how dogs feel about me.”
“Clooney’s not your average dog.” His tone is easy, light, completely sure of what he’s saying. Somehow needling in a way Reid’s never heard. “You just need to think on his wave length.”
“He’s a dog.” Reid can’t help the dirty look he shoots the hand that catches his arm, the way his feet stick for an extra moment when Morgan opens his bag, pulls out the box. “No,” he says with strength that surprises him when he fully understands what’s happening. “No, I’d really rather not.”
“I’m not going to put up with my two favorites boys driving each other crazy in front of me.”
“I’m not-”
“You’re a tease.”
“I’m not-” but Reid doesn’t even finish his complaint because the dog is now wide-eyed, still on the floor but obviously desperate for the contents of the box being pushed into Reid’s hands. He tries again, “This isn’t a good idea,” but Morgan nudges him forward, gives a short whistle that has the dog on his feet in a fraction of a second and edging forward. Clooney wavers just before he reaches the men, glancing twice at his owner cautiously before his tail flicks one way and then another with renewed interest. With Morgan at his back and Clooney in front of him, Reid stands frozen, stiffening up as the dog snuffles closer.
“Don’t,” Morgan warns and he scowls helplessly but manages to hold his ground even as he twists his bag around as a feeble shield between himself and the dog. “Dog treat,” is ordered close to his ear and he finally obeys, pulls one of the stupid treats out of the box and almost throws it to the floor before Morgan makes another warning sound, this one a little sharper. Blowing out a breath, he holds out his palm the way Morgan had explained a half-dozen times in the car, resisting the urge to snatch his hand back when the dog gets closer. “Don’t freak out,” Morgan instructs, tone persistent and sure behind him, but he holds his breath until the dog steps back with the treat between his teeth, devouring it eagerly. “See? It’s fine.”
Reid doesn’t answer, a little confused.
Because Clooney’s now sniffing his feet and ankles after he’s finished with the treat, pausing to shake himself only to nose inquiringly at one of Reid’s knees. When he can speak again, nervous and unsure: “He tried to bite me last time.”
“He thought you were playing with him,” Morgan insists calmly, flexing his palm indolently into the skin at the base of Reid’s back. It’s enjoyable, shockingly so, and Reid thinks, without much focus, that he wants the motion to be repeated when he’s not wearing so many layers. “What?”
“Nothing.” Reid studies the dog at his feet. “What is he doing?”
“You’re boring him.” Morgan’s grinning, it’s in his voice, Reid can always hear it- and maybe that’s another sign he had missed, disregarded because it had always seemed constant. In front of him, Clooney snuffles one last time at his thigh, tail jerking pleasantly, before he promptly turns away, butting playfully at Morgan’s leg and then trotting away to flop happily on the floor in front of the television. It’s an odd image, and he’s too curious now that the nervousness is gone.
“What is he doing?”
“We’re usually watching our soaps by now.” An odd beat of silence, Morgan shifting slightly behind him. “It’s only the Young and the Restless.” When he turns in the heavy silence that follows, studies Morgan curiously, the older man just quirks his mouth into a smile that almost manages to hide his anxiety. “Some people knit,” he insists, and again, there’s a wary question under everything else.
“I actually know how to knit,” he admits, and misses the hand on his back when it drops, when Morgan turns away looking relaxed, apparently assured that “his boys” will be able to get along.
This is how he ends up shoving Morgan down and climbing onto him despite the fact that Spencer Reid is not a commanding figure by any stretch of his own imagination: Morgan discovers his neck.
Physically hypersensitive to a point that it had been a near-constant frustration in his childhood, Reid somehow doesn’t actually know about this erogenous zone until Morgan licks his pulse experimentally.
Reid comes gravely close to slamming a knee in the other man’s crotch.
Only dimly aware of the way Morgan’s grabbed hold of his leg, he stares blankly when a hand braces against the arm of the couch and brown eyes study him too intently, the frantic stutter in his chest completely foreign. “Fine,” he feels the odd need to assure, and feels horribly exposed by the fact that his tie is gone and the top two buttons on his shirt have been opened. “It’s fine, I’m very…” and then, “Derek?”
Morgan simply grins slow, expression one Reid hasn’t seen before but can too easily interpret, and Reid hunches down into the cushions without thinking, shivering when a thumb presses into the hollow of his throat. He manages only a pathetic-sounding, “I’m just a little-” before Morgan nuzzles the spot where his neck joins his shoulders, and he’s rocking up persistently for more before he realizes what he’s doing.
Another button’s undone but he’s completely focused on the breaths puffing below his ear, the slow graze of a mouth that refuses to settle, let him catch his breath and stop moving now that he’s started. Too quickly he’s grinding up with increasing annoyance because Morgan is not close enough, because he keeps hesitating and pulling back and won’t stop asking if he’s okay.
When fingers finally brush his belt only to jerk away, hover over his hip instead, he snaps.
And swears.
Morgan jerks back immediately, wide-eyed, because Spencer Reid does not swear. Because swearing is vulgar and meaningless, a simple fact drilled in by his mother, and because it sounds juvenile as well and it’s already hard enough to be taken seriously. Because even when he’s tried to do it to fit in socially, he very honestly can’t make himself. “Did you just-?”
“Fuck” slips out of him a second time in something that’s an awful mix between a whine and a groan, and he shoves at the body hovering not close enough over him and then shoves harder. Morgan loses his balance in his shock, falls back, and he’s scrambling without thought in a near-hysterical need to touch. Morgan’s body feels different under his hands, looser and surer, and Reid dips to mouth the skin of his jaw, bite the spot under his ear until Morgan goes docile under him.
He almost breaks his thumb fighting with his belt before Morgan’s helping him, unbuckling it easily and starting on his pants. “Shirt,” Morgan orders and he obeys without thinking, managing only two more buttons before he simply twists it up and off, nearly wrenching his shoulder in the process. Fingers spread to skim up his sides and then pull at his skin as they slip back down and it’s still not enough-
Reid bucks instantly, without thought, when fingers curl loose around his cock.
The grip is too light at first, overly cautious, and he instinctively manages not to shift his weight until it turns curious, until fingers suddenly flex tight and stroke from base to tip. “Oh, god-”
Morgan draws him down in a silent order and he obeys eagerly, palms sliding to clutch at Morgan’s shoulders as teeth close over his pulse almost delicately. “Easy,” is chuckled roughly into damp skin, delighted and too amused, “you’re so fucking easy.” He groans helplessly because it’s good, presses his forehead into Morgan’s throat and just moves, thrusting fast and frantic into Morgan’s hold.
“Don’t stop,” he gets out between pants, “please don’t stop,” because someone had gotten him close once and then stopped because it had been hilarious to them, but Morgan’s palm presses reassuringly into his back, kneads the skin, and that somehow is what undoes him completely.
His orgasm shocks through him brutally sudden, better than anything he can remember as he pulls at Morgan’s shoulders, groans soundlessly into his neck. The body under his is warm, trembling with laughter, hands startlingly tender on his skin.
When he collapses right onto Morgan, only vaguely guilty about the muffled grunt that follows, he almost hums at the fingers that thread into the hair at the back of his neck, at first tenderly and then a bit more insistently. He can feel Morgan’s erection against his stomach, and reaches after a dazed minute to palm him through the denim, grinning with satisfaction at the low sound of pleasure it draws out of him.
“Don’t do that,” he orders when Morgan squeezes his ass in a silent demand- but doesn’t push his hand off, instead shifts back just enough to start on his belt buckle, last anxiety burned away as Morgan eases back, relaxed and trusting. It gives him ideas, too many ideas, ones he lists in his head and memorizes in the same moment and at twenty-eight he finally understands wanting to get someone off this badly years after dismissing Ethan’s quiet comments-
Movement on the other side of the room makes him freeze.
Clooney, wandering in from the hall, hesitates long enough to cast him a slightly frightened glance before he shakes himself roughly, darts into the kitchen and doesn’t return.
“I think I just traumatized your dog.”
“We’ll have a talk with him later,” Morgan returns shortly and grabs his hand, sets it where he wants it in an unmistakable order. “Reid-” He doesn’t get any farther, Reid swallowing the rest of his demand as he presses him down into the couch, dog completely forgotten because he enjoys this so much.
The next time he’s over, Clooney is glaring at him from the far corner and Morgan informs him that the dog is now refusing to come near the couch, something that’s “never happened before.”
It takes two boxes of dog treats but Reid eventually earns forgiveness.
It’s frighteningly easy to share his life with Morgan.
They’re so close already that nothing much changes in their professional lives.
Because they still share their hotel room and keep each other fed through long hours, and Morgan still drives while Reid counts miles and exits. There’s a greater weight in his chest in the harder moments because now he has Morgan to lose, but he’s at least self-aware not to think about what he’s capable of if he’d ever be pushed. Because Morgan is as overprotective as he’s always been, and he knows exactly what that protective streak can push Morgan towards, remembers Emily’s bruises and his own lack of any surprise that it had been Morgan, of course it was Morgan, who had come rushing in to get him out of La Plata.
Sharing a single bed in their hotel room is their one concession.
“Hey.” Half asleep, Reid hums an assurance that he’s listening but doesn’t lift his cheek from Morgan’s chest, sleepy-content where he is despite the fact that he’s still wearing his shoes and they hadn’t even taken the time to pull the covers over them when they had collapsed. “This doesn’t really fit with my reputation…” Reid can’t help a smile, doesn’t even try to hide it; the fact that Morgan rambles as bad as the group says he does when he’s this tired is a recent discovery. “We should be in here having kinky sex.”
“Sleep.”
“That’s all we’re doing.” Short nails scrape his scalp absently. “We sleep and we eat, that’s all.” Reid is reasonably sure one adult man should not find another adult man so adorable. “I thought this was going to be harder.” Morgan shifts clumsily, strokes a palm down Reid’s hair the way he does when he’s almost asleep. “We’re boring. We even have a dog.”
“You have a dog.” He reaches up, slips a hand over Morgan’s eyes. “Go to sleep, baby.”
It’s possible that Reid doesn’t hate the term of endearment as much as he says he does.
Possible.
He has a bad night.
It’s been a while since it hit him in such a way- but now it strikes before he’s prepared for it, and he’s completely overcome in a matter of minutes. His work is quickly pushed away, his coffee is eventually set to the side to get cold, and he spends the next two hours moving restlessly from the living room to the bedroom. Too awake to sleep, too vigilant to relax, he holds out for another hour with the blatant stubbornness that had seen him through the last two decades.
Morgan knows- but he doesn’t know, and if he does-
When he goes into the kitchen and realizes he’s starting to re-alphabetize his condiments, he gives up for the time being because he doesn’t want to be here, alone, with things in his head. After this, he grabs his coat and scarf, stuffs a handful of randomly-selected work into his bag in a bad show of productivity and is out the door in less than five minutes.
Once there, however, he waffles some more.
His thumb hovers over the doorbell for a moment before it drops stubbornly to bury itself in his coat, before he takes a nervous step back but then stills again, utterly torn.
Neither of them allows much of themselves to settle into their homes, early on because their emotional survivals had depended on it and later because their training went deep. But Morgan’s house somehow feels better than where he lives, feels right the few times he’s spent the night. It smells better than his place, feels warmer, and he wavers but doesn’t turn tail yet, too anxious to have something for him to actually turn and leave.
When the door opens a minute later, he moves forward without thinking, ducks to settle against Morgan’s side the second his arm lifts to bring him close.
Something hits his leg, Clooney obviously excited to see him, but he doesn’t even startle because the relief he’s feeling is overwhelming, tension building over the last hours dissipating as a hand slides under his shirt to touch him, steady him. The door is closed, locked, and he stays where he is, face buried in Morgan’s neck, fingers tight in his shirt, because Morgan smells so good.
“I just- I had a bad night,” he offers even though Morgan doesn’t ask, and then can’t stop. “It hasn’t been so bad but- when it gets bad-” Morgan is already lifting his bag off, has his coat half-open, and a relieved breath shudders out of him. “I can’t sleep at home like this-”
Morgan kisses him, exhausted but constant, and that’s that.
Reid wakes up hours later only because the body against his doesn’t feel right.
When his fingers twitch, mind hazy, he finds fur instead of the broad expanse of bare skin that he’d woken up repeatedly to resettle against through the night. Not Derek takes too long to pierce the fog despite the keen sense of loss that had disturbed him and it takes even longer to open one eye, focus slowly on the furry shape that’s stolen Morgan’s previous spot.
Dog. Canis lupis familiaris. Clooney.
What he can see of the dog is flopped down on the covers that have been tucked securely around Reid, heavy body further keeping the warmth gathered through the night. He looks alert enough (Reid has an image of Morgan telling Clooney to stay and guard him that pulls a reluctant snort of amusement from his throat) but something in the line of his back suggests annoyance.
“No biscuits,” he feels the need to inform the dog, vaguely guilty about this fact but feeling too comfortable and too secure where he is to go find some.
Clooney just snuffles in response, gives himself a shake that rocks the mattress and lifts his head to peer towards the door, apparently considering. After several seconds, he drops his head back to the bed and studies Reid with a single-minded kind of attention, gaze intent.
The focus is peculiar.
“No biscuits,” he repeats slowly, and closes his eyes as Clooney shifts closer, snuffles again. “Don’t,” Reid insists without opening his eyes, and manages not to startle when the dog noses the top of his head. “Clooney-” The dog sneezes on him and he grunts, torn between amusement and exasperation, unwilling to draw his arms from his cocoon long enough to push Clooney off. “Stop it.”
The door opens and he draws further under the covers as the bed dips and the dog is pulled away, as Clooney’s informed, “Mine first, get your own” in a ridiculously possessive tone. When he blows stray hair from his face and cautiously opens his eyes, Clooney is slipping out the door and Morgan is staring down at him, obviously fighting a grin.
“You sicced him on me.”
“He’s a guard dog.” Morgan drops wallet and phone to the dresser, peels off his jacket and tosses it over a nearby chair without looking. “You needed guarding.”
“FBI agent.”
“Precious commodity.” The t-shirt is stripped off, dropped to the floor with an indifference that makes Reid’s eyebrow snap up. “If you can’t drag yourself out of bed to get a dog off your head,” Morgan draws his belt free of the loops, starts on his jeans, “you’re not in any shape to shoot someone.”
Childishly: “He tried to eat my head.”
“If Clooney wanted to eat you, he could have.” Morgan somehow eases under the covers without lifting them, inches until he can press the heel of his hand into the base of Reid’s spine. “And if you cut your hair, he’d lose interest.” When Reid opens his mouth, a little baffled because this doesn’t fit what Morgan’s said before, he adds, “I didn’t say to cut it, I’m speaking for the dog.”
When the movement settles, when he’s wrapped up again under the covers and in Morgan’s hold and is breathing him in, he finally prods, “Where did you go?”
“You needed clothes.” Fingers thread through his hair, tug lightly, and Reid noses the skin of Morgan’s collarbone, oddly smug about the fact that only he’s allowed to do this. “I grabbed your laptop too, it’s downstairs.” There’s a vague mine building in the back of Reid’s mind but he stifles it (barely). “It’s only the weekend,” is added carefully but Reid can’t summon any unease.
He doesn’t want to leave yet anyway.
“When did you get that one?”
Pausing with his arms lifted half over his head, shirt stretched open in front of him, Morgan stares at him with an almost comical expression of confusion. “What?”
“The lion,” he prods because he’s curious, and this is the only tattoo he doesn’t know about, “on your arm.” Reid knows about the others, knows that his father’s initials were marked in ink a year before he was of legal age to get a tattoo (“my mom almost shot me herself when Des ratted me out”) and that he had another laid into his skin the day after he left the bomb squad. “When did you get that one?”
Momentary hesitation meets his question, murky emotion flickering in the back of Morgan gaze before the shirt is drawn quickly over his head. Before fabric covers the ink and Morgan is reaching for his jacket. “Second year of college. Got it after I blew out my knee. Needed something to mark the occasion.”
He’s lying.
Reid accepts it.
It’s both easy and difficult to guide Morgan through this.
Easy because despite his own inability to make a relationship work, he still has more and better experience with anal sex. Difficult because it’s quickly becoming impossibly hard to think right now, and he needs to have enough rational thought to be aware of everything going on.
But there’s the brush of an open mouth over his, Morgan excited but still unsure, and he forces one hand to release the sheets, loops a trembling arm around Morgan’s neck and draws him down.
“God-” A ragged breath that catches at the end of the word and a thrust that makes Reid’s toes curl, and then Morgan is dragging in a shuddering breath at his neck. “God, you smell good.”
It’s a ridiculous comment, a fact that Reid recognizes even with his cock trapped between them and his body shaking, because he knows for a fact that his breath still smells like garlic and Dr. Pepper. Because he’s sure that Clooney’s already devoured the rest of the take-out because even the best training has its limits in which case Morgan will rant about the damage done to the dog’s diet for a week.
But there’s a grin on Morgan’s face, something reassured and delighted in his voice, and Reid tightens his legs around his waist. Matches the next thrust and feels more than hears the groan of pleasure as Morgan pushes deep, flexes a tightening grip into the skin of Reid’s hip and obeys the tacit order. Adjusts his rhythm until Reid’s other arm locks around his middle and his fingers slip-slide against sweaty skin, until he can only pant into Morgan’s mouth and shake and nod because he can see the question Morgan won’t let himself ask.
“Good,” he somehow manages because he needs to say it, “it’s good, don’t stop-” A mouth slips at the corner of his mouth, Morgan becoming more playful as his thrusts grow more frantic, as the tension in his back finally changes. “Don’t stop, don’t-” He stutters, actually stutters as Morgan licks a line up his throat and flexes his grip again and keeps moving.
Muffled into his neck, grin in the tone unmistakable: “Prostate, right? Lights a guy up like a Christmas tree?” and fine, maybe he had rambled a bit in his attempts to keep Morgan calm, maybe.
Right now Reid doesn’t care, twists slightly between one jolt of pleasure and the next and mutters, “More” without thinking.
There’s the short laughter, surprised but eager, that comes in response before his mouth catches Morgan’s again, tongue stroking into the other’s mouth with more force than he’d ever trusted himself with before. Because Morgan’s taught him this, more experimentation than Derek himself will admit to being open to, and Reid uses it against him readily, grinning at the startled groan that he swallows.
“Don’t stop-” Fingers twitch into his hip, quiet desperate sound stifled at the back of Morgan’s throat, and he’s grinning too broadly into the next kiss, manages “keep going” until he suddenly can’t talk anymore. Until his body arches, his breath catching in his throat as he scrabbles blindly for a grip on Morgan, the last thrusts coming steady but frantic as words tangle in Reid’s throat.
He might enjoy this too much, the way he already knows the strain building up in the body over his, the odd mix of innocence and experience that he’s completely sure Morgan’s never shown to anyone else.
Overcome, Reid manages to smooth a shaking palm over his shoulder as Morgan tenses in a last moment of uncertainty that doesn’t last, and then shudders into his orgasm with a final rock of his hips.
More awake than he should be after sex, startlingly protective with Morgan burrowing so trustingly into his neck, Reid squeezes his arm reassuringly and all but cradles him until an uneasy tension begins to build in Morgan’s back. Until he mutters, “Clingy” with a forced grin in his voice and pulls away to discard the condom, awkward movement a tell of how badly he doesn’t want to break the physical contact.
“It’s fine,” Reid assures, voice frayed but stronger than he expects it to be, and the words must work because Morgan’s mood shifts again, one arm skimming around him possessively. His hair is swiped back from his face, a thumb pressing for a moment at his hairline as Morgan studies him intently. “What?”
“You have to do something with your hair before I take you back to Chicago.”
Something in the back of his head informs him, flatly, that this line of thinking is dangerous, is something to worry about, to panic over, to push away before it breaks him because it will, of course it will.
But this is Morgan and the fear’s become a fragmented, harmless thing, easily dismissed for the first time in his life.
Reid finds himself shrugging as he raises his hand to tap fingers across Morgan’s knuckles, and is helplessly amused at the way Morgan’s eyes catch the sometimes-useful skill left by peer abuse and coins. “It’s fine,” he assures with utter certainty that’s foreign, “it’s fine, she’ll be fine with it.”
It’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with you.
Half asleep, greedy for contact when he wakes up without it, Reid makes the mistake almost five months in, scoots under the covers without thought and plasters himself around Morgan’s back. He clings a little too tightly and breathes into his neck before Morgan is fully awake, and then tightens his grip when Morgan’s shoulder twitches once strangely before he can stop himself.
The reaction that follows, well hidden as it is between the startle response and the too-quick twist under the sheet before the touch is returned, assures him he’ll never make the mistake again.
The fourth time he wakes up tonight, Reid lifts his head from his pillow in a mix of irritation and acceptance, reads the clock with something close to disgust and then slides closer to Morgan. Listens to his breathing long enough to measure it (more a heavy doze than anything else) and then trails a blunt nail along Morgan’s shoulder blade before waiting, watching.
Before Morgan, too many of his attempts at relationships had been utterly humiliating. His solitude had so become the norm that he’d at first been intimidated by the others’ presence around him- and then had come to yearn for it all hours of the day even as he’d attempted to hide the craving, rein his need in.
There was no need to hold back now, not when things fit together like this.
After a minute: “Morgan?”
When there’s only a shivering breath, Morgan stretching and then resettling, he blows out a breath and asks, bluntly, “Are you awake?” He considers for another moment before pushing Morgan in the back with a palm- even though the breathing in the dark has already changed. “Morgan.”
The chuckling sigh that he gets in return answers the question even before Morgan rolls, tucks his arm under Reid’s head in a silent offer for Reid to do whatever he wants.
“Christ, you’re clingy.” Said like Morgan doesn’t have a palm curled around his shoulder, isn’t drawing him down faster than Reid can decide what it is he even wants to do.
He still refuses oral sex. (Reid doesn’t ask.)
Penetration, on the other hand, is something Morgan finally manages to disconnect from his history long enough to look at from a different perspective and decide he might want to try. (“You sure as hell seem to like it,” had been his exact words, Clooney twisting between his legs as Morgan tried to wrestle the rope toy from him, and maybe I trust you enough to try it had gone unsaid but not unnoticed.)
After so many months Reid is more than eager to ease him into it the way he has everything else.
Because he’s becoming startlingly protective of this side of Morgan, world-weary trust that’s hidden so well from almost everyone else but willingly exposed to him, and the urge to shield it, guard Morgan so that it isn’t crushed now that it’s exposed, is shockingly intense. The feeling adds an extra level of understanding (and more than a little sympathy) to Morgan’s previously exhausting overprotective streak and that, somehow, is even more exhilarating, the knowledge of how much he affects Morgan.
For days, Reid considers saying, I care about you more than I once thought I wanted to, but can’t force himself to admit even that. Instead there’s a break after a difficult case that has them sharing the house for a full weekend that stretches through Monday and into Tuesday, their only official work being their signatures on the papers that are always waiting for whatever time and energy that they have left after cases.
On Tuesday night, Prentiss complains a little too insistently to only them about her date from Saturday (refusing to admit that she’s been out with this woman three times in the last month) on the other side of the table in the corner of the bar, and on Wednesday morning, he’s pressing slick fingers inside of Morgan.
Morgan doesn’t loosen the instinctive grip he has on Reid’s nape, doesn’t let go of the ability to jerk him back if he breaks his promise (“you don’t suck me off,” stated for the hundredth time needlessly) but his breathing’s already gone ragged and there’s a grin in his voice when he orders, “More.”
His fingers curve, press, and Morgan stutters, rocks his hips and repeats the command.
Reid grins helplessly at the startled “Jesus” the pressure causes, grazes teeth over Morgan’s side but pointedly doesn’t let his mouth drift farther down even if he wants to, badly. “Jesus-” He presses a kiss to the inside of Morgan’s forearm in a moment of weakness he can’t be ashamed of. “More-”
There’s a fragment of a memory then, Ethan in love and frighteningly vulnerable as he mutters, “I just want to give you this” into his neck like it had been the most important thing in the world and Reid finally gets it years after the fact.
“It can be good.” A quiet assurance as he slides and strokes, listens to the eager noises of pleasure. “Derek-”
“Yeah.” Fingers flex at his nape, tighten. “Yeah.”
Brown eyes study him, nervous but trusting, and he gives whatever Morgan is willing to take.
Reid will never tell Morgan how draining he sometimes is.
Because he’s getting better, has relaxed from how he was when their relationship started and no longer fights quite so hard to overcompensate around them the way he instinctively had for years. But even now he’ll hesitate when things are going well, draw back in a moment of uncertainty to check on Reid, to make sure he’s fine, nearly paranoid in his certainty that he’s somehow hurting Reid.
What’s worst is that it always happens when things are at their best, when Reid is eager and strung tight and so close until Morgan’s focus stutters, until the comforting weight of his body is drawing away.
On too many levels, in too many ways, it’s almost too much for Reid to handle.
It’s not fair, he knows, even if it’s also a completely natural reaction for a person starved for contact comfort outside of the too-warm sweaters he’d sometimes worn for reasons that had nothing to with the weather in the years before the team embraced him. And it’s the one thing he goes out of his way to avoid letting Morgan pick up on, something that’s easier said than done with someone as perceptive as a profiler.
But Reid stays composed each time the occurrence comes up, blows out a slow breath and strokes trembling hands as calmly as he can across sweat-slick skin. Promises when his voice sounds stable, “Fine, I’m fine, keep going” until he feels the tension shift under his hands, until Morgan’s focus finally changes and pleasure is spiking under his skin again.
The mood always passes, burned away as Morgan gets him off with an open enjoyment, and he quickly enough learns how to handle the mood swings- but he goes out of his way to keep his irritation from Morgan.
None of it is his fault anyway.
A week before Atlantic City, JJ corners him in a conference room.
“You’re scaring the police officers,” she informs him as she slips in and closes the door a little too firmly behind her, “and Morgan keeps flirting with the lead investigator.” A coffee is set near the board where he’s working, another stack of files placed beside that. “Did you two finally have your first fight?”
“We’ve had six fights and none of you have ever been able to figure out when we have them,” he returns without hesitation, so quietly frustrated by things he can’t change that he’s left somehow completely sure of himself as he presses another pin to the board. “And he’s not flirting, he’s distracting himself until Prentiss gets back with Rossi.”
“Okay, what is he distracting himself from?” Reid doesn’t answer, focused on making sure the red pushpin is in the correct spot, and JJ breathes out beside him, obviously prepared to stay until she gets an answer. “Spence, you have bitchface.”
The absurdity of the comment breaks his mood for a split second, has his head swinging around to stare at her in utter confusion. “What?”
“Bitchface,” she explains, touching his forehead before prodding, more quietly, “What’s wrong?”
He holds onto his stubbornness the way only he and his mother can, checks the other pins and the notes even though he knows they’re all correct. When he hears the slow breath beside him, knows JJ is opening her mouth to keep pushing where she’s right to push: “He’s dead.” Silence greets the words, uncertainty, and his control wavers a little too much. “Derek only found out when Sarah called last night.”
Reid knows the exact moment JJ understands, feels the sudden spark of anger so skillfully hidden even he’s only barely able to pick it up, can read it only because she’s let him see it before. When she finally speaks, he’s vaguely impressed by the calm because even he isn’t this good. “Did he suffer?”
Quite a bit, actually- the guards hadn’t reached him nearly as quickly as they could have.
Still, he blows out a breath because he can’t do anything else (anything) and finally takes the coffee, fiddles with the lid but can’t swallow any down. “Not enough.”
It’s normal for people to have the emotional equivalent of a security blanket.
Clooney is fourth in a line of living, breathing security blankets that have been at Morgan’s side since he had graduated college so many years before. Reid now knows about a Rottweiler named Hoffman later adopted by Sarah when she had left home herself and Harris, a pit-bull kept for three years; rarely, he’s heard quiet mentions of Bergman, a particularly beloved shepherd that Morgan was still grieving, killed from Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus just a month before Clooney was adopted.
It’s obviously comforting to Morgan that a hundred pounds of overprotective Rottweiler-Shepherd is waiting when he gets home, is highly trained and fully capable of protecting him should any problem arise.
Nine months in, Reid isn’t there when Clooney spends the night at the vet’s, and Hotch predictably forces Morgan home where he calls Reid up to keep himself company. And where they’d usually get off the phone after half an hour, tonight he lingers until Morgan’s words begin to trail off by themselves, until he can hear the tiredness in Morgan’s voice and knows he’ll sleep through the night.
Because he’s still not completely sure why Morgan stares at him across the room with soft heat or is so easily comforted by the barest mutter of assurance in the middle of the night, but it’s become habit to slip to the house with Morgan to huddle under the covers after cases that are too difficult and he’s stopped cringing fearfully when Clooney sneaks into the bed when Morgan is nearly comatose with the rope toy that’s his favorite to stare at Reid longingly in a silent plea. Because Garcia insists he looks like “the stray cat the tuna factory adopted” and thinks “the whole thing is the most adorable thing ever” and usually he hates being called any form of “adorable,” but Reid still finds himself unable to be anything other than pleased with the change.
“At least he won’t be wearing one of those stupid cones on his head…”
“I still haven’t gotten to see that.”
“He’d never forgive you.” In the background, Reid can hear the muffled sound of the television and knows that Morgan is still perched restlessly on the couch, feet bare and Glock on the table in front of him. (If Emily weren’t busy, Reid is sure he would have shown up uninvited at her home the way they refused to admit he sometimes did.) Stalling hundreds of miles away, Morgan prods too easily, “You still haven’t told me what you want for dinner.”
“Whatever you want.”
He says it just to annoy Morgan, and it works, at least to judge by the muted sigh that comes through the connection and the warm certainty that Morgan has just rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and looks pained. “That isn’t an answer, kid.”
“I’m good with anything.”
“Unless you aren’t-” Reid opens his mouth, a little flustered, “then you glare at it.”
“I don’t glare at my food.”
“Sure you don’t.” Derek is close to passing out, exhaustion unmistakable in the weight of his words as he keeps himself talking, but he’s grinning and it’s impossible to miss. Reid smiles helplessly himself, drained after hours of conversation with people who hate him because he’s smarter and younger and yet unwilling to get off the phone. After another moment: “I hate these fucking trips of yours.”
Always, but I really hate it this time.
Reid is too aware of the fact that it’s dangerous to feel this much.
He had learned the lesson early on and had it drilled in further before his eleventh birthday between don’t use the stove when I’m gone and pretending he didn’t sometimes go into his parents’ room just so he could insistently, uselessly, tug at the sleeves of the shirts his father had left hanging in the closet.
But in love, frighteningly vulnerable, he just promises, “We can grab Thai when I get home.”
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
- Bob Dylan