Upward Over the Mountain (1/2), for resolucidity, Hotch/Reid, R
Title: Upward Over the Mountain
Author: coffeecocktails
Recipient: resolucidity
Pairing: Hotch/Reid, with Rossi and Reid friendship
Rating: FRM / R
Word Count: ~12,700
Warnings: Swearing, sex, angst, humor, references to violence
Spoilers: Heavy on season five content, up to the end of s05e08, Outfoxed
Prompt: When Rossi realizes that Hotch is interested in Reid, he pretends to show interest in our favorite genius to make Hotch jealous enough to finally pursue the relationship.
A/N: The title and quotes come from this song.
So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
Sons could be birds, taken broken up to the mountain.
(Iron and Wine)
***
Spencer Reid has so far (in his lofty almost-28 years), experienced two moments of startling and blindingly clear epiphany: one when he was 25 years old and dying, tied to a chair, on the floor of a shack; the other while drunkenly spooning the toilet at the end of his 27th birthday party.
The first is that he is utterly and hopelessly in love with Aaron Hotchner.
The second is that he really, really needs to get over it.
***
David Rossi thinks to himself that if Reid looks up at Aaron’s office window one more time, the goddamn glass might shatter under the force of his abnormally large eyes. He allows himself a moment to be baffled by the fact that Reid has so many extraordinarily large features crammed onto his face. He has one of those faces, Dave thinks, which you’d see on a child and hope for the kid’s sake that he was going to somehow grow into it. But Reid is 28 or so now, and had a freakish growth spurt last summer which Dave is sure was the glorious culmination of the entire team furtively feeding him for the past six years, so any chance that the kid might still grow into his facial features has probably been and gone.
Dave tries to go back to the profile he is writing, but he is caught again by the rhythmic shift of Reid’s gaze, down in the bullpen, between the stack of paper in front of him (glazed) and up at Aaron’s office window (anxious), interspersed with the odd furtive peek at Dave’s office window to see whether he has been caught looking (guilty). Dave tries to do that thing he saw on late night television where you massage your temples with your fingers, but it only makes his headache more horrifically pronounced and his knuckles turn white. He does not remember the television presenter saying anything about the soothing motion making your knuckles white.
This is completely fucking ridiculous, Dave thinks. He has always been an action man. A Man of Action. And now the team - his team, he concedes, grudgingly - is falling to pieces around him, all because of George fucking Foyet. That’s why Aaron’s in his office, brooding and playing at being Harry Potter with a goddamn score to settle and Morgan’s stressed out of his tree with the extra pressure and Prentiss is doing everyone else’s work and probably Dave’s too (because the hell if Dave’s doing it) and Garcia has been acting weird lately, so she’s probably planning to hack another fucking solar system and Reid - Dave peers down through the blinds to where the kid appears to be trying to chew a hole through his goddamn lip - Reid is worrying himself sick about Aaron. To the extent that he’s been trying to pretend he hasn’t recently had his knee joint rearranged like the window display at fucking Bloomingdales.
Dave has known that Reid is in love with Aaron since the end of his second week back at the BAU; it’s always easier to spot real infatuation when you’ve got something with which to compare it. In this case, Dave knew straight away that the way Reid followed him everywhere, quoting things and offering to make him coffee, was just a harmless, scholarly crush; one that would fade with time as Reid realized that Dave was just as annoying an asshole as anyone else. And as soon as Dave realized that, it was just as obvious that the way Reid looked at Aaron was something completely different. Reid mirrored Aaron and took cues from him and he spoke in a lower register when Aaron was around and he thought for longer before he answered Aaron’s questions and he could be reckless as all hell if he thought Aaron needed protecting. But mostly, the kid just watched him. All the time. Constantly.
That had not come as a surprise. The shock of Dave’s life had been the day he realized that Aaron was watching Reid back.
After that, the signs had been easy to spot; Aaron’s anger when Reid, too often, put himself in danger; his careful consideration of everything Reid said; the way he touched the younger man without even thinking about it - a hand in the small of Reid’s back or rested on his shoulder; the way Aaron looked at him, like Reid was something much more interesting and complicated to look at than he really was.
After Dave got used to the idea - and he prided himself on being so open minded about it, although the open mindedness had initially come courtesy of a not inconsiderable amount of Glenfiddich - he realized it made an insane kind of sense. They were probably good for each other, he thought morosely one night, staring into the empty whisky bottle and wondering where all his alcohol had gone. But of course, neither of them would ever actually do anything about it, so that was that.
That was that. But that had been two years ago, and as of late, a little voice in Dave’s head has been saying that if ever Aaron needed someone - someone who could make him think that life had any kind of goddamn point - it is right now. And Dave knows Aaron better than anyone else on this team does, and thus he knows while the man is generous to a fault, that when it comes to the things that Aaron loves - really loves - he gets jealous as all hell if they’re messed with.
And Dave plans to mess. More specifically, he plans to mess with Spencer Reid. In fact, he plans to take the kid out to dinner and if Aaron gets jealous and suddenly realizes he wants Reid after all, he can damn well snap out of his current apathy coma, take a number and wait in goddamn line.
Later, Reid visits Dave’s office with a stack of files that he thinks the older man might be interested in as background reading, but which actually makes Dave want to shoot himself in the face.
“Are you doing anything Friday night?” he asks Reid, and the younger man starts muttering something about Friday being leftovers night and maybe doing some shit with computers that Dave isn’t really interested in beyond a few words.
“Come out for dinner with me,” he says. “There’s a new restaurant I want to try. Sounds like a nice place, French food; your underdeveloped sense of taste will probably cope.”
Reid looks alarmingly unconvinced of Dave’s sincerity.
“We never get time to have proper conversations around here,” says Dave. “You’ve got some theories on delusions I haven’t had a chance to ask about yet and I’ve got a heap of questions.”
Reid smiles. He has quite a nice smile. Then the kid tries to swipe his overgrown mane of hair out of his face and just about falls off his crutches.
Sometimes, Dave thinks, this team is like a scuffy, yappy box of orphan puppies that you found outside the goddamned Walmart. And much as you know the puppies aren’t actually your problem, and they’re annoying and you want to leave the box on the curb somewhere, you know you can’t because it might get run over by a car and then you would feel like shit. So you put the box in your trunk and then you take the puppies home and spend fucking hours feeding them out of a goddamned eyedropper and then they sleep on your silk monogrammed shirts and piss all over your goddamned house -
Reid rights himself. “Yeah, that would be… yes, great, thank you,” he says. “I mean, that’s a yes.” He bites his lip. “What am I supposed to wear?”
Yes, thinks David Rossi, that analogy is entirely apt. Except that he does not now shop - and nor has he ever shopped - at a goddamn Walmart.
***
This is one of the three places in his apartment where Spencer Reid goes to think.
Tonight he has managed to be home in time to make hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream and get himself settled on the living room windowsill before the lights get switched on over the road. He leans his head against the window and exhales, fogging up a little patch of the glass with his breath.
He chose this spot, initially, because he fit so well here; legs tucked under him, back against the wall, neat as a cat. Now, Spencer thinks, he doesn’t conform to the space the way he used to; he has grown quite a bit, for one thing, and for another, he can’t bend his bad knee up in front of him at enough of an angle. These days, he’s half on the windowsill, half sprawled off it; his bad foot on the ground and his arms wrapped around his good leg.
He leans down to stir his drink, and looks up in time to see the floodlights snap on outside the museum across the street. Spencer smiles to himself. He loves being here before the lights go on, looking out into the darkness and suddenly seeing the building come into view; a magic castle appearing out of nowhere. He likes to imagine a solemn line of people floating out of the museum under the cover of night - ancient and weightless, a silent procession of Kings and revolutionaries from different ages, standing on ceremony and silent as ghosts. It’s silly, a game really, and not something he tells anyone about - only his mother would understand and he doesn’t want to confuse her with make believe, telling her about things that aren’t real in case she thinks they are.
Spencer doesn’t know why tonight, of all nights, he has a lump in his throat when he imagines the procession of people. He thinks of Rossi’s gruff and unexpected offer of dinner today, like he was extending a real hand of friendship to Spencer in a way he hasn’t before. Spencer is not sure what it means. And he thinks of Hotch, who doesn’t quite shut his office blinds all the way and who sometimes sits at his desk with his head down and does not move for hours at a time.
The thing that Spencer is trying not to think about is the way Hotch looked last weekend when he came into the office in a sweater instead of a high collared shirt; the fine tendril of white scar snaking up the base of his throat, his eyes daring people to comment.
Spencer looks back at the museum, trying to conjure up ancient Greeks and Roman centurions in his mind’s eye, but all at once there is guilt building in the pit of his stomach and he can’t breathe. When he came back from the dead in Georgia, he had created some kind of a life debt, mistakenly ensured that someone else must die in his place when it should have been him. And when he’d said, “I choose Aaron Hotchner,” Spencer had painted a cross in blood above Hotch’s door for Foyet to find.
This, now, is Spencer’s debt being paid in full. This is his fault.
***
On Friday, when Reid arrives at the restaurant, Dave can see he is sporting precisely all of the clothing items that he was instructed to wear; in terms of color and texture and size the items themselves look as though they were selected by someone who was trying very hard and who also just happened to be a blind person. Dave notes that this does not stop the maitre d’ (male) from flirting with Reid and being just a little bit lingering and grabby when he takes the younger man’s coat, or their waiter (female) from batting her eyelids at Reid all night and later bringing him tiny, complementary chocolate truffles with his desert, even though he does not order them. Reid, in a stunning display of his usual form, seems not to notice in the slightest and Dave begins to realize that Aaron was not exaggerating the time he told Dave about the precautions they observe when taking Reid places where there might be hookers. The kid is a raging aphrodisiac for people who like really bad ties. Dave thinks he will probably never understand.
Reid, actually, turns out to be a wonderful dinner companion. The snippets of trivia and knowledge that can grate on Dave occasionally when they’re working a case and pushed for time are marvelously entertaining in a social setting. The younger man has no trouble selecting what he wants from the menu, although he does allow the sommelier to choose his wine; something Dave would never do because he doesn’t have a 500-bottle wine cellar in his house so that some jumped-up kitchen hand can tell him what to drink.
Dave notices though that Reid’s eyes remain busy and watchful, even while he is talking, his slender-fingered movements with his wine glass and napkin and cutlery all just a fraction behind Dave’s, as though he is waiting for cues. He’s a skilled chameleon, Dave realizes, and it’s a talent he highly values in the field, but it makes him feel a little sick to think about how Reid became so good at it. He remembers the snippets Aaron has told him about Reid’s childhood, and knows that the ability to carefully emulate normal life must have been a crucial kind of self preservation.
Later, when they are eating their mains and both of them have had plenty of wine, it becomes apparent that Reid is a brilliant storyteller as well.
“… anyway, I told them repeatedly that I just needed a bit of quiet for my extra-mural studies, but they were all totally convinced that the only reason I could be going off alone on my free afternoons was because I had started using again, so they sent Morgan up to spy on me…And when he burst into the cleaners’ cupboard and found me sitting on an upturned bucket with a torch and a philosophy textbook, we both just about died of fright…”
Dave roars with laughter.
“Of course, when I was actually using, I would do it in the fourth floor men’s room and none of them knew anything about it at all,” Reid mutters. He looks up, startled. “I’ve never told anyone that part before, I don’t know why I…” he trails off.
“It’s OK,” smiles Dave, enjoying the shared confidence even though he wishes, of course, that Reid had been spared the reason behind it. “They probably felt guilty that they didn’t notice when it was going on,” he says, cupping his hands around his glass of Pinot, “and they would have been trying to make it up to you, for a long time. Hell, I know I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I’d been around then and I hadn’t been able to do anything.”
“I know,” Reid shrugs. “It used to bug me when they’d all look out for me, like they didn’t think I could do the job or something. But I realised that it was actually because they cared, and somewhere along the way - maybe after the cleaners’ cupboard thing - I started to see the funny side, and now” - he spreads his hands, smiles - “I don’t know; I’m used to it. It’s kind of nice.”
“You know the team has your back when you really are fucked,” says Rossi, and Reid nods.
“The funny thing is though,” Reid says, “that Hotch seems to have the perfect knack of doing it without being condescending. You know, Morgan’s got all the subtlety of a brick to the face, but Hotch” - Dave watches him curiously as Reid fumbles with a bread roll - “he’s got this way of checking you’re alright like he’s reassuring you that it’s OK if you’re not, but that he’ll have faith in you either way.”
“Yeah,” says Dave, thinking about all the times (and there have been many) that Aaron has turned that gentle probing on him. He decides to drop the bombshell, as it were.
“So have you always been in love with Aaron?” he asks, “Or was it one of those gradually developing things?”
Reid drops the end of his bread roll in his glass of wine, where it sinks with a plonk. His fingers twitch towards his cutlery, but Dave says, “If you are even thinking about fishing that out of there with your goddamn fork, I am never going anywhere with you again,” and Reid goes back to staring at him like he has utterly lost his mind.
A moment later he still looks shell-shocked, and then he begins to stammer. “I’m not… I’m not… I haven’t…”
Dave smirks as he watches the younger man pass through the spectrum of red until his face settles on a gentle shade of mahogany. Then he decides to throw him a rope.
“I’m not asking about it because I want to mock you, and I’m not going to talk about it to anyone else; although they all know by the way, don’t think that they don’t,” - Reid makes a small peep like a bird being trod on - “It’s just that I know Aaron, I know him really well and he’s my best friend and I - “ Dave falters for a moment, and now he feels embarrassed because Reid is still staring at him like he’s speaking fucking Russian, but he steels himself to continue, “I know he’s fucking struggling at the moment; he’s really struggling, and it hurts for me to see it, and much as it pains me to say this out loud, I just think that you might be exactly what he needs.”
Reid swallows, hard. He looks behind him. “Are you serious?” he whispers.
“Yes,” Dave hisses back. “And I would rather have my fucking teeth pulled than talk about things like this, so don’t make me repeat it.”
“I,” says Reid. For someone who could fairly be termed quite intelligent, this all seems to be taking a little while to sink in. He tries again. “I can’t just make a move on my boss!”
“He’s not technically your boss at the moment,” Dave points out. Reid looks scandalized.
“But he doesn’t - he doesn’t like me. He had a wife. He likes women. He doesn’t - he couldn’t - think of me like that, and you’re being completely ridiculous,” says Reid, although Dave notes he doesn’t deny his feelings for Aaron, or assert his own preference for women.
“I’ve known him for much longer than you have,” begins Dave. “I think I know what he -“
“I can’t do it. And anyway, right now it would be taking advantage - on top of everything he’s already dealing with - and that would be extremely wrong,” says Reid, and his tone says that the subject is closed.
Dave smiles and leans back in his seat. Of course, this is exactly the reaction he expected, which is why The Plan to Make Aaron Jealous is already underway. “Sure, sure alright,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” He drains the last of his Pinot. “This has been a damn good night,” he adds. “We should do it again soon.”
Reid starts turning back to his normal color when he realises Dave is allowing the subject of Aaron to be dropped. He smiles, that full, bright smile that’s so wide and creases the sides of his mouth so heavily that you think his face might break in half. “That would be really excellent,” he says.
“Are you free next Friday?” Dave asks.
Reid is. Dave is not all that surprised.
***
Tonight Spencer is sitting in his sweatpants and flannel shirt on the bathroom floor with his leg stretched out in front of him. This is the second place in his apartment where he goes to think and it’s sort of funny how, when he considers it, this one feels the most like coming home. He used to sit here a lot after Tobias, when he didn’t want to go to sleep; the cold from the tiles seeping through his clothes and the light reassuringly bright and clean. He remembers when he was sick on his birthday last year, and Garcia felt guilty about it because she was the one who fed him all the alcohol and she brought her knitting into the bathroom and sat in the bathtub on a cushion and said soothing things to him while he threw up.
Now he is a little fuzzy from the wine he drank at dinner and light headed with the things Rossi told him, the things about Hotch (Rossi calls him Aaron, thinks Spencer, and he tries it out daringly in his head, but it feels wrong). What Rossi said, about Hotch maybe liking Spencer back, feels like a promise and Spencer doesn’t think you should make promises if you don’t know for certain you can keep them, and Rossi can’t possibly know what Hotch thinks.
Spencer feels overwhelmed sometimes, like he is wearing a cloak made of other people’s blessings, things he never expected for himself and doesn’t really deserve. He already has all this and getting Hotch as well, getting the one thing that he wants so selfishly, seems like it would be far too much. The past five years of his life have already been a lucky accident; he won’t let Rossi make him want anything more.
The tiles are cold on the back of Spencer’s thighs and it makes him remember things he’d rather not, so instead he thinks about how he likes ice cream and Battlestar Galactica and flannel. He does not like the feeling of hard things pressed against his forehead or bare light bulbs or the smell of the ground after it has been raining.
He liked that dizzying, underwater feeling when Rossi said he and Hotch were right for each other. Spencer pushes the stubborn thought back where it won’t end up hurting him, and he forces himself to think of that treacherous inch of scar on Hotch’s throat and what he would say if he knew that Spencer was, indirectly, responsible.
He already chose Aaron Hotchner once. He’s not going to do it again.
***
Dave is at Spencer Reid’s house for dinner and they would be closer to eating the goddamned dinner if he could find any surface on which he might be able to prepare food. The kitchen, like the living room and what little he could see of the spare bedroom on his way in, is full of books.
“You ever heard of a bookshelf, kid?” he asks, trying to combine the stack of Greek mythology books in front of the toaster with the pile of psychology texts on top of the fridge.
Reid is drifting around behind him, rattling in drawers for the corkscrew he claims to own. “I’ve got bookshelves,” he says, “I just… I run out of room. It’s like they breed or something; I don’t know.” He looks up. “Oh, can you please not change the piles around?” His tone is beseeching. Dave snorts.
“I’ve got a system!” Reid insists. “It used to be alphabetical by author and now it’s by subject - oh God, please don’t stick the Greeks with the war poets; I’ll never be able to find anything.”
“Because you’re a raging success at that now,” says Dave. “Look, you get over here and point to exactly where you normally prepare the food, and that’s where I’ll do it.” Reid looks shifty and uncertain.
“Jesus Christ,” Dave says. “Please tell me you’re not eating the goddamn books.” He privately thinks it would explain a lot about Reid’s physique and complexion.
“I can point to exactly where the take out menus are,” says Reid, hopefully. “Oh, alright,” Dave says. He gestures at the lasagna ingredients he brought with him. “If I leave all this in the fridge, are you gonna eat it before it goes bad, or just read the fucking labels?”
“I do not need you to treat my house like a food bank,” says Spencer, indignantly. “I have food.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
They order Vietnamese because Reid promises Dave he will love the fresh summer rolls, and Dave is forced to grudgingly concede that he could probably eat them every night for the rest of his life, although he suspects Reid is attempting to scale that goddamn mountain already.
Reid has apparently spent the day charging through all four Twilight books because of some throwaway remark JJ and Garcia made during the Dante case; he seems to want Dave to listen to a vehement lecture about feminism and the subverting of women’s choices and his moral issues with people trying to teach abstinence by stealth. Dave finds it hilarious that Reid has to turn everything into a goddamn cause, but eventually he says, “I think you need to take that shit a bit less seriously,” and it’s worth it when Reid’s jaw drops. “You’ve read Twilight?”
Rossi shrugs. “I got nieces… Two of ‘em. I saw the film of the first one,” he says. “It wasn’t the worst goddamn thing I ever saw.” Reid laughs.
“If you tell anyone that…” Rossi threatens, but without malice, because Reid is laughing and he does not look miserable and Rossi thinks that maybe, even if things don’t work out with The Plan to Make Aaron Jealous, it couldn’t possibly hurt to take Reid under his wing a bit more. From time to time, nothing serious; just to make sure he’s not actually eating the books. Because Jesus.
They watch a film and Reid talks all the way through it until Rossi wants to belt him, and when the final credits roll, Reid tells him that this is normally when he has ice cream. “You have an ice cream time?” asks Dave. “Ice cream o’clock?”
Reid shrugs, “Pretty much.”
He brings out a tub of strawberry with little bits of jello in it and Dave feels his masculinity disappearing by the second, so he offers to crack open a couple of cold beers as well. Reid looks confused about what Dave would want with beer. “It’s a Thing of Men,” says Dave. “It’s what men do.”
“OK,” says Reid, amiably and a moment later he admits that ice cream and beer are a pretty good combination.
There is a comfortable pause before Reid says, “Emily thought this was a bit weird.”
This’ll be interesting, Dave thinks. He asks, “What’s weird?”
“This,” says Reid, looking awkward, like he’s worried Dave’s going to get pissed at him. “You and I hanging out every Friday. She says it’s not the sort of thing she imagined you doing.”
Dave smirks. “I like to keep people on their toes,” he says. Reid looks uncertain, and Dave realizes it’s not just Emily that the question’s coming from, and he takes a moment to be pissed at anyone who ever made Spencer Reid think he wasn’t worth spending time with.
“I’m probably only saying this because I’ve been drinking,” he says, looking deliberately at his hands, “But I’ve always liked you a hell of a lot more than you thought I did.”
Reid tries to look nonchalant, but his eyes crease at the corners and he says, “Oh, good,” like something in his head has been settled.
Dave decides to have another crack at the eternal losing fucking battle while he’s on the kid’s good side. “You know, once you and Aaron have your shit sorted - “
He is unable to complete his sentence because Reid has taken a couch cushion and is using it to beat him in the head.
Dave decides Reid shouldn’t be allowed sugar and alcohol within the same five hour window.
***
On the next case, in Tennessee, there is a little boy the same age as Jack Hotchner, and he is blond and round faced and wide eyed and sticky fingered and he is dead. When they reach the crime scene, Spencer feels something inside him convulse and he struggles to stay upright. He looks over at Hotch, waiting to see his mask slip, to see him turn away, to see any sign that this is hurting him, that he feels. Hotch does not miss a beat, and the smooth, blank mask of his face does not change. His hands ball into loose fists at his sides, but he does not look away. Spencer is terrified; not of him, but for him.
Later, at the hotel, Spencer is watching the BBC World Service and trying not to think when Rossi knocks at his door. He says, no preamble, “I need you to go and talk to Aaron,” and Spencer opens his mouth to argue and then understands from the steely, furious look in Rossi’s eyes that this time it’s not one of Rossi’s outrageous schemes, but real. So instead he says, “Why?”
And Rossi says - angry, pissed, scared - “Because I just went to his room to check on him and he told me to fuck off. And I’m not sending Morgan in there just yet because I’d rather not have to pay to get someone’s blood off the goddamn carpet in the morning.” He rolls his eyes.
Spencer says, “Why me?” and Rossi says, “He won’t be expecting you,” and holds out Hotch’s spare room key. Spencer would rather stay where he is, but he thinks Rossi is probably right so he takes the room key and collects up his crutches and makes his ungainly way down the hall until he gets to the right door.
“Hotch,” he calls, feeling stupid. “Hotch.” He rests his forehead against the cool wood. He doesn’t know whether the other man can hear him and he isn’t going to shout. In the end, he slides the key card into the slot, waits for the beep, and pushes the door open.
The room is pitch black. Spencer pauses for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust, and suddenly realizes that he has technically broken into Hotch’s room in the middle of the night. He coughs to announce his presence. “Hotch, it’s me.”
Hotch’s voice is whisky-dry in the darkness. “I know.”
Spencer looks in the direction of the sound, and sees the top of Hotch’s head, where he is sitting on the floor on the other side of the room, leaned against the further away of two beds.
“I could hear you coming up the hallway,” Hotch says. “Your crutches…”
His words are blurred at the edges. Spencer wonders whether he has been crying or perhaps drinking. He shivers at his own memories of wanting to forget, of that cold, keening need for something to make his mind sedate enough to be in it. He doesn’t dare ask Hotch whether he is drunk. He doesn’t think he wants to know.
Spencer eases himself into a chair near the door, wondering what Dave had meant for him to say. He faces the same direction as Hotch, and looks out the window, across the valley of lights in front of them, and he thinks about how there are people down in that valley who are broken too, and he wonders how the hell other people manage and what happens to them when they don’t.
“Tell me something,” says Hotch. “Tell me something that isn’t this.”
Spencer tucks his good leg up onto the chair, and closes his eyes and pretends he is on the windowsill of his apartment, looking over at the museum. He thinks for a moment about what his mother would like to hear, and then he remembers that Hotch is not his mother, so he starts talking to the back of the other man’s head about times when embarrassing things have happened to him. He has a large back catalogue, and he tells Hotch about the time he concussed himself on a metal paper towel dispenser in a public bathroom, and gives a dramatic rendition of Morgan bursting in on him in the cleaners’ cupboard (although admittedly, Hotch has probably heard that one every time Spencer has been drunk with the team for the past two years), and about the time he fell head first into a large trash can and had to be helped out.
Eventually, the stories peter out, and he can still hear Hotch’s breathing, soft and slightly ragged on the other side of the room, so he starts reciting Proust. It is a good choice, he thinks, because he doesn’t even have to rely on his eidetic memory for the words to come to him; he just knows them. In his head, his mother is saying them along with him. After an hour or so, his voice starts becoming hoarse and his eyelids are drooping, and when he stops once to clear his throat, Hotch suddenly says, “You don’t need to stay.”
Spencer asks, “Do you want me to?” and there is a long pause before Hotch rasps out, “Yes.”
It is three o’clock in the morning and the sky outside seems to be getting lighter in increments, or perhaps Spencer is just imagining it. He struggles out of the hard-backed chair and onto his feet, making his shuffling way to the other bed, the one nearest the door; the one Hotch is not leaning against.
“You should try and get some sleep,” he says, and promptly feels patronizing and rude, but Hotch climbs to his feet too, his knee joints cracking like gunshots in the quiet. Spencer watches as Hotch’s outline checks that the sheets and blankets are completely tucked in, before carefully removing a gun from his hip holster and placing it just so on the bedside table. He lies down on top of the bed, without removing his shoes or the gun at his ankle.
Spencer’s heart is full of little shards of broken glass. He recognizes the hyper-vigilance: the need to sleep on top of the covers in case you have to get up in a hurry, the need to know you could get to your gun having barely woken. Feeling pathetically like he should set a good example, Spencer slides into the other bed, maneuvering his bad knee until it is comfortable and diligently pulling the covers right up to his chin. He listens to Hotch’s breathing; too shallow, too alert to be of a man falling asleep. Spencer is suddenly not tired either. He thinks of the other man, lying cold and stiff on top of his bed, waiting for God knows what to come through the door, and feels sick.
One thing Spencer Reid has always been able to do well is cry without making a sound, and he cries now - hot, bitter tears in the dark - for the fact that he is finally lying in bed listening to Aaron Hotchner’s breath next to his, but that it is all so wrong and so broken, and he cries because Hotch let him in at all and to hope that that might mean something isn’t fair, and because they could have kissed each other’s bruises there in the dark and perhaps Reid could have made Hotch better if he’d only been given the chance, and he cries because he knows that if Foyet walked through the door tonight, Hotch wouldn’t need to spring for his gun because Spencer would rip Foyet apart with his hands.
When he wakes up a few hours later, Spencer’s eyes feel gritty and Hotch has already dressed and gone.
***
If Dave was a betting man (which he is) and actually had someone to bet against on this score (which he doesn’t), he would have put money on Derek Morgan storming his office less a fortnight after he first took Reid out for dinner, threatening to remove Dave’s kidneys.
Of course, Dave would have lost his cash there, because he wouldn’t have factored in Morgan’s preoccupation with his new Unit Chief job, which has kept his ass in his own office and his mind on other things for the past couple of months.
In fact it takes for Dave - in an act of desperation because Aaron doesn’t seem to have noticed yet - to whisk Reid off to a vineyard for a wine tasting one Saturday before Morgan gets suspicious. Dave’s glad he took the younger man along, actually; he’s better entertainment in the car than one of those books on tape and at the winery, he wrote “tastes like wine” next to every glass in his tasting notes. Dave plans to have the sheet of paper framed and give it to Reid for his upcoming birthday.
It seems that Reid, in his excitement about the road trip, told Garcia all about it and Garcia let it slip to Morgan, who tells Prentiss in passing that he’s going to have Rossi’s head on a plate for messing with Reid, and Prentiss shoots off a quick email to Dave to warn him (Prentiss is fucking great, Dave thinks. He really should buy her a Danish or something), and so he has time to ensure he looks sufficiently smug before Morgan arrives in his office like a brooding, tight-shirted tornado of vengeance.
The younger man makes some boring and unoriginal threats on Dave’s life, and accuses Dave at length of coming on to Reid and doing something he calls pulling a Gideon (unfortunately, Dave sort of knows what that means), and Dave holds out for all of five minutes before he breaks down and tells Morgan about The Plan to Make Aaron Jealous, just to see the look on his face.
Morgan is speechless for only a moment, before he launches into tales of the team’s previous plans to get Aaron and Reid together. Dave listens with growing horror, because all of their plans were moronic and utterly lacking in nuance, and one of them involved a game of Spin the Bottle, and Dave sometimes has difficulty believing that the FBI employed these people and that they are not all dead.
And Morgan is their leader now. Jesus Christ.
Then he feels relieved, because now the team has Dave and he is fucking great at plans, and he tells Morgan this. “So, how’s it comin’ along then?” Morgan asks.
Dave thinks of Aaron telling him to fuck off and the way he comes out of his office red eyed and vacant, and he thinks about Reid’s distracted air and his look of general unhappiness sometimes (like he can’t be glad if Aaron isn’t), and he considers the fact that he could probably put a gun to both of their heads and they still wouldn’t confess to liking each other.
“It’s going well,” he says. “Really, really well. I think I’m making progress.”
Morgan actually looks hopeful at that point, and asks whether he can tell Garcia about The Plan to Make Aaron Jealous. Dave wonders whether it is too late to go back to the days when he used to write books and make lots of money and have groupies and get divorced and shoot things that didn’t talk. Those were some good times.
***
Reid lies on his back under his mother’s writing desk and fingers the scratches and grooves in the wood. This is the first place in his life where he ever went to think, and it was the only piece of furniture he kept from the house he grew up in. It’s a reminder of the times his mother was happy and almost normal, the way he most likes to remember her. He used to sit under this desk as a kid, curled against the leg of it while she worked - because it was the closest he could get to her without being distracting - and occasionally she’d lean down and stroke the top of his head absent-mindedly, like he was a little cat. When he was very young, he used to like it best when she talked out loud to herself as she worked, because it wasn’t as boring if he could try and understand what she was writing.
As he got older, Spencer began to dread the days when she’d talk to herself, because it never meant anything good, and he couldn’t understand the words anyway. No one could.
Now, of course, only his head and shoulders actually fit under the desk, and the rest of his body sticks out across the room. He lies there and pokes at the scratches and wonders why all he hears when he shuts his eyes is his own voice asking Hotch in the hotel room whether Hotch wants him to stay, and the other man’s silence before he said, yes.
The thing is too ashamed to tell his mother in his letters is this: when he was at the hospital, after he was shot through the knee, the doctor had come to him and said, “No fieldwork or anything dangerous for a while, I’m afraid,” and Spencer had not felt angry or disappointed but relieved. He’s just not very brave is all, he tells himself - his strengths lie elsewhere; he has to work harder on courage than Morgan does, or Prentiss. So he wonders what it means when he knows that he’d take a bullet if Aaron Hotchner asked him to; when he knows that he’d take a bullet for Aaron Hotchner even if no one asked him to at all.
***
Dave has had to step up his efforts, but he doesn’t feel too guilty about it because Morgan basically approves and besides, he and Reid are - he chokes over the sentimentality - sort of friends now, and most of what Dave’s doing could be passed off as gestures of friendship. Perhaps. If he tilts his head and squints.
He’s pretty sure (or perhaps it’s wishful thinking) that he sees Aaron’s blinds twitch one day when he brings back a few books Reid loaned him and stands at Reid’s desk while they chat about them for a few minutes. He finds out how Reid takes his coffee and makes one for him sometimes - although he does that for Prentiss too, because he suspects that if he plays his cards right, he might be in with at least a chance there.
But the day when the whole exercise apparently becomes too overwhelming for even Aaron’s limited emotional intelligence to cope with is on Spencer’s 28th birthday - three days before the actual party which Penelope Garcia has bullied him into having. Dave strolls into the round table room, tosses a corkscrew with a cheap plastic bow stuck to it down in front of Reid, and says, “Well, Happy goddamn Birthday to you,” in the grumpiest voice he can muster. The younger man throws his head back and howls with laughter.
JJ arrives with cupcakes then, but Dave can see Aaron glaring at him from across the room. When he returns to his office later that morning, head down in a file, it isn’t until he shuts the door behind him that he realizes he’s not alone.
“Jesus, you could have announced your presence or something,” he tells Aaron, who is glowering in a way that makes Dave wonder whether perhaps he has taken this whole thing just a chalk too far.
Aaron’s voice is admirably restrained. “Dave, we’ve known each other a long time, and I think I speak for…” He shakes his head, “For God’s sake, Dave - are you fucking Reid?”
Dave knows he is treading on very, very dangerous ground here, but he says, “Why is it any of your goddamn business?”
“Of course it’s my business!” Aaron explodes, more alive than Dave has seen him in months. “I’m supposed to be leading this team and I don’t even know what’s going on!”
“Actually, knowing what’s going on is Morgan’s business at the moment, not yours,” says Dave, which is cruel and he regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth because the angry color drains from the other man’s face.
“God,” says Aaron, “This really is just a game to you, isn’t it? I mean, we used to joke about the fraternization rules and I know you like to have fun, but did it have to be right fucking now, with - with everything else going on? And with Reid?” he puts his head in his hands. “God,” he says again.
Dave wants to put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, but he’s scared Aaron might bite him. “Aaron,” he says quietly, instead, and the other man looks up. “I’m not sleeping with Reid and I’m not interested in sleeping with Reid; I just sort of like his company is all.” Aaron looks up, disbelieving.
“But what you need to ask yourself,” Dave adds, “And you need to think about it pretty goddamn hard - is why you care so much that Reid might have something goin’ on with someone else.”
Aaron’s face hardens into a pale, blank mask. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
“We’ve known each other a long time,” says Dave. “You know exactly what I mean.”
“You’re a real jackass sometimes,” says Aaron, so expressionless that Dave can’t tell whether he means it or not.
“Jesus Christ, I know that,” says Dave. “But at least I’ll admit it when I goddamn want something. You know it’s still OK to want things for yourself, right? You remember what that’s like, to want someone? Or are you going to let George Foyet take that too?”
Aaron shakes his head - still incredulous, hurt, looking like he has been winded - and turns to go.
“You need to make up your fucking mind, Aaron,” Dave shouts after him. “Is life still worth living? Is it?”
The office door slams. Dave is scared he has pushed too far. He is scared Aaron doesn’t know the answer to that question. He is scared that Aaron’s answer is no.
***
Spencer Reid’s 28th birthday party is still raging in his living room and he has been sprawled across his bed for about half an hour when there is a light tap on the door.
“You awake?” It is, inexplicably, Hotch.
“Pretty much,” says Spencer. He must have dozed off; his shirt is bunched up round his waist and one leg of his jeans is pushed up to the knee. He’s still wearing his shoes.
“You weren’t drunk at all, were you?” Hotch asks, low and as close to amused as he ever sounds these days. He pushes the door open and Spencer can see his silhouette, solid and strong against the hallway light.
“No, but I do have an IQ of 187,” says Spencer, “and when Garcia suggested drinking games, I knew my only options for getting out of them were pleading the Fifth or pretending I was drunk enough to pass out. Why - what did they make you tell them?”
Hotch puts a hand to his forehead. “You don’t want to know,” he says.
“You didn’t see how much they drank before you arrived; they’ll never remember any of this in the morning,” Spencer says. Hotch had arrived three hours late, with nervous hands and a smile that was crooked and lopsided, like he had forgotten how to use it. He had turned down offers of drinks and hadn’t said much at all. And now he is here in Spencer’s bedroom and Spencer does not know what to say. Instead, he pats the covers next to him, the fog of sleep and the cover of darkness making him more daring than usual. “You can sit down if you want.”
“I’ll only stay a minute,” says Hotch. “I thought I’d just come and check on you before I headed home.” But a moment later, Spencer feels the mattress sink under Hotch’s comfortable weight as he sits carefully down on the other side of the bed.
There is an awkward pause, and Spencer wonders what to call this thing he is feeling. He isn’t used to it. Perhaps he’s a little bit drunk bit after all.
“Dave found a bottle of scotch in the cupboard,” says Hotch. “He asked and I said it was probably alright if he opened it.”
“It was a birthday present,” says Spencer and when Hotch says, “Oh, God,” and moves to get up, Spencer stills him with a hand. “It was a 21st birthday present. If I haven’t drunk it yet, I doubt I’m going to. Besides, Dave will appreciate it a lot more than I would have.”
Hotch snorts. “That man’s a terrible influence,” he says, “and I should know.”
There is a crash followed by raucous giggle, unmistakable as Garcia’s, from the living room. Hotch starts at the noise.
“I didn’t really like any of that furniture anyway,” says Spencer, although he knows it’s not the right thing to say and he wishes he was better at this and he wishes he’d asked Dave for pointers, and then he is appalled at himself for even thinking that. He blinks at the ceiling. “I’m wondering about the practicalities inherent in killing Garcia and making it look like an accident,” he says. “What do you think my chances are?”
Hotch does that odd almost-laugh again, like he isn’t quite able to get the whole sound out. He sighs, a woosh of air in the dark. “Reid, are you…” His voice sounds distant suddenly, like he has gone somewhere else. He swallows, hard; Spencer can hear it.
“Are you happy?” Hotch asks him.
The bottom falls out of Spencer’s brain, and all he remembers is the time he said to Gideon, You look unhappy, and Gideon had said, I am unhappy, and Spencer had felt like someone had hit him. He knows this odd question of Hotch’s is important like that one was, but he doesn’t know why.
“Not always,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “but I know I’m really fortunate.”
Hotch is silent for a moment, and Spencer thinks he must have got the answer wrong, and he still doesn’t know why the question mattered.
The other man says, “I should go and make sure Penelope’s not burning your house down,” and Spencer feels oddly like an opportunity is slipping through his fingers; a chance to say something he keeps meaning to but can’t find the words for.
Hotch disentangles himself from the covers and stands up, and Spencer feels every muscle in his body tighten, a hitch in his throat. He clears it, gently. Hotch is almost at the door when Spencer coughs out the other man’s name.
Hotch turns. “Mmm?”
“I’m glad…” Spencer feels stupid. He lowers his voice. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He hopes Hotch knows that he doesn’t just mean here, tonight and he wants - he wishes - for the other man to say, I’m glad I’m here too, but the silence stretches out between them and the lines of Hotch’s face are imperceptible in the darkness. Spencer feels sick.
Suddenly he feels, rather than sees, Hotch moving back towards the bed. He perches on the edge and, unexpectedly, takes Spencer’s right hand in his left one, interlacing their fingers. Spencer feels silly even thinking about how much his heart swoops in that moment, the way he feels as though there are secrets safely trapped in the space between their palms. They are still for just a moment, Spencer feeling Hotch’s pulse - quicker than his own - against his wrist. Then Hotch takes his hand away, and brushes his hand quickly over the top of Spencer’s head. It is only for a second - a moment so brief that Spencer barely has time to marvel that the same measure of time seems much longer when one is staring down the barrel of a gun - and Hotch is already up, crossing the room, opening the door.
He turns back, and the sliver of light from the hallway lies over his face and down his body like a surfeit of kisses. He says, so quietly that he might not have spoken at all, “Thank you for telling me that,” and goes.
Later, cold on the bathroom floor, the part Spencer will remember the most about the evening is the set of Hotch’s back as he walked away.
Dave was wrong, he thinks.
***
Part Two
Author: coffeecocktails
Recipient: resolucidity
Pairing: Hotch/Reid, with Rossi and Reid friendship
Rating: FRM / R
Word Count: ~12,700
Warnings: Swearing, sex, angst, humor, references to violence
Spoilers: Heavy on season five content, up to the end of s05e08, Outfoxed
Prompt: When Rossi realizes that Hotch is interested in Reid, he pretends to show interest in our favorite genius to make Hotch jealous enough to finally pursue the relationship.
A/N: The title and quotes come from this song.
So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
Sons could be birds, taken broken up to the mountain.
(Iron and Wine)
***
Spencer Reid has so far (in his lofty almost-28 years), experienced two moments of startling and blindingly clear epiphany: one when he was 25 years old and dying, tied to a chair, on the floor of a shack; the other while drunkenly spooning the toilet at the end of his 27th birthday party.
The first is that he is utterly and hopelessly in love with Aaron Hotchner.
The second is that he really, really needs to get over it.
***
David Rossi thinks to himself that if Reid looks up at Aaron’s office window one more time, the goddamn glass might shatter under the force of his abnormally large eyes. He allows himself a moment to be baffled by the fact that Reid has so many extraordinarily large features crammed onto his face. He has one of those faces, Dave thinks, which you’d see on a child and hope for the kid’s sake that he was going to somehow grow into it. But Reid is 28 or so now, and had a freakish growth spurt last summer which Dave is sure was the glorious culmination of the entire team furtively feeding him for the past six years, so any chance that the kid might still grow into his facial features has probably been and gone.
Dave tries to go back to the profile he is writing, but he is caught again by the rhythmic shift of Reid’s gaze, down in the bullpen, between the stack of paper in front of him (glazed) and up at Aaron’s office window (anxious), interspersed with the odd furtive peek at Dave’s office window to see whether he has been caught looking (guilty). Dave tries to do that thing he saw on late night television where you massage your temples with your fingers, but it only makes his headache more horrifically pronounced and his knuckles turn white. He does not remember the television presenter saying anything about the soothing motion making your knuckles white.
This is completely fucking ridiculous, Dave thinks. He has always been an action man. A Man of Action. And now the team - his team, he concedes, grudgingly - is falling to pieces around him, all because of George fucking Foyet. That’s why Aaron’s in his office, brooding and playing at being Harry Potter with a goddamn score to settle and Morgan’s stressed out of his tree with the extra pressure and Prentiss is doing everyone else’s work and probably Dave’s too (because the hell if Dave’s doing it) and Garcia has been acting weird lately, so she’s probably planning to hack another fucking solar system and Reid - Dave peers down through the blinds to where the kid appears to be trying to chew a hole through his goddamn lip - Reid is worrying himself sick about Aaron. To the extent that he’s been trying to pretend he hasn’t recently had his knee joint rearranged like the window display at fucking Bloomingdales.
Dave has known that Reid is in love with Aaron since the end of his second week back at the BAU; it’s always easier to spot real infatuation when you’ve got something with which to compare it. In this case, Dave knew straight away that the way Reid followed him everywhere, quoting things and offering to make him coffee, was just a harmless, scholarly crush; one that would fade with time as Reid realized that Dave was just as annoying an asshole as anyone else. And as soon as Dave realized that, it was just as obvious that the way Reid looked at Aaron was something completely different. Reid mirrored Aaron and took cues from him and he spoke in a lower register when Aaron was around and he thought for longer before he answered Aaron’s questions and he could be reckless as all hell if he thought Aaron needed protecting. But mostly, the kid just watched him. All the time. Constantly.
That had not come as a surprise. The shock of Dave’s life had been the day he realized that Aaron was watching Reid back.
After that, the signs had been easy to spot; Aaron’s anger when Reid, too often, put himself in danger; his careful consideration of everything Reid said; the way he touched the younger man without even thinking about it - a hand in the small of Reid’s back or rested on his shoulder; the way Aaron looked at him, like Reid was something much more interesting and complicated to look at than he really was.
After Dave got used to the idea - and he prided himself on being so open minded about it, although the open mindedness had initially come courtesy of a not inconsiderable amount of Glenfiddich - he realized it made an insane kind of sense. They were probably good for each other, he thought morosely one night, staring into the empty whisky bottle and wondering where all his alcohol had gone. But of course, neither of them would ever actually do anything about it, so that was that.
That was that. But that had been two years ago, and as of late, a little voice in Dave’s head has been saying that if ever Aaron needed someone - someone who could make him think that life had any kind of goddamn point - it is right now. And Dave knows Aaron better than anyone else on this team does, and thus he knows while the man is generous to a fault, that when it comes to the things that Aaron loves - really loves - he gets jealous as all hell if they’re messed with.
And Dave plans to mess. More specifically, he plans to mess with Spencer Reid. In fact, he plans to take the kid out to dinner and if Aaron gets jealous and suddenly realizes he wants Reid after all, he can damn well snap out of his current apathy coma, take a number and wait in goddamn line.
Later, Reid visits Dave’s office with a stack of files that he thinks the older man might be interested in as background reading, but which actually makes Dave want to shoot himself in the face.
“Are you doing anything Friday night?” he asks Reid, and the younger man starts muttering something about Friday being leftovers night and maybe doing some shit with computers that Dave isn’t really interested in beyond a few words.
“Come out for dinner with me,” he says. “There’s a new restaurant I want to try. Sounds like a nice place, French food; your underdeveloped sense of taste will probably cope.”
Reid looks alarmingly unconvinced of Dave’s sincerity.
“We never get time to have proper conversations around here,” says Dave. “You’ve got some theories on delusions I haven’t had a chance to ask about yet and I’ve got a heap of questions.”
Reid smiles. He has quite a nice smile. Then the kid tries to swipe his overgrown mane of hair out of his face and just about falls off his crutches.
Sometimes, Dave thinks, this team is like a scuffy, yappy box of orphan puppies that you found outside the goddamned Walmart. And much as you know the puppies aren’t actually your problem, and they’re annoying and you want to leave the box on the curb somewhere, you know you can’t because it might get run over by a car and then you would feel like shit. So you put the box in your trunk and then you take the puppies home and spend fucking hours feeding them out of a goddamned eyedropper and then they sleep on your silk monogrammed shirts and piss all over your goddamned house -
Reid rights himself. “Yeah, that would be… yes, great, thank you,” he says. “I mean, that’s a yes.” He bites his lip. “What am I supposed to wear?”
Yes, thinks David Rossi, that analogy is entirely apt. Except that he does not now shop - and nor has he ever shopped - at a goddamn Walmart.
***
This is one of the three places in his apartment where Spencer Reid goes to think.
Tonight he has managed to be home in time to make hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream and get himself settled on the living room windowsill before the lights get switched on over the road. He leans his head against the window and exhales, fogging up a little patch of the glass with his breath.
He chose this spot, initially, because he fit so well here; legs tucked under him, back against the wall, neat as a cat. Now, Spencer thinks, he doesn’t conform to the space the way he used to; he has grown quite a bit, for one thing, and for another, he can’t bend his bad knee up in front of him at enough of an angle. These days, he’s half on the windowsill, half sprawled off it; his bad foot on the ground and his arms wrapped around his good leg.
He leans down to stir his drink, and looks up in time to see the floodlights snap on outside the museum across the street. Spencer smiles to himself. He loves being here before the lights go on, looking out into the darkness and suddenly seeing the building come into view; a magic castle appearing out of nowhere. He likes to imagine a solemn line of people floating out of the museum under the cover of night - ancient and weightless, a silent procession of Kings and revolutionaries from different ages, standing on ceremony and silent as ghosts. It’s silly, a game really, and not something he tells anyone about - only his mother would understand and he doesn’t want to confuse her with make believe, telling her about things that aren’t real in case she thinks they are.
Spencer doesn’t know why tonight, of all nights, he has a lump in his throat when he imagines the procession of people. He thinks of Rossi’s gruff and unexpected offer of dinner today, like he was extending a real hand of friendship to Spencer in a way he hasn’t before. Spencer is not sure what it means. And he thinks of Hotch, who doesn’t quite shut his office blinds all the way and who sometimes sits at his desk with his head down and does not move for hours at a time.
The thing that Spencer is trying not to think about is the way Hotch looked last weekend when he came into the office in a sweater instead of a high collared shirt; the fine tendril of white scar snaking up the base of his throat, his eyes daring people to comment.
Spencer looks back at the museum, trying to conjure up ancient Greeks and Roman centurions in his mind’s eye, but all at once there is guilt building in the pit of his stomach and he can’t breathe. When he came back from the dead in Georgia, he had created some kind of a life debt, mistakenly ensured that someone else must die in his place when it should have been him. And when he’d said, “I choose Aaron Hotchner,” Spencer had painted a cross in blood above Hotch’s door for Foyet to find.
This, now, is Spencer’s debt being paid in full. This is his fault.
***
On Friday, when Reid arrives at the restaurant, Dave can see he is sporting precisely all of the clothing items that he was instructed to wear; in terms of color and texture and size the items themselves look as though they were selected by someone who was trying very hard and who also just happened to be a blind person. Dave notes that this does not stop the maitre d’ (male) from flirting with Reid and being just a little bit lingering and grabby when he takes the younger man’s coat, or their waiter (female) from batting her eyelids at Reid all night and later bringing him tiny, complementary chocolate truffles with his desert, even though he does not order them. Reid, in a stunning display of his usual form, seems not to notice in the slightest and Dave begins to realize that Aaron was not exaggerating the time he told Dave about the precautions they observe when taking Reid places where there might be hookers. The kid is a raging aphrodisiac for people who like really bad ties. Dave thinks he will probably never understand.
Reid, actually, turns out to be a wonderful dinner companion. The snippets of trivia and knowledge that can grate on Dave occasionally when they’re working a case and pushed for time are marvelously entertaining in a social setting. The younger man has no trouble selecting what he wants from the menu, although he does allow the sommelier to choose his wine; something Dave would never do because he doesn’t have a 500-bottle wine cellar in his house so that some jumped-up kitchen hand can tell him what to drink.
Dave notices though that Reid’s eyes remain busy and watchful, even while he is talking, his slender-fingered movements with his wine glass and napkin and cutlery all just a fraction behind Dave’s, as though he is waiting for cues. He’s a skilled chameleon, Dave realizes, and it’s a talent he highly values in the field, but it makes him feel a little sick to think about how Reid became so good at it. He remembers the snippets Aaron has told him about Reid’s childhood, and knows that the ability to carefully emulate normal life must have been a crucial kind of self preservation.
Later, when they are eating their mains and both of them have had plenty of wine, it becomes apparent that Reid is a brilliant storyteller as well.
“… anyway, I told them repeatedly that I just needed a bit of quiet for my extra-mural studies, but they were all totally convinced that the only reason I could be going off alone on my free afternoons was because I had started using again, so they sent Morgan up to spy on me…And when he burst into the cleaners’ cupboard and found me sitting on an upturned bucket with a torch and a philosophy textbook, we both just about died of fright…”
Dave roars with laughter.
“Of course, when I was actually using, I would do it in the fourth floor men’s room and none of them knew anything about it at all,” Reid mutters. He looks up, startled. “I’ve never told anyone that part before, I don’t know why I…” he trails off.
“It’s OK,” smiles Dave, enjoying the shared confidence even though he wishes, of course, that Reid had been spared the reason behind it. “They probably felt guilty that they didn’t notice when it was going on,” he says, cupping his hands around his glass of Pinot, “and they would have been trying to make it up to you, for a long time. Hell, I know I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I’d been around then and I hadn’t been able to do anything.”
“I know,” Reid shrugs. “It used to bug me when they’d all look out for me, like they didn’t think I could do the job or something. But I realised that it was actually because they cared, and somewhere along the way - maybe after the cleaners’ cupboard thing - I started to see the funny side, and now” - he spreads his hands, smiles - “I don’t know; I’m used to it. It’s kind of nice.”
“You know the team has your back when you really are fucked,” says Rossi, and Reid nods.
“The funny thing is though,” Reid says, “that Hotch seems to have the perfect knack of doing it without being condescending. You know, Morgan’s got all the subtlety of a brick to the face, but Hotch” - Dave watches him curiously as Reid fumbles with a bread roll - “he’s got this way of checking you’re alright like he’s reassuring you that it’s OK if you’re not, but that he’ll have faith in you either way.”
“Yeah,” says Dave, thinking about all the times (and there have been many) that Aaron has turned that gentle probing on him. He decides to drop the bombshell, as it were.
“So have you always been in love with Aaron?” he asks, “Or was it one of those gradually developing things?”
Reid drops the end of his bread roll in his glass of wine, where it sinks with a plonk. His fingers twitch towards his cutlery, but Dave says, “If you are even thinking about fishing that out of there with your goddamn fork, I am never going anywhere with you again,” and Reid goes back to staring at him like he has utterly lost his mind.
A moment later he still looks shell-shocked, and then he begins to stammer. “I’m not… I’m not… I haven’t…”
Dave smirks as he watches the younger man pass through the spectrum of red until his face settles on a gentle shade of mahogany. Then he decides to throw him a rope.
“I’m not asking about it because I want to mock you, and I’m not going to talk about it to anyone else; although they all know by the way, don’t think that they don’t,” - Reid makes a small peep like a bird being trod on - “It’s just that I know Aaron, I know him really well and he’s my best friend and I - “ Dave falters for a moment, and now he feels embarrassed because Reid is still staring at him like he’s speaking fucking Russian, but he steels himself to continue, “I know he’s fucking struggling at the moment; he’s really struggling, and it hurts for me to see it, and much as it pains me to say this out loud, I just think that you might be exactly what he needs.”
Reid swallows, hard. He looks behind him. “Are you serious?” he whispers.
“Yes,” Dave hisses back. “And I would rather have my fucking teeth pulled than talk about things like this, so don’t make me repeat it.”
“I,” says Reid. For someone who could fairly be termed quite intelligent, this all seems to be taking a little while to sink in. He tries again. “I can’t just make a move on my boss!”
“He’s not technically your boss at the moment,” Dave points out. Reid looks scandalized.
“But he doesn’t - he doesn’t like me. He had a wife. He likes women. He doesn’t - he couldn’t - think of me like that, and you’re being completely ridiculous,” says Reid, although Dave notes he doesn’t deny his feelings for Aaron, or assert his own preference for women.
“I’ve known him for much longer than you have,” begins Dave. “I think I know what he -“
“I can’t do it. And anyway, right now it would be taking advantage - on top of everything he’s already dealing with - and that would be extremely wrong,” says Reid, and his tone says that the subject is closed.
Dave smiles and leans back in his seat. Of course, this is exactly the reaction he expected, which is why The Plan to Make Aaron Jealous is already underway. “Sure, sure alright,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” He drains the last of his Pinot. “This has been a damn good night,” he adds. “We should do it again soon.”
Reid starts turning back to his normal color when he realises Dave is allowing the subject of Aaron to be dropped. He smiles, that full, bright smile that’s so wide and creases the sides of his mouth so heavily that you think his face might break in half. “That would be really excellent,” he says.
“Are you free next Friday?” Dave asks.
Reid is. Dave is not all that surprised.
***
Tonight Spencer is sitting in his sweatpants and flannel shirt on the bathroom floor with his leg stretched out in front of him. This is the second place in his apartment where he goes to think and it’s sort of funny how, when he considers it, this one feels the most like coming home. He used to sit here a lot after Tobias, when he didn’t want to go to sleep; the cold from the tiles seeping through his clothes and the light reassuringly bright and clean. He remembers when he was sick on his birthday last year, and Garcia felt guilty about it because she was the one who fed him all the alcohol and she brought her knitting into the bathroom and sat in the bathtub on a cushion and said soothing things to him while he threw up.
Now he is a little fuzzy from the wine he drank at dinner and light headed with the things Rossi told him, the things about Hotch (Rossi calls him Aaron, thinks Spencer, and he tries it out daringly in his head, but it feels wrong). What Rossi said, about Hotch maybe liking Spencer back, feels like a promise and Spencer doesn’t think you should make promises if you don’t know for certain you can keep them, and Rossi can’t possibly know what Hotch thinks.
Spencer feels overwhelmed sometimes, like he is wearing a cloak made of other people’s blessings, things he never expected for himself and doesn’t really deserve. He already has all this and getting Hotch as well, getting the one thing that he wants so selfishly, seems like it would be far too much. The past five years of his life have already been a lucky accident; he won’t let Rossi make him want anything more.
The tiles are cold on the back of Spencer’s thighs and it makes him remember things he’d rather not, so instead he thinks about how he likes ice cream and Battlestar Galactica and flannel. He does not like the feeling of hard things pressed against his forehead or bare light bulbs or the smell of the ground after it has been raining.
He liked that dizzying, underwater feeling when Rossi said he and Hotch were right for each other. Spencer pushes the stubborn thought back where it won’t end up hurting him, and he forces himself to think of that treacherous inch of scar on Hotch’s throat and what he would say if he knew that Spencer was, indirectly, responsible.
He already chose Aaron Hotchner once. He’s not going to do it again.
***
Dave is at Spencer Reid’s house for dinner and they would be closer to eating the goddamned dinner if he could find any surface on which he might be able to prepare food. The kitchen, like the living room and what little he could see of the spare bedroom on his way in, is full of books.
“You ever heard of a bookshelf, kid?” he asks, trying to combine the stack of Greek mythology books in front of the toaster with the pile of psychology texts on top of the fridge.
Reid is drifting around behind him, rattling in drawers for the corkscrew he claims to own. “I’ve got bookshelves,” he says, “I just… I run out of room. It’s like they breed or something; I don’t know.” He looks up. “Oh, can you please not change the piles around?” His tone is beseeching. Dave snorts.
“I’ve got a system!” Reid insists. “It used to be alphabetical by author and now it’s by subject - oh God, please don’t stick the Greeks with the war poets; I’ll never be able to find anything.”
“Because you’re a raging success at that now,” says Dave. “Look, you get over here and point to exactly where you normally prepare the food, and that’s where I’ll do it.” Reid looks shifty and uncertain.
“Jesus Christ,” Dave says. “Please tell me you’re not eating the goddamn books.” He privately thinks it would explain a lot about Reid’s physique and complexion.
“I can point to exactly where the take out menus are,” says Reid, hopefully. “Oh, alright,” Dave says. He gestures at the lasagna ingredients he brought with him. “If I leave all this in the fridge, are you gonna eat it before it goes bad, or just read the fucking labels?”
“I do not need you to treat my house like a food bank,” says Spencer, indignantly. “I have food.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
They order Vietnamese because Reid promises Dave he will love the fresh summer rolls, and Dave is forced to grudgingly concede that he could probably eat them every night for the rest of his life, although he suspects Reid is attempting to scale that goddamn mountain already.
Reid has apparently spent the day charging through all four Twilight books because of some throwaway remark JJ and Garcia made during the Dante case; he seems to want Dave to listen to a vehement lecture about feminism and the subverting of women’s choices and his moral issues with people trying to teach abstinence by stealth. Dave finds it hilarious that Reid has to turn everything into a goddamn cause, but eventually he says, “I think you need to take that shit a bit less seriously,” and it’s worth it when Reid’s jaw drops. “You’ve read Twilight?”
Rossi shrugs. “I got nieces… Two of ‘em. I saw the film of the first one,” he says. “It wasn’t the worst goddamn thing I ever saw.” Reid laughs.
“If you tell anyone that…” Rossi threatens, but without malice, because Reid is laughing and he does not look miserable and Rossi thinks that maybe, even if things don’t work out with The Plan to Make Aaron Jealous, it couldn’t possibly hurt to take Reid under his wing a bit more. From time to time, nothing serious; just to make sure he’s not actually eating the books. Because Jesus.
They watch a film and Reid talks all the way through it until Rossi wants to belt him, and when the final credits roll, Reid tells him that this is normally when he has ice cream. “You have an ice cream time?” asks Dave. “Ice cream o’clock?”
Reid shrugs, “Pretty much.”
He brings out a tub of strawberry with little bits of jello in it and Dave feels his masculinity disappearing by the second, so he offers to crack open a couple of cold beers as well. Reid looks confused about what Dave would want with beer. “It’s a Thing of Men,” says Dave. “It’s what men do.”
“OK,” says Reid, amiably and a moment later he admits that ice cream and beer are a pretty good combination.
There is a comfortable pause before Reid says, “Emily thought this was a bit weird.”
This’ll be interesting, Dave thinks. He asks, “What’s weird?”
“This,” says Reid, looking awkward, like he’s worried Dave’s going to get pissed at him. “You and I hanging out every Friday. She says it’s not the sort of thing she imagined you doing.”
Dave smirks. “I like to keep people on their toes,” he says. Reid looks uncertain, and Dave realizes it’s not just Emily that the question’s coming from, and he takes a moment to be pissed at anyone who ever made Spencer Reid think he wasn’t worth spending time with.
“I’m probably only saying this because I’ve been drinking,” he says, looking deliberately at his hands, “But I’ve always liked you a hell of a lot more than you thought I did.”
Reid tries to look nonchalant, but his eyes crease at the corners and he says, “Oh, good,” like something in his head has been settled.
Dave decides to have another crack at the eternal losing fucking battle while he’s on the kid’s good side. “You know, once you and Aaron have your shit sorted - “
He is unable to complete his sentence because Reid has taken a couch cushion and is using it to beat him in the head.
Dave decides Reid shouldn’t be allowed sugar and alcohol within the same five hour window.
***
On the next case, in Tennessee, there is a little boy the same age as Jack Hotchner, and he is blond and round faced and wide eyed and sticky fingered and he is dead. When they reach the crime scene, Spencer feels something inside him convulse and he struggles to stay upright. He looks over at Hotch, waiting to see his mask slip, to see him turn away, to see any sign that this is hurting him, that he feels. Hotch does not miss a beat, and the smooth, blank mask of his face does not change. His hands ball into loose fists at his sides, but he does not look away. Spencer is terrified; not of him, but for him.
Later, at the hotel, Spencer is watching the BBC World Service and trying not to think when Rossi knocks at his door. He says, no preamble, “I need you to go and talk to Aaron,” and Spencer opens his mouth to argue and then understands from the steely, furious look in Rossi’s eyes that this time it’s not one of Rossi’s outrageous schemes, but real. So instead he says, “Why?”
And Rossi says - angry, pissed, scared - “Because I just went to his room to check on him and he told me to fuck off. And I’m not sending Morgan in there just yet because I’d rather not have to pay to get someone’s blood off the goddamn carpet in the morning.” He rolls his eyes.
Spencer says, “Why me?” and Rossi says, “He won’t be expecting you,” and holds out Hotch’s spare room key. Spencer would rather stay where he is, but he thinks Rossi is probably right so he takes the room key and collects up his crutches and makes his ungainly way down the hall until he gets to the right door.
“Hotch,” he calls, feeling stupid. “Hotch.” He rests his forehead against the cool wood. He doesn’t know whether the other man can hear him and he isn’t going to shout. In the end, he slides the key card into the slot, waits for the beep, and pushes the door open.
The room is pitch black. Spencer pauses for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust, and suddenly realizes that he has technically broken into Hotch’s room in the middle of the night. He coughs to announce his presence. “Hotch, it’s me.”
Hotch’s voice is whisky-dry in the darkness. “I know.”
Spencer looks in the direction of the sound, and sees the top of Hotch’s head, where he is sitting on the floor on the other side of the room, leaned against the further away of two beds.
“I could hear you coming up the hallway,” Hotch says. “Your crutches…”
His words are blurred at the edges. Spencer wonders whether he has been crying or perhaps drinking. He shivers at his own memories of wanting to forget, of that cold, keening need for something to make his mind sedate enough to be in it. He doesn’t dare ask Hotch whether he is drunk. He doesn’t think he wants to know.
Spencer eases himself into a chair near the door, wondering what Dave had meant for him to say. He faces the same direction as Hotch, and looks out the window, across the valley of lights in front of them, and he thinks about how there are people down in that valley who are broken too, and he wonders how the hell other people manage and what happens to them when they don’t.
“Tell me something,” says Hotch. “Tell me something that isn’t this.”
Spencer tucks his good leg up onto the chair, and closes his eyes and pretends he is on the windowsill of his apartment, looking over at the museum. He thinks for a moment about what his mother would like to hear, and then he remembers that Hotch is not his mother, so he starts talking to the back of the other man’s head about times when embarrassing things have happened to him. He has a large back catalogue, and he tells Hotch about the time he concussed himself on a metal paper towel dispenser in a public bathroom, and gives a dramatic rendition of Morgan bursting in on him in the cleaners’ cupboard (although admittedly, Hotch has probably heard that one every time Spencer has been drunk with the team for the past two years), and about the time he fell head first into a large trash can and had to be helped out.
Eventually, the stories peter out, and he can still hear Hotch’s breathing, soft and slightly ragged on the other side of the room, so he starts reciting Proust. It is a good choice, he thinks, because he doesn’t even have to rely on his eidetic memory for the words to come to him; he just knows them. In his head, his mother is saying them along with him. After an hour or so, his voice starts becoming hoarse and his eyelids are drooping, and when he stops once to clear his throat, Hotch suddenly says, “You don’t need to stay.”
Spencer asks, “Do you want me to?” and there is a long pause before Hotch rasps out, “Yes.”
It is three o’clock in the morning and the sky outside seems to be getting lighter in increments, or perhaps Spencer is just imagining it. He struggles out of the hard-backed chair and onto his feet, making his shuffling way to the other bed, the one nearest the door; the one Hotch is not leaning against.
“You should try and get some sleep,” he says, and promptly feels patronizing and rude, but Hotch climbs to his feet too, his knee joints cracking like gunshots in the quiet. Spencer watches as Hotch’s outline checks that the sheets and blankets are completely tucked in, before carefully removing a gun from his hip holster and placing it just so on the bedside table. He lies down on top of the bed, without removing his shoes or the gun at his ankle.
Spencer’s heart is full of little shards of broken glass. He recognizes the hyper-vigilance: the need to sleep on top of the covers in case you have to get up in a hurry, the need to know you could get to your gun having barely woken. Feeling pathetically like he should set a good example, Spencer slides into the other bed, maneuvering his bad knee until it is comfortable and diligently pulling the covers right up to his chin. He listens to Hotch’s breathing; too shallow, too alert to be of a man falling asleep. Spencer is suddenly not tired either. He thinks of the other man, lying cold and stiff on top of his bed, waiting for God knows what to come through the door, and feels sick.
One thing Spencer Reid has always been able to do well is cry without making a sound, and he cries now - hot, bitter tears in the dark - for the fact that he is finally lying in bed listening to Aaron Hotchner’s breath next to his, but that it is all so wrong and so broken, and he cries because Hotch let him in at all and to hope that that might mean something isn’t fair, and because they could have kissed each other’s bruises there in the dark and perhaps Reid could have made Hotch better if he’d only been given the chance, and he cries because he knows that if Foyet walked through the door tonight, Hotch wouldn’t need to spring for his gun because Spencer would rip Foyet apart with his hands.
When he wakes up a few hours later, Spencer’s eyes feel gritty and Hotch has already dressed and gone.
***
If Dave was a betting man (which he is) and actually had someone to bet against on this score (which he doesn’t), he would have put money on Derek Morgan storming his office less a fortnight after he first took Reid out for dinner, threatening to remove Dave’s kidneys.
Of course, Dave would have lost his cash there, because he wouldn’t have factored in Morgan’s preoccupation with his new Unit Chief job, which has kept his ass in his own office and his mind on other things for the past couple of months.
In fact it takes for Dave - in an act of desperation because Aaron doesn’t seem to have noticed yet - to whisk Reid off to a vineyard for a wine tasting one Saturday before Morgan gets suspicious. Dave’s glad he took the younger man along, actually; he’s better entertainment in the car than one of those books on tape and at the winery, he wrote “tastes like wine” next to every glass in his tasting notes. Dave plans to have the sheet of paper framed and give it to Reid for his upcoming birthday.
It seems that Reid, in his excitement about the road trip, told Garcia all about it and Garcia let it slip to Morgan, who tells Prentiss in passing that he’s going to have Rossi’s head on a plate for messing with Reid, and Prentiss shoots off a quick email to Dave to warn him (Prentiss is fucking great, Dave thinks. He really should buy her a Danish or something), and so he has time to ensure he looks sufficiently smug before Morgan arrives in his office like a brooding, tight-shirted tornado of vengeance.
The younger man makes some boring and unoriginal threats on Dave’s life, and accuses Dave at length of coming on to Reid and doing something he calls pulling a Gideon (unfortunately, Dave sort of knows what that means), and Dave holds out for all of five minutes before he breaks down and tells Morgan about The Plan to Make Aaron Jealous, just to see the look on his face.
Morgan is speechless for only a moment, before he launches into tales of the team’s previous plans to get Aaron and Reid together. Dave listens with growing horror, because all of their plans were moronic and utterly lacking in nuance, and one of them involved a game of Spin the Bottle, and Dave sometimes has difficulty believing that the FBI employed these people and that they are not all dead.
And Morgan is their leader now. Jesus Christ.
Then he feels relieved, because now the team has Dave and he is fucking great at plans, and he tells Morgan this. “So, how’s it comin’ along then?” Morgan asks.
Dave thinks of Aaron telling him to fuck off and the way he comes out of his office red eyed and vacant, and he thinks about Reid’s distracted air and his look of general unhappiness sometimes (like he can’t be glad if Aaron isn’t), and he considers the fact that he could probably put a gun to both of their heads and they still wouldn’t confess to liking each other.
“It’s going well,” he says. “Really, really well. I think I’m making progress.”
Morgan actually looks hopeful at that point, and asks whether he can tell Garcia about The Plan to Make Aaron Jealous. Dave wonders whether it is too late to go back to the days when he used to write books and make lots of money and have groupies and get divorced and shoot things that didn’t talk. Those were some good times.
***
Reid lies on his back under his mother’s writing desk and fingers the scratches and grooves in the wood. This is the first place in his life where he ever went to think, and it was the only piece of furniture he kept from the house he grew up in. It’s a reminder of the times his mother was happy and almost normal, the way he most likes to remember her. He used to sit under this desk as a kid, curled against the leg of it while she worked - because it was the closest he could get to her without being distracting - and occasionally she’d lean down and stroke the top of his head absent-mindedly, like he was a little cat. When he was very young, he used to like it best when she talked out loud to herself as she worked, because it wasn’t as boring if he could try and understand what she was writing.
As he got older, Spencer began to dread the days when she’d talk to herself, because it never meant anything good, and he couldn’t understand the words anyway. No one could.
Now, of course, only his head and shoulders actually fit under the desk, and the rest of his body sticks out across the room. He lies there and pokes at the scratches and wonders why all he hears when he shuts his eyes is his own voice asking Hotch in the hotel room whether Hotch wants him to stay, and the other man’s silence before he said, yes.
The thing is too ashamed to tell his mother in his letters is this: when he was at the hospital, after he was shot through the knee, the doctor had come to him and said, “No fieldwork or anything dangerous for a while, I’m afraid,” and Spencer had not felt angry or disappointed but relieved. He’s just not very brave is all, he tells himself - his strengths lie elsewhere; he has to work harder on courage than Morgan does, or Prentiss. So he wonders what it means when he knows that he’d take a bullet if Aaron Hotchner asked him to; when he knows that he’d take a bullet for Aaron Hotchner even if no one asked him to at all.
***
Dave has had to step up his efforts, but he doesn’t feel too guilty about it because Morgan basically approves and besides, he and Reid are - he chokes over the sentimentality - sort of friends now, and most of what Dave’s doing could be passed off as gestures of friendship. Perhaps. If he tilts his head and squints.
He’s pretty sure (or perhaps it’s wishful thinking) that he sees Aaron’s blinds twitch one day when he brings back a few books Reid loaned him and stands at Reid’s desk while they chat about them for a few minutes. He finds out how Reid takes his coffee and makes one for him sometimes - although he does that for Prentiss too, because he suspects that if he plays his cards right, he might be in with at least a chance there.
But the day when the whole exercise apparently becomes too overwhelming for even Aaron’s limited emotional intelligence to cope with is on Spencer’s 28th birthday - three days before the actual party which Penelope Garcia has bullied him into having. Dave strolls into the round table room, tosses a corkscrew with a cheap plastic bow stuck to it down in front of Reid, and says, “Well, Happy goddamn Birthday to you,” in the grumpiest voice he can muster. The younger man throws his head back and howls with laughter.
JJ arrives with cupcakes then, but Dave can see Aaron glaring at him from across the room. When he returns to his office later that morning, head down in a file, it isn’t until he shuts the door behind him that he realizes he’s not alone.
“Jesus, you could have announced your presence or something,” he tells Aaron, who is glowering in a way that makes Dave wonder whether perhaps he has taken this whole thing just a chalk too far.
Aaron’s voice is admirably restrained. “Dave, we’ve known each other a long time, and I think I speak for…” He shakes his head, “For God’s sake, Dave - are you fucking Reid?”
Dave knows he is treading on very, very dangerous ground here, but he says, “Why is it any of your goddamn business?”
“Of course it’s my business!” Aaron explodes, more alive than Dave has seen him in months. “I’m supposed to be leading this team and I don’t even know what’s going on!”
“Actually, knowing what’s going on is Morgan’s business at the moment, not yours,” says Dave, which is cruel and he regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth because the angry color drains from the other man’s face.
“God,” says Aaron, “This really is just a game to you, isn’t it? I mean, we used to joke about the fraternization rules and I know you like to have fun, but did it have to be right fucking now, with - with everything else going on? And with Reid?” he puts his head in his hands. “God,” he says again.
Dave wants to put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, but he’s scared Aaron might bite him. “Aaron,” he says quietly, instead, and the other man looks up. “I’m not sleeping with Reid and I’m not interested in sleeping with Reid; I just sort of like his company is all.” Aaron looks up, disbelieving.
“But what you need to ask yourself,” Dave adds, “And you need to think about it pretty goddamn hard - is why you care so much that Reid might have something goin’ on with someone else.”
Aaron’s face hardens into a pale, blank mask. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
“We’ve known each other a long time,” says Dave. “You know exactly what I mean.”
“You’re a real jackass sometimes,” says Aaron, so expressionless that Dave can’t tell whether he means it or not.
“Jesus Christ, I know that,” says Dave. “But at least I’ll admit it when I goddamn want something. You know it’s still OK to want things for yourself, right? You remember what that’s like, to want someone? Or are you going to let George Foyet take that too?”
Aaron shakes his head - still incredulous, hurt, looking like he has been winded - and turns to go.
“You need to make up your fucking mind, Aaron,” Dave shouts after him. “Is life still worth living? Is it?”
The office door slams. Dave is scared he has pushed too far. He is scared Aaron doesn’t know the answer to that question. He is scared that Aaron’s answer is no.
***
Spencer Reid’s 28th birthday party is still raging in his living room and he has been sprawled across his bed for about half an hour when there is a light tap on the door.
“You awake?” It is, inexplicably, Hotch.
“Pretty much,” says Spencer. He must have dozed off; his shirt is bunched up round his waist and one leg of his jeans is pushed up to the knee. He’s still wearing his shoes.
“You weren’t drunk at all, were you?” Hotch asks, low and as close to amused as he ever sounds these days. He pushes the door open and Spencer can see his silhouette, solid and strong against the hallway light.
“No, but I do have an IQ of 187,” says Spencer, “and when Garcia suggested drinking games, I knew my only options for getting out of them were pleading the Fifth or pretending I was drunk enough to pass out. Why - what did they make you tell them?”
Hotch puts a hand to his forehead. “You don’t want to know,” he says.
“You didn’t see how much they drank before you arrived; they’ll never remember any of this in the morning,” Spencer says. Hotch had arrived three hours late, with nervous hands and a smile that was crooked and lopsided, like he had forgotten how to use it. He had turned down offers of drinks and hadn’t said much at all. And now he is here in Spencer’s bedroom and Spencer does not know what to say. Instead, he pats the covers next to him, the fog of sleep and the cover of darkness making him more daring than usual. “You can sit down if you want.”
“I’ll only stay a minute,” says Hotch. “I thought I’d just come and check on you before I headed home.” But a moment later, Spencer feels the mattress sink under Hotch’s comfortable weight as he sits carefully down on the other side of the bed.
There is an awkward pause, and Spencer wonders what to call this thing he is feeling. He isn’t used to it. Perhaps he’s a little bit drunk bit after all.
“Dave found a bottle of scotch in the cupboard,” says Hotch. “He asked and I said it was probably alright if he opened it.”
“It was a birthday present,” says Spencer and when Hotch says, “Oh, God,” and moves to get up, Spencer stills him with a hand. “It was a 21st birthday present. If I haven’t drunk it yet, I doubt I’m going to. Besides, Dave will appreciate it a lot more than I would have.”
Hotch snorts. “That man’s a terrible influence,” he says, “and I should know.”
There is a crash followed by raucous giggle, unmistakable as Garcia’s, from the living room. Hotch starts at the noise.
“I didn’t really like any of that furniture anyway,” says Spencer, although he knows it’s not the right thing to say and he wishes he was better at this and he wishes he’d asked Dave for pointers, and then he is appalled at himself for even thinking that. He blinks at the ceiling. “I’m wondering about the practicalities inherent in killing Garcia and making it look like an accident,” he says. “What do you think my chances are?”
Hotch does that odd almost-laugh again, like he isn’t quite able to get the whole sound out. He sighs, a woosh of air in the dark. “Reid, are you…” His voice sounds distant suddenly, like he has gone somewhere else. He swallows, hard; Spencer can hear it.
“Are you happy?” Hotch asks him.
The bottom falls out of Spencer’s brain, and all he remembers is the time he said to Gideon, You look unhappy, and Gideon had said, I am unhappy, and Spencer had felt like someone had hit him. He knows this odd question of Hotch’s is important like that one was, but he doesn’t know why.
“Not always,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “but I know I’m really fortunate.”
Hotch is silent for a moment, and Spencer thinks he must have got the answer wrong, and he still doesn’t know why the question mattered.
The other man says, “I should go and make sure Penelope’s not burning your house down,” and Spencer feels oddly like an opportunity is slipping through his fingers; a chance to say something he keeps meaning to but can’t find the words for.
Hotch disentangles himself from the covers and stands up, and Spencer feels every muscle in his body tighten, a hitch in his throat. He clears it, gently. Hotch is almost at the door when Spencer coughs out the other man’s name.
Hotch turns. “Mmm?”
“I’m glad…” Spencer feels stupid. He lowers his voice. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He hopes Hotch knows that he doesn’t just mean here, tonight and he wants - he wishes - for the other man to say, I’m glad I’m here too, but the silence stretches out between them and the lines of Hotch’s face are imperceptible in the darkness. Spencer feels sick.
Suddenly he feels, rather than sees, Hotch moving back towards the bed. He perches on the edge and, unexpectedly, takes Spencer’s right hand in his left one, interlacing their fingers. Spencer feels silly even thinking about how much his heart swoops in that moment, the way he feels as though there are secrets safely trapped in the space between their palms. They are still for just a moment, Spencer feeling Hotch’s pulse - quicker than his own - against his wrist. Then Hotch takes his hand away, and brushes his hand quickly over the top of Spencer’s head. It is only for a second - a moment so brief that Spencer barely has time to marvel that the same measure of time seems much longer when one is staring down the barrel of a gun - and Hotch is already up, crossing the room, opening the door.
He turns back, and the sliver of light from the hallway lies over his face and down his body like a surfeit of kisses. He says, so quietly that he might not have spoken at all, “Thank you for telling me that,” and goes.
Later, cold on the bathroom floor, the part Spencer will remember the most about the evening is the set of Hotch’s back as he walked away.
Dave was wrong, he thinks.
***
Part Two