Archive of Our Own

Spencer’s shoulder blades hit brick and the adrenaline surge is nothing like a foot chase, everything like a shootout. The nape of his neck is clammy with drying sweat. He pants cool air for the first time in hours. The alley is sour and stale but the body weighing him into the wall smells like vetiver and smoke. He stands with his legs spread, hands out in front of him, grasping fabric and skin and leather. He opens his mouth when teeth nip at his lips. 

The man—Jerry-John-Jimmy-something, a J-name that Spencer didn’t care to catch over the music inside—shoves him with his hips. Pins him in place and wrenches his jaw down. It’s on the line of too rough but Spencer likes that line, so he walks it further. He slips the tail of the man’s belt out. 

“Reid.”

Spencer freezes. He breaks the kiss with a guilty grimace.

“Hotch,” he says. “I—”

All it takes to silence him is a palm raised in the air. Hotch waves him towards the back door of the bar, held open with the toe of his shoe.

“We have a case,” he says. “Morgan already left with the girls, and Rossi is planning to meet us on the tarmac. I’m pulling the car up front.”

“Okay,” Reid says weakly. 

The door clatters shut. Reid pats the broad chest bearing him into the wall.

“Sorry,” he says. “I should have told you I’m always on-call.”

“Who the hell was that?” the man says.

“It doesn’t matter. I have to go.”

“I thought we were gonna have some fun.”

Reid grunts, his wrist encased in an unforgiving grip. 

“I said I have to go,” he says.

The man sneers. Shakes Reid by the arm, and takes a step closer.

“What, you gonna go fuck Mr. Tall, Dark and Broody instead?” he says.

Spencer laughs bitterly. “If you don’t get your hands off of me right now, I will scream, and you won’t like Mr. Tall, Dark and Broody when he comes back.”

“Whatever. You’re not cute enough to deal with this shit.”

“Charming,” Reid mutters as the man stomps away.

He waits a second, ten, twenty, thirty before sneaking through the door and weaving his way out of the bar. He shakes off the glare leveled at his back and exchanges it for the blank stare leveled over his right shoulder. It’s preferable, but only just.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says, sliding into the passenger seat of Hotch’s SUV. “I’m usually more careful, but I-I got carried away. It won’t happen again.”

“Reid,” Hotch murmurs.

“I know, I know. It wasn’t during work hours, but it was technically a work gathering, and it was beyond unprofessional to—”

Hotch huffs. “Spencer. It’s fine. You’re an adult. You’re allowed to spend your time how you want, with who you want.”

“Thanks,” Spencer says. He buckles in. Deflates. “Thank you, Hotch. This, um, this isn’t how I expected to come out.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance to do it on your own terms.” 

“It’s not your fault. And it wasn’t much of a secret, was it?”

Hotch lifts a shoulder. “It’s not my place to have an opinion one way or the other.” 

“You’re a profiler,” Reid says. “Our whole job is having opinions one way or the other.”

“True,” Hotch says, pulling the car out on the road. “That doesn’t mean I have to share them.”

“I guess not.”

Downtown Quantico drones by in dull blurs of color. Spencer picks out landmarks in the distance, predicting the route Hotch’s navigation will take them back to the Academy. They rarely haunt the bars near their work. Too many familiar faces, and those familiar faces tend to have too few inhibitions for everyone’s comfort.

Hotch clears his throat.

“I’ll share one opinion,” he says. “You should keep your ringer on. Prentiss was ready to call in the search dogs.”

“I did have it on,” Reid says. 

“You didn’t answer her calls. JJ called you four times.”

“I was—distracted.”

“I could tell,” Hotch says mildly.

Reid flushes. “We don’t have to keep talking about this.”

“We don’t.” 

An itch grows under Reid’s skin. He scratches his wrist, frowning at the heat pouring off of it. It’s too dark to see, but experience tells him the joint is ringed red and ugly. Hotch looks over at him. Looks back at the road.

“Do we need to talk about it?” Hotch says. “Did he hurt you?”

“He wasn’t thrilled that I had to leave,” Reid says. “I don’t think it was intentional.”

Hotch scoffs. “How hard did he grab you?”

“Okay, fine. It was most likely intentional.”

“I’ll take a look at it on the jet.”

“It’s just a bruise, Hotch. I’ll live.”

“I’ll feel a lot better if you let me look at it.”

Reid sighs. “I can take care of myself, you know.”

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should have to,” Hotch says quietly. 

It’s funny—for a second, Reid almost believes him. He hums.

“Is this a frequent problem for you?” Hotch says.

Reid shrugs. “People are becoming increasingly more entitled. Some of the men I go home with get…demanding.” He eyes Hotch’s hand, strangling the gearshift. “I did tell him I’d scream for you if he didn’t let me leave, if that helps.”

Hotch is simple, sometimes. A sheepdog scenting his flock for injury. Bristling with failure when he smells blood, and lowering his hackles when he finds none. He relaxes: his hand loosens; his spine curves into the contours of his seat; he splays a slack grip around the wheel.

“Did you tell him I’m armed?” he says.

“No,” Spencer laughs, “but I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” 

“There shouldn’t be a next time. You don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

“I mitigate the risks as best I can. I’m not as clueless as everyone thinks I am. I know the red flags to look out for.”

“I don’t think you’re clueless,” Hotch says.

“Everyone except you, then,” Spencer grants. “You think I’m naïve.”

“I think I’ve seen the worst the world has had to offer, and I’m appropriately wary of it. You see more good in people than I do.”

“That’s not true,” Spencer says softly. “You hide it well, but you’re always in pain from giving people the benefit of the doubt. Your burden is the inevitable disappointment when they let you down.”

“I hide it well, but you still see it.”

“That’s why you wanted me on your team, right?”

“I didn’t want to bring you on the team,” Hotch admits. “Gideon vetoed me. If it was up to me, you would have had a few years of peace before I brought you on board.” 

Spencer blinks in time with the turn signal. He tunes out Hotch’s idle chatter with the security guard at the front gate. Counts his own breaths and Hotch’s breaths and tries not to feel so small. The Academy is more imposing at night than it could ever be during the day. A looming goliath of sun-bleached cinder blocks. His throat clicks. He tugs his sleeve down over his thumb.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Hotch says after the gate falls behind them.

“I’m not offended,” Reid says. “More…surprised. You didn’t give off the impression that you were unhappy with my recruitment.”

“I wasn’t unhappy with you, and it wasn’t personal. You couldn’t even drink yet. I was drinking to cope. I didn’t know if you were ready for this life.”

Reid steals a glance to the side. Hotch has always been stoic, but when the light hits him just right, he oozes sheer exhaustion.

“You never said,” Spencer says.

“Nothing I said seemed to matter all that much,” Hotch says. “The higher-ups weren’t concerned with your mental health. Or mine.” 

“They still aren’t. How monthly psych evals aren’t mandatory is beyond me.”

Hotch laughs. “It’s because we wouldn’t show up for them, mandatory or not.”

“You might have a point,” Reid says. “Do you… Do you still wonder if I was ready?”

“Every day. You’ve done well for yourself, though. You grew into it. For better or for worse."

Reid hums. “You gave me the benefit of the doubt. Am I one of your inevitable disappointments?”

“No. You’re something else entirely,” Hotch murmurs.

“What…” 

Hotch shakes his head. Spencer huffs, but takes the hint.

“Alright,” he mutters. “Where are we going?”

“Wyoming,” Hotch says.

“I’ve never been to Wyoming.”

“That’s the beauty of Wyoming,” Hotch drawls. “You can go a thousand times, and it makes such a negligible impression that every time you go is like the first.”

Spencer grins. “I look forward to it.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

***

“Reid.”

Spencer groans. He thumps his head back on the wall. Scowls, and ducks under the arms caging him in place.

“Again?” he says sullenly.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Hotch says. “Let’s go.” He turns towards the stranger grumbling where Spencer left him. “Whatever it is you’re about to say, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Loud and clear, dude,” the guy says, backing away. “Fuck.”

“That wasn’t nice, Hotch,” Reid chides.

“I don’t have time to be nice,” Hotch says. 

“Can I at least get your number?” the man tries, turning beseeching eyes on Reid.

“No,” Hotch says.

Reid snorts. He takes his satchel from Hotch and throws it over his shoulder. Electronic music booms out of the open door at the back of the bar, forming a wall of sound more grimy than the graffiti-covered one he was just pressed against. He pushes into it blindly, squinting in the foggy gloom.

D.C.’s nightlife is more lively than anything Virginia has to offer. No matter the hour, its bars and clubs are packed to the brim with locals, tourists, college students, congressional staffers and retail workers alike. The elite mingle with the downtrodden. It’s almost a sociological experiment. Spencer clings to the periphery of the room, Hotch’s presence a heavy thing behind him, his hand a heavier thing on his shoulder.

“I’m not an UnSub,” Reid says, loud enough to be heard over the din. “You don’t have to perp walk me.”

“Force of habit,” Hotch says. He lets go.

Gentle strings take the place of blunt bass; the bar quiets. It’s corny, but the song that spills from the speakers slows the crowd down, couples them up. Spencer falls back a step.

“You’re on edge tonight,” he says.

“You disappeared,” Hotch says.

“I would’ve come back. What’s the—” 

The shrill alarm of an Amber Alert blares across the room, phone-by-phone. Reid winces.

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Hotch says. There’s a gritty edge to his tone. Something on the cusp of censure, but not quite committing to it.

“I feel like you’re upset with me,” Reid murmurs.

“Not with you.”

“But you are upset.”

“Just drop it, Reid,” Hotch sighs. “I’ll call for the full briefing when we’re in the car, but JJ gave me the rundown before she left. Chelsea Maynard is five years old. She went missing from her front yard in Manasses. Both of her parents have airtight alibis.”

“How long ago?” Spencer says.

“Seven hours. The house is in the process of being renovated. They wasted a third of the day looking for her around the rubble.”

Reid stops short in the corner of the bar. A swell of people block the exit, arms looped around necks, swaying softly. He scrunches his nose. He blames a long-forgotten instinct when he grabs Hotch’s hand and pulls him around the throng.

“There was another child abduction in the area three months ago,” he says once his shoes scuff on the sidewalk outside. “Are there any preliminary indications that Chelsea was taken by the same UnSub?”

Silence.

“Hotch?” 

He squeezes Hotch’s hand. Hotch’s full attention is heady on a good day, a bad day, an in-between day but it’s disarming at night. His eyes are pitch in the dark. They flit between Spencer’s face and the steeple of their twined fingers.

“Sorry,” Reid says. “I should have asked first. I didn’t want to lose you.”

“No, it’s fine,” Hotch says, visibly fitting himself back behind his mask. “Come on.” 

He leads Reid past the drunken masses lined up outside of the club next door, down the street towards the parking meters. Spencer trips over himself twice.

“He seemed much more reasonable than the last one,” Hotch says offhandedly.

“He was,” Spencer says.

“I overstepped. I shouldn’t have told him he couldn’t have your number.”

“I didn’t want to give it to him. He was younger than I usually go for, anyway.”

Hotch adjusts his grip. “He looked older than you.”

“Not by enough,” Reid mutters.

“If you say so.”

They don’t part until they reach the car, and when they do, Reid clasps his hands together, holding himself tightly like he’s putting pressure on a wound. He bundles them safely in his lap and wonders what it means, that he can still feel the heat of Hotch’s skin.

***

“Who was that guy?” Ben says, and Spencer knows it is Ben, because he seemed impressed with his own name when they physically collided on the outskirts of the dancefloor. He offered it up as if it was of any more worth than anyone else’s. It might be. 

It wouldn’t be the first time Spencer has tangled with fame, but Ben strikes him as arrogant and self-aggrandizing, not notable. Nice to look at, at least. Solid and powerful.

“What guy?” Spencer pants. He whimpers at a tug of teeth under his ear. Leans into the ache.

“The one that was watching you from the corner booth.”

Spencer groans. “Don’t worry about him. Just keep doing that.”

Ben licks up his throat. He sucks a kiss to Spencer’s Adam’s apple, laving over it with the flat of his tongue.

“He looked like he wanted to punch me,” Ben says. His breath prickles goosebumps on Spencer’s skin.

“That’s nice.”

“What’s his deal?”

“He’s harmless. Can we stop talking about—” Spencer hisses at a knife-sharp pinch over his jugular. “Easy. That’s too hard.”

“You can take it,” Ben says. He prods the sore spot. Leers, and says, “I bet this is what he wanted to see. You bruise like a peach.”

“I’m anemic,” Spencer intones.

“Is that French?”

Spencer looks to the sky. Takes a steadying breath. He flinches, full-body, when Ben bites him like he wants to maul him. 

“Okay, stop,” Spencer says. “You’re hurting me.”

“That’s kinda the point, Princess.”

“We’re done here.”

Ben jerks his hips, pushing his erection against Spencer’s stomach. He’s tall. Muscled and where he was solid, he’s scary, now.

“Look what you did to me,” he says sweetly. Pathetic. “At least get me off, first. You owe me.”

“Not even if the sun went supernova,” Spencer spits. “Back off.” 

“Fuck you.”

“You lost that chance.” 

Spencer hooks his sneaker behind Ben’s ankle. Rams his shoulder into his solar plexus, unbalancing him enough to step around him.

“And for the record,” Spencer says, “I’ve sat in on autopsies with cadavers more well-endowed than you.”

He slams the door behind himself. Locks it, even though the alley is accessible from the street, and Ben won’t have a hard time re-entering the club if his ego allows him. It’s the principle of the thing. Spencer throws himself into the booth the team claimed hours past. The pleather creaks.

Hotch slides him a glass of water.

“You okay?” he asks lightly.

“I’m fine,” Spencer says.

“Your neck—”

“Is also fine.”

“Okay.” 

Spencer runs his fingertip up the side of the glass. Condensation parts a trail, beading onto the table. He takes a sip. Glowers at his reflection on the rippled surface.

“Your friend looks pissed off,” Hotch says.

Spencer turns towards the dancefloor. He shouldn’t, but he waggles a wave at Ben. Call it a false sense of security, but Hotch has always kept him safe. Even Foyet couldn’t fell him. A pauper’s grave in Boston can attest to that fact.

“He’s a brute,” Spencer mutters. “He should be pissed off.”

Hotch’s teeth flash white under the dim light hanging low over the table. He narrows his eyes across the club. 

“Don’t start a brawl with him,” Spencer says. “Then you’d both be brutes, and I don’t have the means to bail you out of jail.”

“How bad?” Hotch says.

“He bit me. He didn’t break the skin.”

“I could arrest him for assault.”

“So could I.”

Hotch concedes the point with a sigh.

“Why didn’t you?” he says. “It’s bad enough that he did that to you. What if he does it to someone else?”

“Because I asked him to bite me,” Spencer says quietly. “The issue wasn’t the biting. The issue was the fact that he didn’t respect my boundaries.”

“Right.”

Spencer winces. He chugs his water, slaking a thirst he doesn’t have. He tries to place Hotch’s warped scowl through the glass. He sets it down. Teeters it back-and-forth.

“Did I mess up?” he whispers. “You’re mad at me again.”

Hotch shakes his head. “I’m not mad at you. I wasn’t mad at you last time, either.”

“You’re tense. Right here,” Spencer says, smoothing out the sharp line between Hotch’s brows with the pad of his thumb. He leans back against the booth. Rests his head on the frame, a handful of inches from Hotch’s shoulder. “Tell me about Jack.”

“He’s good.” 

“JJ said he’s keeping you on your toes. She wouldn’t elaborate.”

“He wants to play baseball,” Hotch says. He smiles wryly. “He convinced himself somewhere along the way that he can’t play soccer and baseball. Attempting to reason with a six year old is more trying than an interrogation.”

“Youth soccer and baseball leagues typically have opposite seasons.”

“I know. I’ve explained that to him more times than I can count. He likes soccer, too. I don’t think he should give it up so easily. All of his friends play it.”

“All but one, I’d bet,” Spencer says. “And the one that plays baseball instead is much cooler than the ones who play soccer.”

“Probably,” Aaron laughs. “I asked him if that was the case. I’m still his part-time parent, but I’m not removed from his day-to-day life anymore. He doesn’t tell me things like that, these days.”

Spencer toys with a coaster stuck to the tabletop. He’s facing Aaron head-on, but his field of vision is half-lidded. Half-moon as he yawns, drawing his knee up on the bench. He likes Aaron like this. Soft. Present.

“Has he told Jess?” he says.

“I don’t want to betray his trust by asking her,” Aaron says.

“I could talk to him. I’m removed from the situation.”

“You would do that?”

“Of course,” Spencer says. He matches Aaron’s smile. Skewed, like they’re sharing an inside joke. It’s over his head, if that’s the case. “Maybe I can guide him towards a STEM hobby. 50% of all baseball-related injuries accrued by children aged 5 to 10 affect the face and head. Robotics is much safer.”

“I didn’t need to know that,” Aaron mutters. 

Spencer laughs. He holds still when Aaron reaches out, tweaking an errant lock of hair, curled in front of his eyes. Hums when Aaron tucks it behind his ear. He yawns again. He covers it behind the back of his hand but it consumes him before it spits him back out, drained and depleted. 

“Where is everyone?” he says. “I assumed they’d reconvene by now.”

“They left to go bar hopping,” Aaron says. “I’ve never understood the appeal of going to one bar, let alone five.”

“Why do you even come with us?”

Aaron shrugs. “Why do you? You don’t drink. I’ve never seen you dance.”

“It’s hard to adjust to how quiet my apartment is after being in the field. And sometimes… Sometimes I find someone to help pass the time.”

“Is that what it is?” Aaron says.

“It’s just sex,” Spencer says. “It’s more gratifying than loneliness, and less complicated than a relationship.”

Aaron hums, non-committal.

“I’m done for the night, I think,” Spencer says. “I can’t see straight.”

“I can,” Aaron says. “Your friend is still looking at you.” 

“He’s a creep.”

“I’m not above shooting out his tires.”

Spencer giggles. He snaps his jaw over the sound. Coughs.

“If you were anyone else, I’d think you were joking,” he says. “He told me something interesting, though.”

“I didn’t realize troglodytes could speak,” Aaron says dryly.

”He said you were staring at me. Watching me when I was talking to him, I guess. Were you?”

Aaron slides free from the booth. He holds Spencer’s coat out. It’s a bit patronizing, and a clear deflection, but Spencer lets him button him into it. JJ has done the same thing to him before. He writes it off as an odd consequence of having a kid. Sticks his hands in his pockets and his tongue out at Ben, surly and alone on the dancefloor.

“I’ll drive you home,” Aaron says.

Spencer takes his hand, and what he means to say is thank you, but what slips from his lips is: “You can, you know.”

“I can what?”

“Watch me. I don’t mind. I like knowing you’re looking out for me.”

A halfway expression flits across Aaron’s features, smack dab in the middle of contentment and frustration. It touches on vanity before it disappears entirely. Spencer mourns it once it’s gone. 

He’s missing something.

***

Spencer shoves his back against the push-bar of the door, only kept upright by the vice-grip around his hips when he breaks into the night. He shivers at the brisk breeze caught between the two buildings embanking the narrow space. It’ll snow, soon. Virginia winters have long since lost their novelty.

“Damn,” Paul says. “Looks like we’ll have to find someplace else.”

“What?” Spencer says. “Why?”

He likes Paul. Not in a way that inspires any desire for true connection, but for a night, he’s more than tolerable. Handsome and seemingly unaware of the fact; broad and overly aware of the space he takes up. Gentle. The kind of man who better suits the role of a lover than a throwaway fuck. In a different life, Spencer might have asked him to stay.

Paul turns him by the waist.

Spencer knows that jacket, those trousers, those shoes but he wonders if he knows the person wearing them at all. Only the barest hints of a pinched profile cut through the shadows. Unfamiliar men’s boots peek out under a familiar man’s silhouette.

“Oh,” Spencer says. “Sorry, Hotch. I’ll just—”

“You do that,” Hotch says tonelessly. He’s motionless. Stone. Guarding the figure he has plastered against brick.

“Okay. I’m…” Spencer trails off. His throat is drier than the desert he was born in. “I’ll see you later.”

“Great.”

Paul guides him inside. He wraps Spencer in a hug and it’s—nice, but overbearing. 

“I could get us a hotel room, if you want,” Paul murmurs in his ear. Sweet-soft. “Maybe that was a blessing in disguise. You’re too pretty for a dirty alleyway. You deserve something nice.”

Reid shudders. He tries on a smile. It feels rotten on his cheeks. 

“I can handle a bit of dirt,” he says. 

“I’m sure you can. I get the feeling that you can handle more than you let on.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your hands,” Paul says, turning Spencer’s palms into the light. “They’re dainty, but they’re callused. How often are you in the range?”

“You’re uncommonly observant,” Spencer says.

“I have to be. I’m a prosecutor. It’s my job to—”

Spencer drags him in for a kiss by the tie. Shuts him up and it’s messy, but when Paul is quiet, Spencer can pretend.

“Bathroom?” he says.

“Sure,” Paul rasps. “Yeah, that’s… Absolutely.”

Spencer takes him into his throat in a grubby cubicle. He closes his eyes because it’s easier that way, and he doesn’t want a one-night-stand to see him cry, and he doesn’t understand why he wants to cry in the first place. He’s good at this. Practiced and confident. He palms himself when Paul’s thighs start shaking.

His mind drifts twenty feet outside, and for a moment, it’s not a stranger’s boots slotted between Aaron’s feet but his own knees. He moans, before guilt steals the sound. Paul’s hips stutter. He’s too gentle. There isn’t an ounce of danger in his bearing. His smile lines aren’t distant memories; they’re deep canyons that haven’t dulled from disuse. He doesn’t demand obedience or exert control. He’s…bland. As off-the-rack as his suit. He pulls out of Spencer’s mouth and jerks himself into his hand. Spills with a muffled curse.

Spencer staggers to his feet. He takes a step back when Paul reaches for him. Paul nods. Sighs.

“Where did I go wrong?” he says.

“You did everything right,” Spencer says. “You were a consummate gentleman.”

“And that’s not what you’re looking for.” 

It’s close enough to the truth that Spencer inclines his head, averts his eyes and fixes the drape of his shirt. His body angles itself towards the door. He hates this part. The lingering goodbye.

“Ah,” Paul says. “You already found what you were looking for, it’s just that you found him in a compromising position with another man in the alley.”

Spencer huffs. “You see too much. You see more than I do. I don’t— I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe it’s time to look in the mirror.”

Spencer does, once Paul is gone. It doesn’t lend him any clarity. He shouldn’t feel so torn open but he’s Prometheus with his guts exposed and pecked at. He rinses his mouth out and splashes water on his face. Pats himself dry with recycled paper towels that scour his skin more than anything. He shirks back inside the bar.

Hotch nurses a beer at one end of the table. Broody and moody. He kicks the chair across from himself out when Spencer hovers behind it, shifting his weight. Spencer sits.

“I thought you left,” Hotch says, and it sounds like an accusation.

“I was going to,” Spencer says. “I changed my mind.” 

“Did you change your mind, or did someone change it for you?”

“Does it matter? Someone changed your mind, too.”

“‘Spose not,” Hotch mutters.

“I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Spencer says quietly. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

Hotch taps his nails against his bottle. Pointer to pinky, again and again. He gusts out a breath. 

Silence is only awkward if one allows it to be. Spencer slams the door of discomfort open. Feels it swamp him, tsunami-strong, fidgeting against the wake of his inadvertent discovery.

“I should go,” he says. “Actually, this time.”

“Alright,” Hotch says.

An empty space rings hollow where Reid has been conditioned to expect an offer for a ride. He lets it simmer for a gunshot second. He snags his coat off of the table and stands.

“I’ll see you on Monday,” he says.

“Get home safe,” Hotch murmurs.

“You too.”

It’s deep enough into the night that the nearest Metro station is shuttered. Spencer stumbles back to his apartment, sober and aching for it, praying to a god he’s never believed in for the answer to the age-old question of how to turn back time.

***

“We agreed that the winner was going to buy the last round, right?” Prentiss says.

Morgan snorts. “You can’t change the rules just because you’re about to be slapped with a bill. Loser closes the tab, and the winner gets bragging rights.”

“I was just checking.”

“You should aim for the triple 20, Em,” Garcia says. “The worst you could do is miss.”

“The triple 20 takes up less than 0.9% of the scoring area of the dart board,” Spencer says. “It’s smaller than a stamp. Aiming for the bullseye is a better strategy for non-gifted players.”

“I can’t believe you just called me non-gifted,” Prentiss says. “And in front of all of our friends, too. That’s cold, Reid.”

“Not all of our friends,” JJ says, absent as she pokes at the keyboard of her phone. She drops her darts on the cocktail table. Drops her brow in her palm and pushes her hair off of her face. “Has anyone seen Hotch?”

Reid’s cheeks burn. He keeps his eyes on the dart board. Plans out a throw he’ll never make, studiously forcing himself not to swivel towards the back of the pub. The best defense against getting caught in a bluff is not fording one in the first place.

“He was talking to someone by the pool tables a while ago,” Prentiss says.

“Did you see which way he went?” JJ says.

“No, why?”

JJ sighs. “I need to run something by him.” Her phone lights up. Vibrates itself in a circle on the table. She reads the message, and locks the screen. “Never mind. I’m going to have to run this by all of you.”

“Don’t tell me we have a case,” Morgan groans. “Why do I keep going out with you people? This always happens.”

“I’ll go find Hotch,” Prentiss says, throwing her bag over her shoulder. 

“You’re trying to avoid paying up,” Rossi points out. “Loser closes the tab. That’s the hard line, and I will defend it with my dying breath.”

“Technically, we all lost tonight. We could split the bill.”

“You guys can head out,” Reid says. Resigned. A gallows mission. “I know where Hotch went. We’ll be a few minutes behind.”

“Is everyone conspiring against me?” Prentiss utters.

Reid packs his satchel slowly. Carefully. Running up the doomsday clock for as long as he can. He’s loath to break the unspoken truce he and Hotch have made. The one that promises a status quo—not their status quo, forged through fire and tempered in the quiet moments in between life and death—so long as they stick to the basics: work. SSA Hotchner, Unit Chief, and SSA Dr. Reid. Clean and simple.

Excruciating.

Rossi dawdles behind the team. A toothpick hangs from his lips. He throws it in an empty glass and pulls Reid aside.

“Go easy on him, kid,” he says.

Reid cringes. “You saw, didn’t you?”

“At my age? I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see him, I didn’t see where he went, and I definitely didn’t see your doe-eyes tracking him.”

“Sure,” Reid says. “You, uh, know who he’s with, though.”

“I know enough. I’m not so sure he does. He’s very dense when it suits his needs.” 

Reid hums. He fits the strap of his bag over his head. 

“Luckily and unluckily for the rest of us,” Rossi says, “you’re equally as dense. It would be impressive, if it wasn’t so sad.”

“Should I take offense to that?” Reid says.

“If you’d like.” 

Rossi pats him on the shoulder. Shoves him towards the door. Reid waves him off.

“Good luck,” Rossi calls after him. “Don’t let him bite your head off.”

A streetlamp casts tarnished light behind the pub. Reid doesn’t step into it. He sticks to the shadows clumped around the door. A thief in the night, if it’s possible to pilfer trust. He shatters it and melts it down, watching from a distance.

Aaron is a provider, a protector, and he kisses like there’s a threat aimed at his spine. A hand leaning on the wall and an arm wrapped around the back of his partner, covering him head-to-toe. It’s all-encompassing. It’s—private. 

Reid clears his throat. 

No response.

He does it again, pulse thrumming at the twitch of Hotch’s fingers over brick.

“Hotch,” he says.

“What?” Hotch snaps.

“Sorry. We just got called in.”

Hotch draws away. He holds himself as a barrier between the man still clinging to him and Reid, but for the space between breaths, Reid thinks—

“Give me a minute,” Hotch says, tossing Reid his keys. “I’ll meet you in the car. Turn the heat on.”

Reid almost laughs. It’s the abridged version of an argument they’ve been holding onto for years, where he refuses to sit in an idling car and Hotch insists that no living human should have such cold hands.

“Okay,” Reid says. He doesn’t have any fight left in him. 

Hotch’s head hangs. He raps his palm against the wall. His posture says leave and Reid listens, follows the command, until he doesn’t. He stops in the doorway. Head cocked, ears prickling.

“You didn’t tell me you have a boyfriend,” says a mild voice. 

“I don’t,” Hotch says.

“Then who was that?”

“Nobody.”

Spencer softly shuts the door.

He’s sweating under the collar by the time Hotch drops into the driver’s seat. The dry rasp of the heater dessicates the air. Hotch turns it down to low. He swings the car out on the road without checking if Reid is buckled in, and the mother-hen routine can get grating, sometimes, but its absence aches like a slap.

“So…” Reid starts.

“Let’s not do this,” Hotch says. 

Reid lasts all of three miles before he breaks.

“He looked like me,” he says. “The resemblance was uncanny.”

Hotch grimaces. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Doppelgängers are more than folklore. Two completely unrelated individuals can share single nucleotide polymorphisms that genetically link them as near-twins. Interestingly, the main divergence of their traits happens within the microbiome, which—”

“What’s the case?” Hotch interjects.

“I didn’t ask,” Reid says. “I’m sorry.” He turns to the window. Lowers his voice, and says, “He really did look like me.”

“I get it. You don’t have to rub it in.”

“I’m not rubbing anything in.”

Hotch huffs. “Are you sure about that?”

“Do I sound like I’m gloating?” Reid says, end of his rope and hanging from it. 

“No,” Hotch murmurs. “You sound…upset.”

“I might be.”

“I apologize if I made you uncomfortable in any way.”

“I don’t want a corporate apology,” Reid says. 

He twists in his seat. Takes in the rugged rage that ebbs and flows across Hotch’s face, dwindling to nothing. It’s been a long year. A long year of hospitals and funerals and ghosts.

“I don’t need an apology in the first place,” Spencer says. He aims for soothing and lands on creaking. “What are you doing, Hotch? You’re not attracted to men.”

“I’m not,” Hotch says. He shifts. “I wasn’t.”

“But you are now.”

“Not really, Spencer,” Hotch sighs, longsuffering. “Why don’t we skip to the part where we pretend that none of this ever happened.”

“I wish we could,” Reid whispers.

“Yeah. Me too.”

***

Hotch declines Garcia’s invitation for drinks one week and Reid turns down JJ’s the next and neither of them are being pressed or pressing anyone into walls but there’s a too-tall wall between them. Cinder block and mortar. Reid is on the outside looking in; Hotch is on the inside looking out—or else Spencer is on the ground looking up and Aaron is walking on top of the wall, arms out, though not to catch himself.

Reid knocks on his door on a lonely Friday evening. The office is empty. Startlingly quiet.

“May I come in?” he says.

Hotch sets his pen down. He gestures to the chair across from his desk. Reid sits.

He sits on his hands, because Hotch is tense again, right there between his eyes, and reaching out would be as foolish as petting a stray. His bearing is rigid, like someone drove a screw between his shoulder blades and tightened it until it wouldn’t budge any more. He’s tired. Reid can tell. Not tired with a capital ‘T’ or tired to his very bones, just…tired.

“What happened to us?” Reid says softly.

“Nothing,” Hotch says.

“I’m trying to think of a safe topic to talk about, and the only two I can think of are murder, and your son. That doesn’t feel like nothing to me.”

“We don’t have to talk.”

“I want to. I miss you.”

It hangs in the air. A stiletto blade that cuts the corners of Hotch’s lips, carving them into a frown.

“I never left,” he says.

“You might as well have,” Spencer says. “You refuse to be alone with me in the field. You barely look at me. The team is starting to notice.”

Hotch sighs. “Is there something you needed, Reid?”

“Yes. I need you to tell me how to fix this.”

“I can’t…” Hotch snaps his teeth. Clenches his jaw. He pushes his chair out, moves in front of his desk, and sags in the seat next to Reid. “I can’t answer that. If nothing is broken, there’s nothing to fix.”

“Is that our problem?” Spencer says.

Hotch shrugs helplessly.

“You tell me,” he says. “I wasn’t aware that we had any problems.”

“No? We’re nothing, and I’m nobody. Maybe we really don’t have any problems.”

“I didn’t realize you heard that,” Hotch mutters. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“What else could you possibly have meant?” Spencer says dryly.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”

Reid settles into his chair: limbs akimbo and head hanging off of the back. He stares at the ceiling. Muses patterns in the fiberglass tiles and tries to find sense in the holes he connects like constellations.

“You went home with someone,” Hotch murmurs. His thumb grazes the side of Spencer’s neck. Sweeps over the yellowing bruises there, and retreats.

“I’m allowed to spend my time how I want, with whom I want, remember?” Reid says.

“I’m almost positive I said ‘who.’”

Reid snorts. He turns towards Hotch. Notes the heaviness of his brow, and the downward droop of his shoulders. Spencer names the stoop of his spine as defeat. He reeks of it. 

“You make an effort to maintain less pretentious speech patterns than mine,” Reid says. “It’s a concession. You feel guilty that you trained yourself out of your accent to get ahead, and you prefer not to speak like an academic on top of it. It makes you feel like a fraud.”

Hotch sinks deeper into his seat. He sprawls out and it’s lazy, but intentional. A bit like the truth shaking hands with a lie.

“You are allowed to go home with people,” he says quietly.

“You just wish that you were the person I went home with,” Spencer says. It spills from his lips, circumventing his brain entirely. He has to shape the words for a second time just to place them. He nearly spews them back out.

Aaron looks away. A ruddy blush crawls up his cheeks. 

“Oh,” Spencer whispers. “I-I’m right, aren’t I?”

“I think I’d prefer to talk about murder,” Aaron says.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m your superior. I can’t initiate a sexual or romantic relationship with my subordinate.”

Spencer scoffs. “Your adherence to the policy directives is unpredictable, at best. I didn’t realize that was something you cared about so strongly.”

“I don’t,” Aaron sighs. “Not really.”

“You’re hiding behind the handbook.”

“Perhaps.”

Spencer pulls his knee up. He rests his chin on it. Stares more openly than ever at Aaron, shamefaced and—uncertain. It’s an alien expression on him. He’s decisive as an identifier; determined to a flaw. He’s the bullet in Spencer’s chamber when Spencer is backed into a corner and he’s the voice in Spencer’s mind when his own is lost. He’s something else entirely. That’s what Spencer was missing.

His heart tumbles in his chest.

“Where do we go from here?” he says.

“I can give you a ride home,” Aaron offers. 

“Your apartment is closer than mine.”

“It is.”

Spencer leans over the arm of his chair. 

“You could give me a ride there instead,” he says.

“I could,” Aaron says simply. “But you won’t like me, once I have you.”

“Why not?”

“I’m much better at holding on than I am at letting go. I’ll choke you.”

“I like being choked,” Spencer says. His neck heats. “You meant that figuratively.”

Aaron’s pupils dilate. Eat up the rings of his irises and spit out want.  

“I did,” he says. Raspy. Rough. “You like older men. You like being choked. You like being bitten. You’re full of surprises, and at the same time, none at all.”

“Don’t say it’s Freudian. I hate that man.” 

Aaron laughs. A real one, like he used to before his world razed to ash around him.

“Do that again,” Spencer says.

“Do what again?” Aaron says.

“Laugh.”

Aaron smiles fondly. Shakes his head. Spencer traces the edges of his lips and yelps when Aaron nips him.

“You’re full of surprises, too,” Spencer says. “Did you bite him?”

“No. I didn’t know him. Either of them.”

“You wouldn’t have had sex with them. You lacked the emotional connection to do so.”

“You’re nearly there,” Aaron murmurs, taking Spencer’s chin in his palm. “They weren’t you.”

“The second one was eerily close,” Spencer says.

“His speech patterns weren’t pretentious enough for my tastes.”

Spencer huffs. “Take me home with you,” he says, and Aaron does.

***

Spencer throws one hand on the headboard and scrabbles for purchase on Aaron’s scapula with the other. His vision swims with stars—white and gold and black flecks that flick across his eyes—but he has a foot firmly in consciousness. Aaron’s grip on the sides of his throat is as steady as it is cautious. Confident, and careful. Spencer strains up into the pressure.

Aaron hunches over him. Compresses his carotids and kisses his open mouth. His thrusts are slow but earth-shatteringly deep. Thorough, like he is with everything else.

“Should I call you names?” he says. “Should I call you a slut?”

Spencer whimpers.

“A tease?” Aaron tries, saccharine and sweet.

Spencer moans. His thighs slip over the slick skin of Aaron’s waist. They tremble wretchedly with fine, telling quivers. He’s on the precipice. He’s certain he won’t survive jumping off of it.

Aaron tuts. “What do you need?”

“Talk,” Spencer gasps. “I like your voice.”

“I know you do. You submit to me, when I give you orders.”

Spencer keens. He digs his heels in the small of Aaron’s back. Arches his spine, and the angle is too much, but Aaron removes his hand from his throat and wedges it under him. Keeps him there.

“You’re tight, for a whore,” Aaron grunts. The slide of his hips is languorous and agonizing.

“‘M not a whore,” Spencer whines.

“What are you, then?”

“Yours. I’m—yours.”

“Good boy,” Aaron murmurs. He bites a kiss under Spencer’s ear. Trails his lips down to the hollow of Spencer’s throat and sucks a bruise there. “So good for me. You’re close; I can feel it.”

Spencer nods frantically. “Keep talking.”

“Would you let me kiss you behind a sleazy bar? Would you let me fuck you in the bathroom?”

“Yes. Yes, I—” Spencer strangles a mewl at the first touch to his dick. His back bows off the sheets. “Fuck.”

“Anyone could see,” Aaron says lowly. “Would you want them to?”

“They’d know I’m yours.”

“They’ll know anyway. They’ll see your limp. They’ll see your bruises, in the shape of my hand.”

“Oh, God,” Spencer cries. “Please, Aaron. Please.”

Aaron looms over him. He twists his wrist. Pulls Spencer’s cock with a deft hand, and whispers, “Let go.”

Spencer comes with a broken noise. A pent-up spiral of sound that hitches its way out of him, growing into a babbling mess of syllables as Aaron speeds up, fucking him with purpose. He tries to clench around Aaron but he’s lax, loose, limp and languid. Aaron kisses him. Stutters a moan into his mouth and gathers him up and Spencer has been used before, body and mind, once or twice or a dozen times, but never so wholly. He’s halfway to tears when Aaron’s hips slam, and stop. Aaron groans.

“You’re perfect like this,” Aaron rasps, breathless. “Mine.”

Spencer shakes.

He couldn’t be further from afraid, even though Aaron’s eyes are dark and dangerous and the promise in his voice clangs like the permanence of chain. He’s—satiated. Stripped down to his base self and sweating. 

Aaron bundles him close, twists, and collapses on his back. He beams like the cat that fucked the canary. Laughs, a little. Spencer pants on his chest. He’s empty and full. Floating.

“You said I wouldn’t like you once you had me,” he slurs once the concept of words returns to him.

“Was I right?” Aaron says.

“I think I love you. That was… Jesus.”

Aaron snorts. “You’re easy to please.”

“Not usually. You’re just that good at pleasing me.”

A swell of satisfaction lifts Aaron’s cheeks. He stretches leisurely. Bodily moves Spencer onto his side and curls around him. Spencer grasps the corded forearm wrapped around his middle. He idly traces tendons and skips his fingerprints over scars.

“It took me a long time to put it together, but I just realized something,” he says.

Aaron hums. “What’s that?”

“The first time I ever slept with a man was the night after I met you. I never bothered to consider why it suddenly felt imperative to try.”

“How was he?”

“Nothing like the real thing.”

“Good,” Aaron says. “Do me a favor. No more alleyway trysts with strange men. I can’t stand watching you get hurt.”

Spencer huffs a laugh. “No more kissing my clones, then.”

“Deal.”

It feels like a deal with the devil, when Aaron pushes him over and kisses down his back, across the curve of his ass. Spencer signs his name, and accepts his fate with a sigh.