R (original) (raw)

Title: Landlocked Blues – Part Two
Author: ???
Recipient: kyrdwyn
Pairing: Rossi/Reid
Rating: FRM/R
Word Count: ~ 18,600
Warnings/spoilers: Swearing (a lot), sexual references, angst, humor, hurt/comfort, references to violence, liberties taken with canon timelines
Summary/prompt: As soon as David Rossi decides he can’t stand Spencer Reid and his stupid hair and his stupid face, life conspires to screw with him. It always does.
A/N: Here’s my take on the prompt, “conversations in hotel rooms while on cases turn into friendship, then love, but making it work outside of cases is difficult.” The title is from the Bright Eyes song of the same name. Happy Christmas!

Part One

Dave has never been very good at sharing people. He shares his money, because he can’t stand knowing that people he cares about are going without something when he could just as easily pay for it himself, but people are either his or they’re not. He’d always thought, when he was younger and more stupid, that marriage meant you could be sure of someone, that you were theirs and they were yours, and that was that. Of course, three marriages later, he knows that people are fickle and there’s no reason to ever be sure of anyone – not money and not the law and not God and not sex. He should know; he’s goddamn tried them all.

He knows, therefore, on an academic level, that Spencer Reid is not his. And yet, when he hears Garcia inquiring about a date Reid apparently went on the night before, he has a sudden urge to obtain a semi-automatic weapon and shoot someone in the face. It is in the spirit of this humor that he spends the morning sniping at Reid and Reid, obviously tired and pissed about something, snipes back. They’re working a local case and Aaron, being a cruel and sadistic bastard, assigns Dave and Reid the crime scene together. Dave rolls his eyes and stalks for the lift.

“Because being friendly would kill you dead with all the pain it causes,” Reid mutters, scurrying after him.

They get into the SUV in silence, and when Dave turns the key in the ignition, the radio comes on full blast and both of them wince as their ears are violently assaulted by hip-hop music.

“Clearly Morgan was here,” says Reid, reaching for the volume dial.

“And yet it’d be more pleasant if he just marked his territory by pissing on the seats or something,” Dave growls, despite the fact that he is never speaking to Spencer Reid again.

There passes a companionable moment of unity, punctuated only by the rapper singing quietly about his various deviant sexual proclivities.

“I hate this song,” says Reid, presently, as he randomly prods buttons, trying to change the station.

“Me too,” says Dave.

“I mean,” Reid says, obviously having taken Dave’s words as encouragement for his continued existence and warming to his theme, “Not only does he split his infinitives quite badly in the chorus, but also the subject matter is an affront to women and their allies.”

“I was just going to say that the sound is like being stabbed repeatedly in the eyes with a fork,” Dave says, despite himself.

“Well, there’s that.” Reid finally finds some classical music. “Do you think we’ve got time to grab coffee on the way over?” he asks.

Rossi sighs, as visions of his resolution to give up on Reid for good dance in his mind’s eye like a row of terribly untalented yet enthusiastic strippers. “Well, the vic’s not going to get any more dead in the five minutes it takes us to stop at a Starbucks,” he says, reluctantly.

“Good,” says Reid. “There’s one on Independence and Maryland. Internal sat-nav,” he says, pointing to his head when Dave stares. He looks at his watch, “I hope they still have pastries left.”

“I hope your arteries explode,” Dave snarls, “It would be so very richly deserved.”

“That’s pretty much a medical impossibility, actually, so I think I’ll take my chances. Oh, apricot Danish,” says Reid, suddenly, because he seems to think that Dave truly does want to hear every bizarre thought that falls out of his bizarre brain, “I love apricot Danishes. Maybe with custard on top. Yes, definitely custard. Or chocolate chips. Oh, do you know what seems odd about those crime scene photos? I’ve just realised. Exsanguination should leave a lot more blood on the ground than that.” He pauses for all of a second. “Maybe they have Danishes with custard and chocolate chips. Do you think that would be weird?” He pulls a crime scene photo and holds it close to his face. “No, that’s definitely not enough blood.”

Dave wonders, fervently and at least semi-seriously, whether he might feel better if he ran over a kitten. A litter of kittens. A cavalcade.

“Dave,” says Reid, uncertainly.

“Mmm?”

“Are you mad at me because I went on a date last night?”

“No,” says Dave, in a tone that does not sound very fucking convincing, even to him. “You don’t owe me anything; why the hell should I care if you go on dates?”

“Um,” says Reid.

“Oh, that,” says Dave, in what he hopes is a breezy tone. “I thought we agreed that um was a bad idea and that we shouldn’t do it again?”

“Um,” says Reid. “The date was terrible, by the way,” he says.

Dave feels his heart leap, and then feels a little bit ashamed. “Did you head butt the guy in the face?” he asks, hopefully.

Reid snorts, “No,” he says. “I was just really distracted the whole time, actually, and then a woman from NA walked up to me on the street as my date and I were leaving the bar, and we talked for a couple of minutes, and then after I’d said goodbye to her, the guy was really mad at me for talking to a prostitute while I was out with him.” He is indignant.

“Erm…” says Dave, “Is there any chance the woman in question actually was, you know, a hooker?”

Reid looks confused, “Well, I guess,” he says, “Maybe? But I know her! And I don’t really think about things like that.”

“Oh, that’s amazing,” says Dave, “Your date thinks you ditched him for a hooker.”

“I didn’t ditch him!” says Reid. “It was only for a couple of minutes, and I wasn’t trying to solicit her or anything! I just asked how her kids were!”

“You are so phenomenally incompetent it actually strikes fear into my heart.”

Reid brightens. “Do you think that means he won’t call me?” he asks.

“Yeah, I think it’s probably pretty fucking safe to assume he’s not going to call,” says Dave, amused.

“Oh, thank goodness,” says Reid, relieved, “I didn’t really want to see him again anyway.”

Dave roars with laughter. “Come on, admit it,” he says, dryly, “I’ve ruined you for other men.”

“You’re kind of an asshole and you’re pretty old,” says Reid.

“And?” asks Dave.

“And I spent the whole date wishing I was with you instead of him,” admits Reid, looking quickly out of the window.

Dave attributes the warm feeling in his chest to heartburn.

***

Reid looks at him severely, over the rims of his glasses. “You haven’t given me one single reason that makes any sense at all for such big tax breaks,” he says. “Other than your wanting another Ferrari.”

“I don’t have a goddamn Ferrari,” mutters Dave. “I wouldn’t buy a Ferrari. I am very satisfied with both my genitals and my sex drive, thank you very much, and I don’t need a goddamn Ferrari.”

Reid rolls his eyes. “It was a figure of speech,” he says, “But you knew that. You’re just being perverse.”

“And you have a very annoying face.”

He has begun to look forward to these hotel room conversations, though God knows why. They never touch each other and they constantly argue, and Dave has been married three times, so he’s already well-versed in that kind of relationship. But with Reid it’s different, somehow. He’s so academic in his argument that he doesn’t take anything personally, and every once in a while, he’ll tilt his head carefully to one side and concede that Dave is making a sound point.

Dave doesn’t do that, because he’s always right, but he does look forward to the sparring all day, and on nights when one of them is too busy, or too tired, or the team is working late, he goes to bed feeling oddly like he is missing something. Once he actually got up and checked for his wallet and his watch and his gun and his heavy gold ring, before realizing that what he missed was Reid’s stupid face and his fucking infuriating conversation and his nauseating habit of mainlining candy and talking with his mouth full.

Tonight, they’ve disagreed on taxes, guns and education, and agreed on healthcare, abortion, and war. Reid, ever the hopeless fucking optimist, says, “Actually, the important thing is that we’re both dissatisfied with the way the US cares for least of its citizens, and the fact we disagree on means is immaterial.”

“That is so ridiculously simplistic, not to mention completely mental, that there is every chance my brain could explode,” says Dave.

“OK, name one place where our views are irreconcilably divergent,” says Reid, easily, leaning back on one elbow. Dave fucking hates that this is so natural for him.

“There’s God,” he says, shortly. “I mean, I’m the worst fucking Catholic that ever lived, but I believe that there are some absolutes, and I believe in a good that’s better than anything people could do, and a heinous evil that’s beyond what we could create.”

“I believe in second chances,” says Reid, lightly, “And that no one is ever absolutely anything.”

“Don’t you ever wonder, though, in this job…” Dave trails off. “Don’t you see things that are so miraculous or so awful, and wonder what other explanation there could possibly be?”

“In my experience, both physics and people are capable of the miraculous and the awful,” says Reid, “And that’s what I put my faith in.”

“Yeah? How’s that working out for you?” Dave asks, and is rewarded with Reid’s rueful smile.

The younger man sighs. “I prayed once,” he says. “I didn’t believe in it, but I thought I was going to die, and I was weak and tired, and all I could think to pray was God help me.”

Dave thinks of the stories he has been told about Georgia, about Reid climbing out of a grave like a ghost with a silver pistol in his hand, and shivers. “What happened?” he asks.

“I didn’t die,” says Reid, “And now I’m a drug addict who has to sleep with the lights on. So you tell me.”

Dave smiles at him, awkwardly. “Go on, talk yourself up,” he says, lightly, and Reid huffs a little laugh.

Later, when they’re watching the news, Dave thinks about the hours spent at church and poring over the bible and the words and words and words of liturgy that filled his mouth like wax, and realises that he’d never really prayed anything but God help me, either.

Dave used to pray to Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, because he kind of identified. He thinks Spencer Reid might be a lost cause, too.

***

After Haley dies, the problem is that there is absolutely nothing to do, and they are people who work much better when there is a task to be completed or something to be solved; someone to be saved. This time, though, this time their problems are all either solved or they are just beginning, and there is no one left to be saved and they are probably all damned to hell anyway. Each member of the team comes upstairs to tell Aaron they are sorry, and then they stand around in Aaron’s old house, in the remains of his old life, and Haley’s body lies on the floor upstairs and Foyet’s on the floor downstairs, and no one knows what to do. How the hell are they supposed to know what to do?

Dave watches as Morgan is the one who deals with forensics and Prentiss is the one who gives instructions and JJ is the one who answers people’s questions, and thinks, yes; this is who you are. And Reid, Reid is the one who leads Aaron to the bathroom and holds him gently against a wall and wets a flannel – testing the water with his hand to make sure it is warm – and starts washing George Foyet’s blood off Aaron’s fists. Aaron flinches at each touch and Reid talks to him, soft and soothing, and Dave realizes with a shock that it’s the same voice Reid uses on unsubs. Then he remembers that Reid treats unsubs like they could be his family; like they could be someone he loves. And he thinks, yes; this is who you are, and he thinks, then who am I?

Later, when he is making up beds for Aaron and Jack in one of his spare rooms, Dave makes promises and says things that are logical and he supposes those are the ways he knows how to bring comfort. But he is still awake when his phone rings at two o’clock in the morning. He answers it because he needs to be near someone, the way Jack and Aaron are curled together in the spare room. Reid’s tense voice says, “What are you doing,” but not as though it is a question.

Dave says, “Aaron and Jack are at my place,” although he knows it is not an answer.

Reid says, “Come outside in ten minutes.” Dave wants to be near someone, so he does.

The younger man is lounging against the hood of his car, angular and awkward. He hasn’t changed his clothes. “Get in,” he says.

Dave looks back towards the house. “I shouldn’t leave, in case Aaron needs something,” he says, weakly.

“He’ll be OK for an hour. Please get in.” And Dave does, because he thinks it might be the first time Spencer Reid has ever really asked him for anything, asked for his own needs to be put above something else’s. He gets in because he is curious.

They drive. On the radio, Bobby Darin sings, _somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere waiting for me, my lover stands on golden sands_… and Dave, watching the lights flash by on the highway in melting pools of blue, thinks it might be the saddest thing he’s ever heard. It is clear to him that Reid has no particular plan, but the night is quieter and gentler than anything they have faced today, and so they drive into it silently and it swallows them up.

Reid stops, eventually, for gas, and as soon as he gets out of the car to pay, Dave feels a primal surge of want, a desire to release the tension and fury that is inside him, that he could never let Aaron see. And they are at a gas station off the highway and it is quarter to three in the morning and Noel Coward is singing, I’ve been cherishing, through the perishing, winter nights and days. He sees a red neon motel sign down the street and wonders whether he dares.

When Reid gets back in the car, Dave just says, “We could stop up there, if you like,” and Reid, without so much as a fucking pause, says, “Alright,” in that agreeable way he has, and that’s how, less than a minute later, Dave is sitting in the car in the motel parking lot while Reid gets them a key.

And sorrow will never come Oh, will it ever come true, Our room with a view?

Even after Reid shuts off the ignition and the radio stops, Dave feels as though the music is following them as they crash their way up the unlit stairwell, bumping into each other in the darkness, and Reid fumbles with the key at the door.

“Here, let me,” whispers Dave, and he turns the key with Reid breathing hot against his ear. As soon as the door screeches free, Reid pushes him inside and against the wall, and the shock of it makes Dave feel alive again, alive, and he tastes blood when Reid bites down, much too hard, on his bottom lip. Dave pushes back and tangles his fists in Reid’s hair and they move together, completely out of step and hearing only the harsh rhythm of each other’s breathing. Dave cannot remember the last time another person’s skin felt so warm, the last time he felt nails on his back and an exploding flower of pain in his heart, and this is for Aaron and for Haley but it is also for them. Reid knows that – he must – and his skin is hot like a fever, and his body spread out beneath Dave is lit up flashing red and blue where the neon Motel sign burns through the threadbare curtains.

We’ll watch the whole word pass before us while we are sitting still, leaning on our own windowsill.

“Jesus Christ,” says Dave when, abruptly, they stop.

“Yeah,” Reid says, then, “We should head back.” There is a dark rasp to his voice, but he is already up, pulling on his trousers, and Dave’s heart is still hammering and he knows they have to go back (they have to), but the moment seems jarring and incomplete.

They drive back with the windows down and the freezing night air tamping down their skin and Dave, for the moment, for this moment, feels more free than angry. At his house, he says, “See you tomorrow,” to Reid, which is a stupid thing to say, and Reid says, “Thanks,” which is not much better.

The house is quiet and calm, and Dave thinks, over whiskey as the sun comes up, about Reid washing the blood off Aaron’s fists and he wonders why he wants so much to be close to a person who does things he finds so deeply incomprehensible.

This morning at the motel had been good and it had felt right, but Dave wants to know if Reid likes cherries; what he thinks of Camus. Actually, he could guess right now what Reid thinks of Camus. But he wants the chance to ask.

***

Reid has circles under his eyes, Dave thinks, crossly, looking across the room at where the younger man is sitting, in the evening half-light. He thinks, I’m supposed to be fucking helping with that and then he thinks, I don’t know how. Tonight they sit in a hotel room without talking, and it’s freezing out but Reid has the windows open so the cold air stings their faces and burns away conversation. They don’t touch each other, and Dave thinks it’s because Reid doesn’t trust him, since Foyet, and he doesn’t know why.

This is the man, Dave thinks, who believed his own father was a murderer with no evidence but a collection of half-formed memories and ghosts. The man who, when Dave asked what it was like going to high school aged nine, said, “It was uneventful,” and turned away. Dave knows about Reid tied to the goalposts – Morgan told him – knows about the kicks and the punches, and Reid must know that Dave knows, and he doesn’t even trust him enough to talk about it.

Reid is a stage magician and his trick is this: he feigns so much frank fucking honesty – pretends to be so much more open with the world than anyone else – that people trust him and believe him right away and they don’t stop to think what he might be hiding under all that guileless charm. He doesn’t use this in a malicious way, Dave thinks; it’s just that Reid is the most artful concealer of his own emotions that Dave has ever met, all the while pretending to be utterly uncomplicated. His words are a conjurer’s flourish; he distracts the audience by acting utterly disarming and while they are looking at that, his real feelings are happening so far below the surface that no one ever sees them. It scares Dave, sometimes, to look into Reid’s angular, pale face and see only himself reflected back in it, as though his own over-confidence and arrogance are being projected onto a blank screen. He is afraid, sometimes, that he is rubbing the other man out.

Tonight, Dave is reading and Reid is pretending to; Dave can’t hear the other man’s pages turning, and every time he glances up, Reid is looking into the distance.

“You alright?” Dave asks, and the frown falls off Reid’s face and his crooked smile flashes quickly, like a knife.

“Of course.”

Dave thinks he’s lying. “Are you still mad about the goddamn ditch?” he asks. Today, out of frustration, he’d pretended he was going to walk away and leave Reid to clamber up a bank alone, with his bad leg, and Reid had believed that he was actually going to do it. It had been stupid and childish, but Dave is so fucking sick of Reid refusing to trust him, of Reid acting like Dave’s going to turn on him at any moment, that he’s tempted to start playing to expectations. And he’d gone back and helped the kid out of the ditch; of course he had.

“You know, right?” he says now, “You know I’d never leave you in a goddamn hole? You know I was just joking?”

“I know,” says Reid, with a thin, unconvincing smile.

Dave refuses to feel guilty, later, when he is lying alone in bed and trying to convince himself that it’s not his goddamn fault if Reid doesn’t trust anyone worth a damn. But he can’t help thinking, in that small, dark part of his brain where the fucking stupid thoughts occur, that his pretending to walk away from Reid had probably felt like a fist to the face, and he thinks Spencer Reid’s seen plenty of those.

***

Dave is so angry it actually makes him feel sick to his stomach. He’s so angry his teeth hurt. He can’t even think; the rage is higher than his thoughts, and it is rage that eventually propels him out of the chair in his hotel room and down the hall towards Reid’s.

The thing is that Dave has always been good with death. He hates it, of course – it angers him and it upsets him and it makes him crazy, but the dead do not haunt him; the living do. His nightmares have always been a loping parade of the ones they almost didn’t save, the ones whose bodies are alive, but death is sunk so deep in their faces, peering out of their eyes, that they are gone already.

Dave knows what to do about the corporeal dead. He does not know what to do about the living, walking, breathing dead; the ones who have come so close that surprise is taken away for them, that they know now what death will look like and that every moment from this one on will be another tiny step towards dying properly. Dave is not squeamish about mutilated bodies but sometimes, when he encounters survivors – the ones with death in their eyes – he has to look away.

Aaron has seen death at such grotesquely close quarters that these days, Dave can more often than not see it written all over the other man’s face. And only very occasionally – in such fleeting moments that he is not sure whether it is real or just the turn of a head, a trick of the light – he thinks that, perhaps, he can see it in Reid.

Today Reid put himself, unarmed, between agents with guns and a woman with a long, sharp knife, and tried to talk her down while she threatened to put the knife through his throat, and now Dave is sick with fury.

He pounds on the door to Reid’s room, and Reid opens it – mild as milk in his ridiculous pajamas, as though Dave’s going to buy that act – his face dull and resigned. Dave only has time to note that Reid was obviously expecting this visit, before he pushes past the younger man and slams the door shut behind him.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he snarls.

“My problem?” says Reid, blankly. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, don’t give me that goddamn mild-mannered professor act,” seethes Dave. “You’re only just back in the field after getting half your goddamn kneecap blown away and you go out there today with no vest and no gun and fucking invite some psycho to try it on. I can’t figure you out!” he yells, and the fear and frustration he has been feeling for months comes rushing out. “You’ve got no idea how fucking selfish it is, the way you don’t give a shit about yourself, and it’s either arrogant or it’s suicidal, and I want to know which!”

I want to remember how it feels to be next to you again. I want to know you won’t do these stupid things anymore. I want to stop you from feeling like you have to.

“Well?” says Dave, “Do you think you’re invincible or utterly disposable? Because I’d rather not have your death on my conscience, and the way you’re going, it’s bound to happen sooner rather than later.”

Reid flinches, and when he speaks, his voice is low and cold. “Of course it’s all about you, isn’t it?” he hisses. “Don’t you dare talk to me about selfish. You’ve got the market well and truly cornered on selfish. You don’t care whether I’m around or not, except for how it affects you. And believe it or not, I don’t specifically tailor my actions in the field just to piss you off.”

“But don’t you understand that I’m invested?” says Dave, shaking his head. “Don’t you get that every time you don’t trust me – don’t trust any of us – and just rush in there by yourself, it’s like you’re throwing the whole goddamn idea of the team in our faces? I know I’m not one to talk, but I don’t…” Dave swallows, “I actually care if I die or not. I don’t know if you care Reid, and it scares the shit out of me, and I can’t… I can’t watch you not care any more.”

“What’s it to you?” Reid seems so confused, so bewildered, that Dave can barely believe it, even though he knows enough about the other man to realize it’s genuine.

“We had sex,” Dave says, incredulously, “We had sex twice, and we’ve had all those nights together, just you and I, talking shit and sharing, and I thought maybe we were trusting each other. And I might be an asshole but at least people know what I am, which is more than I can say for you,” he says, breathing hard. “Who the hell are you? Do you even know? Have you ever been honest with anyone about who the hell you are?”

Reid looks like he has been hit in the face. “Do you know what I spent my first two years at the Bureau doing?” he asks, anger in his voice. “I spent them trying to get out from under Gideon’s shadow. He never told me why he picked me for the BAU, never told me what he thought I’d bring to the team, and I thought… I thought for the longest time that I was either a second chance with the son he’d driven away, or a second chance for him; that I was supposed to be him without the unhappiness and the bad choices. You have no idea how hard that was, Rossi,” he spits out Dave’s name, “Knowing that I didn’t deserve the job and wanting to be good at it anyway; wanting that more than anything. And you know what I did?” He draws himself up to his full height. “I decided: stuff Gideon, or Hotch, or Morgan, I’m going to do this job my way. That’s how I’ve coped with being Jason Gideon’s little pet project,” he says, echoing the words Dave had said so long ago, “By sticking to what I think is right, even when that means putting myself in danger. That’s who I am, and you’ve got no right... You’ve got no right.”

“But if you’d just trusted me with that…” says Dave.

“Why on earth would I trust you?” asks Reid. “Give me one good reason.”

Dave rather sees his point, but he says, weakly, “I trust _you._”

Reid rolls his eyes. “Alright,” he says, “Why did you get divorced?”

“None of my wives liked me very much. I’m serious,” he adds, seeing Reid’s look of disbelief.

“What are you most afraid of?”

Dave hesitates. “Being completely ineffectual,” he says, and he can see Reid’s face soften slightly.

“Biggest mistake you ever made?”

“I’m looking at him,” says Dave, steadily. He means the way he judged, the things he said, the things he didn’t see, but Reid looks like someone has slammed a door in his face.

“Fuck you, Rossi,” he says.

“Oh, God,” says Dave, “That came out wrong – I didn’t mean…”

“Fuck you,” says Reid, again, and storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Dave wonders whether Reid realizes he has walked out of his own hotel room. He sits on the bed waiting, for hours, for the other man to come back. He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he wakes up and it is morning and he is all alone.

***

When Dave walks into breakfast, Prentiss does not say anything, but the way she is consuming her bagel could only be described as insolent. There is a brief and unnatural silence. “Erm,” says Dave, “You didn’t all happen to overhear a conversation Dr. Reid and I had last night, did you?”

“Define ‘overhear’,” says Prentiss, “because I feel that word implies a kind of choice about whether to listen or not, whereas this felt more like…” she trails off under the force of Dave’s glare.

JJ smirks. “Define ‘conversation,’” she says.

Morgan shrugs. “I felt like I should be waiting out in the hall with a towel and a spit bucket and a quart of Gatorade for when they rang the bell at the end of the round.”

“OK, you’re all fucking hilarious,” says Dave putting his head in his hands. A thought suddenly occurs to him. “Do you think Aaron heard the part about us having had sex?”

“I think people in Oregon heard the part about you having had sex,” says Morgan.

“Well I, for one, was surprised by that revelation,” JJ says, taking another slice of toast. “In fact, Elle and I had a bet going about Spencer and now I guess I owe her fifty bucks.”

“Yeah well, Gideon and I had one going about Spencer, too, and he owes me a hundred,” says Morgan, sourly. “I’m never gonna see my hundred bucks either, the bastard.”

“I’ll leave you all to discuss the goddamn important things,” says Rossi, getting to his feet and feeling about a million years old, “I’m just going to go somewhere quiet and kill myself.”

“That’s the spirit,” says Prentiss.

***

Aaron, when calling the pair of them into the room he’s using as an office, is apologetic but firm. Reid won’t look at him, and there are rings of purple under his eyes like bruises. Dave knows how he feels.

“Is this about my parking tickets in work vehicles again?” he asks Aaron, somewhat hysterically, “Because I’ve told Erin that if she wants people to die because I couldn’t find a goddamn parking space, she can hand that edict to me directly. And I’m not fucking paying the fines either.”

“Dave, you park on yellow lines while you’re getting Starbucks,” says Aaron, distractedly, “I’ve seen you do it. But that’s not why I called you here…”

“I am very, very confused about all of this,” says Reid, in a deeply unconvincing attempt at innocence.

“Look,” says Aaron, “I understand that my team seems to have turned into the Wild West in terms of adherence to Bureau rules, and I completely blame myself for that. Furthermore, I know I’ve been the beneficiary of our somewhat loose respect for bureaucracy, on more than one occasion, so I’m not going to be hypocritical enough to hold the pair of you to a higher standard.”

George Foyet looms, unmentioned, in the room.

“However,” says Aaron, more sternly, “You two need to sort out whatever problem you seem to be having with each other. And it needs to be sorted out fast; otherwise I’ll have no choice but to get Strauss involved. And that would make me incredibly pissed off, but more importantly – in case you missed it the first time – it would mean Strauss is involved. Got it?”

Reid nods, pink to the tips of his ears. Dave hauls himself out of the chair. “Can’t you at least talk to Erin about my parking tickets?” he asks, as he turns to go.

“You parked in a disabled space while you were picking up your dry-cleaning. Get out of this office,” says Aaron.

He has a point. Dave goes.

***

“I was jealous,” Dave yells, into the keyhole of Reid’s hotel room door that night, after his knocking goes unheeded. This is fucking ridiculous and humiliating. There is no way everyone else is not crowded onto Emily Prentiss’ bed with popcorn and a bucket of chicken wings, hanging on his every word.

“It seemed so fucking unfair, when I came back to the Bureau, that I’d had to leave and fail and get divorced and everything to figure out what made me happy and what didn’t. And you already knew. You seemed to be about twelve goddamn years old, and you were so fucking smart, and you already knew that cars and a book deal and nice suits wouldn’t make you happy, and you seemed so sure of yourself already, and I was so jealous it took my breath away.” Dave sighs. This is really, incredibly embarrassing. He inhales.

“I hated you, alright?” he calls through the door. “I hated that you were so sure of yourself, and you knew everything, and everyone thought you were perfect. I realized that you were just point blank a better fucking person than me and I hated you for it.”

The door swings open, and Reid, in his pajamas, stares at him incredulously. “That’s completely ridiculous,” he says, without preamble, “No one person is better than anyone else.”

“Well, that’s because you’re you,” says Dave, in frustration. “That’s because you treat homicidal psychopaths with the same respect you would your Grandmother. Normal people would say you’re a better person than me.”

“I suppose it’s fortunate that I’m not normal people then,” says Reid. He frowns. “You really thought I was so sure of myself?”

“Before I got to know you, yeah,” says Dave.

Reid swallows. “I went to therapy, once,” he says, in a small sort of voice. “Just one time; after Tobias Hankel. In my first session, I’d been talking about how helpless and useless I’d felt, and I got this homework, you know, that my therapist said I had to do. I was supposed to make a list of all the qualities about me that were unique in the team, all the things I could do that the others couldn’t.”

He pauses. Dave waits.

“I sat there at home with my notebook open every night for a week,” says Reid, “Trying to think of the things I could do that no one else on the team could do without me. And in the end, I cancelled my second session. I didn’t go back. Because all I had written down, the only thing I had at the end of the week, was: I’m faster than Google.”

Dave’s heart breaks. “You’re also much more relevant,” he says, gently, “And you throw up significantly less porn.”

Reid laughs, softly.

“I’m really sorry,” says Dave, gruffly. “I am. I never bothered to give you a chance, and I made assumptions, and I said things that I very much didn’t mean. I mean, you really do have terrible hair,” he says, and Reid smiles. “But that thing I said in Aaron’s office, right after I started back at the Bureau, I didn’t…”

“I know,” says Reid.

“I really fucking didn’t…”

“I know.” Reid swings his hand out awkwardly, and touches Dave’s.

“Can I come in? I suspect everyone else is enjoying the show a little much.”

Reid steps back, and holds the door open.

“Do you want to talk some more?” asks Dave. “I mean, we can, if you want.”

He sort of braces himself, but Reid says, “Not now,” and whips a deck of cards out of his pocket. “Let’s play,” he says, in a steely sort of voice, shuffling the cards between his thin fingers. “If you win, I’ll… I don’t know, get a haircut, a proper one,” he says.

“Alright,” says Dave, wondering what the catch is. “And if you win?”

“If I win,” says Reid, his eyes flashing, “You have to come on a date with me. A proper one. Not in a hotel room.”

Dave pauses and pretends to think about it for a moment, and then he meets Reid’s eyes, and nods. He watches the set of the other man’s jaw, the determined way he deals the cards, and Dave knows, beyond any reasonable doubt – before the game even starts – that he is going to lose.

He does.

***

The next night is bright and clear and there are stars. The first thing that is wrong is the silence. He creeps through the dark, quiet house; feeling – rather than hearing – Reid moving, soft and light, behind him. The rest of the team is entering the building from its other sides, and if Dave were to be strictly logical, he’d pick Aaron to be teamed up with – Aaron, who can clear a building better than any agent he’s ever known – but tonight he’s glad it’s Reid who is with him. They are the first pair to reach the back garden, and Reid signals to him, indicating he will open the kitchen door just slightly so they can slip through it. Dave nods and sees Reid disappear, slim and straight, into the dark, like a wraith.

The second thing that goes wrong is that the man they are hunting is in the garden, lying in wait for them. The bastard must have guessed they were coming. Dave is just squeezing through the door when he hears a rustle in the bushes, behind Reid, and turns his head sharply to see moonlight reflect off the barrel of a gun. Reid is perfectly lit by the stars, picked out against the darkness, and he has not seen the unsub yet, and Dave can’t see the man’s outline well enough to be guaranteed a good shot. He hears the man’s gun cock and Reid hears it too and finally starts to turn around, but he’s too late; much too late.

Dave has only a split second to decide, and in that split second, he dives across the lawn, sending Reid sprawling onto the grass at the same time the unsub fires his gun. There are more gunshots – FBI weapons – and Dave feels Reid struggling out from under him, and he wonders, idly, why he can’t move himself.

Then the pain starts, as though he is being stabbed, again and again – in his shoulder, perhaps, or his chest? – with a fucking red-hot knife.

He is on his back, and he feels cold and wet, and he looks at the stars, which are burning tonight.

***

The first thing he hears is a panicked, high-pitched voice. He recognizes the voice; it sounds like a Care Bear having a death match with a swarm of bees. Dave realises he is probably not dead, because there was no tunnel or bright light of any kind and everything still hurts like fuck. Furthermore, he hopes he is not dead, because in the name of sweet Jesus and all that is holy, he’d rather not face the prospect of an afterlife with Spencer Reid.

“These can’t be comprehensive test results. There’s only one page here,” Reid is saying, “Where are all the other pages? You call this comprehensive? It’s a single sheet of paper!”

And a woman, calmer, says, “Well, we only tested for what he might actually have, if that’s what you’re asking. But if you want to make a case for your boss having dengue fever from a bullet to the shoulder, you go right ahead, Dr. Reid.” The doctor is spoken with a certain amount of sarcasm.

Dave opens his eyes to save them both the trouble.

Reid is holding a rolled up piece of paper and once he sees Dave is awake, he uses it to hit Dave on the good arm. It doesn’t hurt, but Dave says, “Ow,” anyway. Reid ignores his pain.

“You’re an idiot,” the younger man tells him, “A complete, total idiot. You’re the biggest idiot who ever did anything idiotic. Do you have some kind of mental deficiency? No, don’t even tell me. Also, and I don’t know if I’ve told you this lately, you’re an idiot.”

Dave throws himself on the mercy of the nurse. “Aren’t any of my other colleagues here?” he asks, pitifully.

She gives him an unsympathetic look. “Yes, but I’ve overheard their conversations outside, and I think you’re getting off lightly with this one,” she says.

“Idiot,” snarls Reid, punctuating the word with a swipe of rolled up paper.

“Mother of God,” says Dave.

“Why on earth did you do it?” asks Reid. “What would compel you to leap in front of someone you knew had a weapon and was about to discharge it?”

“I figured you’d been shot enough goddamn times,” Dave mutters.

“Once!” says Reid, his voice rising in pitch. “I’ve been shot once!”

“Thought it might be nice to share it around.”

There is an awkward silence, as Reid appears to be doing battle with the part of his brain that wants to debate this point as a literal argument. Dave decides to change the subject.

“What happened to my shirt?” he asks, casually.

“What shirt?” asks Reid, looking up with a frown.

“The one I was wearing,” says Dave. “Bespoke, heavy linen, monogrammed cuffs, expensive, you know?” Actually, Reid wouldn’t know an expensive shirt if it came by and bit him on the ass, but Dave’s going to chalk one up to post-shooting charity.

“Your shirt,” says Reid, in disbelief. “Well, actually I ripped it open looking for an entry wound subsequent to the point where you got shot like an idiot.”

“You ripped my goddamn shirt? That was a two hundred buck shirt!”

Reid’s face is a picture. His mouth opens and closes several times in rapid succession.

“Jesus,” snorts Dave, “I’m only joking. Your penchant for taking everything completely literally is too easy. Jesus, the look on your face.”

“I hate you,” says Reid, in a tone that does not match his words.

“S’mutual,” Dave assures him. He is suddenly very tired.

Reid leans in and makes a fuss of arranging the blankets, with softer, smoother touches than are strictly required. “Idiot,” he says, with feeling.

***

When Dave is released from hospital, the doctor recommends he wait to fly for a couple of days. Aaron tells him Reid has offered to stay and keep him company, but he says it with the air of one who is concerned he might be feeding a squirrel to a grizzly bear. Dave is astonished to realize he’d rather have Reid there than anyone else.

Aaron, because he is the fucking all-seeing, all-knowing Wizard of Oz or something, has managed to gauge the mood well enough that Dave and Reid are booked into the same hotel room, where Dave fidgets around, trying to get comfortable and yelping at Reid every time he looks like he might try to help.

“I don’t know why the hell I couldn’t get shot in my writing arm,” he says, still feeling disgusted after his phone conversation with Erin this afternoon. “Instead I get a full-time desk job and all the paperwork my black little heart desires until I’ve got full fucking range of movement again. It’s ridiculous.”

Reid looks like he wants to explain why Strauss’ edict is not ridiculous, but he makes a sympathetic face instead, which Dave appreciates.

“Hey, do you think I could convince her that I was left-handed all along?” he asks, suddenly brightening at the idea.

“Probably not,” says Reid, “Unless you told her you couldn’t write any more because you’d had some kind of damage done to the motor processes in your brain, and even then, it’s unlikely to stand up to medical scrutiny.”

“You’re telling me to claim brain damage? I’m not telling Erin I’m brain damaged; she’d have a field day,” Dave mutters. “Jesus Christ. All I’m saying is that in return for my pains, I could have at least gotten out of some paperwork.”

Reid smiles in that awkward way that he has. “Sure you don’t want to use it as an excuse to get out of our date?” he asks, in a voice that scratches at the question.

“Yes,” says Dave, rolling his eyes, “I specially arranged for that fuckwit to shoot me and put me on my goddamn ass writing things in little fucking boxes for weeks an’ weeks, all so I didn’t have to take you to dinner.” He catches the look on Reid’s face. “Of course I still want to go on a date with you, you enormously insecure whack job,” he says. Reid visibly relaxes.

“Unless,” Dave says, “You’re trying to get me to say I don’t want to go for dinner because you don’t want to go for dinner? Like reverse psychology?”

Reid raises his eyebrows. “Don’t talk to me about psychology,” he says, in a haughty tone that Dave thinks he might be growing to quite like, actually.

Room service arrives and Dave eats all the pickles and Reid eats all the ice cream and both of them agree that the hospital food was, in fact, better and that this has the taste and consistency to suggest that someone else already ate it first.

Dave is feeling warm and sleepy and full, and certainly at least vaguely content – although he’s pretty sure that can be explained away by the quantity of excellent prescription narcotics he took with dinner – when Reid’s phone rings. It is Hotch, to tell him that Reid is to fly straight to Alabama the next morning, instead of going to Quantico, because there is a case. The boys are 15 and dead and the police do not know who they are because they are from the streets and nobody missed them and nobody wants them. Reid’s jaw tightens and a muscle jumps in his throat and Dave wants to give him a lecture about not taking things to heart and not doing anything stupid. Then he looks down at his sling and realizes his current moral high ground is a fucking swamp 300 feet below sea level.

Hotch can’t help it that sometimes he seems like an angel of death, but tonight that is what he is. A pall descends on the room and Reid looks moodily out the window and Dave is lost in the memory of the girl he helped save once who hung herself two years later in sheets of driving rain.

The younger man makes a low noise, and Dave looks up to see… not tears, but sorrow all the same. “Have you ever felt like you’re watching someone at the exact moment their heart breaks?” Reid asks.

Dave is unnerved to realize he knows what that means, even though it makes no logical fucking sense, and says, “Yeah.”

They are quiet for a moment. Dave swallows hard, and he watches Reid’s long fingers tuck his hair behind his ears.

“Sometimes…” Reid says – and his voice catches, so he clears his throat – “Sometimes I feel like that’s all I ever see when I look at people. All I ever see is the moment they break, and I carry them all with me, all of the hurts and heartbreaks I’ve seen. I can’t forget. And I know that makes me seem… I don’t know, oversensitive and too easily hurt, and God…” He takes a deep breath, “I don’t know if I’m making any sense, but God, I’m ready to see something else. I want to be watching someone when they realize they’re in love, or actually happy, or -” He breaks off, and shakes his head.

Dave – almost before he is aware of himself – catches Reid, with his good arm, at the back of the younger man’s neck.

“Look at me,” he says, and Reid’s puzzled eyes meet his.

“Look at me,” says Dave again, and he’s crap at expressing how he’s feeling, but he hopes Reid gets it. “Look at me.”

Then Dave brings his face to Reid’s and their lips meet and both of their eyes are open and they are watching each other.

***

Reid is late. Dave, who considers tardiness up there with bedwetting and pulling the wings off insects as one of the signs of a truly unstable mind, tries to ignore how fucking insane this situation is and how annoyed he feels and focus on more pleasant things, like the pain in his right arm and how it currently feels cold enough to fucking snow. Reid finally arrives at a lolloping, flailing run, his glasses askew and strands of hair falling out of the ponytail it is – inexplicably – pulled back in.

“I am so sorry,” he breathes, brushing the strands behind his ears. “I dropped one of my contact lenses in the toilet, and then I couldn’t find my glasses and then there was a delay on the red line and the metro was stopped for 25 minutes and I ran all the way here and I fell in a gutter…”

“You should have mentioned that first,” says Dave. “All my anger is dissipating now that I can replay over and over again the mental image of you falling in a gutter. Was it very dramatic? Did people see you? Did they laugh?”

“You’re not very nice,” says Reid, without rancor. “I did attempt to be punctual; I know you like it. Although,” he says, in the tone of voice he uses when he’s about to say something particularly unreasonable, “Being that there is likely an infinite number of dimensions, each with a time slightly different to our own, it seems plausible that in at least one of them the time is, in fact, half past six.”

“You’re claiming you’re on time in another goddamn universe?” asks Dave, “Jesus Christ. Is there another dimension where that shirt does not look like it was projectile-vomited on by the entire 1970s?”

Reid regards him balefully. “I was about to say that you look nice,” he says.

Dave rolls his eyes. “I appreciate that you are wearing jeans,” he says, grudgingly. “You should do that more. Or not wear any pants. I’m easy.”

With an ease that could only have come from too many nights at the bar with Emily Prentiss, Reid says, “That’s what I’ve heard!”

Dave goes to cuff him around the head and finally notices the ponytail properly. “What the hell have you done with your hair?” he asks.

That vulnerable uncertainty flashes across Reid’s face. “I thought you might… You’re always going on about my hair and I thought you might…”

Dave sighs. “This does not apply to matters of casework, in which I am always and unreservedly right, but you need to learn not to listen to me when I’m being an asshole.”

“Then there’s a strong statistical probability that I may never listen to you ever again.”

Dave leans over and tugs the band out of Reid’s hair, letting it – unbrushed and still damp – float into a silver-blond mushroom cloud. He runs a hand through it roughly, then realizes he is very close to Reid and feels suddenly awkward. “You have a very uneven face,” he says, sternly.

“You’re really, really, unbelievably old,” says Reid, and smiles his crooked smile.

Dave had been loathe to let Reid choose the restaurant, and the place looks like a bit of a dive, with its fairy lights and tinny jukebox and paper tablecloths, but they have a wine list that looks like it knows what it’s talking about. Plus, the cuisine is Creole and Dave might enjoy fine dining as much as the next bastard, but he’s a sucker for jambalaya and shrimp bisque, if it’s good.

“Nice pick,” he admits to Reid, as they tear into juicy appetizers and lick their blackened fingers afterwards, because there’s no one else here to see them do it. The colored lights above their table play across Reid’s face, dipping into hollows and across planes as he smiles, and Dave finds himself smiling back.

“Look at this,” says Reid, and he pushes his plate away and pulls a pencil out of his pocket with greasy fingers (Dave winces, until he realizes that any harm done to that abomination of a shirt can only be a good thing). Reid sketches on the paper tablecloth with swift, deft strokes, and when he takes his hand away, a cartoon of an angry-faced Dave is revealed. The speech bubble coming out of angry-Dave’s mouth says, “RAAAAAR.”

“Oh, but you’re preternaturally fucking funny,” says Dave.

Reid smirks, and Dave liberates the pencil from his grasp, their fingers brushing lightly as he does so.

“It’s on,” says Dave, suppressing the prickle he feels run up his spine. He draws Reid with a veritable hedge of hair several times larger than his body. Reid retaliates with a picture of Dave, crossed-eyed and holding a fist full of parking tickets and Dave draws Reid trying to dance. By the time coffee arrives, the table is covered with little Daves and little Reids – Dave with a misshapen arm and Reid with a misshapen leg – and other drawings, which were works of artistic collaboration: Aaron frowning and Garcia surrounded by computers and wearing a brooch the size of her head, and Prentiss kneeing Morgan in the balls. The latter has never actually happened, but it turns out both Dave and Reid have always harbored secret hopes – both that it would and that they would be there to see it.

“Oh don’t,” says Reid, as Dave starts drawing speech bubbles on Morgan and Prentiss, “You can’t make me laugh any more, don’t, I’ll be sick.”

“That’s because you poured your cappuccino in your desert. I knew nothing good could come of that.”

“I can’t believe they don’t have a coffee-flavored desert on the menu any more,” says Reid, crossly. “How hard would it be to make coffee pudding, or coffee cobbler, or coffee… beignets, or something.”

Dave shakes his head, incredulously. “People like you shouldn’t be allowed a digestive system,” he says. “You can’t be trusted with it. Your intestines are like goddamn neglected children.”

A moment too late, he remembers about Reid’s childhood, but the younger man only snorts and clutches his stomach.

“Don’t talk,” he gasps, “Just don’t say anything.”

When the waitress starts pointedly sweeping up around their feet, Reid clears his throat, nervously. “I’m not ready to go home yet,” he says.

“No one said anything about you going home,” says Dave, easily. “And besides, I was promised a whole night. Or threatened with a whole night. I can’t really remember the details, but I recall emotional blackmail was involved.”

Reid snorts. “I recall your crashing lack of talent at cards was involved.”

Dave smiles like a snake. “Do you play pool?”

“I never learned,” says Reid.

“It’s all angles,” Dave says. “Math, really. As long as you can avoid falling over the pool table, you might be alright. And more importantly, once you learn, I’m going to kick your ass, you fluffy-haired, card-cheating emotional blackmailer.”

Reid raises an eyebrow. “Want to bet our next date on it?”

“Nah,” says Dave. “I was kind of hoping I’d already secured the next date with my irresistible charm.”

The younger man smirks. “You talk complete rubbish sometimes, but sure,” he says. “I’m not actually entirely averse to going out with you again.” He leans close to Dave as they walk to the counter. “Plus, I understand you’re very good in bed.”

Dave considers it, and decides he’s pretty sure Reid’s too innocent to have timed that comment for right before Dave sees the bill. But only pretty sure.

Shrugging into his coat at the door, Dave says, “I just want you to know that I make absolutely no guarantees about this working out,” and then he links his right arm into Spencer’s left, and drops a quick kiss against his earlobe, to let him know that he doesn’t especially mean it.

“That’s alright,” says Spencer, mildly, wrapping his scarf around his neck with his free hand. He can’t quite reach the back, and Dave reaches over and does the last bit for him.

“You’re pretty alright,” he murmurs in Reid’s ear, and Reid looks pleased.

As they leave the restaurant, the tinny jukebox starts up behind them, and a rapper begins a familiar battle cry about smacking his hoes up. Dave snorts. “Hey, they’re playin’ our song,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Spencer, leaning his head on Dave’s shoulder, with a laugh. “Yeah, I guess they are.”

***

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer. (Albert Camus)