(no subject)

[poeticpathetic.livejournal.com]

Title: Reasons Why Not
Pairing: Reid/Nameless OFC
Rating: NC-17 for sex
Summary: You see the job in everything.

This started out being just an excuse to write some half-decent porn and then turned into an actual half-assed plot with some character angst.  Comments loved, appreciated, etc.


He doesn't expect it but it's Morgan who first tips his head disapprovingly.  Of all people, he wants to say, but doesn't.  His tongue gets weighted down like a heavy stone in his mouth, cold, clammy.  He knows that Morgan wants to say, don't do this, but he stays silent, claps Reid on the back and slings his bag over his shoulder.  See you on Monday, kid. 

Places like this inspire a brand of fear in him like no other.  It's different from the fear inspired by leading himself into a dark corridor with his gun stretched out first, different than the eerie silence he remembers from several months ago on a Saturday when he was crouched under a clinic receptionist's desk, his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming and giving them away, blood covering the front of him.  Stay here, he said.  Stay still.  Be quiet.  Moments like this inspired that brief flash, the rush. They reminded him of the sour smell of something burning, the hot rush of dilaudid making his mind fog and cloud.  Places like this were of a different fear.

It's Friday night and the DC bar is packed, wall to wall.  It's not the typical bar filled with government suits unwinding from paperwork and business, but it seems packed with grad students -- people his age, edging up on thirty but still flushed with the promising parts of youth.  He's ill-dressed for the occasion, his collared shirt a bright blue, tucked into light colored slacks with a belt keeping them from hanging off his waist.  A tie.  He looks rumpled.  It's eleven-thirty at night and he realizes that maybe this is why Hotch tells him, every Friday, to go home at five.  Maybe Hotch imagines that Reid has a chance at the social life he doesn't have.  The idea in itself is laughable. 

He sees her across the way, easily recognizable.  She's wearing the same necklace she had on when Reid slid into the office and found her hiding under the desk, her hand over the slope of her upper left arm, gripping tight.  The blood seemed unreal, and he had seen plenty.  He bent to secure something as a tourniquet -- her cardigan had worked.  This sucks, she had said almost dizzily, drowsily.  We get crazies all the time but none of them actually ever shoot me--

He hangs back at the bar like a silent observer before he realizes that solitude is a red flag here.  He has to either approach her, talk to her, or leave, embarrassed.  She's got a flock of friends, some skinny, short guy with no hair and a pair of suspenders, a shirt describing some metal band.  They stand close, but aren't romantically together, evidenced by the simple moves of body language.  Basic profiling.  He attempts to turn the mechanism off, but somehow it's always running.

I'm thirsty.  He remembers her looking sallow and heavy-lidded.  He had her blood on his hands, tugging the knot.  I'm thirsty.  There's water on my desk.  Reid's voice was a low hiss, quiet to keep them secretive, safe.  Your electrolytes are plummeting with the blood loss.  You can't drink any water right now or you'll develop water intoxication.  Are you you a patient?

Am I what? 

Are you an outpatient?  If you are we need to get you out of here right now.

I work here.  I'm not a patient.  Reid sees her nametag, the plastic slip of it attached to the cardigan he's got wrapped around her upper arm.  She's a receptionist, billing and coding, he imagines.  Young.  His age.  Her name, last and then first initial.  The ID picture is of her smiling and looking flushed, healthy.   He grunts.  I didn't mean to imply.

I'm bleeding, this isn't the right time to get into a murder morality discussion, she slurs.  He nods at her.  Right.  Right.  On the other side of the desk, the heavy door swings open and  he feels her clench up.  His hand slides over her mouth and he looks her sternly in the eyes.  A finger lifts to his lips.  Quiet. Quiet.

In the bar, none of this matters.  Resilient, he imagines.  She's smiling, has a beer in her hand. 

The good doctor.  She relieves the pressure of having to dig in first, of having to think of something casual to say so that it isn't obvious that he's been standing there for close to fifteen minutes, running over the possible things to open with.  Do you remember me?  I held my hands over your shoulder and applied pressure while the medics were coming upstairs.   But he doesn't have to speak.  She spots him first, the sharp slice of eye contact hitting him and digging in.  He lifts his hand, a pitiful wave.  The good doctor.

You look like you're having fun.  He motions to her shoulder, covered by the drape of a cardigan sweater that's several sizes too big for her.  Her arm slides up and she shimmies her shoulders, both of them, in an almost uncomfortable move.

Good as new, she assures him.  Her friend, the one with no hair and the metal band t-shirt slides up.  Reid recognizes his look, the look he has never perfected, has never attempted to.  He's being sized up for indiscernible reasons.  When Reid sizes people up, assesses them, profiles them, he does it quietly, without any expression that they can see. 

She introduces them.  She calls him doctor, again.  This is Dr. Reid.  Spencer, he interrupts to tell her.  I'm not due back at the office until Monday.  It feels like a joke, those words in his mouth, and he mulls them over.  No one laughs, but she grins.  There's relief in that alone.

The friend chimes in.  Have a drink, we're celebrating.

Celebrating what? 

My new lease on life, she announces.  The lights around them are dim and flickering.  The dance floor is packed and moving.  Reid wonders if this is what Fridays feel like most of the time, to most other people. 

He had been compelled to visit her in the hospital, if only to explain to her that shortly after they caught the shooter, six blocks away from the clinic, on foot, things had ended in an ugly and unexpected suicide by cop.  She was up and mobile, sitting on the edge of her hospital bed and he left her his card.  The invite to the bar came later, much later, long after he had practically forgotten -- no, not forgotten, just categorized and filed away -- the entire ordeal.  He had agreed because he had been caught off guard, or so he tells Morgan on his way out, and now he's here and he somehow has managed to get to the point where he's drinking tonic water with lime.  He declines alcohol and no one asks why.  He still has a leather bag strapped over his chest.  They talk at the bar, her hip wedged against the edge of it, her hand wrapped around the glass she holds.  Her nails are painted, but short.  Practical.  There's just the faintest indication, even in this light, of a slope in the side of the bridge of her nose, an indication that she spends a decent amount of time wearing glasses.  He guesses eye strain.  Her eyes are brown.  Nothing spectacular.  Just brown.  If he were asked to describe her personality after forty-five minutes of casual interaction, he imagines he'd call her plugged-in.  She knows all the words to every song that plays over the speaker system.  She greets people she's never met before as easily as she greets the close friends that come up to say hello and buy her a drink.  She starts declining after the third.  Her buzz is evident in the flush of her cheeks.  They play an old Motown song he recognizes from his mother's extensive record collection (something he has since inherited and never touched outside of organization) and her friend grabs her arm.  Spencer looks for a wince, the twitch of a grimace and he catches one, just barely, at the corner of her mouth.  The shoulder still aches, perhaps.  Scars are still fresh reminders, even when the pain is gone, something his knee can attest to.  She excuses herself, touches his arm when her friend pulls her to the dance floor.  Out there, she blends in.  It's as if nothing is wrong, or has ever been.  There's something disconcerting about it.

Her hands slide up in the air.  She twists and sings along.  It's joyful.  For a few songs, she stays out there with her friends.  From the bar, Reid stands back and watches her dance.

--------------

It's another month before he hears from her again.   The scattered email with perfect capitalization and punctuation in his inbox surprises him.

Doc,

There's a Keaton/Chaplin marathon this week at the Odessa Theater.  Come with me, Friday night.  You should get out of the house more.

-A.

He doesn't know if he likes the tone of it, all that assumption and positing without knowing him.  He could get out of the house plenty for all she knows, and yet he assumes that there were some tells that night at the bar when she danced and he didn't, when he answered his texts from Prentiss with an urgency, when he acted as decoration in the background, a weighty set piece to her staged night of celebration.  Over his shoulder, Morgan looks at the email and Reid scrambles to move the mouse fast enough to click out of it, back to something more formal, something with numbers and, if he's lucky, a graph or a map.  Morgan's palm, massive, sweeps over the top of his head in a muss.

My man, he teases. 

It's not what you think.

Yes it is.  You remember what I said.

-------------

He wants to resist, but doesn't.  They meet in the lobby of the Odessa and out of courtesy and normal social codes, he buys her ticket.  She declines when he offers to pay for snacks and he sees why.  They sit in the center of the center row, her surrounded by her bounty of popcorn and candy, a soda to sip from, shot through with a straw.

On the screen, Chaplin blunders through factory work.  She laughs.  They're the youngest people here, he thinks, a fact not uncommon for him.  After awhile, he laughs too.

After the movie, he laughs harder.  She walks down the street, doing her best imitation of a Chaplin shuffle.  He tells her she looks more like a penguin waddling, and the shriek of laughter she lets out pierces him, sharp, like a cold pin.  He's smiling.  He feels it pulling his cheeks wide.  He knows what he looks like, a mouth full of teeth, uncomfortable, shy but enthusiastic.  They have coffee in the cold and for once, he's the one absorbing new knowledge.  She tells him about Charlie Chaplin's young teenaged brides, how one of them left JD Salinger for Chaplin and how Salinger wrote a scathing letter to her with foul assumptions about their wedding night.  She talks about film most of all.  Names he's never heard of, but struggles to contextualize. 

Take me to your place, she says standing on the sidewalk with him, her hands shoved in the pockets of her oversized coat.  She's swimming in it, in the green scarf around her neck.  He feels a strange, foreign pang, rare but not unfamiliar.  He recognizes it and yet it's unexpected all the same. 

Oh, I don't know--" It sounds like rejection, but the tilt of his voice bouncing back to him sounds more like apprehension, his own fears instead of a reluctance to crack that door open for her.  He barely knows her.  He knows her name, her occupation, her blood type from the EMT who rattled it off into a radio.  He knows more than he should.

"Please."  It's not a question from her, but a gentle demand.  They walk together, their arms skidding and touching, but their hands never pulling out of their pockets.

She doesn't balk at the disarray his apartment is in, but seems somewhat charmed by its size.  She examines the bookshelf, or what of it she can absorb all in one sweep.  The DVD collection is small, but he feels confident in what titles she'll glance over.  Classics.  A compilation of short, silent films not unlike the one they watched that evening.  She passes by him and goes straight for the record collection, which seems to hold her attention. 

You have really good taste in music.  Her voice sounds like she's made some sort of discovery. 

They aren't mine.  I inherited them.  I don't think I've ever listened to any of them.  This is a lie.  He's heard the Bob Dylan records at least a hundred times a piece.  If he ever let the needle touch down on one of them, he doesn't know what he'd do. 

She's busy mooning over a copy of Blue when he offers her a drink.  The nicety escaped him until then.  When she sits, she moves a go bag over, something he still has to unpack.  In the kitchen, he's alone, pulling the cork from the neck of a bottle.  He breathes and stalls.  He needs this time to plan, to imagine all the possible scenarios and how he'll handle them, and yet he comes up blank every time.  He suddenly feels constricted by his tie, the vest he wears over it.  He shed his jacket first thing.

Reid hands the glass off to her and she leans back.  Even in her jeans, she's all leg, the peek of her feet showing off before he spies her heels.  She's tall, even without them.  Not as tall as him, but tall.

You should listen to this someday, she says insistently, sliding the record onto the table and swallowing her wine with an enthusiastic tip of the glass.  He watches her cross her legs and he knows where this is all going.  It shoots a rush through him, anxiety and excitement all at once, adrenaline.  He feels flooded, conflicted.  These are the moments when he feels young.  He has never felt young.  He has been treated like he was young, he has been aware of his youth, his age, the way he looks, and yet he has never felt young.  He has always been the one in the room with the most knowledge, with the ability to suss out any particular situation. 

He has always been the one in the room with the gun.

She kisses him and nothing shirks away.  There's a surge instead, a forward push.  They don't grapple, but he feels her hands sliding up against his sides, where his cardigan parts away.  He has a dress shirt tucked in, pale, a bright tie.  She kisses like Lila did, hungry and hot and maybe a little scared.  He wants to tell her, while his tongue is twisting against hers, that he's not that knight she wants, that he assumes all women want.  Valiant and wild and a little animal.  He's different.  He's a blinker, as he told Garcia that one time, someone who can put himself in the line of danger, but who also is terrified of dying, who doesn't want to die, who wants to live and live and live and he's closer to thirty now and there aren't any signs of the disease that pulled his mother so deeply past the ledge and then her hands slide lower and he startles himself when she touches over his slacks and he moans into her mouth.

It's not a cinematic grapple for the bedroom like he's seen in bad movies, spines knocking the walls, setting pictures askew.  He doesn't have any pictures, barely any art.  There are books, though, everywhere, books all over in stacks and piles, some organized and categorized, some not.  It's a slow walk, a silent realization and her foot catches a book stack and knocks some over -- shit, she says -- and he tells her to ignore it, keep going, he'll get it later.  I need to use the bathroom, she says, and he blinks.  Okay.  And like that, she's gone behind the door and he's left in his bedroom, on the low, flat, comfortable bed, perched on the edge, still wearing all his clothes and his shoes.

He's breathing heavy.  Not panting.  Just deep.  It's a ritual he uses when he needs to calm himself before sleep, when he knows that he has to be up in four hours and he's worried about nightmares.  When she emerges, she's in her underwear and he stops breathing for a minute.  She isn't small.  She's tall, there's weight to her, length in her legs, she's formidable, not the twigs he's used to seeing Morgan with.  Her hips are a swell and she tilts toward him.  She's curvier than Hayley, built maybe closer to Emily's weight and shape -- he only has these women to compare to.  He realizes these are rare moments.  Rare, rare moments.  There's a battle somewhere, between the idea of having this, enjoying it, and knowing that it's maybe for the wrong reasons, or doing the honorable thing and explaining that she's here because he represents something to her, that these feelings she has aren't authentic, aren't bred from the right place. 

Do you have a condom?  She asks, posed there, and there may be a battle but he has no choice.  He doesn't, but she does, somewhere, in her purse, and he watches her bend to retrieve it, to tuck it in the waist of her underwear -- a nice touch -- and then she's on top of him.  Her hot mouth, her hands.  Fingers twitch at his tie.  He's undone by her, stitch, by knot, but button, by zip.  It doesn't take long for him to figure out the mechanics, to slide the straps off her shoulders, to roll on top of her and watch as she arches, sharp, catlike, lifting her hips so his fingers can curve over the elastic of her underwear and slide them down, over her thighs, past her knees, off her ankles and feet.  Her toenails are painted, he notices, a deep plum color, what he can tell, a bruise, the dark streak of red he remembers on his hands when she was bleeding out beneath him, wan and thirsty.

It's a tangle and then he's got his hand between her thighs, he feels the wet, the heat, the invitation of her spread out and she's suddenly harsher, wants more.  He slides fingers, two, long, inside of her and she opens up to him, almost grateful, her mouth spreads wide, white and toothy and she laughs and he thinks -- why are you laughing, why are you laughing at me? -- but there's a shift and he realizes she's not laughing at him, she's just laughing, because that's what you do in this situation, when it's new and curious and maybe just a touch uncomfortable.  He laughs against her skin, her shoulder, her neck, his tongue sliding into the notch where her collarbones met just below her neck, and he thumbs over her.  She twists and arches and reaches for him.

They're skin and heat and he hears her tear the foil before he feels her hands around him, pulling and twisting and he doesn't know why, but he's clawing at her from this prone position, covering her.  She's not as tall as him, but tall.  Her hips are curved and sharp all at once and he doesn't know how this is possible.  This is not the first time he's done this and she knows this, has probably never even questioned it.  The condom slides on, tight, constricts him, steals his breath.

They kiss and it's permission, a green light.  He slides against her, guides, feels the slip, the press, and her hips move, her mouth, her voice says yes.  He goes easy on his knee, because there's still an ache in it when twisted in the right succession of ways, but he moves, the familiar way, the way he likes, a steady pace.  His hands are in a dozen places, his hands, hands that could twitch magic tricks from their tips, could discover coins and cards and things that weren't there to begin with.  One hand of his slides between them, touches her while his hips press forward and it takes time and patience, recitations in his head of numbers and equations, maybe just once, a silent, hopeful thought, a please, a c'mon, and she opens up to him again.  He feels her tighten and shake, her voice pours out of her like water, running and rushing and she grips his shoulder, says easy, easy, and he lets up.

In a slow move, he's suddenly on his back and she's on top.  He has a view of her, the pinch of her waist and sudden flare of her hips, where he steadies his hands while she plants hers against his sides.  She moves, easy and smooth, over him, and he watches her, watches where normally he'd be tempted to press his head back and close his eyes.  His breath is ragged, hissing, his fingers grip and he can't warn her but he doesn't have to.  It takes considerably less time than it took her, and when he comes, it's quieter, grateful, like a sudden loss of tension, a slide of something off of him.

She spends the night, sleeps quietly next to him and in the morning, at an hour he's sure is earlier than she'd like, they share coffee and leave together, him for work, her for home and another few hours of sleep.

---------------

They get sent out of town unexpectedly, as it always happens.  He sends her a quick text.  Texas for a week, maybe more.  I'll call.  He does.

Have you seen cowboys?

No cowboys.  Some cowboys.  Military.  Lots of pregnant women.

Ah, the south.

This case --

Don't.  Don't tell me about the case.

I'm sorry.

I like to think you're on vacation.  Getting some sun.  Eating ribs.

We had Chinese.  All of us, at one table.  This happens a lot.

She asks him questions.  What color is your tie?  What's on the television?  What book did you bring with you?  Maroon.  The local news.  Some Kant.

See me when you come back.  Her voice is thinner, preparing for something.  Maybe disappointment, maybe fulfillment.  This is a good thing.  For you.  For me.  She sounds so sure and he doesn't know.

This is what it's like, he explains almost quietly, like when he's talking to his mother, when she's upset and he wants nothing but her calm oblivion, her happiness, her next move on the chess table in front of them.  There's always something.  It doesn't stop and it won't.  Not ever.  I'll always be coming and going.  Things have happened--

Don't tell me.  I'll get nervous.  I can't pretend it's a vacation if you tell me.

There's a pause and he breathes into the phone.  He waits, because he knows she'll talk first.

Like what happened to me, but worse, she confirms.

Sometimes.  He's flipping through the case file on his lap, the photos, the girls, like horrible before and afters.  They all look the same.  He's preferential, this one, smart and not sloppy yet, but he will be, they always are, they always forget something.  He looks at the pictures again.  They look like something.  Brown hair, long, the dark eyes, conventionally and innocently good-looking.  All college educated.  All on promising career tracks.  He can't take his eyes off of them.  They all look the same.  All of them.  They look like her.

Spencer?

I have to go, I -- there's work, I need to do it before we meet later, I have to go.

Are you--

I really have to go.

Spencer sits on the edge of his hotel bed and breathes.  It's deep, measured, even, none given precedence.  His lungs expand, contract, and his skin crawls, itching and he misses something obvious, the pinprick and the flood, the heat, the forgetting.  His fingers clench, his jaw, he breathes.  This is how it is and this is how it always will be.  The moving, the travel, the blood washed off at the end of the day, the filing away and categorizing but never, never forgetting, the case files, the photos, the women.  It's too often women.  Young.  Every one of them potential, every kiss he's ever shared, every silent moment with them can someday be stolen by this.  The women, once shot, once bleeding, once asking him for glasses of water.  They are women who will always look like victims, no matter how much he wants them.  The job pushes in, seizes him, he can't escape.

He calls her at four in the morning, three where he is and her voice is groggy, but he's wide awake.

Spencer?

See me when I get back.

There's silence.  He hears the rustling of blankets.  She's rolling over in bed.  Okay, she says.  Okay.

The job pushes in, seizes him.  She breathes into the phone and he listens, quiet, calmed by it.