Because I think the person responsible for ruining Reid´s hair should be stoned to death with cotton balls, just so they have time to think about what they've done.
And because if CBS insists on erasing every female character from the show they should at least have the guys be gay.
And because I´m addicted to slash, of course.
Obviously this completely ignores recent canon. As do I, by the way. It´s not easy but I make it work.
BoyLove at the BAU or Why Reid really cut his hair
"Alright, one of you explain this to me!"
Morgan, who was sitting at the edge of Reid´s desk, chatting with the young doctor turned around to see Hotch walking towards them with a stern look and a sheet of paper in his hand.
The rest of the team, all of them scattered over the bullpen, looked up as well. Judging by Hotch´s expression, their boss had a bone to pick with either Morgan or Reid –and he must be pretty upset if he didn't even take the time to call them into his office.
"Explain what, Hotch?", Morgan asked, sincerely confused.
He put down his cup of coffee next to Reid's identical looking one. For some reason, Hotch´s frown deepened when he saw their matching beverages and he stood in front of them, hand on his hip accusingly.
"This.", he simply said, holding the sheet of paper in front of them so they could see it was a print out.
Morgan´s jaw fell slack as he saw the picture on it while Reid let out something like a squeak, jumping out of his chair and almost slamming into Morgan as he lunged for the paper, ripping it from Hotch´s hand.
"What is that?", he gasped, staring at it with wide eyes. The rest of the team watched in confusion as he first turned pale then bright pink. Morgan looked about the same with a tinge of green mixed in.
"What's on it, Reid?", JJ walked over to get a look at the paper too, Rossi at her heels.
Before they could get a look at it though, Morgan suddenly snagged it away from Reid and out of everybody's reach.
Unfortunately, he didn't realize that Emily was standing right behind him until she ripped it out of his grasp.
"Prentiss, don't-", Reid cried but it was already too late. Emily was staring at the picture, a wide grin slowly spreading over her features.
"My, my…I always thought both your reasons for not having girlfriends were screwed up, but this I didn't expect."
In the meantime, Rossi and JJ had closed in, both of them staring over Emily's shoulder at a picture that clearly showed Reid and Morgan lip locking.
"Oh my god, Spence, why didn't you tell me?", JJ squeaked, her grin matching Emily's. Both women were completely ignoring their male colleagues´ flabbergasted expressions and the fact that Hotch still looked extremely cross.
This time it was Reid´s turn to snatch the photo away from the giggling women: "Because it never happened…I…it must be photo shopped…"
Incredulous voices grew loud as Morgan fell in and both Emily and JJ protested immediately.
"Reid, Morgan.", Hotch interjected at last and they all fell silent. Hotch sighed heavily, looking uncomfortable: "I'm not gonna try and dictate your private lives but if you two are…involved, it needs to be made official to the-"
"No! God, no!", Morgan fell in before Hotch could finish the sentence: "That didn't happen! Reid is right, that must be a fake or something…"
Hotch raised a single eyebrow: "Are you sure?"
The girls giggled again, finally costing Morgan the last of his composure. He couldn't let this be, it would completely ruin his reputation as a ladies' man. Literally!
"Why are you having such a hard time believing this?", he asked around the room challengingly with a little bit of panic mixed in: "Have I not had more girlfriends than all of you guys combined? Come on, you guys! How could you even consider me having something with Reid? It's ridiculous!"
Reid nodded furiously at that, ears still bright red.
JJ just shrugged, only mildly bothered: "You do make a nice pair now that I think of it…"
"DON´T think of it!", Morgan interrupted hastily: "Don't even start!"
"Hotch, you´ve got to believe us.", Reid spoke up pleadingly when no one paid much attention to Morgan's flailing: " We can figure out what happened. Where did you find the picture?"
"I did a routine search for your names on the internet and it came up."
"Can you show me where?", Reid asked while Morgan blanched further upon realizing the picture was on the world wide web. His reputation would be ruined.
Reluctantly it seemed, Hotch gave in and let Reid try to save himself and Morgan. He typed into Reid's search engine what he had on his earlier and indeed, the picture popped up almost immediately.
Reid clicked on the link to find it had been posted on a public site that was apparently dedicated to something called Criminal Minds. There were more pictures and seemingly endless pages full of stories.
"What is that?", Hotch asked in astonishment, as he peeked over Reid's shoulder, reading all of their names over and over on the page.
Reid read over the whole page quickly: "It looks like reports on our cases…wait no, this also contains information about our personal lives….there are thousands…here´s something about me struggling with anthrax…here, dilaudid….Gideon leaving…God, how do they know all that, that's restricted information!"
"Maybe whoever wrote these is the person who took the picture? We could sue them.", while Hotch shared Reid´s concern, Morgan was completely focused on repairing his image.
"No one took the picture!", he snapped again.
"Well, then prove it."; Emily grinned: "Because so far everything on that site looks pretty accurate…"
"Oh…", Reid interrupted the banter, his expression growing serious as he stared at the screen.
"What?"
"This one is about Hotch becoming a serial killer after Foyet´s death…and this one is about us becoming UnSubs…"
"What?", now Hotch was the only to lose his stoic calm, furiously yelling at the screen: "Who do these petty little liars think they are denunciating my like this?"
"What happened to accurate?", Morgan asked him with a smug look, only to be awarded with a death glare.
"What else is there?", JJ asked Reid in order to dissolve some of the tension.
"Let's see, this story is about me getting kidnapped, me getting tortured, me getting abused…oh my, maybe I'll just change the search category."
"Yeah, try to find one that's about me and a pretty lady, will you?", Morgan demanded: "Just so we can all be clear on that whole photo business."
Reid complied, typing away quickly: "Alright, romance, let's see."
"I didn't say romance, Reid."
"Well, there´s no casual sex category, Morgan.", Reid said dryly, quick to get on with his research: "Hey, but I can type in pretty as a search option, that should make it easier….Oh, here´s one about you…"
They all crowded around when Reid suddenly stopped talking and just stared at the screen, his eyes moving rapidly as he scanned page after page. He turned pale.
"Oh my…", he murmured tonelessly.
"What?"
"It…it´s smut, Morgan."
Instead of mirroring Reid´s expression, Morgan looked downright smug: "See, I told you guys…"
"It's about you and me."
Morgan halted in midsentence, his jaw falling slack: "Please say you're kidding?"
Reid shook his head, looking miserable: "You have no idea how much I wish I could erase the last two thousand words I just burned into my eidetic memory."
Incredulous, Morgan bent over the chair to see for himself what had Reid so flustered -and didn't believe what he was reading.
"You drive me crazy, pretty boy.", Morgan growled as he threw his slender lover down on the bed and took him passionately. Reid moaned when Morgan pulled him closer, his tongue making its way…
"Well, I guess we´ve established that there is a third party involved.", Prentiss concluded when neither Reid nor Morgan were able to shake their stupor: "Maybe we should analyze some of these just to get a better picture of the…"
"NO!", Reid finally snapped out of his shock, blocking the screen so she couldn't read anymore. He had read far more in the past five minutes that he ever would have wanted to and they all pretty much followed the same principle. No one else would read these if he had any say in it.
It turned out he didn't. Fifteen minutes alter the whole team was sitting around the office, reading into the stories on the page. For research, of course.
Morgan cursed from time to time, slowly despairing when he hadn't found a single story that included any sort of interaction with a woman on his part –except Penny, which was also sort of disturbing considering she was like a little sister to him. He´d found some that had Rossi or Hotch in them though and that almost made him want to go back to reading about him and Reid.
"Why the hell am I always the girl?", Reid just broke the silence, his frustrated outcry leaving no doubt as to just what he was focusing on.
Everybody just looked at him, not saying a word. One could have heard a pin drop.
"Well, that´s the only thing that isn't a mystery to me.", Morgan finally scoffed, amused that Reid even had to ask. If he had to be gay, the least was that he got to be on top.
"Are you trying to say something to me right now, Morgan?", Reid hissed, looking positively vicious as he stared at the back of his colleagues head.
JJ intervened once again, barely suppressing a snicker: "Guys, guys, calm down…no one is the girl."
"But hypothetically…"
"You know, guys.", Emily interrupted before Reid could get technical and embarrass them all: "I think I've actually heard of this. It's called slash fiction: Writers pair up two men in their stories and let them get involved. It was done a lot for Star Trek back in the day I think…"
"But why?", Rossi asked, confusion clear on his face.
"Well.", Reid mused, not even his current distress keeping him from slipping into dictionary mode: "There aren't that many women in Star Trek, much less interesting characters…so maybe…"
He was interrupted by Morgan who squeezed the bridge of his nose furiously: "Reid, I swear, I'm this close to smacking you already, so…"
"Fine. Let's say there are few women in those shows.", Emily conceded before they could fight again: "But there are women here at the BAU. Good-looking women!"
She gestured between Garcia, JJ and her: "Are there no stories with us in them?"
"Uh, here´s one about you, Emily.", Reid pointed out: "You're falling into a depression because JJ left to have her baby. And here you're staying behind to work on a case with JJ…and here…argh, damnit! Why don't they label these correctly?"
He turned away from the screen abruptly, all but slapping his hands in front of his eyes. Morgan peeked over his shoulder, suddenly grinning: "Nice going there, Emily, I knew there was a whole other side to you. And look, here´s a threesome with Elle…"
Emily was at the desk before he could finish the sentence, quickly hitting the off button on the computer: "That's it, turn it off! Hotch we need to do something! One curious phase in college does not mean I want every guy out there to stop trying to hit on me forever! I'm not getting younger!"
Hotch stared at her for a whole three second before making sure his stoic face was firmly in place and nodding: "Fine, I´ll have Garcia look into it, see what she can do. All of you, go back to work."
They all nodded, still bickering as he moved towards the tech´s office.
It was only in the last second that Morgan suddenly jumped, yelling after Hotch: "Wait, did he take that picture with him? Oh, no! She´s never gonna let that go!"
In a sudden panic, he practically jumped over a desk, trying to catch up to his boss and spare himself further humiliation in form of Garcia posting the photo on her website but it was already too late - Hotch was gone.
"Don't sweat it, sugar."; Emily quipped, grinning at both Morgan's and Reid's red faces as she went back to her desk: "If it was on the internet I´m sure she´s long seen it."
"Very funny, Prentiss.", Morgan grumbled acidly: "I wanna see you laughing when they find pics of you and Blondie making out."
"Not that that would be too hard.", JJ muttered almost as if to herself, blushing when everybody´s head snapped up: "What? It´s like Emily said. One slip up at a Christmas party doesn't mean a girl is gay - it just means she has a low alcohol tolerance."
At that, Prentiss and Morgan just stared while Rossi burst out laughing.
Reid scrunched up his face a few seconds later in understanding: "Ugh, JJ! Emily! That´s another picture I don't want in my head!"
"That's cause you´re gay, Reid."
Not to be taken seriously.
I personally wouldn't care if the girls got it on as long as it keeps them away from the guys.
I maybe write a second part to this, I guess I´ll have to in order to explain the title. Depends on the reception.
There actually is a picture like that on the net somewhere, and I'm pretty sure it is photo shopped. I would just like to say that it is not mine (Even though it's great, kudos to whoever made it!) and I didn´t mean to offend anyone –which is why I mostly took my own stories as examples. Please don't sue, this was just for entertainment and I'm utterly poor.