Chapter One: Emily – Give me a sign

Thanks to my lovely beta, Greeneyedconstellations!

Warning: Tagged for dubious consent, explicit sexual content, horror elements and non-consent. This is kinky as shit, guys. So um... yeah, don't click in this unless you know what you're in for. Which is sex. It's porn, guys; shameless, gratuitous werewolf porn, and there are some super blurry consent lines crossed and recrossed and then just ignored completely. Heed the tags all ye who enter here.

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She's not quite drunk, not yet, but she's barely sober and it's a heady enough mix that she can't help but laugh at what she's observing.

The boys are watching a movie. Well, Reid is watching a movie. Morgan is slumped on the couch next to him with dark shades sneaking down the bridge of his nose and exposing eyes that are tightly shut; if the game wasn't already given away by his slack mouth and the soft, but rumbling snores issuing from within.

Reid doesn't seem to care. He's got the popcorn balanced between his hip and Morgan's thigh, and every few minutes he has to steady it because he's reminded of yet another exciting thing that he needs to tell them all about right the fuck now; bolting upright and almost sending it flying into the back of JJ's head. He saves it every time, barely, and it's a fascinating process to watch.

She's on the floor, her long legs carefully laid out straight, and she's busy trying to look anywhere but the screen as a mawkishly costumed creature lunges out of the backseat of a land rover and tries to take a chunk out of the protagonist.

"They're actually animatronics," Reid is trying to explain, using one purple-socked foot to prod at JJ's arm. He's wearing what Emily would generously describe as his 'comfiest clothes' and they sag around his legs and ass where they've gone thin and worn in the wash. JJ is in the same. Morgan is dressed as usual. Emily is… overdressed. As always. She's also sorely envious of their comfort. "See, look. They're not costumes. Did you know that they considered using CGI for the…"

"Spence," JJ says, jabbing her elbow into his calf. "Seriously. I see enough horror at work. Why can't we watch something happy?"

Reid pouts. Emily laughs, pressing the cool bottle to her lips and tilting her head back to swallow the bitter liquid. JJ turns plaintive blue eyes on her, sitting on the sidelines observing, and she can't help but feel drawn in by that expression. There's really no saying no to JJ when she wants something badly enough to Bambi-eye you over it. "Em, help me out."

"Can the werewolves, Reid," Emily suggests, and Reid looks shattered. It's a Bambi-eye stare-off between him and JJ now, and Emily's sorely glad that the remote is safely on the armrest by Morgan's side and not hers. "I've never been a fan."

He blinks. "How can you not be? Along with vampires, werewolves are the staple of the horror genre. Herodotus, Pausanius, Ovid, Virgil; they're the quintessential 'spooky thing goes bump in the night.' Did you know the wolf was originally associated with prostitution? One theory of the wolf that raised the founding brothers of Rome–Lupa, the mother wolf, may in fact have been a prostitute."

Emily takes a swig of her beer because she is nowhere near drunk enough for this bullshit, good god. "If we get him drunk enough, do you think he'll shut up?" she asks JJ, who leans across Morgan and swipes the remote.

"Right, that's enough werewolves for you tonight," she says, but there's affection in her tone. "We're watching Mulan. I told you we should have to begin with."

Reid's smile slips, but only for a moment. He's the proverbial happy-go-lucky spirit, and Emily watches as he immediately bounces back from his disappointment. "Did you know the cannons used in the avalanche scene are actually…"

The DVD player spits out Reid's movie with a whirr.

"Hey, was watching that," Morgan mumbles loudly.

Reid turns to him, incredulous. "You were asleep. You were snoring. You exhibited rapid eye movement."

"Was just resting my eyes, Pretty Boy. Gimme the remote."

Emily drowns her sniggers in the neck of her beer bottle and wonders why anyone would ever believe that people actually grow up.

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There's a moment on the jet flying home from yet another case, when Emily looks up and sees something she's not entirely sure she understands.

If it were anyone else, she'd know exactly what it was, but it's Hotch.

Morgan's asleep with his earphones on and the dull throbbing of a loud bass beat floating in the still air; JJ's curled up on a seat with her chin on her knee and a blanket over her lap, head bobbing with the shift of turbulence under the wings. Rossi is sprawled, taking up two seats and mouth gaping open wide enough that she can count the fillings on his back teeth if she feels so inclined.

Reid is on the couch, laying like he's a puppet with his strings cut and limbs tangled, the endlessly open way he positions himself when he's completely assured of his own safety. There's a book cracked open on his chest, his eyes are shut, and his blanket is pooled to the side where it's slipped off his knees. She loves him completely and absolutely in that second of seeing him like this.

Hotch steps out the kitchenette with a coffee, scans the jet (Emily closes her eyes and relaxes, confident in the ability of the dim lighting to hide her), and then steps over to him.

She watches as the man's mouth quirks in a smile that's a touch too warm and ever-so-slightly silly and recovers the younger agent with the scratchy blanket, tucking it around his shoulders.

His hand lingers as he does so.

When he walks past her to get to his own seat, she keeps pretending to be asleep and tries not to wonder what it means.

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Emily's never been one to tiptoe around the big things.

She invites Reid to lunch, plops him down on a bench outside his favourite coffee-shop (small, cluttered and slightly musty smelling, and that's just so fucking him), and ignores the way he tightens his coat around his shoulders. It's cold but not that cold yet.

"Are you sleeping with Hotch?" she asks, and he chokes on his coffee.

"No!" he yelps, and his ears turn pink. His gaze slips away. Liar! "Not… no."

"Not yet?" she adds helpfully, and makes sure to smile so he knows she's being helpful. He looks cornered.

"Not… not yet, no." There are those Bambi-eyes again. Aimed right at her and damnit, they still work. She hands him her scarf and he winds it around his neck gratefully as he talks while looking everywhere but at her. "Please don't tell anyone. We're not… we're not anything. He's just…"

Not the kinda man who starts something he doesn't intend upon finishing, she thinks, but doesn't say it, because if she suddenly has the firm realization that it's very probably Hotch doing the courting here, and she imagines that courting Spencer fricken Reid would be like courting a particularly skittish bunny rabbit.

"Your secret is safe with me," she promises him, and they walk back to the BAU together.

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"Alaska again." Garcia's hands are shaking, she's panicking, trying to hide her fear in the clatter of bright bangles and beads on her arms. Her eyes are on Morgan, now Reid, now Morgan again, and finally Hotch. "Ooooh, I don't like Alaska. Why do you have to go to Alaska? Surely there are better qualified teams? You guys don't… well. It's cold there. And foresty. There's no wi-fi."

"We have seven missing hikers and two dead. You're not coming this time, Garcia. We're going to be in the Tongass National Forest for this one, in a base camp the rangers have set up there," Hotch says grimly, and the screen behind Garcia's back flares to life. Emily knows that her face doesn't change, but everyone else's does. "They've requested our urgent assistance with stopping the men responsible for this."

"What the fuck," Morgan says flatly, his eyes widening.

Reid looks away, throat working busily as he struggles to swallow around a nausea that Emily can feel threatening in her own gut. "That's… Hotch, that's not a human's work."

"It is." JJ stares down at the file, her fine hair hiding her expression, but her voice is still clear. "Animals have damaged the bodies before they were found, but the coroners say that the majority of the damage was… human in nature."

Rossi's shoulder brushes hers as he leans forward, his eyes narrowing. He's not pulling back like the rest of them are, but his skin is green. "Majority? These people have been torn apart. You're saying humans did that?"

"Cannibals?" Reid asks, and the sickness is replaced by a sharp curiosity. In an instant, he's switched from shocked onlooker to hardened agent, and all because they've handed him a puzzle. His mind fascinates her, almost as much as it mystifies her. "They look relatively well preserved, considering that they're estimated to have been dead for… two weeks, according to the coroner's report. Their hearts are missing."

Garcia wails softly, the noise barely audible. "I hate Alaska," she mutters.

Rossi's mouth twitches. "Join the club."