A DUEL OF WITS
My first foray into Criminal Minds fan fiction, I hope you enjoy this one-shot! Let me know what you think, if you believe I fell short of canon, et cetera. So long as it's constructive, criticism is always welcome!
This is a one-shot, but if people are interested/I get a better idea of what's to follow the events of this story, I might write up a sequel or two.
Enjoy!
They sat in the bullpen together, two parts of a whole left after yet another taxing case. Morgan kept reaching for a cup of old, half-spent coffee, as if to take a pull, but nearly half an hour and seven false starts later, the Dixie cup was still untouched.
Spencer sighed as, like clockwork, the process started anew. He checked his wrist watch. Eight times in approximately twenty-four minutes: one aborted premeditated sip per one hundred eighty seconds. He evened out his stack of nearly completed paperwork on his desk with two crisp, rhythmic taps, eyeing Derek over the brim of page number seventeen of the usual procedural drivel.
"Morgan, are-" Are you alright? Just one of the many manifestations of Questions to Never Ask an SSA. He inwardly shook his head at his unusually harebrained antics, wondering why, lately, every moment spent with Morgan made Spencer feel like an incredible fool.
You know why, a niggling voice in the back of his head argued, logical and sure in contrast to the wholly untamed, unbidden feelings running rampant through his system at the mere sight of one Derek Morgan.
"You should go home," he suggested instead.
The smile that slid onto Derek's face was alien but familiar, if only because Reid had seen that lecherous smirk directed at, say, countless sleazy women within the cavernous walls of bass-charged clubs. He was still unaccustomed to that grin, that blatant invitation being directed at him. "Only if you promise to come with me, Pretty Boy," he drawled.
"You know I can't," Reid replied, almost automatically. He had the sudden feeling that lately, everything about them had begun to feel like mere clockwork.
He wasn't the only one. Morgan scowled, a recipe with a heavy-handed pinch of angst as he shot back, with stunning accuracy that could only be expected of an all-knowing god, if not a very proficient profiler, the exact words Spencer could never hold a poker face up against. "Bull. Shit." He stood up from his desk but instead of turning towards one of the exit wings, Derek propelled himself forward like an invader-not necessarily unwanted, just unexpected-into the span of Reid's territory. "Spencer, how many times do we have to go over this? I want you, you want me: isn't that all you need to know, boy genius?"
"There's never enough for me to know," Reid delivered smoothly, impish grin a placeholder for his slippery feet.
These uncharted waters between them, first of seemingly unrequited desire and then of a mutual lust, a shared affection, a desire, were gradually losing their terror-inducing extrinsic qualities.
…Spencer wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.
Morgan looked like he wished he could forego the respect and trust they'd built between them-an anchor, a hindrance-to laud Reid with a be-all, end-all kiss of harlequin paperback kisses as he growled, with a barely restrained simmering irritation, "Boy, don't play with fire. I'm not fooling around here."
"Neither have I," Reid replied. "Not even when I very clearly said no." A pained look that crossed Morgan's features almost made Reid take back what he said… almost. "Just because we seem to share a… this general feeling, doesn't mean we should act upon it."
Morgan rolled his eyes. "Reid, how many times do I have to make it clear? Hotch won't care, Rossi won't care, and if Jayge or Garcia care, they're hypocrites." Derek chanced a hand on Spencer's desk. "We could do this," he finished, fierce and persuasive from the timbre of his voice to the look in his eyes.
The classical ladies' man, Reid thought with a distancing dose of sardonicism. He frantically willed his blood to evenly distribute, but no amount of commanding could dictate the unbidden blush on his face or the growing problem hidden beneath his desk. "But we won't."
Morgan huffed. "Pretty Bo-"
"It would be unprofessional."
"I'll believe that when you quit making eyes at me every chance you get."
"Wha-I don't-"
Derek leveled an anvil of a silencing glare upon Spencer. "C'mon, man. Actions speak louder than words."
"Let sleeping dogs lie." At Derek's bewildered look, he shrugged with a sheepish grin. "I couldn't resist. You know, an eye for an eye, a proverb for a proverb…"
Derek chuckled, a quiet secret between the two of them. "Well how about this one…" Derek murmured, leaning further into Spencer's space with a dangerous enticement and a heady cologne. "It takes two to…" He fluttered his fingers against Reid's, "Tango."
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Reid smiled, a flimsy tableau of calm that Derek just raised an eyebrow at in dubious contempt.
"You're shitting me, right? Spence, you don't honestly believe-"
"D-Morgan, I've told you more than once," Spencer said calmly, voice devoid of much of anything save a detachment reserved for textbook facts and sociopaths. "We can't risk it. It's too dangerous-we'd be setting ourselves up for disaster."
Derek leaned back, taking his warm hand and damnable charm with him as he stared at Spencer for a long time. He didn't say a word because the silence said it all.
In the end, he scoffed and got up, knocking his probably disgustingly cool coffee back into his mouth before dumping the cup into the trash. He collected his things with a measured calm, the beast of his anger barely restrained.
Just before he turned the corner to one of the three conveniently located exits, Morgan shook his head. His eyes met Spencer's across the room. "And they say ignorance is bliss." Spencer looked down at his papers as Derek went, taking with him a restless, contagious energy and any shreds of hope Spencer had harbored up until now.
An empty bullpen, an empty win.
He caught a glimpse of black: Derek's leather bombshell jacket, left where he'd slung it when they'd first arrived back in Quantico at a quarter to one. Reid was moving before he was even consciously aware of it, tiptoeing over to where it lay over the glass partition of the interns' cubicles as if Morgan would come back for it at any given moment.
He snatched it up and brought it back to his desk, letting it catch his warmth and embrace him in bewitching smells of man, life and parfum d'homme in hopes that Derek would come back in for a forgotten jacket, an awkward genius' apology, a cliché kiss. Reid wished it hadn't taken him this long to realize what a part of him had always known, that he hadn't killed the rapidly diminishing chance to make things right between him and Derek-more than a coworker, more than a friend, one of the few reliable constants present in the complicated, ever-evolving equations of work and life.
Spencer left headquarters that night alone, cloaked in a jacket and a sickening sense of regret.
"You've lost a diamond while you were too busy collecting stones." - Anonymous