A Courtship in Three Phases
o :: o :: o
First Phase: Initiation
While my relationship with Morgan had always been filled with what could conceivably be called passion – whether artificial as a product of our jobs or interpersonal as a product of our clashing personalities – neither he nor myself had drawn any connections past the platonic. After all, working for the BAU was wont to create tension, and no two people will get along consistently and unfailingly when they spend as much time together as we did. That level of closeness breeds some amount social friction, regardless of mutual attitudes.
My first inkling that I was remiss in not conceptualizing past the fraternal bond of two co-workers came after a particularly successful case in southern California. After a long hunt and the deaths of three young, male children, we had caught the un-sub red-handed. The child was (at least physically) unharmed and the un-sub apprehended. As a result the entire team was elated and self-congratulatory, and so they decided to go out to a local bar to celebrate, as the flight back to Quantico wasn't scheduled to leave until the following afternoon.
I say that I agreed to go with them only by the loosest definition of the word "agree". My method of celebration usually includes the latest quarterly psychological journal and a hot cup of chamomile tea, but I could sense early on that where I would end up that night, there would be no tea on the menu.
"Yo, poindexter," Morgan had said as he rounded the corner into our conference-room-slash-temporary-headquarters. "JJ, Emily and me are going out to grab a couple of beers. You in?"
"'JJ, Emily and I,'" I corrected.
But my efforts in the name of grammar went, as usual, unacknowledged. "You're going," he said, pointing at me. "You work too much. This'll be good for you."
Everyone on this team probably worked too much, and whether or not it would be 'good' for anyone was certainly up for a spirited debate. Unfortunately, before I had time to contest this point, he continued:
"Emily's bringing the car around. We're leaving in twenty minutes. Bring your dancin' shoes, cowboy."
I sighed as he left. Pop culture references were usually lost on me (if that had, indeed, been a pop culture reference). I knew from experience that there was little point in arguing, and so I finished cleaning up the crime scene photos, maps, index cards, and other miscellany from the board and left the San Jose police station.
During the car ride I suffered many indignities at JJ's hands, including by not limited to the forced removal of my tie ("It makes you look too stuffy and professional"), the mussing of my hair ("Girls like it when it looks like you don't care"), and the rolling of my sleeves ("Show a little arm; let them know you're playful"). She did, however, allow me to keep my FBI identification, because apparently "chicks dig it".
The club was called Loco, a large establishment on a boardwalk that catered primarily but not exclusively to latinos. The interior was filled with pulsing techno music, strobe lights, and furniture made from chrome and glass. The presence of two young, attractive women in our party waived the cover charge.
The others quickly set to dancing and drinking. I, for the most part, was comfortable to sit at the bar and nurse a glass of chardonnay. This was not a locale I was used to. In fact, on the rare number of occasions I'd been to similar places, it had consistently been a product of the strong-arming of my coworkers.
Once I was sure none of them would come heckling me to dance, I produced a quarterly psychological journal, which I had discreetly folded and tucked into the inner pocket of my blazer. It was not the most comfortable place to read, but I was not about to complain. I was about three-quarters of the way through when I heard a female voice that I did not recognize.
"You came to Loco just to read at the bar?" She had to speak loudly over the dull roar of the club. I detected hints of a Mexican slant to her voice. When I turned, the pretty, olive-skinned woman was smiling at me, wild brown eyes shining through her long bangs.
"This isn't really my sort of area," I explained, taking notice of the low-cut dress and stiletto shoes. "I'm just here to appease some friends."
"No? So where is your sort of area?"
She rested a hand on the bar, very close to mine, and leaned in. Cognitively I became aware of the fact that this was the body language of a woman trying to express interest in copulation, and I suddenly became quite uncomfortable. After all, these sorts of things don't happen to me very frequently.
"Gay bars, usually."
She pulled back, looking startled. With my personal bubble clear and the pair of D-cups out from under my chin, I felt much more comfortable.
"Oh. Right. Sorry!"
I had used the gay excuse before. It was perfect because it removed all blame and eliminated any feelings of rejection. It also had the added bonus of ceasing any unwanted flirtation.
"It's all right," I explained, closing the psychological journal. "Excuse me."
I left my wine at the bar and weaved through the crowd, hoping that I could find a more secluded area to finish reading. Towards the back of the dance floor I noticed a small, dimly-lit hallway, which I followed up a curving flight of stairs onto a loft that overlooked the lower level. It appeared to be abandoned – perhaps a disused VIP area – and it was full of overstuffed white furniture and coffee tables. A long, sheer curtain partitioned off the far half and I, hopeful to find a place that would not be disturbed, ventured towards it.
It was then that I became aware of a vague, rhythmic noise. At first I thought it was the sound of someone walking on tile with hard-soled shoes, but it seemed unlikely given that the floor was made from plush carpet. I slowly pulled back the curtain and peered past.
Interestingly, the first thing I noticed was the source of the noise: it was the steady knocking sound produced by the edge of a table as it hit the wall over and over. There was a blonde woman that I did not recognize sitting on the edge of the offending table, her thighs spread and her dress hiked up around her waist. She was leaning back on her palms and panting breathlessly as Morgan steadily rocked against her. He was hunched over her slightly, with one hand against the small of her back and the other knotted in her long, curly hair.
It didn't occur to me that they were engaged in coitus for a few seconds. I was startled by the intimacy of the scene, by the passion and the friction. I had never seen Morgan so lost in himself before, and the expression of complete serenity on his face was one that I had never seen. His lips were moving against the long lines of her neck, forming words that I could only assume were not meant to have sound.
I had never seen the woman before. Presumably, neither had Morgan.
The orientation of the table and its two occupants were such that the woman's back was to me. I must have stood there longer than I realized, because eventually Morgan looked up and noticed me. I of course couldn't see my own expression, but I imagine that I must have looked something like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi.
At first I was overwhelmed with a sense of shame and reticence upon realizing that Morgan had noticed me, but I scarcely had time to convey these emotions before I saw his long, thin mouth curl into a smile. The shame and reticence were gone, replaced by a feeling that can't be described accurately with a single adjective.
The pace at which he was rutting into her doubled, all while his eyes continued boring into mine. I felt weak at the knees and my heart rate began climbing. Morgan lifted his mouth away from his partner's neck so he could look me full on as he copulated with her.
It sounds almost as strange to say as it was to feel, but in my mind at that moment it wasn't some nameless barfly on the table; it was me. Perhaps it was the emotional power of it or perhaps it was the intensity of his expression and the way neither of us could seem to break eye contact, but the situation abruptly became extremely personal. It was me on that table with my thighs spread, and Morgan was tangling his hands in my hair, not hers. So immersive was this feeling that I could almost feel him – feel the subtle lines of his torso pressed into mine, feel the heat of his body against me, feel his cock slamming into me.
It wasn't until I felt something warm in the palm of my hand that I was shaken out of the peculiar reverie. Though I hadn't been aware of it, I'd been gripping the metal railing so tightly that the sharp edge had dug into my palm and split the skin open. I jerked my eye-line away and, just as quickly as it had started, it was over. I swept away, letting the curtain drop back into place.
o :: o :: o
Second Phase: Excitation
Two weeks, four days and sixteen hours passed. The BAU helped to bring down a serial strangler in Milwaukee not long after we'd returned to Quantico from California.
I'd tried my best to keep myself at arm's length from Morgan while not pinging the radars of any of my not unobservant colleagues. The first tactic to problem solving is complete avoidance, after all – though in retrospect, I should have realized that it would not have worked when you cannot completely avoid the source of the problem.
I could feel him watching me the whole time we were in Milwaukee. It sounds paranoid and a little bit crazy, but I did catch him actually doing it once or twice. Across hallways, from the other side of the BAU jet, over the top of the police cruiser – he'd even once stood directly behind me while I was at a window and lingered there, so close that his breath on my neck made me shiver.
I felt more at ease back in Virginia, at my desk with the two half-walls. Unfortunately I couldn't stay at my desk forever, not with my job. In the break room, he finally caught up with me.
"So we aren't gonna talk about it?"
The question had come from behind. I was at the break room counter, pouring the last of the pot of coffee into my "I Heart New York" mug. I looked up so I could see him in the reflective metal of the paper towel dispenser. His arms were crossed.
"Why should I care whether or not you hook up with random bar floozies?"
He was silent for a moment, and then he smirked.
"So you are thinking about it," he said. "I could have been talking about anything else, but you went right to that."
I frowned, grabbing the bag of Folger's coffee grounds from the cabinet. "Outwitted by a football player; that's embarrassing."
And then, he was behind me, with his hands pressed lightly over mine to keep me from preparing the next pot of coffee. I swallowed and tried to hide my nervousness.
"Morgan–"
"Has it been on your mind as much as it's been on mine?" he asked, voice low. "Something happened there, Reid. Saying it didn't is swimming up a river in Egypt."
I didn't answer. The tip of his nose brushed through my hair.
"You're awfully close," I said eventually. I was never good with saying the right thing at the right time.
"You're not moving away," Morgan answered. Apparently he didn't have the same problem.
"We're coworkers," I mumbled, trying unsuccessfully to shrug out of his arms. "We see each other an average of eighteen hours a day. Statistically speaking–"
I was turned around in his arms – abruptly – and pulled up against him. His mouth closed around the crux of my jaw, tongue and lips massaging the skin. My breath hitched in my throat, and whatever statistic I was about to cite quickly died halfway to my mouth.
"God– Morgan–"
"Office is empty," he observed, speaking against my skin. "Even Garcia packed it up for the night. No one to observe, no one to hassle us."
His hand found the way to the front of my corduroy pants, roughly massaging me. What was once a hitched breath escaped as a brief, yelping moan.
"Morgan–!"
"Tell me you don't want it and I'll stop," he promised. "I wouldn't force anything on you. Tell me you do want it, though – I promise I won't disappoint."
"I– I don't–"
His palm continued, more swiftly now. It was garnering a reaction, and judging by the self-satisfied smirk, he could tell. Using one hand under my leg, he hoisted me up onto the edge of the counter, pushing apart my knees and maneuvering between my thighs.
"I have been wanting to do this to you," he explained, "for a very long time."
"I'm confused."
That statement seemed to surprise him. His ministrations stopped and he pulled away, looking at me in concern and confusion.
"You've worked with me for almost three years – Hotchner even longer than that. How is it that, in all this time, not one of us has been able to notice that you're bisexual?"
Any confusion and concern melted away. The smirk returned. "You never asked."
"You never asked me either," I said.
"You can be straight as an arrow and still be attracted sexually to one specific member of your own gender," Morgan replied, looking unconcerned. "I learned that a long time ago."
My face got hot and Morgan chuckled. "I'm not straight," I said self-consciously.
"No shit?"
"I figured it out not that long ago – I mean, it was mostly off my own intellectual conceptualization and not from any, ah, outside source. It's funny that for the way my mind works, I never really bother to introspect, save in cases tha– Morgan!"
He'd cut off my soliloquy by unfastening the button of my pants. Despite my protestation and my very best efforts, my body was eagerly responding to his ministrations, and somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that I wouldn't be able to appear unwilling for very much longer.
"Tell me to stop, kid," Morgan said, almost taunting. "Just say the word."
His hand pushed past the elastic of my briefs, and all at once his hand snaked around my shaft. The angle was awkward – a strange sort of upside-down grip – but my hips bucked reflexively into the touch. The hands braced on the counter, the only things holding me upright, shook with the overload of sensations.
"Okay," I hissed as he started to pump the shaft slowly. "Okay. Yes. Fuck it. I have been thinking about it. I've analyzed it from every possible angle, backwards, forwards, and from both humanistic and cognitive psychological views."
I didn't need to look at Morgan to know that he was all but dripping liquid mirth from his pores. "All right," he conceded, the pace of his hand on my length redoubling. "And after all that analysis, what conclusions have you come to, Dr. Reid?"
"I–" I stammered, "based on the physiological sensations and the emotional processes–"
"Which emotional processes?"
"–for fuck's sake, Morgan–"
"It's like math class, kid, you have to show your work."
It was hard enough to think cogently with a hand around my cock, let alone answer a series of emotionally revealing questions. I could tell, however, that Morgan was taking far too much enjoyment in watching me squirm, and that he wouldn't let me out of this without an answer.
"When– when you made eye contact with me," I began, my breath beginning to get ragged, "while you were copulating with her, I felt like– it became more personal. I felt like you were looking at me because – Christ, Morgan – because you wanted to be fucking me, and not her."
Morgan made a strange sound that came from the back of his throat. A fraction of a second later, he slipped his arms around me, picked me up, and all but flung me down onto the break room table. Napkins and plastic cups and paper plates toppled onto the floor, and I found myself on my back, with a suddenly desperate Morgan working off my corduroys.
"Go on," he growled, tugging them off with no small force. "Your conclusions."
I swallowed. "I came to the conclusion that there was unresolved sexual tension between us," I said, slowly, as I watched him fumble through his wallet. "And that it would end one of two ways: one, with an eternal, unspoken strain between us, or; two, explosively."
I heard the sharp tearing of tin foil; Morgan was unwrapping a condom. "Like this?" he asked.
"Yeah," I answered. "Like this."
The next thirty to forty-five seconds happened in a haze of fumbling hands and clothing awkwardly shoved aside. By the time Morgan had his condom in place (he was uncircumcised, I realized with a small amount of surprise) and was situated between my thighs, the gravity of the situation finally hit me, perhaps too late.
My shirt was still on but that didn't stop Morgan from kissing up my chest and neck. I could feel the tip of him pressing against the skin of my perineum. The condom, at least, was pre-lubricated.
"You're right," Morgan said against the lines of my throat. "You usually are. I saw you standing there and suddenly it was all you." His kisses get higher, following along the edge of my jaw.
"Morgan," I mumbled, this time without the agitation or surprise. I wouldn't have wanted to admit it out loud, but his name came out more like a moan.
"I just had to have you," he said, abruptly capturing my mouth in a wet, soft, open-mouthed kiss. Just as suddenly, and not half a second later, he pushed his hips forward, beginning the slow and deliciously painful process of breaching me. My mouth fell open against his and my back arced off the table on its own volition. It felt good. When he was deep enough, I noticed that he'd angled himself to bump against the soft, erogenous prostate, and I shivered.
"Oh, God– nnghm–"
He'd claimed my mouth again, kissing me ferociously, and started to fuck me. His arms gripped me, tightly, around my back. The pleasure of it mingled strangely with the discomfort of being fucked for the first time, and it all melted down into a hot, pulsing, desperate, violent rhythm, his rhythm. In, pause, out, pause. He was going slowly. He knew it would hurt some.
My fingernails, stubby and unimpressive as they were, dug into the skin of his lower back. The pain was fading quickly and my body ached for more. He seemed to get the message, because as he deepened the kiss, still unbroken, he sped up, his hips slapping into mine with more frequency. His own faded jeans weren't even off, just opened and pushed down enough to allow him freedom, and the denim felt rough on my skin.
I felt sweat bead on my forehead, and along the back of my neck, and pooling on the concave of my stomach. Heat was welling in my gut, building slowly like a stoked fire. My shaft, trapped between our bodies as they moved, was straining in time with the pounding of his hips.
How long it was, I couldn't say. We were in our own solipsism, it felt. But I did eventually feel the telltale signs of an impending orgasm. I broke my mouth away and put my cheek against his, so my lips were near his ear.
"Morgan–" (my voice broke for a moment) "–I can't– I'm going to–"
"I know." His voice was like a prayer. "I know, Reid."
Whether it was acknowledgment or assertion of similar feelings was unknown to my foggy, sex-hazed mind. All that I could be absolutely certain of was that I was very, very close to climax, and each time Morgan's taut abdominal muscle slid against the underside of my shaft, I got that much closer.
"I– I'm– Morg–aaaaaauuugghnnn–!"
My hips bucked in a desperate attempt to prolong the sensation of the blinding, violent orgasm that all but ripped through my body. I was aware, at least tangentially, that Morgan was also speeding up, breathing heavily into my hair. He slowed only as the last pulse of climax faded and I sunk, streaked with sweat and exhausted, onto the table.
Morgan stood hunched over me for a moment, his cock still buried inside me to the hilt, shoulders stooped and hands splayed on the table. His body shook with each breath. Idly, I admired the gentle glistening of sweat along the lines of his chest.
"Damn, Reid," he said eventually. He pulled out of me with a soft, wet pop. He must have come to climax simultaneously, or near-simultaneously; the condom was translucent and I could see a stain of white at the tip. "That was – actually, that was better than I thought it would be."
I could have either been flattered or upset at the remark. I went with neither.
"I don't think I've ever done something so impulsive in my entire life," I said honestly, gathering my strength to sit up on my elbows. I watched disinterestedly as he pulled off the condom, knotted it, and tucked it into a roll of napkins before tossing it into the lidded garbage can.
"You have to do something crazy and impulsive every now and then," he said, looking back at me.
"Is that what this was?" I asked. "Crazy?"
Morgan smiled. There was no mirth this time, no self-satisfaction, no lust – just warmth and sincerity. "Kid, that was definitely crazy." He reached out to brush a lock of hair from my face, and I found myself leaning into his touch.
"Crazy enough to happen again?" I asked, surprising myself at how timid I felt.
Morgan didn't answer immediately. The smile flickered for a moment, but his hand came to rest, palm-down, on my cheek.
"I'd love that," he said eventually. "A lot."
"The great thing about the universe is that it's big enough where crazy and improbable things happen with great frequency."
We kissed again, gently, with no charge of sexual tension. I started wishing, much more than wondering, that it would happen again.
o :: o :: o
Third Phase: Reconciliation
Our sexual encounters continued, in secret, for over four months.
We were both careful to keep them random, and never in the same location twice. The last thing we wanted was the team catching wind of them – after all, intradepartmental relationships, regardless of their nature, were frowned upon by the Powers That Be within the FBI.
It can be said, however, that they did steadily increase in frequency. In the earlier weeks, we would hold back until the tension became too much of an emotional burden and we ended up having violent, shirt-tearing, toe-curling sex in a janitorial closet or private bathroom. As time went on, they went from once or twice a week to four times – sometimes even five, if we could get away with it. The only thing that remained constant was the spontaneity.
Emotionally, I found it exciting. We steadily became aware of each other's quirks: for instance, Morgan's preferred sexual position was when I bottomed from the top with my hands on his chest, and I had quickly become a fan of Morgan's staggeringly talented mouth. The meetings were wonderful – tantalizingly regular but never quite the same. Their secrecy kept them passionate, and their passion kept us alive, and served as an emotional release from the horror we faced every day.
Intellectually, though, I found myself at odds with them. I certainly had no complaints about the sex in and of itself, but I still found myself strangely dissatisfied. It took me much longer than I care to admit to discern the reason behind this unhappiness, though in my defense, I've had nothing to compare it to.
If Morgan felt the same way, it certainly wasn't apparent from the outside looking in. To his credit, he would have kept face no matter what he was feeling, and I had no reason to assume that he would verbally share his emotional burdens with me.
It wasn't until late January that I worked up the nerve to address it. We'd met at his flat, a surprisingly posh apartment on the top floor. His bedroom had one immense picture window that looked out over Quantico, blanketed and muffled with six inches of snow.
I was riding him, in his favorite position: straddling his waist with my hands on his chest. His own hands gripped my hips as I rocked on and off him. The black silk sheets were tangled around our legs, and the dim, angled lights of his bedroom put the muscles of his chest in sharp, clear relief.
As tensions climbed higher and muscles pulled tauter, he pulled me down against him. I could hear not long later from the catch in his breath and the deep, throaty moan against my jaw that he'd come to climax. I continued my movements for a few seconds, allowing him to ride out the orgasm, before slowly dismounting and rolling off him, collapsing in the knotted mess of sheet, comforter and bedspread.
Morgan sleepily disposed of his condom. I watched his face. I could tell, from both the physiological signs and the emotionally trying child murderer case we'd come off of, that he was ready to sleep. And so, I kept it brief: "Do you want to have dinner?"
Morgan looked over at me sleepily. "It's like 2 AM."
"Not now," I said quickly. "I mean, you know. Later."
"You trying to hook me on a new Thai restaurant, kid? I keep telling you I can't afford to eat out that frequently."
"No," I said, slowly, sitting up on one elbow. "I mean like a date. You and me, at a restaurant, with conversation."
Morgan's brow knitted above his nose. "You're asking me out?"
"Shouldn't I be?"
His answer didn't come for a few seconds. He rolled his head so he was looking straight up at the ceiling lights, dimmed to glow a dull orange. "Aren't the purpose of dates to get to know each other? We already know everything there is to know."
"We know a lot," I conceded, "and most of what we know are things even couples who've been married for twenty years wouldn't know about each other. But at the same time, there's so much basic information we don't know."
"Such as?"
"When's my birthday?"
Morgan laughed. I smiled down at him.
"And I'll be honest, I don't even remember your sisters' names, or what your favorite movie is, or what it was like the first time you fell in love."
"Well," he said, "you've got a point."
"And so, if you're willing," I began, scooting closer to him, "I think we should go on a date. Because even though I don't know what your favorite food was growing up, I know you're a really, genuinely good person, and I think we could be good together. You know, as more than just sex buddies."
I'd spoken very quickly, as I do when I'm nervous. Morgan didn't do me the service of answering promptly; instead he just watched me through half-lidded eyes, his hand on my hip, fingertips drawing slow circles on the skin.
"You're really asking this." It was somewhere between a question and a statement.
"Yes."
"You want us to try for a real relationship, with emotional and physical commitment, and meeting each others' parents, and all that crap."
It didn't sound all that glamorous when he put it like that. "Yeah."
Again, he fell silent for a while, studying me. Eventually though, his lips split apart into a smile, followed closely by a laugh.
"You're kind of a freak, Reid."
"Yes, well, so are you."
I leaned down and kissed him. The world outside was muffled by the snow, leaving nothing but us in our microcosm of reality. I didn't know if I'd just made a huge error in judgment, or if it had been the best decision I'd ever make. There was every possibility that it would end catastrophically, just as there was every possibility it would end blissfully.
But I liked my odds.