"No Reid?" Morgan asked as they sat down around the roundtable, and Hotch watched the others glance around for him.

"He's taking a personal day," Hotch said.

"He okay?" The concern on Morgan's face was palpable, and Hotch could see the same on everyone else's face.

"He's fine," Hotch said softly. "It's a family matter. If we need him in Utah, he'll follow us tomorrow – if not, he'll stay here and work alongside Garcia."

"A family matter?" JJ repeated. "Is his mom okay?"

"The case?" Hotch reminded them gently.

It felt strange, all of them on the jet without Reid. He was used to Reid chattering beside him, slipping into his back-and-forth with Prentiss and Morgan, rattling off his statistics, but he couldn't help but think about him, wonder if he'd met up with Gideon yet, or if he was still waiting to. Gideon had answered the phone just as Hotch was slipping out of the door, and part of Hotch – a small part of him, a hook in the back of his mind – was concerned that Reid still wouldn't have a cell number he could call him on, but he'd given Hotch Gideon's.

"Family thing," Rossi asked, "or boyfriend thing?"

He said it loudly enough that Morgan and Prentiss glanced over the aisle, and Hotch gave Rossi a look, but Rossi only raised his eyebrows.

"He didn't mention the boyfriend," Hotch said. "He said he had a personal matter that needed pursuing, and that it was a family matter."

"Sounds like the boyfriend."

"If it was the boyfriend," Hotch said, through slightly gritted teeth, "he didn't say so."

"You know this guy, right?" Morgan asked, leaning on the side of his seat. "What do you think of him?"

"The important thing is Reid's opinion."

"You hate him, right?"

"The case. Please."

"You okay?" Rossi asked him in an undertone as they got off the jet.

"It's Gideon," Hotch said lowly, and Rossi turned to stare at him, his eyes widening.

"He okay?"

"He's the same as ever," Hotch said, and put on his sunglasses. "That's what I'm worried about."

"I can come to your place," Gideon said.

"No," Reid replied. "You can't."

"What, you want to hash this out in a public space?" Gideon asked, and Reid could hear the frustration in his voice, the irritability at not being trusted. "You don't trust me?"

"It doesn't have to be a public place," Reid said quietly. "But I don't want you in my home."

The silence on the other end of the line was tense, and heavy: Reid felt sick to his stomach, but it was the truth, and he'd told it, and that was the important thing. He could hear Gideon breathing, slowly, evenly – he was forcing himself to breathe slowly, evenly.

"Then," he said, his voice low and full of gravel, "why don't you come to mine?"

"Okay. Tell me the address."

"No cell?"

"I dropped it," Reid said. "I'm going to need to get a new one."

"You really still that angry at me?" Gideon asked after he gave him the address.

Reid hung up.

It was not a cabin.

Reid half-expected to see one, as he dipped into the Shenandoah Valley, expected to be lead off into some narrow path up through the ridges, but he didn't go that way: his map led him to a stretch of farmland outside of Castleton, and when he drove onto the property, it was on a dirt road. Gideon hadn't warned him about it, but then, Reid hadn't asked.

It was thick woodland, with creeks running all through it, and he drove over a few small bridges made of metal slats as he moved forward – that meant there was farmland up ahead, so it wasn't a huge surprise when the wood gave way to a stretch of open field. It wasn't a huge space, just a few fields and barns against one edge of the cleared wood – probably the space was made for horses, instead of cattle, although he didn't know what Gideon was going to do with it.

He pulled in front of a small cottage, next to Gideon's car, and he swung his legs out carefully, trying to dodge the mud as he moved up toward the farmhouse door.

He didn't need to knock: the door was already open, and he could hear Gideon whistling along to the radio as he stepped inside, his hands in his pockets. The cottage was neatly appointed, boxes stacked up around the place, and there were empty shelves already screwed up against most of the walls in the hall. Glancing into the living room showed a lot of similar shelves, many of them empty, but there were parts of the walls with art hung up on them, too – birds, deer, local fauna.

Gideon was washing dishes – two different pots and a pan, but only one plate, one knife and fork.

"You still a size nine narrow?" Gideon asked, not turning around, and he nodded toward the kitchen table: Reid looked at the jeans waiting for him there, a heavy denim made for a narrow waist, and at the hiking boots beside them, resting on top of the box. As Gideon turned, wiping off his hands with a dish towel, he said, "I was hoping you'd've gained weight, but I saw the last night that you haven't."

"New shoes on the table," Reid said, picking them up and setting them down on one of the chairs. "It's bad luck."

"Bathroom's down the hall for you to change," Gideon said, putting the dish towel aside. "I can lend you a jacket if it's too cold."

"It's fine," Reid said, and he leaned back when Gideon moved past him: he saw the way Gideon raised his hand just slightly, but when Reid pulled back, he clenched it into a fist, dropping it back down to his side. He didn't say thank you as he heard the soft noise of the doorstep depressing – he'd put a stone slab on cinderblocks before cementing it in, so that every time someone stepped on it you could hear it inside the house, the depression of weight a subtle warning, and not one you could notice until you stepped on top of it.

Gideon's kitchen was nothing like Reid's – it was homey and full of warmth and patterns, different pans and pots, a bright tablecloth. The rest of this cottage, he knew, would be more like his than he probably wanted to think about – books against every wall, dark wood furniture and lights that weren't too bright, most of them vintage pieces with glass shades to change the colour of the bulbs; screens and blinds on the windows as well as curtains, so that you could block out all the light; technology confined to one room or to a few drawers; heavy blankets, unscented soaps and detergents. Gideon wouldn't need soundproofing out here – he could probably hear the noise from outside, but he liked that.

Reid picked up the jeans and the boots, and walked along to the bathroom.

The trails weren't trodden in very deeply, and there were signs that the undergrowth had been hacked back fairly recently, because it hadn't quite regrown. Reid followed the path Gideon set, and when Gideon came to a perfect stop, utterly still, Reid copied him, and when Gideon pointed, Reid followed the movement of his hand.

"Eastern Towhee," he said, when Gideon met his gaze, and Gideon gave a nod of his head. As they walked, they repeated the process a few times, with the Cedar Waxwing, the Turkey Vulture, the nest of an Orchard Oriole, then with a Seal Salamander, then a Brown Creeper, then an Eastern Chipmunk.

"Here," Gideon said, coming to a stop. He didn't point, this time, and Reid scanned the woods around them, not knowing exactly what he was looking for, and he didn't find it easy to follow sightlines at the best of times, least of all when Gideon was specifically looking around to make it harder for him.

And then he saw it, right ahead of them in the mud alongside the nearest creek, clear in the brown dirt because it had been a dry few days, and he raised his chin slightly, tightening his cardigan around himself. "Um," he said. "Black bear. And one cub."

"How do you tell it's a black bear, not a grizzly?"

"Because we're in Virginia?"

"Reid."

"Uh, a grizzly would be more like this," Reid said, feeling like he was nineteen years old again, although this time he wasn't flinching whenever a leaf brushed his shoulder, and jumping a mile whenever a bird called too loudly. Pressing his foot into the mud and making the right sort of oblong shape, he spaced the toes and claws out beside one of the clearest of the bear tracks, to compare them side by side.

"Good," Gideon said.

"I have an eidetic memory," Reid said. "Testing me on stuff like this is pointless."

"You still like it when you get the answers right, though, don't you?"

"I liked it better when I still got some of them wrong," Reid said.

"I never understood that about you."

"It's not that hard to understand," Reid said, putting his hands in his pockets. "It used to mean you still had more to teach me."

Gideon looked at Reid, and Reid saw the sadness in his expression, the twist of his mouth, the slight furrow of his brows. He didn't look any older than he did a few years ago – he was no greyer than he had been, no balder than he had been, hadn't gained weight, hadn't lost any. There was something in that, in how unchanged Gideon seemed, that made Reid want to scream until his throat was hoarse – Reid felt like he'd torn himself apart and rebuilt himself three times since Gideon had left, and yet Gideon looked the same, exactly the same.

"You can say anything you want to me, you know," Gideon said.

"You first," Reid replied. "I really came here to hear what you had to say, not the other way around."

"You want me to say I'm sorry?"

"I don't really care if you're sorry," Reid admitted. "You actually apologised four times in the letter you left for me at the cabin. So it's not really about that."

"What's it about, then?"

"I don't know what you want. You don't want to return to the BAU, or you would have called— Well, pretty much anybody except me. That tells me it's about our personal relationship, and not work, and it's not about a case. You're upset that I don't want you in my home – you're angry that me and Hotch—"

"You and Hotch," Gideon said, nodding his head. "Yeah, let's talk about that."

"He usually tops, but we trade places too," Reid said, raising his eyebrows when Gideon made a sound of disgust and pulled away. "Oh, that's not what you meant?"

"Will you ever learn to just argue like a man, instead of jabbing like that? Just say what you mean."

"You want me to say what I mean? Okay, I'll say what I mean – you disappeared, you left no contact details, nothing, none of us had any idea if you were even dead or alive. Two years of complete silence, where you went off and concentrated on whatever you thought would help you – a road trip, maybe, or you walked the Appalachian trails a few times, I don't even know. Now, you come back as if you want things to go back to normal, but they can't go back to normal, because for two years you didn't care if I was worried about you, you didn't check in on me, you didn't even send a card for my birthday – I have a stack of presents and cards for you in the back of my closet because some part of me still hoped you'd come back."

"Well, I'm back," Gideon said. "What more do you want from me, Spencer? I told you I'm sorry, I came back – what the Hell else am I meant to do?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Reid said, sarcasm dripping from the words, and he stepped in closer, leaning over Gideon, his lip curled. "What did you want? Was I meant to put up bunting, confetti, print t-shirts? Was I meant to organise a party because you decided to bother to come back from the dead? Was I meant to apologise for daring to grieve?"

"You didn't have to grieve," Gideon snapped. "I wasn't dead, I told you—"

"You didn't tell me shit, Gideon!" Reid snapped right back. "You left a goddamn note and then dropped off the face of the earth."

"I said I was sorry—"

"Anybody can say sorry! You're sorry, I'm sorry, there's a boardgame called Sorry!"

"Then what the Hell do you want?"

"I want you to care that you hurt me," Reid said. "And you've made it blatantly obvious that you don't."

"Don't you dare," Gideon said. "Don't you dare say I don't care about you."

"You could have written," Reid said. "You could have called. You could have put a damned classified in a newspaper I subscribed to if you wanted – anything. Anything. A month of silence I could have taken – three months, even, six months. Not a year. Not two years. And you know what the worst thing is?"

"What's the worst thing?"

"If Stephen hadn't Oded three months ago, I don't think you'd have bothered coming back for me at all."

Gideon was silent. He hadn't known, then, that Reid had known.

"I'm really… I'm really sorry for your loss," Reid said quietly, some of the anger fizzling out of him. "But— You know, relapses aren't, um… They're not anybody's fault. It's not your fault. But I'm not Stephen, Jason, and you can't turn around and suddenly bother to give me a call because your real son is dead."

"That isn't how it happened," Gideon said hoarsely. "I didn't find out Stephen was gone until after I drove back through Virginia – I was already coming back. To talk to him, and to talk to you. And then when I got to the house, his wife…" Gideon turned away from Reid, his eyes shining but not welling up, his arms crossed over his chest. His voice was laboured, low, thick. "He'd been clean six years. Nothing to do with me – he started using a few years after we stopped talking, got clean again, but then he, uh…" He took in a breath through his mouth. "I was two weeks late – that's all. You read his obituary in the paper?"

"Yeah, the Roanoke Echo," Reid said. "I didn't tell anybody."

It hurt, watching Gideon like this. He took in his next breath slowly, shaking his head, and Reid could see the tears in his eyes, but Gideon wouldn't let himself cry. A second later, he was collected again – his eyes were a little puffy, but that was all.

"I made so many plans," Gideon said in a small voice, barely more than a whisper. "What words I'd use on the phone with Stephen, how I'd apologise, work my way back into his life – same with you. How I'd buy a house, somewhere isolated, but not without a cell signal. I just needed… time."

"And what do you want now?"

"I came back to Virginia for two sons," Gideon said. "And one of them is dead."

"Were you worried I was gonna OD too?"

"I don't know what I would have done if you… I kept up on you, you know. I read your papers, when I passed through libraries."

"Just my papers?" Reid asked. "Not articles about the team, or…?"

"I didn't want to hear about the BAU," Gideon said in a low voice. "That part of my life is over. I was gonna tell Stephen that, I was gonna… He hated the job, you know. I tried to talk to him before, tried to mend those bridges, but I was still on the job, and he hated it."

"He hated that it took you away from him."

"Same difference."

Reid shifted on his feet, looking back the way they'd come. "Do you have alcohol?"

Gideon stared at him. "Since when do you drink anything stronger than an Arnold Palmer?"

"It's not really for me," Reid said, and started walking back along the path.

Gideon only hung back a moment or two before he started following.

"Hotchner."

It was eleven AM in Utah, which meant it was early afternoon for Reid, and when Hotch saw the unknown number with the Virginia area code, he'd answered it immediately.

"Hey," Reid said softly. "I just wanted to check in, let you know I was okay."

"I'm glad," Hotch murmured, raising his hand to wave off Rossi when he looked to him, concerned. "What are you two doing?"

"We went for a hike," Reid said. "Now we're pouring bourbon."

"You're drinking?"

"No," Reid said. "I'm drinking a— What is this?"

"A blackberry nojito," came Gideon's voice at the other end of the line. The long-suffering humour in his voice was familiar, albeit in a distant way.

"It's mint, flattened club soda, lime juice, and blackberry syrup." Reid said.

"You gonna fly out to us?"

"Garcia booked my flight for eight AM, and I'll pick up my new phone from the terminal when I drive over."

"How is it?"

"We're working it out."

"Okay. See you tomorrow."

Rossi put his hands in his pockets, looking amused. "Did he say flattened club soda?"

"When you put sugar into a carbonated beverage, the carbon dioxide, which the soda is supersaturated with, is able to latch onto what are called nucleation sites on the individual grains of sugar, which gives the CO2 the opportunity to form bubbles and escape. You see the same chemical process when you drop Mentos in Coke." Rossi was staring at him, and Hotch couldn't help but smile, just slightly. "He doesn't like the bubbles," he explained.

"You know," Rossi said, "I am glad somebody loves that kid."

Hotch laughed, quietly. It was difficult for him to really tense up, at the moment – all of his muscles felt like Reid had scrubbed them clean and slid them back into place, and every step he took felt strangely light and easy, but it was a lightness that he could easily get used to – no twinges in his shoulders or his knees, no stiffness in his back. Nonetheless, there was a slight tension coiling between his shoulders, at the idea of Reid with Gideon – but Reid had sounded relaxed and easy, and although he'd been a little bit solemn, it hadn't been any extreme of emotion.

"What did Haley say?" Rossi asked.

"Her main worry was that I was abusing my power over him," Hotch said quietly. "That he's too young, and that he's always looked up to me, and now… She asked which of us will be reassigned, when the Bureau finds out."

"What did you say?"

"I didn't," Hotch said. "But I told Reid that if it came to that we could have a sit-down with Strauss and H.R., that I'd offer to step down as unit chief if we could remain on the same team. We'd obviously have to check in regularly with H.R., from there – CC them on our work emails…"

"That's a pretty severe demotion," Rossi said in a soft voice. "You sure you'd be good with that?"

"I don't want to leave this team," Hotch said. "But if I was the one to get Reid pushed out, they'd never forgive me. I'd offer this, and if the Bureau refused, I would insist on being the one to leave the team."

"You tell him that second part?"

"No."

"It's not easy, is it?"

Hotch shook his head, and then turned toward his phone when it rang – Prentiss and Morgan.

"How'd it happen?" Gideon asked, and Reid stayed in his place where he was sprawled out on Gideon's couch – it was a long one, the sort of couch that someone as tall as Reid could actually lie down on. He could hear the sizzle of pans as Gideon cooked, and he leaned against the cushion to watch him, absently twisting the Rubik's Cube in his hands – it was one of those complicated ones with 20 strips instead of 3, and the most difficult thing about it was trying to isolate one strip at a time to twist.

"We went out to visit Chester Hardwicke before he was executed. He managed to organise a riot in the prison so that the two of us would be trapped in the interrogation room with us – he planned to kill us both. Hotch wanted to fight him. He was separated from Haley at the time, and she'd sent a settlement agreement for him to sign, and he was… You know, he was ready to brawl, he wanted it. No oversight, no reason to hold back."

"And afterward, you were consumed with desire," Gideon said blankly.

"I stopped him. I talked about Hardwicke until the guards could come in to get us. And then, after, we talked about it, and he was upset, and I knew he and Haley had separated, and so I… I kissed him."

"He was always worried about that crush you had on him," Gideon murmured. "No more reason for him not to indulge. I bet he likes that, having a kid your age look up to him like that."

"Do you want me to give you the dictionary definition of hypocrisy," Reid asked, "or did you want to connect those dots yourself?"

"That is not the same."

"No," Reid agreed: he'd completed two sides of the cube, and he was sort of getting the hang of it of the cube. "I never idolised Hotch. And he never did anything to push me in any direction – never gave me advice with an agenda other than helping me."

Gideon crossed his arms tightly over his chest, and he scowled down at Reid. "You're angry I got you to join the BAU?"

"No," Reid said. "I love working at the BAU – I'm very grateful for the opportunities that you gave me, everything you taught me. I told Hotch last night that even if I'd told you I didn't want to join the BAU, I think you probably would have kept up mentoring me in some capacity. I do think it's stupid for you to be this angry over what romantic relationships I have after we haven't talked to each other for two years."

"I'm not angry," Gideon said.

"Tell that to your face, shoulders, hands, and—"

"Reid."

"What? You saw me once, you thought, oh, that kid could be me – you trained me to be you: now I'm you. You don't get to complain."

"You're not me," Gideon said, loudly. Reid looked up from the puzzle in his hands, looking at Gideon, who was staring down at him. "I'd never wear my hair like that."

"You mean, if you had hair?"

Gideon ruffled his, hard, and Reid huffed out a noise that might have been a laugh, two years ago, bringing up his knee against Gideon's thigh and making him take a step back. It was the first time, he realised, since he'd come out to the house that he'd completely relaxed, and he sat up on the couch, looking up at Gideon.

"I knew that it would hurt you when I left," Gideon said quietly. "But I thought of myself as dangerous. To you, to the team – I couldn't stop working, couldn't even dream of it, but every mistake I made put all of you in danger. And I'd hurt you enough. I didn't want to come back until I thought I could do more good than harm – and by the time I did, it was too late."

"It's not too late," Reid said quietly, getting to his feet.

"I should have called sooner," Gideon said quietly. "I'm sorry I didn't. Four months, that's… That's a long time, for you."

"Yeah."

"Age gap doesn't just mean time, experience, you know. Hotch has a mortgage, a kid, a divorce pending – he's got responsibilities you don't, expectations of him that aren't made of you. You ready to take that on?"

Reid bit his lip, looking down at the Rubik's Cube, swallowing hard. "I'm, um… I don't know," he admitted.

"And keeping it secret from the team?"

"I'm gonna tell Emily. Uh, Rossi already knows."

Gideon was quiet, looking at him, and then he reached out, touching the side of Reid's arm, squeezing. He'd missed that. He'd missed Gideon. "Come, eat. You're too thin."

"My mom says that too."

"She's right."

Reid sat down at the kitchen table, looking at Gideon as he started plating. "You're really going to stay here? In Virginia?"

"Yep."

"What are you going to do here?"

"Write," Gideon said.

"Like Rossi?"

"No, no, God, no," Gideon said, "I was thinking, uh… I was thinking some travel writing. I was thinking I might write about birds."

"About birds?" Reid asked, tilting his head. "Fiction, or…?"

"About their relationships," Gideon said, putting plates in front of Reid on the table. "About what it feels like, to watch them. I might make trips to other places, to write about those. I can't… I should never have gone back to the BAU after I took that leave. So, I'll, uh, I'll write about birds."

Reid imagined that, for a moment, isolated in the middle of nowhere, no computers, no murder, just quiet space and books, space to write. It sounded nice. It was a nice thought.

"How do you not feel guilty?" Reid asked.

"Oh, I feel guilty," Gideon replied. "I feel guilty all the time."

Hotch didn't really get a moment alone with Reid once he joined the case in Utah, but on the way back home, he curled up with his knees up against his chest, his arms wrapped loosely around them, his head tipped back against the back of his chair.

"How'd the family thing go, Spence?" JJ asked quietly.

"Pretty good," Reid said. "Way better than I thought it would." He spoke quietly, and he was still concentrated on some point in the middle distance, staring into space. "He's gonna meet us at the airfield, actually."

Hotch glanced at him. "He is?"

Reid nodded. "He said he'd take us out for dinner."

"Who?" Morgan asked.

"Gideon," Reid said.

That started talk: suddenly, everyone was leaning in, asking dozens of questions, but Reid's eyes had fallen closed, and any question that was directed at him, he ignored. Hotch wasn't sure if he was really asleep or not – but then, it didn't matter.

"You okay?" he asked lowly: they were the last two off the plane.

"I'm actually, um… I'm really good, just tired," Reid said, and he reached back, touching Hotch's hand for just a second as he met his eyes, then pulled it away. "I didn't tell you before, but Stephen died. A few months ago."

"Spencer…"

"Can I stay at yours tonight?"

"Of course," Hotch said. "Always."

Reid smiled at him, although he looked exhausted. "Thanks," he said softly, and stepped ahead of him down the jet's stairs.