Chapter Text
It never really gets cold in New Orleans—not even at night, not even indoors—but Reid still feels a chill go through him as Gideon shakes Ethan's hand. The power of figurative language.
Not out of anything bad, per se, it's just… Surreal is probably the word. Worlds colliding, no matter how closely adjacent they were in hindsight, is always jarring at the very least. Worlds very close and yet, like asymptotes, never to meet, now finally crossing paths in an air conditioned bar in a city Reid's never been to before and then imploding in a spectacularly unspectacular way. It has no right to feel as weird as it does, and yet here they are. The most bizarre little tableau of Reid's life: Gideon, leaning forward intently in his seat, comfortable as ever; Ethan, half sitting on the arm of Reid's matching chair with the most casual grip on his glass; and Reid, quite literally stuck in the middle.
"I mean, I may have dropped out," Ethan is saying while someone walks over Spencer's grave, "but I still know when I'm in the presence of greatness, man."
Mind thoroughly boggled, Reid is powerless to do anything but stare into the middle distance. He doesn't think he's ever in his life heard anyone call Gideon "man" outside of Derek, and even then only in a moment of supreme stress.
It's surreal enough even before Gideon's brief smile and answer, "Well, thank you. I'd say there's no shame in having dropped out, if this would have otherwise been a path not taken. You play beautifully."
But that might also be the bourbon. He's not that used to bourbon. He already felt ridiculous drinking it last night, folded up in this same overly-stuffed brocade armchair looking like if Sebastian Flyte was an Edward Gorey drawing, but it's the French Quarter, right? That's what you're supposed to do. Tonight, though, he feels a lot smaller—too aware of how much he was feigning ease before.
"Thanks. I was off tonight, but I appreciate the lie."
"Not at all. Reminded me of a young Barry Harris."
"Well, I'm not gonna turn down a compliment like that."
It's probably why he's so fidgety too: Spencer can't stop turning in place where he is, stuck undeniably between Ethan and Gideon. Every time he pays too much attention to one side, turns too much towards one, he can suddenly feel (or at least imagine) the eyes of the other on him, reading into every movement. It would be exhausting if it weren't for the remaining adrenaline of managing the interaction—as is, the drinks make his head spin all too easily, brain loose in his skull like a fish in a bowl.
It doesn't help that Ethan had chosen to forgo his own chair in favor of leaning against the back of Reid's, citing the fact that he spent the last few hours sitting but with a look at Reid's sudden nervous fluster that said he knew what he was really doing by avoiding the polite dance of, "No, please, here, sit." It's a far cry from the way they'd both been leaning into each other's space all last night, Reid light on his toes even with the heavy conversation. Tonight, he's instead rooted to his seat with anxiety and befuddled in his senses by alcohol. A truly winning combination. Reid, trapped in a waking nightmare, takes another sip.
"Have you always played?"
"Eh, sorta. Actually..."
And Reid doesn't even do close contact well normally, but the thing about Ethan now is that he was always, like, a guy, but in the intervening years had become effortlessly a man. He's got a vest on again, the one he'd lost hours ago in his set, and on paper it's something Reid would wear anytime, but he would never be able to manage to wear it like this, like a man. Even the way he's leaning against the chair now feels masculine: elbow on his knees, wide stance, square shoulders. Reid's never known how to do that. He mostly handled being a boy fine—in the precocious, Encyclopedia Brown, "boy"-as-followed-always-by-"genius" sense—but being a man is... something else he's never quite sure he can manage to pull off. He usually manages to fall somewhere between humanized muppet and Star Trek alien that's obviously played by a person but still slightly off. He's always had a complicated feeling about that—about seeing other men be men with an ease that eludes him and yet is impossible to feel wholly jealous of—but it's crystal clear right now what exactly that reaction is and it's really not something he wants to be having with Gideon sitting right in front of him.
And, oh no, shit, Spencer's not paying enough attention—where's the conversation now? He has a sudden fear that they're talking about him, even when a second's worth of attention is enough to prove they're not. They're talking about Benny Goodman, actually, but for a second it's hard to shake the association.
"Too straight-laced for me, in the end," Ethan shrugs. "Sure, he learned from some of the Chicago–New Orleans greats, but how creative could a guy that dorky looking really be, y'know?"
Gideon just smiles his placid smile. "Ah, but who else could do 'Moonglow'?"
Ethan laughs a single, wry laugh, before taking a sip. Meanwhile Gideon's smile stays put. It takes only a second's worth of thought for Reid to realize that he's sincere about it. Holding eye contact, that naturally theatrical little gesture he does with his hands falling away only for them to fall back loosely to his lap—Gideon isn't being polite (which was a slim enough possibility but viable given the social setting): he actually likes Ethan.
Reid… doesn't know what to do with that, but he's really, really glad to know it. He's both pleased and, for some reason, frightened in equal measure, though what exactly he's frightened of isn't entirely sure. He wants them to get along. He also, at the same time, very much doesn't want that. It's confounding.
Gideon glances at him then, so on the point Reid would swear he heard that thought. It's the same confusion: he knows both that Gideon can't possibly read his mind and yet, in a very real sense, he absolutely can.
"Fair enough." Privy to none of this, Ethan nods. "Hard to argue with that sheer number of hits either."
"Or degrees," Reid cuts in. "He had honorary doctorates from Union College, the University of Illinois, Southern Illinois University, Bard, Brandeis, Yale, Columbia, and Harvard."
"So, almost as many as you, then."
The grin that breaks across Spencer's face feels like it says way too much to those who know how to read it (i.e. Gideon) but he can't control it. His head twists enough to the side to be seen from above without giving Ethan the satisfaction of a full smile.
"Almost, yeah. Definitely more than you."
Reid doesn't have to look up to know Ethan is mirroring it in his own way, but he does regardless. He's not exactly expecting it when Ethan reaches down to ruffle his all-too-easily-in-reach hair, but he isn't surprised either, simply frowning and fixing it without a word.
"Ah," Gideon says then. "Reid mentioned Spelling Bees, but I see it now. You must have grown up together."
While Reid starts to splutter, Ethan raises an eyebrow, beyond pleased. "That still what you lead with?"
"That's not— There were other things." He doesn't mention them now, either the ones that he did voice on the plane or the ones he didn't. This whole crossover event has him supremely wrongfooted. He's gonna keep his mouth shut as often as possible.
"Like the Quantico dropout part?"
Before Reid can start to try to apologize for that, Gideon smiles. "The world we travel isn't very inhabitable. It takes guts to admit that. To put one's own well-being first, before expectations, and to know oneself well enough to recognize it... That takes courage."
"That's a nice way of putting it," Ethan says again, but with the serious undercurrent that means it's sincere.
Gideon shrugs. "It's the truth."
"Well, it's also true that we skipped the seventh grade at the same time. Though Spencer had already skipped, I think, second and fourth by that point? If I'm correct?"
Reid doesn't have to answer that question: he was right the first time. No wonder. It's the kind of minutiae kids tend to fixate on, especially when they're tweenage rivals-slash-best friends. Every year counts. He's not surprised Ethan hasn't forgotten.
As if hearing that thought, Ethan glances at Reid askance before adding, "Guess it's not the kind of thing you grow out of."
When he digs the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, Reid's eyes go immediately to Gideon, but he doesn't react, doesn't blink, as Ethan lights up. Similarly, when his eyes go back to Ethan, Ethan doesn't offer Spencer a drag the way he would have back in the day and did last night. They are all, it seems, very good at reading the room, whether they do so professionally or not.
Before he lights up, he still asks Gideon, "Do you mind?"
Gideon shrugs again—another red flag for Reid to obsess over—and Ethan does so, glass balanced on the wide rimmed corner of Reid's chair. In between, Reid meets Gideon's all-too-knowing eyes, though he can't quite make out what it is Gideon knows.
Ethan exhales conscientiously above them all, but the smoke draws their eyes back to the rest of the bar: all the people, unwinding, and the recorded jazz piped in overhead a quiet underscore. All these people, alive. All these people, as safe as they ever are. The mood dips into contemplation and Ethan takes note.
"So," he says as they all look at the room around them, the busy streets outside the big windows in front, "I take it this means you caught the guy? Your Ripper. Which is lame as hell, by the way—what, couldn't even do the Axeman of New Orleans?"
"Gal," Gideon answers. "And yes."
"Gal, huh?" Ethan raises a silent eyebrow Spencer's way. "Congratulations."
No one needs to clarify.
"One cannot make bricks without clay."
"The body of work on female serial killers is still lacking," Reid adds, for Ethan's benefit but mostly because he's excited to talk about it. "In particular, women engaging the police and media in writing during their crimes is almost entirely unheard of, though I'll have to double check the numbers when we get home."
"I'm supposed to believe you don't already know?"
"He likes to have the data in front of him anyway," Gideon interjects before Reid can demure further.
Reid lets him. He's not wrong, after all. Yet, despite this, he doesn't see the danger coming of two people knowing him too well interacting until he's on a collision course with it.
"Does he still do the thing where he stares into space like he's counting invisible things?" Ethan asks around a grin.
Gideon laughs for real as Reid realizes this must be what it's like when one's parents bring out the baby photos (and worse, he isn't sure who is the parent in this analogy). "Yes. Yes, he does."
"I always wanted to take him to a casino, just to see what happens. That was never gonna work, back then..." Ethan turns to Reid, "but I bet even once you actually turned 21, you still got carded."
It's a dig, but not a deep one. Like the way Morgan ribs him, it's too familiar to be mean.
Gideon smiles. "There's a reason I only play against him in chess, that's for sure."
"I've been banned most places on the strip by now," Reid recovers enough to add. "Atlantic City hasn't caught on yet, though. Mostly."
With a halfhearted toast, Ethan responds, "Sounds like a road trip to me. You can knock out my student loans in one night, I bet. What do you do with all that cash anyway?"
"I usually give the winnings to local libraries."
"Of course you do."
He shrugs. "It's important to give back."
"And it's got nothing to do with the need for librarians to be proud of you that you've had since birth."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Reid says as evenly as possible.
"Right. Sure you don't. Well, hey: to former teachers' pets. " He reaches down to clink their glasses together. "Though I'm not so sure about 'former,' in your case."
Only with Ethan's pointed head tilt does Spencer remember Gideon is still sitting there, with a front row seat to... whatever this is they've been doing. Reid immediately wants to sink through the floor, but Gideon doesn't say anything at all. That is, to an extent, all he needs to say before finishing his own drink and standing.
"Well." He glances with practiced theatrical ease at his watch, every minute gesture filling Reid with dread—at what, being seen? Maybe. Maybe more. "It's been a pleasure, boys."
Ethan, still sitting on the edge of Reid's chair, sits up a bit straighter to offer a hand while not sacrificing an inch of his lax attitude. He shakes Gideon's hand with all the confidence in the world. "Real good to meet you."
"You as well. And please, send me your album, I mean it. Reid can give you my address—or you can always send him home with a copy."
While Reid tries to figure out when they had time to talk about that, he misses the barely perceptible twitch of Ethan's lips reaching for a smile. "Alright."
Gideon turns his eyes on him as Reid hides his face behind his glass.
"I'll see you on the plane, Dr. Reid."
"Yeah."
"Wheels up at eight hundred hours," he adds casually, not looking at Ethan and yet somehow addressing him too.
"I remember." It's a touch too harsh, definitely too defensive, but Gideon nods without further commentary, knowing his point has been conveyed.
"Alright then." He nods one more time to Ethan. "Good to meet you."
Ethan nods back, and away Gideon goes, boots echoing and shoulders square against the crowd around the door until he disappears into it seamlessly.
Out of respect or disinterest, Ethan doesn't sink into Gideon's seat until he finishes the last of his drink, long after the man, the myth, the legend, has left the building. Ice tinkles as he sets his empty glass on the small table between them, and now, only occupied by his cigarette, Ethan turns his attention back to Reid with the same unspoken question in his eyes as he'd had when he noticed Reid was there.
"So. You're here again." He eventually makes it clear in words. "I gotta admit, I didn't really expect that."
"What, you thought I'd leave without saying goodbye?" Reid stares into his own glass defiantly. "That's your thing."
"Fair. Doesn't answer the question, though."
For all their unearned familiarity, for all the history they've shared, one thing about Ethan has certainly changed. He's so much calmer, not picking up the fights Reid tries to seed but letting them sail calmly by without comment. New Orleans has made him slow—languorous, like molasses, sinking easily into a lean against any bar top or wall like he was made to always be at angles with the world. Growing up, he was always louder than Spencer, always more outgoing (if to no avail outside their outcast circle) and higher energy. He wasn't too different when they were teens either, but time or bourbon or the persistent warmth of the bayou has slowed him down. His eyes linger more now. His words, more thoughtful. Maybe that's aging, but Spencer doesn't think so: he hasn't gotten any more sagacious in the meantime. Maybe it's just Ethan.
"You're jumpier than I remember," Ethan observes, but before Reid can argue, he's standing, one hand holding his cigarette and one held out to Reid. "Come on. Smoking indoors might still be legal here, but it's started to get its fair share of dirty looks."
He waits a beat to give Reid the opportunity to either accept it or answer the unspoken question before he adds, "Unless you think it'll just make you crave something else."
Reid takes the cigarette instead of the hand, inhales what he can, and stubs it out on the nearest ashtray before stalking towards the door.
"For the record," he starts as soon as Ethan joins him around the corner, out of the sidewalk traffic and disinterested yet prying ears, "the childhood prodigy rivalry is what I led with when describing you."
Leaning easily against the wall next to him, Ethan still raises an eyebrow in silent judgment of Reid's whole thing right now. "Which obviously hasn't changed."
"Sorry, I just—" The rest of the apology dies on his lips while Ethan lights a new cigarette and hands it over. He really doesn't have an answer. Instead, he takes another drag to actually feel the burn and bitter of the nicotine, twice as strong and twice as awful tasting with the time away. He doesn't finish the sentence.
Ethan takes the cigarette back for his own inhale, not offering it back as he breathes out a wobbly smoke ring. "I get it."
Reid squints through the smoke and the lowering light. Everything is becoming orange, between the streetlights ticking on and the sun setting in the distance. New Orleans, though never going to sleep, is dimming around them, changing into its nightwear. "Do you?"
"I don't know," Ethan offers back in challenge. "Do I?"
He remembers Boston: the bottles crowding out the recycling bin in their apartment, the alarms slept through for hours on end, too dead to the world to notice whether awake or asleep. It's all analgesic, in the end. Down rather than up.
"To a degree," Reid settles on.
Ethan hums thoughtfully, letting that hang for a moment unchallenged. When he does speak, it's carefully even, though lacking the recently acquired faint accent Reid has noticed slipping away with every second spent together.
"Do they know? Your team. I mean, they definitely know something, but do they know the specifics yet?"
"I haven't told anyone. But they might."
"Not even him?"
He doesn't have to clarify. "He's the last person I'd want to know, to be honest."
"Hello again, Dr. Daddy Issues."
"Look who's talking."
"Not a doctor." Ethan's eyes are smiling as he holds the cigarette out again, an overt peace offering. "But touché. He without sin and all, which I certainly don't qualify for. All too easy to rack up plenty of those out here."
Reid's face is not heating up or doing anything visibly weird. It's the humidity. "You know Vegas is Sin City. Kind of backwards to leave a place just to do the thing it's nicknamed for."
"You know as well as I do that doesn't apply to the suburbs when you're fifteen."
"I was in California by fifteen."
"And yet here we both are. Finally equals, huh?" Ethan holds his hand out patiently for the cigarette Reid's forgotten he had. "After a point, you run out of milestone birthdays, and everyone's just consenting adults."
Nothing to read into that. "Uh. Right."
It's hard not to, though—read into things, that is. Not out here, with the city's white noise around them, a comforting huddle of anonymity in a crowd. It was easier to get a handle on inside, but unfortunately, they're even more alone in public now, and Ethan looks even more handsome in streetlight orange. It's a little safer to think now that Gideon isn't around, but not by much. It's hard to ignore when he tips his head back to exhale and the dark, sharp edge of his jaw comes into view. There's something else to it, too. He's, what, an inch taller than Spencer? And even less at the moment, leaning against the wall. Yet he feels taller than Spencer in a way he's not really used to, and better at it—not gawky and twig-like but proportionately tall. Tall in a way that matches his look, the dark eyes and the way his hair falls when he leans over the cigarette to protect it from the wind. Tall, dark, and handsome, a knowing voice in Reid's brain provides, is an archetype for a reason.
"It's funny how much of a difference two years felt like then, right?" Ethan asks, thankfully interrupting this line of thought before Reid can get too far into it, though his change of subject isn't completely unrelated. "I mean, 13 and 15 were separate planets back then, but looking at it now, we were equally fucked up kids, and equally fucked up adults now."
"Pretty sure we were technically both fucked up adults the last time I saw you too," Reid counters, though that accidentally shows his hand even more. He tries to and partially succeeds in turning around into a dig by adding, "Some of us more than others."
Still, Ethan doesn't mention it, even as the easy way he doesn't pass back the cigarette but tuck it back into Reid's lips for him says it all.
"You know what I think? You, Dr. Reid, need to lighten up."
"I am," he says around the cigarette, mumbling and not inhaling. Then, to prove it, he inhales, holding it in as long as he can without embarrassing himself. "See? Lightened."
"Uh huh."
He blows out smoke as ostentatiously as possible. "I'm relaxed!"
"And yet you're still uptight beyond your years. Come on. A tie?" Ethan grabs the knot of it, giving Reid a shake. "Do you even own short sleeves?"
"Like button downs?"
"Ninety percent humidity on a Saturday night and you're dressed for a conference. Hold on."
Reclaiming their cigarette, Ethan holds it in the corner of his mouth for safe keeping as he reaches over to pull at Spencer's tie with both hands. "Come on, buddy, loosen up. This is New Orleans. You wear a tie down here, they'll hang you with it."
"You say that like we're not from the exact same place," Reid argues back, but it's a lost cause once Ethan tugs the end of his tie free from his collar. He at least drapes it back around Spencer's neck for him, though. It's the little things.
"There." Ethan sticks the cigarette back in Reid's mouth. "Now you're ready for the Big Easy."
"Just in time to leave. So," Reid starts, every word feeling awkwardly new in his mouth, like something plastic whose edges are not yet rounded by being worn down, "how'd you end up here anyway?"
"Where? The big city? Or its seedy underbelly?"
"It's not that big," is Reid's blindly witty response. "Honestly, it doesn't even really feel like a city."
Ethan laughs. "It doesn't, does it? I always thought it was cuz the buildings aren't vertical enough. You think of New York, right? Skyscrapers and lights."
"In theory. I've never been."
"What, you've been to Atlantic City enough to get banned but never been to New York?"
"Well." He thinks about it. "Not really. Not outside of crime scenes. I don't take vacations."
"It's like that Asimov quote. Tall buildings that soar, stretch, strain."
Out and up to the stars, it reached, Reid's memory finishes, to the stars that had now turned away. He thinks about looking at the clouded night through barren branches and wondering if it would be the last thing he saw. He reclaims the cigarette for a while.
"I knew you were paying attention," he says eventually. "DC is like that too."
"Something about not being taller than the Capitol or something, right?"
"That's actually a myth. It's more to do with zoning laws and the width of streets, the tallest building in the city is actually the Washington Post headquarters across from the White House. It's not poetic, it's bureaucracy."
Ethan just quirks an eyebrow. "Sounds pretty damn poetic when you put it that way."
"It's a fact."
Another infuriatingly blasé shrug. "It can't be both?"
"No, the two categories just usually don't overlap."
"How do you explain you, then?"
Spencer snorts, an ungainly, unattractive thing.
"Seriously?" It's too pretentious, even for him. "I am not a poet."
But Ethan hums: disagreement, clearly, though Spencer has no idea why. He doesn't have to wait long for any kind of clarification.
"First off, don't think I haven't noticed you're dodging the original question."
"What question?" Reid asks, so flatly it may as well not be a question. Ethan tips his head, acknowledging the dodge again but not contesting it, and thus earning himself another small smile from Spencer, brief as it is. As it is, the conversation continues as if this little exchange never happened.
"I admit, I forgot that about you," Ethan says, considering, as if appreciative of the insight while in the midst of having it. "You know, you start to remember someone as an outline more than anything, but you weren't ever just the boy genius. You could always tell your mom taught medieval poetry."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Just that you're not so different from us tortured artists as you look."
"You don't know anything about me anymore," Reid tries to counter, but as true as it is, it falls flat. "What, do you still cover your room in Billy Joel posters and hate broccoli? When was the last time you talked to Laura Stanton, or Beedo, or anyone else from chess club?"
"Jesus, Beedo," is all Ethan says to that, with all the wonder of someone who hasn't thought about the name in years.
"Exactly. Things change. You know the me I was when I was eleven, that doesn't mean you know me now."
"Didn't just know you at eleven," Ethan points out. "And something tells me you haven't changed that much."
"Not as much as you, you mean."
Maybe it's projecting, a desperate attempt at deflection, but it seems to land somewhat; Ethan's shrug then is more defensive than casual. "This place is a long way from Quantico."
"That doesn't mean you're any different," Reid argues. "Geography has nothing to do with the kind of person you are. Besides, it's not like I'm there right now, am I?"
That's neither true in the slightest nor at all the point, and Reid doubts he's going to get away with it as easily the second time. Too soon, too fast: Ethan's unimpressed look confirms that he sees it too, but the conversation moves on without addressing it. So caught up in that dodged bullet is Reid that he misses the next one coming back around to get him.
"Alright," Ethan concedes, "so you can leave home, but home never leaves you. Congrats, James Baldwin. Has that got anything to do with what's got you all Pagliacci, or is it just the job and the drugs?"
Despite the comparison and lingering bleakness, the laugh Reid huffs out his own drag on is genuine. Ethan takes the cigarette back with a closed, sideways smile.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Maybe I should've been the profiler after all." He inhales before adding, "You oughta smile more, y'know. Even if it doesn't change anything. You look about twenty pounds lighter with one laugh."
"I never said you were right," Reid defends, though he doesn't say now that he was wrong either, "I just wasn't expecting a commedia dell'arte reference."
Ethan smiles. "Yeah, well, your behavior said it all."
He doesn't argue this either. "Why Pagliacci?"
"I guess it's less sad clown and more sad crime-solving savant, but am I wrong?"
"Actually," Spencer can't help smiling himself, "'Pagliacci' means clowns, popularized by Leoncavallo's 1892 opera of the same name in which Cavio, a man playing the clown Pagliaccio, murders his wife and her lover onstage. The origin of Pagliacci as a stereotypical sad clown like in the joke comes from Watchmen almost a decade later."
"Alright, but Watchmen's clearly more culturally significant," Ethan says without missing a beat—coincidentally right as Spencer realizes that was probably way too much detail again.
"Obviously."
"Though I guess, given it's said in the story by a Nazi scumbag, maybe not the most trustworthy historical source."
"There's that too."
It's... disproportionately gratifying to realize, even belatedly, that Ethan didn't think twice before volleying back: that there wasn't a second where he was so much as taken aback by the rambling. No moment where he thought about commenting on how much Spencer was. Never a thought.
"He isn't even a particularly sad clown. He's a zanni, which is a trickster and astute servant. If anything, the joke should be about Pierrot."
"Zanni, huh? Is that where 'zany' comes from?"
"It is, actually, yeah."
They exchange a smile, then the cigarette once more. Maybe it's the fact that he's certain there's no murderer on the prowl, but tonight the streets around them feel unfathomably more alive.
"'Astute' works alright," Ethan says eventually. "Though I stand by the sad part."
"Oh. Um."
Spencer goes to take another drag and finds the cigarette gone, glowing its way over to faintly illuminate Ethan and then out of reach.
"Uh huh. Don't think you got away with it that easily, Spence."
The unfamiliarly familiar nickname catches him even further off-guard. He forgot Ethan used to call him that too. It makes this (along with a hell of a lot of other stuff) that much more embarrassing, not in the least because Spencer Reid isn't supposed to forget anything. He definitely isn't supposed to forget something like that, from someone like this. Someone he once knew better than anyone. Better than himself.
That's his point, though, isn't it: that they don't really know each other anymore, even if Ethan remembers things like his favorite color being purple and what century of literature his mom taught. So why is he so pissed about it?
"So what is it?" Ethan asks, eyebrow raised but cigarette offered: half stubborn, half forgiving. Maybe they don't know each other anymore, but maybe that's what makes it possible for Reid to answer without further obfuscation: without anymore smoke to hide behind.
"I don't..." He feels his face contort with a frown, a grimace, or something indescribable. "I think I'm having a crisis of faith."
One of Ethan's eyebrows goes up, though it's somehow nonjudgmental. "Alright then. Faith in what?"
"That's the thing," Spencer says faintly. "I don't know exactly."
He doesn't continue immediately, but there's no pressure to do so when Ethan is just watching him, patiently, as their shared cigarette burns down slowly between them. This part is different: being able to sit in silence with each other, not competing for attention—either that of a teacher or parent or even each other—nor letting loose the usual stream of passion about nerdy things that would put off anyone else. The maturity of silence is new for them, but not unwelcome in a moment like this.
"I'm supposed to be a man of science," Spencer eventually starts. He blinks away the brightness of the streetlights against the darkened sky and blinks away, at the same time, his almost-last memory, that awful, impossible light at the end of the tunnel. "Facts and statistics. Evidentiary theories. I'm not supposed to have a faith to lose."
"Faith in science, then?"
"It— I don't know. I mean, it's not like the science has changed. Why should I suddenly stop 'believing' in it?"
"Maybe you believe in it the way other people do religion," Ethan offers.
"How do you mean?"
"I mean, if your faith in humanity's so tied up in faith in science you can't pull them apart anymore, you might think losing one means giving up on the other."
"Maybe..." He thinks about it, really thinking, but the half understanding he gets to is whisked away by a breeze.
"I mean, I could see that. You've always been kinda philosophical. Thinky. Like I said: poetic."
"What?" Reid, for some reason, balks. "No."
Ethan doesn't flinch, though, as he meets Spencer with an unimpressed stare. "Come on, man. I mean, first there's your mom, all her ballads and morality plays. You always liked the thinky scifi best, and you never turned down a philosophy debate. I'm not surprised."
"I never turned down an anything debate, and neither did you," Spencer counters. "And only one of us is an artist, and it's certainly not me."
"Uh huh." A man of few words, it's easy to see when Ethan is gearing up for the opposite, but Spencer somehow misses the signs as he's handed the cigarette to take care of. "You read people for a living, Spence. That's the definition of a soft skill."
"It's behavioral analysis—"
"Softer than you'd like to admit, maybe, but it's not all cold and rational science. The shit you study isn't exactly protons and neutrons, data on a screen—" He raises his hand before Spencer can interrupt again. "Which is why, honestly, it'd be more fucked up if you didn't have a crisis of faith every so often."
"Oh, so that's where this is going."
"It is, yeah. Consider it my version of a pep talk."
"So you're saying I'm doomed to have nightmares every night?" Spencer tries to joke. "Yeah, that's a hell of a pep talk."
It falls flat. It falls very flat, but Ethan doesn't mention it.
"I'm saying you're only human, Spencer. You're gonna get rattled. But you don't gotta let it drive you to whatever edge you're on."
"I know that."
The usual self-castigating urges rise up with that line of thinking: mind over matter, you should be above this, shouldn't let things get to you, you're better, smarter, than all of this. With Ethan there, though, having gone through all the same kind of struggles and just as smart and somehow, now, all that much happier for not having to work so hard, it's easier to ignore those voices.
"Alright," Ethan nods. "So long as you do."
The air goes out of Spencer—the fight. Ethan doesn't mention that either.
"And I'm not poetic, or whatever," Spencer adds, just to end on a different note. "I don't know where you got that idea. I'm a nerd, plain and simple."
It's an obvious change of subject, but Ethan lets it go without mention, floating away on a rare breeze in the maze of city streets. "No one ever said you can't be both."
"Well, I wasn't. You of all people should know. We read all the same stuff."
"Yeah, and now I'm a twenties gentleman's worst fear, all improv music and booze and casual sex. First and Last Men, my life is not."
Geez. For that reference alone, Reid could kiss him. The argument is too fun, though. "And mine is? I don't remember developing a hive mind with the future of humanity."
"Well, I wouldn't put it past you. That wasn't my point, though."
"Oh yeah?" He's smiling now, he can't help it. "You had one?"
"Yeah, smartass." Ethan doesn't take the bait—just quirks an eyebrow his way. "All I know is, while I was reading Chuck Palahniuk, you were reading Ursula K Le Guin, which about sums it up."
"I read Palahniuk too," Spencer argues. Because you did. "And we both read Vonnegut. Plenty philosophical."
"Alright, then meditative. And you were never into Palahniuk the same way."
"That's not true. I found the meta-narrative surrounding 'Guts' a fascinating example of both the fear mongering rhetoric of book banning and an experiment in the physical effects of fiction, how the written word comes to life in the body—" He sees the look on Ethan's face: not the lost stare or even eye rolling reaction of most people, but instead a knowing, quiet smile. Still, he reins it back in. "Point taken."
"It's funny. I mean, it's not like I forgot you could on forever like the Energizer Bunny, I just didn't remember… I don't know."
"They call it info dumping," Spencer offers before curiosity takes over. "Didn't remember what?"
"How cute it was."
One part of him doesn't know what to make of it, while the other does, very much so, but doesn't know what to do with that understanding. "Well. I was a kid."
Ethan watches himself ash their cigarette to the side. "Different kind of cute now."
To an extent, he's surprised it took this long to come up. It was an undercurrent through all last night, drawn out silently until neither of them could find any other excuse to stick around. Then, he could almost have a modicum of plausible deniability; half occupied with constantly ducking Prentiss's calls and still, technically, on the job, it's not like Reid could really get into the whole thing.
Now, though, without the pressure of a killer on the loose, there's room in Reid's mind for not just memories but questions. Not just what was, but what ifs.
"When you asked... if I was gonna ask 'the question,'" Spencer starts carefully. "At first, I thought that was what you were talking about."
Ethan shrugs. "It wasn't not. But I could tell pretty quick it didn't have anything to do with what's still on your mind."
"But you never—"
It sounds whiny before he even says it, but Spencer manages to bite down on the worst of it before it gets out. It doesn't matter anymore, really, but Ethan wasn't wrong. Dr. Daddy Issues has some clearly related abandonment issues, and it still stings to be left behind without so much as a goodbye. Everyone wants closure, right? That's understandable. It's just pathetic to be this upset over something so comparatively small, after all these years of watching worse things happen to other people.
He settles on saying, "It's not like we ever talked about it."
There was a lot to not talk about. That made it both easier, and harder, to talk about it now when the simplest explanation was that they were stupid kids together, and then stupider young adults, who careened back into each other's lives with too much impact to ever really get the resulting stains out.
"I don't think we wanted to."
In the end, it was fairly textbook: Ethan graduated at a steadier rate, ending up in Cambridge the same time as Reid's second doctorate. They stayed roommates all four years of his undergrad, even as Reid finished in half the time. There's a reason he broke his no-repeats rule to take MIT's chemistry program too, and not just because the thought of adjusting to another roommate was exhausting and rent isn't cheap. It was stupid, and mundane, and completely predictable. He was, still, a teenager. They both were. It was, as they say, college, with all the fumbling, hormonal connotations that carries.
"Well, then we were stupid."
"Yeah, that was the general idea. You wanna do something about it now?"
In a sense, that period of his life was the most normal Spencer's ever been, which might be saying something considering that he was getting two doctorates in the span of one "normal" degree at one of the best schools in the country, but, well, he can only do so much. And when he had to go home to send his mother away, and happened to run into Ethan on his way out of the same hometown… Well, in the end, it was almost predictable. Same right time, same right place.
"I want—"
Ethan, though. Ethan was never really so easy to understand. He was… brilliant, like a supernova, but at the same time normal, the way Spencer could never quite manage. He went to parties, he overslept exams, he slept with many people and, as every smart kid learns to do at some point, always pulled up his grades at the last minute like a low-flying stunt plane. In retrospect, Spencer was pretty damn normal too: moony-eyed, eager to prove himself, missing his mom like any other seventeen year old on campus. He lost his virginity in a dorm with someone blasting Oasis in the room next door: from what he's heard, it doesn't get more average than that. It was pretty simple, too, borne from a human-stupid love of familiarity. Ethan still reminded him of the desert: the empty sound of playgrounds after dark, sand skittering along the open pavement, all too easy to mistake for an alien planet. Playing Star Trek and Watchmen, writing their own Martian adventures in the park as they'd each forbidden the other from coming over during Science Fair season. Even in Boston, they were far from the only robotics club alumni, Ethan was still different. Still understood Spencer more than, it felt like sometimes, anyone else on the planet.
The question he didn't ask wasn't Why did you leave? It was Why did you leave me?
All of this is to say that when the rain starts falling and Ethan pulls them under the bare cover of the nearest fire escape, Spencer's hands stop shaking for the first time all night when they land on Ethan's jaw.
It's so different from getting high. He feels more in his body than he ever has, yet the escape is the same. They're pressed together knee to chest, and it's like the rain is both too cold and too warm, heavy with wet clothes, over sensitive, over stimulated. It's too much. It's perfect. For a moment, Spencer Reid gets to be a creature of matter over mind, and no one gets hurt. Not even him. And his hands stop feeling cold.
This is a bad idea, is the one thought that goes through his head as their mouths slot together, warm and wet from the sudden rain. A stupid, bad idea. Spencer knows all the stats about addicts in relationships (not a relationship, a stubborn voice in the front of his head insists) or, alright, in conjunction then, even as fleeting as this. No one enables you better than someone looking for an excuse to be enabled in return, but that's not what it is—a blind, stubborn argument, but it's not. It's different. Setting aside their mismatched vices, Ethan has already proved he won't push him in that direction, and vice versa. Even if they have sex, that doesn't mean things will go down that road. Wanting one thing doesn't mean wanting the other.
But it maybe does, if you have any kind of history. Reid can't think about any of that right now, though—it's too much, even for him, to get into when there's the ready and powerful distraction of Ethan's tongue in his mouth, his hands heavy on Spencer's hips. Cigarette completely forgotten and left for smoldering dead, the fire escape they're under isn't quite enough to block all the rain, but the constant metallic pinging precludes any self-consciousness Spencer would otherwise have about things like the sound of his own breathing, any noise he might unwittingly make, the way his shoes squeak on the wet ground. His hands feel too big on Ethan's face, fingers too thin and getting in the way, but it doesn't matter. The white noise makes everything okay. He doesn't have to think so damn much. For once, he can just do. Just be. Being has plenty to keep him occupied, that's for sure, in the form of hands with seeking fingers and tongues with the taste of—
"I never closed out my tab," Spencer realizes belatedly, squinting at the bricks above them as his head tilts back to make room for wherever Ethan is going. Where is he going? Oh. Right. Yes. Definitely that.
"It's fine," Ethan says against his pulse. "They know you're with me. No doubt it'll be on my tab tomorrow."
He also realizes pretty belatedly that they're technically in public. There's even a service door into the bar in question a few feet down the very wall at his back, a discovery that runs through him coldly in direct contrast to the heat of Ethan pressed against him on the other side. "Do they know, uh...?"
The rain fills the pause between as Ethan pulls back only so much, their noses colliding and breath shared completely. The rain is warm, objectively, but their small shelter is warmer. "This is New Orleans, Spencer. They don't care."
"Right."
"Besides, I'm sure this alley's seen a lot worse over the years." Then, quick as lightning, he adds, "Which I'm sure you could tell me all about, but that might ruin the mood."
Spencer snorts before being the one to lean back in this time, pressing Ethan into the brick instead and swallowing his responding laughter.
The good thing is, even with that white noise of the soft rain around them, he can feel the equally soft noises between them so clearly it's as if he can hear them. Ethan moans against him and the reverberation of air and lips is as good as a gunshot in the night. Still, Spencer finds himself chasing the sound, pressing and pulling closer, closer, until he can convince himself the ribs steadily expanding and contracting under his hands are his own. Like they're one person.
A flicker of doubt follows that last thought, full of regret and selfishness, but it's quickly doused by the way Ethan's hand winds through the hair at the nape of Spencer's neck and tugs. (People in the past have told Spencer that he has piano player hands, apparently as flirting, but he didn't get it until now—now, well, suffice to say that he understands the appeal.) There's no questioning whether he wants this too when their hips press together, and actually, this is the best idea Reid's ever had. Actually, they should never do anything else.
As if in agreement, the rain starts falling harder, more insistently cutting into and then drowning out everything between the two men. Between one breath and another, Ethan tugs them further along the wall until they fall into an alcove in a tangle of limbs, eighty percent of them Spencer's.
"Why do they even bother giving you a gun?"
"Jesus, seriously?" Reid's laugh sputters out full of rainwater. "'Is that a gun in your pocket'? Even I know that one."
With a silent laugh, Ethan kisses him quickly, mouths open. They're that close when he corrects, "Cuz I was gonna say you don't need to: those elbows are deadly weapons all on their own."
"Fuck you."
"I'm kinda getting that idea, yeah."
Though he means to stop himself, Spencer's eyes drop instinctively to his mouth, a different kind of wet shine in the half light of the alley. "That wasn't, uh. I mean. We don't have to—"
Ethan thankfully kisses him again before he has to finish that sentence, but it's quick. Their mouths slide off each other too easily, between the rain and spit, but it shuts him up long enough for Ethan to say, "Relax, Spencer. I get it. Now can you please breathe?"
He does. His lungs fill with the acrid aftertaste of twice smoked tobacco, the sweet honey of whiskey, and rainy human heat. His fingers are cramping already with his too-tight grip on Ethan's wet vest, but he can't get himself to hold any less. All of this, every detail, is something to hold onto when lately all he wants to do is let go of everything. Spencer breathes it all in, and then out.
"I like the bangs," Ethan says, pushing back the half-wet hair in question with the wide palm of his hand. It would be an almost childishly clumsy gesture if it weren't for the pulse of sparks that runs down Spencer's spine at the touch.
"Thanks." Their faces are still too close to think properly, but Spencer's almost sure he can hear something else in the words. He gets his answer soon enough.
"Can't decide if they make you look more or less like a kid."
"Shut up." Even if he didn't kiss him quickly afterwards anyway, the words are completely empty. Still, they cut through the sound of rain, as does Ethan's answering grin.
"Aha. There he is." His voice, Spencer suddenly realizes, is lower than it was last time they did this. Somewhat embarrassingly, the effect is the same as it always was. "The smartass who landed us both in detention after one week of shop class."
"That was because you wouldn't stop making jokes about drilling—"
"No, it was cuz you kept correcting the teacher's terminology."
"That wasn't— The difference between an awl and—" Spencer's hands grab Ethan's vest more, pulling them closer without moving at all. They go from hip to hip to their legs winding together completely. In return, Ethan's hand slides back easily to cover his nape, the dampening space between his collar and neck where cool, wet hair shocks against the warmth of skin on either side. "That was ten years ago, why are we arguing about this right now?"
"You love to argue," Ethan answers, readily and correctly. Their faces are too close to distinguish. Still, Spencer knows what expression he's wearing and is infuriated by it in a way he remembers from years ago, a mix of irritation and desire that can only be solved one way.
"I do not," he manages to get out as the last word before they're colliding again.
This time, they stick. Tucked into a little haven of bricks, still low enough to the ground that water logs their shoes, Spencer presses Ethan into the wall until they might as well be one person to the outside eye. It's easy to get lost in the rhythm of it: the push and pull an extension of their earlier petty argument, now spoken in the sign language of hands in hair and on hips. Hands wander, dragging against wet denim and hot skin underneath. It's the blood rush of being set right side up after hours on one's head, the bottom heavy feeling of feeling upside down despite having feet on solid ground. It's every feeling at once and yet nothing at all, just pure, blissful silence. It's too much and it's exactly what Spencer needs.
When it becomes more the former than the latter, he has to break away—for air, he'd insist if anyone asked, even though no one will. Ethan is breathing heavily too, which is comforting as well as heady. At least Spencer's not the only one.
"All good?" Ethan breathes.
"I, uh—" Even though he knows he shouldn't, he asks, "What are we doing?"
It feels suddenly like a precipice at his feet, a last moment where he could either fall back into solid land, scraped elbows and all, or see what happens in free fall. It feels like a decision Spencer doesn't want to make.
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't want to think about it," he admits to the humidity between their bodies.
"Alright," Ethan says, tipping his head back and up so their eyes have nowhere to go but each other's, "so don't."
Spencer can't tell exactly if it's that he's too hot or Ethan's too cold, but the press of their foreheads together is soothing like his bathroom's crystal doorknob against his temple, always cool, also grounding. The rain around them hasn't gotten too bad yet, but it too is cool in comparison to their bodies. Cool rain on the heat flush of his neck.
The precipice, it turns out, is so easy to fall off of.
"You live nearby," he says. It's not a question: he remembers clearly Ethan years ago vowing to never again live so far from his place of work he couldn't drag his hungover ass there.
"Let me guess: my geographic profile?"
There's too much water down the back of Spencer's collar to argue. "Sure."
"Well, congrats, agent. You've done it again. You wanna confirm your theory? I'm sure you can tell all sorts of things from my dish towels."
"Yeah." He wipes the hair out of his eyes. "Yes. If that's okay with—" In case it betters his chances, he kisses Ethan quickly one more time, trying to make it the best he can. Logically, he knows one kiss isn't going to make a difference, but he still feels he has to try. "Yes."
"Alright," Ethan agrees all too easily. "Can I tell you something first, though?"
For all that Spencer is unsure he won't try to run for the hills the second Ethan stops touching him, he nods anyway. Whatever it is, he might as well hear it. It can't possibly be worse than anything else he's accidentally said tonight. Unless Ethan is married or something. Wait, he's not married is he? Reid would've figured that out by now, right? And it doesn't sound like something Ethan would do—well, maybe the affair part, but no, not really. It's not out of the question, though...
"I am sorry, y'know."
"What?" Spencer doesn't hear it at first, lost under the roar of blood into, through, and far from his ears. "For what?"
"Virginia. Leaving. Not saying anything."
"That—" There's water in his eyelashes, water in his ears. Rainwater clinging to the back of his tongue, far from the lingering taste of Ethan's mouth on his. "I'm fine. It doesn't matter anymore."
"Sure. But I know it used to. And I was sorry then, just like I'm sorry now."
"Oh. Uh. Okay."
Earnestness suffuses the air between them, so much so that when it gets hard to bear, Spencer dips forward so there's less fog between them. It's just their foreheads touching (and hands and hips and even knees) but it's enough to realize something else.
"I think I probably loved you," Spencer says before he knows what the words are going to be. A flicker of a stupid daydream comes back to him, with the clarity and fuzz of a rarely recalled memory. "Back then. I mean. I think I might've been in love with you. Which, y'know, could happen again."
It feels too dramatic, but it doesn't feel wrong. He means it: he probably was. It would explain some things. And even if he isn't now, the memory of that feeling isn't hard to recall. What is hard is trying not to act on it for his past self's sake: for the Reid that didn't know and couldn't say anything. For the Ethan, then, who really could've stood to hear it. For every version of them both.
"Yeah."
It's all Ethan says in return, but it isn't cruel. It isn't dodging the implicit question, neither the response expected or dreaded when someone says those three (ish) words. It just is, because they both know it's true and have no need to say more. And maybe, just maybe, because he's already admitted the same thing a moment before.
"So," Spencer says with the last bit of breath in his lungs, "which way do you live?"
At exactly 7:25 the next morning, Spencer's body wakes him up with just enough time to collect his still damp clothes before doubling back to the not-quite-far-enough-for-comfort hotel to pick up his bags and meet the rest of the team in the lobby to head to the tarmac together. Just barely, though: no time for much of anything else. If he hurries, he might even be able to change his clothes first, though the idea isn't as encouraging as it should be. If anything, the prospect just makes him want to crawl back under the sheets and forget the entire life he's supposed to have. He doesn't want to go home. He doesn't want anyone to realize he's in yesterday's clothes. He doesn't want no one to ever know. He just doesn't. He's too tired to.
But he promised Gideon he'd be on the plane.
Still, he lingers, fingers spreading over the empty sheets next to him. They haven't been empty for long: still warm. He half remembers waking in the night to find himself half draped over Ethan, who was holding him back in his sleep too. It was... cozy, as alien a sensation as that is to Spencer, and he fell back asleep without any further effort. Still, rare as it is, he isn't put off by the emptiness now. His subconscious has already filled in the blank from the faint but fresh smell of smoke in the room. Spencer can't forget much of anything, but it would only take half a second of knowing Ethan to know that he'd be smoking out the open window.
Spencer sits up and is somehow startled at the state of his body—not because of the stereotypical "morning after"-ness of it, but rather the overall good feeling that permeates every inch of him. He doesn't feel wretched, doesn't even feel guilty, once he realizes there's no pounding headache, no sour taste in his mouth, no pervasive itchy feeling that has to be psychosomatic but is nevertheless unstoppable. Sure, his hair probably looks incredibly stupid and he's somehow wearing Ethan's undershirt and nothing else, but it doesn't compare to the realization that he feels well rested for the first time in weeks.
The only thing, he notices with a glance over himself, would be the bruises: tender, maroon marks that each bring with them a vivid memory of heat and wetness. Maybe it's the morning light, but there seem to be more of them than Spencer remembers. Certainly not as many (he realizes with silent mortification) as Ethan has, though.
Not that they're visible at the moment. With a second's more attention, he finds the shape of him, leaning over the open window with a silent cigarette. Ethan at the very least has more clothes on, even if they're still as disheveled and undone as Spencer feels: plain black t-shirt full of wrinkles, long striped shirt with every button unbuttoned, and pants that hang loosely over the tops of his bare feet. It fits him better than Spencer at least, the whole rumpled thing. It only seems different from his usual look because Spencer remembers the exact way the waves of his hair came about this time, the feeling of the strands between his own fingers, and all the things that came after. He knows what that skin tastes like, in a variety of places and a variety of circumstances.
Everything is hard to forget for someone with a mind like his, but he gets the feeling he'd be stuck in the same mental loop regardless. And after all, why not? It was (humbly) pretty good sex. Pretty sure he's allowed to dwell on it.
After a moment of this, he clears his throat. "Hey."
"Hey." Though Ethan doesn't turn, there's a faint smile clear in his voice. "Morning, Sleeping Beauty."
"Who are you calling Sleeping Beauty?" There's no alarm clock on the nightstand and Spencer's watch is somewhere else, so there's no real way of knowing how late it is, but he's confident enough from the slant of the sun that it isn't that late. Still, while he's out of sight, he rubs his face with the palms of both hands to get rid of any sleep in the corners of his eyes.
"Take a look in the mirror and get back to me."
Ethan's head turns back with slightly more smile than before. He looks, otherwise, exactly as Spencer expected. It's about the only thing he feels prepared for now.
Trying in vain to look casual while flattening his bedhead with both hands, Spencer clears his throat again. "So. Uh."
"Uh huh?"
Spencer thinks for a very long second.
"...Good morning?"
He doesn't have sex often enough to be completely comfortable with the whole "morning after" subtype of human interaction, but he really doesn't know how to handle this specific scenario. He gets the feeling even regular dating wouldn't help him here—how are you supposed to act after a one night stand with the guy you lost your virginity to in multiple senses years ago, for years, before he abandoned his entire life including you without a word? It's not like Spencer has a lot of experience with this. He doubts anyone does.
Thankfully something like his version of instinct takes over. Most of his clothes are within reach of the bed and it's easy to grab them when Ethan's eyes move back to the window when he breathes out, leaving Spencer to scramble undignifiedly into damp pants in relative privacy. Everything is wrinkly, most of it still wet at the seams and cuffs but all of it smelling like rain.
As he pulls himself together, Spencer can't help taking a good look around the studio apartment. He was a little busy last night, but it's exactly what he would have imagined: the dark wood floors, bare furniture, records everywhere. Sparse, but comfortably so. Lived in, with abandoned water glasses and empty plates on random surfaces. The sheets he was laying in are worn soft and there's a familiar Radiohead poster on the inside of the closet door, wrinkled and faded in contrast to the nicer, framed gig posters. John Coltrane presides over the kitchen half of the room, but Spencer recognizes the flaking spines of Douglas Adams on the bottom of the bookshelf. Stacks of cheap thrillers with crackled covers. Charmingly real in all its dust and mess. Exactly what Spencer would have pictured.
He's struck by the brief, vivid image of a future where he didn't go back to Virginia, instead staying here, in these four walls, learning to love new foods and new books and new people in an old world with an old friend. Like he's in a Bogie-Bacall picture. Old flames, rekindled. Lives unled and second chances. A romantic, cinematic scene, scored by jazz and light through diffuse smoke—or something autumnal and urban, like a Simon & Garfunkel song. It's a stupid, impossible daydream that lasts only a second for dissipating in the cool air that sneaks underneath the sheets, and it won't ever happen, but for a second, Spencer has that thought, and it's his to keep. For a second, the world where such things are possible for Spencer Reid exists, even if only in abstract. Then the image fades into the cool grey of morning like dreams of the night.
"There's coffee, if you want."
Spencer nods even though it won't be seen. He does, of course, but from the way he said it he gets the weird feeling Ethan doesn't mean it. "I'm alright, thanks. I should get going."
"Right. Your plane."
"Can't really miss it."
He finds one shoe easily enough, but the other isn't anywhere nearby. That's... weirdly embarrassing.
"Not this time, anyway. Right?"
Spencer just blinks, brain awake enough to recognize he never told him that but not enough to connect the dots entirely.
Ethan half smiles, barely. "That's what I thought."
Gideon. "All my stuff's at the hotel, and I should change first anyway. My clothes are..." He shudders under the feeling of wet, awful wrinkles. "Yeah."
"True walk of shame," he says with an actual smile then. He stays sentry at the window even as he adds, "You can borrow a shirt, if you think you're gonna run into anyone in the lobby."
"And take it with me straight to the plane? Not exactly 'borrowing.'"
"Guess you'll just have to bring it back." There's an ashtray in the windowsill, but Ethan doesn't bother with it, staring into the middle distance across the street. "Maybe even take a vacation for once: see more sights than crime scenes, if you can manage. Think they'll let you borrow the jet?"
"I doubt it. Maybe you'll just have to visit me. I came to you this time, it's your turn."
"Oh yeah? And what am I gonna do in DC? If I'm paying for airfare, it better be good."
"I've never played tour guide before," Reid admits. "Uh. The National Gallery? They have this fascinating cycle of paintings about Joan of Arc. Air and Space— No, Udvar Hazy. There's a great Ethiopian restaurant by my place."
The faint smile on Ethan's face slowly gets more genuine with every word, even as it never breaks through to a real smile. "Do I get to stay in your guest room, or do I have to shell out for a hotel too?"
"Dealer's choice," Spencer says. There's an unspoken question, one he isn't quite sure about himself, that's running underneath when he adds, "I don't actually have a guest room, though. If that changes anything."
As Ethan shrugs and turns back to the window, Spencer remembers with sudden clarity the emotional ebbs and flows, tangled as they were in his own preoccupations, that colored their days then. In the light of day, his own issues beaten back ever so much by one good night's sleep, it's easier to see Ethan clearly. It's all there, in the hang of his shoulders and the wrinkles between his brows. The demons he'd been drowning years ago haven't gone away, even if they're kept at bay and/or partially exorcised by the music. The dark circles under Reid's eyes have found their equals on Ethan's face, and Spencer gets the idea that the latter are far more permanent tenants. He's not exactly unused to seeing that haunted look on people's faces—it's an occupational hazard, if not prerequisite—but that doesn't mean it doesn't sadden him to see it here, on this face, in this morning light.
"Hey, Spence?"
"Yeah?" He tries not to perk up. He tries not to think about that stupid daydream. But it's been hours since he last shot up and, stuck between the thin skin feeling of needing a hit and the relaxation of an actual good night's sleep regardless, a place where hope is not so easy to evade.
"Your other shoe's by the desk."
"Right." It can't be anything but a dismissal and Spencer tries not to let it sting. "Thanks."
He's going to get it, head buzzing with the singular focus of getting back to the hotel, to his things, to his bag, when Ethan's voice stops him in his tracks again, sounding tired but less sharp.
"And..."
Ethan doesn't move from his post in the window, but he turns back to look him in the eye. "I'm not exactly sponsor material over here, but whenever you're ready to quit whatever it is, let me know? I've got some tips that probably transfer."
It shouldn't mean anything: he's right, he's not sponsor material, and Spencer's earlier sensible inner voice reminds him again about addicts in relationships. But it means something nevertheless. It means a lot, actually. It's an offer of help, and it's the first he's gotten, seriously, and it means... Shit. It means a lot.
Thankfully, he hasn't gotten far enough to make it awkward when he then blurts in response, "Can I kiss you?"
It's an honest question, though it feels stupid to ask given that the answer has demonstrably been "yes" probably at least a hundred times in the last 12 hours, but Spencer does anyway. It's different, now: in the daylight, in Ethan's home, in the chill of the morning. It feels important to ask permission for it, even as it feels important to do regardless.
The nuance doesn't escape Ethan, even though his expression doesn't betray one way or the other as he says, "You're quite the gentleman now, huh."
Before Spencer can worry about overstepping, though, he nods. "Yeah."
"Okay."
So he does, deliberately closing his eyes only after Ethan does the same. His hands don't feel like they've changed any in the night, but they seem to fit better now against Ethan's cheeks, not at all awkward and malproportioned. Maybe it's the deliberateness of the gesture, the knowledge of exactly what he's planning to do and why. Maybe it's just practice. Either way, it's steady. Sure.
Spencer pauses a moment, just a moment, to memorize everything about it he can before he leans in and his eyes close too. It's simple and honest and kind, the way children kiss, and then a bit not, like adults lingering after a party, after everyone has gone home and things are quiet. And it's, okay, not exactly chaste, and a little thrilling for that exact reason, but it doesn't go on long enough to become anything more than what Spencer meant by it. It is a statement. It says something all its own. It needn't do anything more.
Their lips part, eventually. They have to. The quiet lingers like it's as unwilling as the both of them to let it go completely. It's a thick quiet: protective, almost. It covers the sound of people in the street below, just starting their own hungover days, like it's keeping them in their own bubble. For the first (and maybe last) time of this trip, nothing outside gets in.
The thing to finally break it is the smallest click of Spencer's own throat, but it doesn't shock him from the moment, just makes his forehead collapse against Ethan's with a bit more resignation than he was planning to let seep into the moment.
"Okay."
"Okay," Ethan echoes, recognizing it for what it is: an answer to the proposition left hanging in the air while they kissed for they both know is one last time. For now, at least. Always for now.
To be clear, though, Spencer adds, "And, y'know. We could talk otherwise too. Until then. After then."
He gets a small smile for that. "You wanna be pen pals?"
"Yeah," Spencer says with the same expression only brighter. "I'll email you."
"Oh yeah?" Ethan arches a single eyebrow, though it's less arch and more genuine in the morning light. "Notorious technophobe Dr. Spencer Reid, breaking out in hives from contact with a computer? All for little ol' me?"
Something burns in the top of Spencer's chest, warm like the sun. Because it seems the thing to do, he reaches over limply, obviously, ridiculously, to lightly punch Ethan's shoulder. "Yeah, so appreciate it."
When Ethan laughs, it's with him, not at him—now and, to be honest, always. There aren't a lot of people Reid can say that about, really. He didn't know how much he needed it until now.
"Just you wait, man," he shoots back: lazy, from the hip. "Next time, I pick the itinerary. How far is Atlantic City from DC?"
A smile strains at Spencer's pursed lips. "Three hours, give or take. Depends on traffic."
"Sounds like a road trip."
He did love Ethan, he realizes, and he does still, if not in a way that can be easily labeled. Not quite like a lover or a childhood friend or family or even a fellow addict, a fellow human being. Something like all those combined and then something else. Love, though. Love, regardless. Still there.
"You know that goes both ways, right?" He feels compelled to say one last time. "That... you can talk to me too?"
"I always planned on making you my one phone call if I ever got arrested," Ethan counters, but his smile isn't as strong as it could be, dampened by the undercurrent of the words. "Not my fault it miraculously hasn't come up."
"Yet."
"Yet."
"Just in case, though, I'll make my next degree law."
That gets a real, audible laugh out of Ethan, which reverberates through the morning quiet without escaping their little bubble. Spencer can see why he chose this apartment: it has great acoustics. While he was too busy to appreciate that last night, he takes time to enjoy it now.
"Man, I missed you." Ethan reaches over to mess with Spencer's already hopeless hair, just like last night in the bar, before lingering in a half-hearted attempt to put it back into some semblance of order. "Now get your skinny ass out of here before your coworkers send a search party."
"They wouldn't need a search party, they'd just find me themselves," Spencer says as he takes over more seriously. It's a lost cause, but he tries. Kinda his thing. As he takes a step towards the door, half turned, he adds, "I'll call you."
"Not if I call you first."
"Don't wait till you're arrested, then."
Ethan relights his cigarette, though he doesn't commit. "I'll go knock over a liquor store right now if that's what it takes."
At that, something snaps and Spencer doubles back haltingly, tripping over his own feet but dedicated to the action anyway. The light is still dishwater thin when he leans over and kisses Ethan's cheek: a ridiculous, childish gesture, but a gesture nonetheless. Now, though, in this instant, there's nothing depressed about the gray of the sky. There's nothing solemn. There are no goodbyes. It is silly and too serious at the same time, but never sad.
"Atlantic City?"
The corner of Ethan's mouth ticks up before he tucks the cigarette back in its spot.
"Atlantic City," he echoes, smoke curling out with the words, and this time, Spencer grabs it and tosses it out the window onto the empty street below.
"Six minutes," he finally reminds Ethan before heading for the door for real this time.
Behind him, out of sight, Ethan laughs. "And I did not miss that."
That laughter is the last thing Spencer hears as he heads down the stairs. He carries it with him onto the drying city streets.