Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"And you're sure your unassailable virtue is still intact?" Garcia teased, over the phone, still in the office as Reid made his way up the stairs to his apartment. "Not pining for some pretty face? I mean, that's the fastest I've ever seen you leave, after a case. You're usually still here with me, writing reports until they make us go home in the morning."

"I'm fine, Garcia." Reid knew a date was the last thing Garcia was actually worried about. A relapse, maybe, but not a date. "I promise you. I just wanted to get back t... Huh." He reached out and pulled a delivery slip off his door, balancing the phone against his shoulder as he let himself in. "Hey, can you look something up for me? It looks like I missed a package, but I didn't order anything. If I give you the tracking number, can you figure out where it came from, at least?"

"Are you sure you don't have someone waiting for you?" Garcia laughed nervously. "Give me the number and let's see what I can do."

Reid provided the number, leaning against the door to close it behind him. "Call me back when you've got it? I don't have enough hands."

"Call me back in ten minutes. If I don't hear from you in fifteen, I'm sending the locals." Garcia sounded completely serious.

A chill ran down Reid's spine as he dropped his go bag and locked the door. "Deal."

He dropped the phone into a pocket and drew his gun. The apartment didn't provide many places to hide, and frankly, he should have had his gun in hand the minute he saw the slip on the door, but better late than never, considering he hadn't gotten shot yet. Not his home. Never his home. He wasn't Hotch -- he wasn't important enough ... But, that was stupid. He and JJ had always been the obvious targets. He looked young and distracted in most of the photos that made the paper, and JJ was the face of the unit -- always on screen.

Stupid, stupid, stupid... he should've been paying more attention. But, as he made his way back to the kitchen, checking everything along the way, he had to admit no one had been there, since he'd left. Still, as he went to splash water on his face and put on another pot of coffee, he seriously considered sleeping with his gun in easy reach. Something was not right, here, and the last thing he wanted was to wake up -- he wasn't going to think about that.

Put the coffee on and call Garcia. Don't think about the way the cloth cuts after a few hours, the stench of -- No. Stop. Make coffee.

He called Garcia as he listened to the coffee maker burble. "It's clear. Nobody's been here at all."

"You're sure?" Garcia asked. "I mean, not that nobody's there now. Obviously you'd notice. That place is tiny! But...?"

"Trust me. I'd know. I keep things a certain way." Reid gave the coffee maker a pleading look, but it remained unmoved. "Everything's where I left it and nothing's new. Did you find anything?"

"Did I find anything," Garcia scoffed. "Well, first off, it's a very large box and it was shipped overnight. Someone knew you'd be home some time today. Still working on who, but the package shipped from an Amazon warehouse, so it's not going to be body parts or something. I'm pretty sure whatever this is, it's not going to be anything too horrible, unless someone bought you an entire pallet of furbies."

Reid choked on a laugh. "I ... I can't imagine why anyone would send me furbies."

"As a form of torture, obviously. Did you flunk anyone, last semester? It would be the ultimate revenge. Or something." Garcia's voice faded out into the clatter of keys.

"If one of my students sent me a pallet of furbies, I hope they're prepared for the war this is going to start." Reid slid down the cupboards until his feet touched the other side, letting the drawer behind him support his back as he continued to stare balefully at the coffee maker.

"Okay, it's not furbies. It's... a chair?" Garcia paused, the double taps of the keyboard suggesting she was tabbing through multiple documents. "And the gift notes on it read: 'No obligations. Your partner pays well. Instructions to follow.' What am I looking at, Reid?"

"I'm sorry, did you say a chair?" Reid was back on his feet in less time than it took to finish the sentence. "Is it, by chance, an extremely fancy chair? Maybe a microfiber recliner? A vibrating one?"

"And you got it in one. Something you want to tell me?"

"We have a mutual ... contact. The Vanity case. You're the partner in that note. He's telling me I don't owe him for the chair because his fees for the case paid for it." Reid barked out a laugh and grabbed his coffee mug as the machine began to make the sounds that suggested it might finish soon.

"Wait, wait. What?" Garcia filled verbal space as she tried to make sense out of what Reid was saying. "No, no, no. Why would he buy you a chair? What...? Did I miss something?"

"You could say I fell in love, while I was there..." Reid managed to sound wistful, watching his own smile in the reflection on the inside of the kitchen windows as he tried not to laugh.

"You what."

"With his chair. I fell in love with his chair." Reid gave in to the laugh. "I was joking about paying him to make one like it for me. So, I think he's taken it upon himself to send me the parts to do it myself. 'Instructions to follow.'"

"That's a pretty serious gift. These chairs aren't anything like cheap." Garcia sounded doubtful.

"What's the name of the purchaser?" Reid found himself suddenly curious. "Because I know what it's not."

"François-Marie Arouet? Sounds very Fre--"

But, Reid was already laughing so hard he leaned on the edge of the sink to hold himself up. "Yeah. Yeah, that's him. There is no question."

"I'm so confused. It takes a lot to make me admit that, you know." Garcia paused, waiting for Reid to pull himself together. "You're not going to tell me anything, are you?"

"Not over the phone. Ask me about it in a crowded bar. Assuming you can get me into a crowded bar. I might make an exception for this conversation, just because I need another pair of eyes on a few things, and you're the only person who can know about any of this, because you already do."

"Reid, this is crazy. I'm the one who's supposed to say things like that, not you!" Garcia protested. "And even I stopped saying things like that years ago!"

"Well, to be entirely fair, it is entirely your fault." Reid finally poured his coffee. "You found him. You sent me out there. You kept him out of the final reports."

"And somehow you're the one who gets a chair out of this. I see how it is." The sound of Garcia taking a swig of whatever was on her desk followed, then, "Mmm, no. Actually, I don't."

"It's fine. I just fixed his coffee maker. Kind of. I made coffee with it, after being warned it was impossible, because I wanted a cup of coffee. I will never understand why people drink Jolt. What is the purpose of drinking something disgusting that could just as easily be just as caffeinated and actually taste good?" Reid took a sip of coffee and remembered, almost too late, to swallow before starting the next sentence. "It's a return on the coffee maker, if it's anything more than just showing off."

"This is much more expensive than even a really nice coffee maker. This chair costs more than Rossi's coffee maker."

"It actually was Rossi's coffee maker. Not Rossi's, but the same kind." Reid shook his head. "I'm pretty sure he's just showing off, considering I didn't give him any of my contact information."

"That doesn't concern me less. If anything that concerns me more."

"Look at his record. He's a notorious show-off. You knew him when he was still active. How much of his work was just because he could? He got pretty seriously  burned on his last job, right? You just handed him the confidence to start pulling stunts again, so he's starting small. With me, because if he screws up, I'm not going to be dangerous. We parted on friendly terms. I think you scare the shit out of him. He's pretty shaken that you managed to find him."

"Pretty sure you're not supposed to be profiling people we work with," Garcia teased.

"Pretty sure people we work with aren't supposed to be using fake names to send me chairs, so I think we're even," Reid retorted. "Besides, you're the one who thinks he might be dangerous."

"He knows where you live. He is dangerous."

"I know where he lives. I'm much more dangerous." Reid took a long swallow of coffee. "Listen, we'll talk about this later. Safer."

"I like exactly nothing about this, but I trust you. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"I'm on leave. A hundred days, remember?" Reid rubbed his eye with the hand holding the coffee cup. "And I took an extra day, so I get a weekend on both ends. I start teaching not Monday, but the one after, so I can make sure I've got everything together before I walk in."

"I know you; you had everything together three weeks ago. This weekend, we're going to a bar. Write that on your calendar. Spencer Reid is going to get drunk and tell all." Garcia laughed. "While you're on leave, because I have mercy."

"Your mercy is greatly appreciated, as always. As is your assistance. Call me at home when you know where and when." Reid figured he owed her at least this much. He wasn't going to get that drunk. He wasn't going to tell her everything.

"Will do. Sleep well!"

"Same, when you get there." Reid hung up the phone and dropped it back into a pocket.

Chapter Text

Sunday morning, Reid woke up on the couch. That was not unusual. The faint smell of bleach next to his head, on the other hand, suggested something was definitely wrong. As he slowly pried his eyes open, several things occurred to him: the smell was an unused barf bucket made from the bathroom bin and a splash of bleach; four daiquiris was at least one too many, if not four too many; sitting up was a questionable idea at best; and there was a new piece of furniture he had yet to decide exactly where to place. The lack of wheels on the chair in its unmodified state meant that decision would require actual thought before he tried to move it, so he could avoid moving it more than once.

Coffee, first, he decided. Then maybe a text to Garcia, equal parts thanks and invective for the night before. He was in no shape for a telephone conversation with this hangover. Maybe there was a good reason for a cel phone, after all. But, he was definitely pouring out the bucket before the smell of bleach permeated anything he cared about. The single-cup coffee maker he kept joking about started to sound like something he should have made an investment in, before the preceding night, as he considered the distance between himself and the kitchen, which was all the way around the end of the coffee table -- a good two feet away.

Okay, text Garcia first. Then coffee. Phone was... on the table. Within easy reach. Good.

'I'm alive. I may regret that.' He hit send and made himself sit up, a dull groan echoing through the room as he took stock of his body.

As he considered the distance to the kitchen, a knock sounded at the door, which was even further and involved more opportunities for tripping on the furniture. This was the last thing he needed, but he made himself get up to at least check. The walls seemed to move like a carnival funhouse, and Reid wondered if he was still drunk. Use the camera, he reminded himself, and slid the phone he was still holding across the door until he could see through the peep hole on the screen. Another package? On a Sunday? He took a photo and texted it to Garcia as he opened the door, trusting her to know what to do with it if anything went wrong.

"Hey, sorry, I was sleeping." Reid squinted at the man writing out an attempted delivery slip against the side of a much smaller box than last time.

"I hope it's worth getting up for," the delivery man answered, handing him the box and heading off down the hall.

Reid locked the door and headed back in, toward the kitchen. Coffee. He'd meant to get coffee.

As the coffee maker burbled behind him, he carefully sliced open the box -- an Amazon box again -- to find, under a layer of packing peanuts, a single-cup coffee maker. He tore through the box until he found the packing slip.

'Coffee to help you get out of the chair,' the gift note read.

He texted Garcia again, still unwilling to hear more than he had to, this time with a photo of himself holding the new coffee maker. 'Who delivers on Sundays???'

The phone rang a moment later.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you first thing in the morning," he apologised to Garcia, instead of a greeting.

"It's two in the afternoon, Reid. You sure you're all right?"

"I'm sitting on the kitchen floor. I may still be drunk," he admitted.

"I thought that might happen after you told that girl on the dance floor that you wouldn't give her your number because your boyfriend wouldn't approve." Garcia chuckled. "You still want me to do a lookup on this guy's face?"

"No, no. It's fine. It's an actual package, and I know where it came from. Just didn't think anywhere delivered on Sundays." Reid rubbed his face and squinted up at the coffee maker before deciding the light from the window behind it wasn't helping. "... Wait, I said what? To who?"

"I didn't catch her name, but she was definitely interested in doing some much dirtier dancing with you."

"So I told her I was gay and in a relationship. That sounds like something that would make sense after a few drinks." He paused. "I don't dance. What--?"

"After the third daiquiri, Spence honey, you dance like no one ever told you not to. You looked like a backup dancer in an eighties hip-hop video. Except whiter. And taller. And with less booty shorts. But, I'll tell you if you were doing that in booty shorts, even claiming to be gay would not have gotten the girls off you."

Reid groaned pitifully, feeling the echoes of his own drunken confidence of the night before. "You have pictures, don't you." It wasn't a question. "And you've already sent them to JJ and Prentiss."

"I definitely have pictures, but I took them for you. Just in case you didn't remember any of that." Garcia laughed. "But, if you want, I can send them to JJ and Prentiss..."

"Do. Not." Reid sighed. "Tell me I kept my shirt on. I'm assuming I did, because I woke up in it, and I'm pretty sure I would not have been able to figure out the buttons again after that much alcohol. I don't think I'm missing any buttons..."

"The closest to stripping you got was rolling up your sleeves," Garcia promised. "I'll send you the pictures to fill in the blanks."

"I'm going to spend the rest of this week lying on the floor paralysed with embarrassment, aren't I?" Reid groaned again, wishing the coffee were done. "How much did I manage to tell you about our friend?"

"The more you drank, the less you said. It was pretty amazing. So, probably only what you remember telling me." A long pause followed. "And the part about how you were thinking about going back and writhing against his crotch some more."

Reid paused, tasting the words, waiting for the flash and the hollow dread. It never came. "I did not say any such thing."

"Spoilsport. So you do remember, then."

"No, I can just make out parts of things when you're telling the truth. There's nothing there. It didn't happen." Reid managed to sound smug despite the lack of coffee, a monumental effort.

"You're good," Garcia conceded. "I'll send you the pictures. Call me if I need to remember anything else for you."

"Thanks. I think I'm just going to sit here and wallow in horror and self-reproach for a while."

"Make a cup of coffee and wallow in your amazing new chair. Might as well get some use out of it."

"I think I'll save that for when I have something I want to remember." Reid chuckled. "I'll let you get back to what you were doing."

He slid the phone up onto the counter behind him and ignored the buzz that let him know the first set of pictures had arrived. Coffee. Maybe some toast. And then another nap.

He was never getting that drunk again, no matter who was buying the drinks.

Chapter Text

It was Tuesday, when the next surprise arrived. Reid had found a bad place for the chair, but he could plug it in without blocking any of the bookcases, and for now, that was what mattered. He was curled up in it, surprisingly comfortably, with a book, a cup of soup, and the vibrating back set to low. In that moment, he finally understood what Langly had meant about not using it for a desk chair, so he'd have a reason to get up.

A knock interrupted his reverie, but this time it didn't concern him nearly the way it had. Probably something else from Langly -- he was going to have to do something about that, before this ascended into full-on ridiculousness. His apartment was too small to fit much more.

As he got up and went to the door, he watched a card slide under it. 'Reconsidered all that historical virtue yet?'

There was no way... And yet, the nervous face on the other side of the door, under a wide-brimmed hat was ... conceivably Langly's. No glasses, a little wider in the jaw, but the card had prepared him to see it. With some misgivings, he decided to open the door to the man dressed like a city electrician.

"Do you know how many cameras are pointed at this fucking building?" Langly hissed, grabbing the large toolbox next to him and ducking through the half-open door, clearly relieved when Reid locked it behind him, even as his eyes darted to the windows at the other end of the room, glad for the drapes, however flimsy.

"What are you doing here?" Reid demanded, and then gestured to the chair. "What are you doing in general?"

Langly pulled his glasses out of a pocket and put them on, taking off the hat, as he set the toolbox against Reid's desk. "I've always liked a good challenge." He shrugged. "This time, the question is whether I can continue to interact with someone on the outside in ways that usually involve an exchange of personally identifiable information with third parties, without getting myself shot in the street? And before I continue this conversation, I hope you don't mind if I sweep for bugs?"

Reid shook his head and stepped back. "You won't find anything. I'd know. Everything is exactly where it belongs, and no one else would be able to do that."

"The places you could put one in here might not involve moving anything," Langly muttered, pacing through the room with a clearly handmade piece of black hardware. He paused beside a half-finished chess game resting atop a bookcase by the door, studying the state of the game for a moment.

"I'm still right," Reid argued, and a few minutes more proved the point.

"Sorry. I'm a little paranoid." Langly almost threw himself onto the couch, as he came out of the kitchen, but suddenly changed course, nearly tripping on the coffee table. He untucked his hair from the back of the coveralls he wore as he crouched down next to the toolbox and opened it to pull out a pair of thermal boxes. "I brought lunch. I hope you like Ethiopian."

Reid rubbed his face and peered at Langly over the ends of his fingers for a moment. "Okay, here's what's going to happen: You're going to put that on the coffee table, I'm going to go get forks, and then we're going to have a serious conversation."

"You're worried I'm going to get you killed." Langly set the boxes down and started unpacking them, as he slid onto the couch, glancing toward the kitchen, to his right. No drapes in there. "Spoons, not forks, if you even want a spoon. There's enough bread to go around."

"Honestly, my own work is more likely to get me killed. I've been shot... twice? Twice I think. No, three times. Stabbed, drugged, held hostage, exposed to bioweapons... But, I've never seriously considered giving it up. I can't tell if that's pathological, because I'm way too close to it, but let's go with 'probably'." Reid stepped back around the coffee table to turn off the chair and moved to join Langly on the couch, setting the spoons firmly on the table. "No, it's not that. Look, this is some weird stalker thing. We met once. And, yeah, that was a good time, and I'm happy to have your help on that case -- which is still open, because you're right, we can't tell where she came from or where she went. But, you found my address --" He held up a hand. "I know. Frohike probably had it before he came down to tell you I was a federal agent. And you just start... sending me expensive gifts! It's a little ... weird! It kind of bothers me! I can't tell what you're expecting to get out of this, but the statistically probable answers really don't make me feel any better about it."

"Shit." Langly put his face in his hands and laughed. "Okay, if you want me to stop, just tell me. Seriously. I'm just stretching some skills I haven't used in way too long, and you get to benefit from it. I don't mean anything creepy by it. I'm not even trying to get in your pants, although if you wanted to get in mine, I'm not going to say no." He dropped his hands into his lap and looked at Reid. "It's been a lot of years since I could reach out and poke something and then go see the effects. I shouldn't be doing it now, but ... I miss it. I miss the rush. I miss other people being surprised. I just thought I could flex a little and make you smile. That's it. I swear."

"What were you going to do if I wasn't home?" Reid asked, trying to keep the conversation going as he sorted out what that actually meant for him, other than that his first instinct had been correct.

"Of course you were home. Did I mention how many cameras pick up parts of this building? There's almost no way in or out of here that doesn't show up on at least one of them." Langly shrugged and rubbed one of his legs. "Did I mention I walked here? Because I did. Underground. I'll show up on those videos, too, coming up to the building and later, when I leave, but I don't think any of them had an angle that would give up my face. Speaking of my face..." He pulled cotton padding out of his cheeks and stuck it into a plastic bag in the pocket his glasses had come out of. "But, if I'd missed you? I'd have stopped to eat and then gone home. Never would have surfaced on this side of town."

"How long of a walk?" Reid made the first gesture of acceptance, opening a container of something green and lumpy that smelled incredible.

"Ah, what time is it... Four hours? Five? It's about fifteen miles by the undercity from where I started. Obviously, I didn't start at home, but where and how I got there is my problem, not yours." Langly grinned and tore a corner off a huge folded piece of bread, unfolding it to grab some of the first dish. "It's not that far."

"And you're going to try to walk back tonight?" Reid looked horrified.

"I am in much better shape than you seem to think." Langly hid a smile by cramming the dripping twist of bread into his mouth.

"Okay, I'm going to say it. You're apparently in much better shape than I am, and I passed the physical this year." Reid laughed and opened another container. "Should I ask?"

"Online Dance Dance Revolution competitions. Frohike thought he was being funny, but I actually kind of like it. I'm good, but I'm not great. I got my ass handed to me by some Korean girl last week. Or... someone I'm going to assume is a Korean girl, anyway. Everyone on the circuit thinks I'm twenty-something and Australian." Langly wrapped another bit of the green food in bread and offered it to Reid. "You should try this. It's great. It's what happens when you give collard greens to people who know how to cook."

"Collard greens?" Reid eyed the roll suspiciously, trying to figure out how to take it from Langly without spilling the contents. "Aren't those usually cooked with bacon and butter?"

"Totally different cuisine." Langly noticed the difficulty Reid seemed to be having. "Here, just open your mouth and I'll--"

"No." Reid blanched and held his hand out flat. It wasn't that Langly had touched it-- He pushed those memories aside, but still shook his head. "I can't... that's... No. I'll eat it, but not like that."

Langly looked curious, but didn't ask, setting the rolled bread on Reid's palm. "Your house, your rules."

"Thank you." Reid ate out of his own hand, licking the drips off his palm. "Okay, that is good."

"I think that one's carrots and potatoes." Langly pointed to the second container, and then opened the third. "Which means this is... yeah, lentils. And there's like a week's worth of bread, because I love this bread and it goes with everything."

"Everything's vegetables," Reid realised, as he tore off a piece of bread to try something else. "In case it took you too long to get here."

"Bingo. Got it in one." Langly shrugged and stuffed more food in his face. "You can't just hope for the best with meat, especially if you're bringing it to someone else. Double if it's someone you're trying to impress."

"Still not sure how I feel about you trying to impress me, but I'm glad you left the meat out of it." More of the collard greens disappeared into Reid's mouth, as if to disguise the innuendo. "Where did you pick this up? I wonder if they deliver this far up."

"They don't deliver, but a few of the services will pick up from there, so you can probably get it up here. I always forget the name, but if you hand me a keyboard, I'll find it for you."

"I can't. I don't have a computer." Reid cleared his throat and squinted at the floor as he grabbed another bite.

"You what? I'm pretty sure that hasn't been a sentence real people really say in almost twenty years." Langly's face twisted in confusion and horror.

"I don't! It was a big deal when the Bureau made me get a cel phone. I don't really have a use for one in my daily life. If I want a computer for something, it's work, and everywhere I have an office, I have a computer in it. Even if I'm pretty sure the academy gave me a broom closet with a desk in it." Reid shrugged and kept eating.

"Okay, so... that's something we don't have in common." Langly blinked in amazement, trying to wrap his brain around the idea.

"I have a cel phone. If I really need to see something, the Bureau pays the data plan." And that reminded Reid that he hadn't opened the last few messages from Garcia, which contained the photos from the bar. He wasn't sure he really wanted to see those. "But, even then? Nobody calls it unless I'm in the field or I've sent a text recently. Landline rings louder and feels better in the hand. Less of a distraction, too."

"So, give me your cel phone and I'll look it up for you." Langly dipped a piece of bread in the carrot and potato dish. "I'm not carrying, but if this turns into a habit, I'll build something that's not going to broadcast my location to anything with the slightest interest."

"The Bureau gets upset when I turn off my GPS," Reid joked, getting off the couch and fetching the soup he'd forgotten next to the chair. He'd put it in the fridge. "Seriously, though, I'm in a line of work where potentially needing to find my corpse is a concern. Or to find me before someone turns me into a corpse, because that's happened a couple of times. Finding me. Not me getting turned into a corpse. But, it was close."

"Okay, this is the sound of me changing the subject now. Do you have coffee? I forgot to pick up drinks." Langly smiled weakly as images he shouldn't have pulled flashed through his head.

"This is my house. If there's no coffee, it's because I haven't gotten up yet." Reid poured two cups, finishing out the pot that had been sitting, and put up another before he grabbed his phone off the counter, where he'd left it Sunday, and brought the coffee out to Langly. "Coffee and phone. Which I'll be wiping your fingerprints off."

"Passcode." Langly held the phone back out to Reid, who entered it. "Thanks."

As the screen unlocked, Reid's finger brushed the top, cascading down the list of recent messages, including the last image Garcia had sent.

"Whoa. Wait. Is that you?" Langly tapped on the image without thinking.

"Oh my god. No. No! I haven't even seen those yet!" Reid's hands made several abortive gestures, wanting to snatch the phone back, but not wanting to accidentally touch anything on the screen that might make this situation worse. "In my defence, there were several daiquiris involved!"

Langly whistled and scrolled through the images. "I don't think that needs a defence at all... Holy shit, Reid. I may have to take back my earlier statement about not trying to get in your pants."

Reid covered his face and groaned, sliding onto corner of the couch. "As long as getting in my pants never involves me having more than one drink in a night, I think I might be all right with that. Might. Maybe. I had a great time, but that's really not... me. I don't do things like that. Blame the adrenaline and the imp of the perverse."

"I might have gotten that impression around the time you said you didn't like hugs, and if I didn't get it then, I definitely got it when you nearly crawled out of your skin when I brought it up later." Langly didn't sound at all distressed at this revelation. "I'm not really like that either. I'd like to be, and I'll grab any opportunity that I'm not going to suffer for later, but opportunity usually comes at a higher cost than I want to pay. ... Not in cash. Opportunities, not hookers. Work. I'm not giving up a story that could affect millions of people for a piece of ass, and that's usually the trade." He left out the part where he was usually unwilling to break up a good gaming run, either.

"Just so you know, I do find that attractive," Reid admitted, face still buried in his hands. "I mean, it's a different profession, but you get it. First, the job."

"Always," Langly agreed. "Hey, you should see this one. You look like a movie star. What's with the ladies? Do you know them?"

"No. I don't know them. I don't even remember their names. I told one of them I wouldn't give her my number because I was gay. That is how drunk I was."

"Would you have given it to her if you were sober?"

"No."

"Then where's the problem? You're probably never going to see her again. What do you care if she thinks you're not into women?" Langly paused, studying the picture. "They are pretty cute, though. I'd make that mistake, if I had a chance."

Reid looked over the tips of his fingers at the sound of his phone being set on the table.

"I saved the restaurant into your contacts." Langly offered half a smile. "And as tempting as it was, I didn't go fishing through your phone for classified data."

"Those pictures should've been classified. Those pictures should never even have been taken." Reid continued to look mortified as he reached for another bit of bread.

"Maybe not, but you still look better in them than I have ever looked in a photo. This face does not play well with cameras."

"It's your glasses," Reid said, washing down a bite with coffee. "It's probably a conflict of lenses that distorts your face. I photograph better without glasses, too. Besides, if we're talking booking photos, everyone looks terrible in those."

"You don't wear glasses." Langly noted, with his mouth full.

"You haven't seen me in glasses. That doesn't mean I don't wear them. I just don't wear them often. Usually, I can see just fine. Mostly."

They ate in silence for a while, more focus on chewing than talking, while the food was still warm.

"So, were you really planning to walk home tonight?" Reid asked, stealing the last of the collard greens.

"Yeah. Might be a test of my endurance, but it's not that bad. It's low intensity; it's just long. And boring." Langly rolled a burrito with the end of the lentils and some of the carrot and potato stew. "Left you the last of the carrots on purpose. They're good, but I bought dinner for you, and I shouldn't be eating most of it myself."

Reid covered his mouth to talk while chewing. "Bullshit. You're the one who walked fifteen miles to get here."

"Thirty mile round trip in one day. I might have done that once in Idaho. I think we were in Idaho. I don't remember. Cornfields as far as the eye could see." Langly shook his head.

Reid swallowed and sat very still, eyes glazed and a look of consternation on his face for a long moment. When he spoke again, it was slowly. "What if I said you didn't have to walk home tonight? It's up to you, but... I'll blame the imp of the perverse again. You seem to bring it out in me."

"That's going to make for some very interesting surveillance video, on the exit, and I really hope no one's that interested." Langly laughed. "I might take that offer, whether or not it includes a more enjoyable test of my endurance."

"The jury's still out on that," Reid admitted. "But, it had crossed my mind."

"You're thinking it."

"You're sitting in my living room! Half of our acquaintance, to date, has been dirty jokes and frottage!"

Langly opened his mouth and then closed it, shaking his head. "I was going to make a French cheese joke, but I think I'm just gonna pass."

"That's fromage." Reid delivered the punchline anyway.

"And you had to say it."

"You don't know me very well, if you thought I wouldn't."

"What can I say? There's no line in your file for 'will deliver the punchline to the joke you politely avoided telling'."

Reid picked up his coffee in both hands and rested his elbows on his knees. "The file doesn't have everything. Yours describes a delusional paranoiac who has difficulty seeing out of the shadow of his own towering ego."

"I think we established the limits of my ego when I let you wipe ball-sweat in my hair." Langly delivered the line entirely deadpan, face still and waiting for a cue as he watched Reid.

"See? That's my point exactly. The file doesn't have everything." Reid sipped his coffee, trying to cover an embarrassed chuckle. "And the final notes on Vanity list you as being dead. In case you were wondering. No one knows we found you anything but deceased, and she's been taking all the credit, which she can do because of the black box. I don't know how that works. I just know it does."

"You know I'm not delusional, because you trust the tombstone." The corners of Langly's mouth turned up in a grim smile.

"Not just that. We covered our tracks. She pulled the actual case file." Reid took a long swallow of coffee. "I didn't sleep for two days."

"Good." Langly shook his head. "I sound like a dick. I mean, good you saw it. Good you got it from someone other than me."

"That was almost me, once. Less conspiracy, but the virus... We didn't expect it to be there. I walked right into it. That was how we found out." Both of Reid's hands stayed on the coffee mug, knuckles white. "Kept working, because what else can you do? It's not like I was going to get less infected if I let them send someone else in, in a suit. That would just increase the chance of contamination."

"What did you get hit with?" Langly asked, quietly.

"Anthrax. I know, it's a classic. Brand new strain of an all-time great." Reid let the words pour out of his mouth, tasting the extra venom on them. There were things he had thought, but didn't say. And he still held the words down, but the caustic sense attached itself to the words he did say. "You?"

"Didn't it say in the file? I'm sure someone named it. I might have even heard a name for it, but in all the shit that went down, I don't remember. It shouldn't have existed. It shouldn't have been possible. I mean, that's kind of the story of my career, at this point, but that one really topped all. Something made of sharks, I remember that much. I don't know, somewhere in there, I started hallucinating. Threw up in a body bag. Ask Byers, I bet he remembers, if anyone does." Langly shifted toward Reid, but made no move to touch him.

"I got to skip the body bag, but I could've done without the semi-public decontamination. Standing around naked in a plastic tent on a residential street in the middle of the day? Not... really my idea of a good time, even without the soaking wet part." Reid cleared his throat and blinked a couple of times, lips thin against what might become a hysterical laugh.

Langly grabbed his own cup and tapped the bottom of it against the rim of Reid's. "Still alive and well." He took a swig.

"Still alive, at least. Pretty well, on paper." Reid shook his head and sipped his own coffee, blinked at it, and tipped back the rest of the cup. "But, you know better, don't you. You got far enough in to know I have the week off."

"Hey, I took a fucking week off the last time I got arrested, and that wasn't even for murder, all right?" Langly shoved Reid's shoulder, two fingers, there and gone.

Reid was still just as fast, batting at the fingers as they pulled away. "This is the sound of me changing the subject." He handed Langly's earlier line back to him. "I've been not asking since you got here, but are you dressed... under that?"

Langly looked down at the coveralls he still wore. "Yeah, I figured I'd take them off eventually, but you can't just walk into somebody's house and start stripping."

"Have I thanked you for not picking my locks?" Reid held out his hand for Langly's coffee cup, as he stood.

"I'm not picking your locks. As we've established, I knew you were home. I'm trying to avoid getting shot, thanks," Langly scoffed, finishing the coffee before he put the cup in Reid's hand.

"Come on, I didn't even answer the door with my gun. Not to say I didn't consider it, but..." Reid shrugged, ducking into the kitchen. "So, how about I pour more coffee while you stop drowning in your own sweat?"

"Bathroom?" Langly asked, getting up. "I feel like I should at least splash cold water on my face."

Reid set the cups on the counter and held up a finger as he stared into them, visible through the kitchen doorway.

"Imp of the perverse?" Langly teased.

"Do I just look like I'm about to have a bad idea?"

"Yes." Langly laughed. "But, I like your bad ideas, so don't let that stop you..."

Reid leaned down and smacked his head on the edge of the counter, before turning to Langly with his eyes closed and a smile fixed firmly in place. "I was going to say something about there being a shower in the bathroom and honestly, I could probably use one, too, and you know, if I'm absolutely sure the last thing you touched was not just soap, but my soap, as opposed to the entirely likely actual sewer you probably passed through on the way here..."

"Did you just suggest we should take a shower together?" Langly squinted across the room.

"I absolutely did, and then I realised I really didn't think that all the way through at all, and that is a worse idea than I thought, because I would be naked and you would be looking at me." Reid blinked and glanced at himself. "I mean, it's not a terrible view, but I'm a little... There are things I'd let you touch before I let you see, even if you did probably spot most of them in the file."

"I can count on one hand the number of people who have seen me shirtless," Langly deadpanned. "More people have seen my thighs, and that is ... ninety percent the fault of this particular cocktail dress I will never speak of again, and that is the last time Frohike got to pick what I was going undercover in."

Reid snorted and clapped a hand over his mouth to hold back a laugh.

"Okay, but... double or nothing." Langly grinned. "Window in the bathroom?"

Reid shook his head. "No...?"

"Shower in the dark. I trust you know where everything is without looking."

Reid pointed in the right direction. "Move right now before I come to my senses and think better of this."

Langly bolted for the bathroom, shutting the door behind himself. "Five seconds. I have to take a piss first."

Chapter Text

By the time the door opened, Reid leaned beside it, looking like he might be having second thoughts.

"Did I just blow that?" Langly asked.

Reid shook his head, but didn't say anything, slipping into the room as Langly stepped back. He closed the door, flicked off the light, and hoisted himself onto the edge of the counter beside the sink, to make room. "I just needed to finish convincing myself this wasn't the worst idea I've had this year. I can think of at least five that were demonstrably worse, including going to that bar, Saturday night."

"That was not a terrible idea." Langly's voice was accompanied by the sound of cloth and zippers and the thump of boots being kicked off. "I think my boots are next to the toilet."

"Listen, that idea was so bad, I was still drunk when I woke up at two o'clock Sunday afternoon." Reid unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off, leaving it behind him, beside the sink. "I slept something like twelve hours, and I was still drunk."

Langly whistled. "How many drinks?"

"Four." Reid folded his shirt behind him.

"Metabolic?" Langly asked, just before his back slammed against the wall. "Jesus christ, this is why the lights are off. So you can't see me get stuck in my pants."

Reid laughed, his own trousers sliding off easily, as he dropped from the edge of the sink. "Need help?"

"I got it. I got it." Langly snorted. "I'm naked in a dark room with a fed. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be nearly this enthusiastic about that."

"Hey, there are hot feds!" Reid protested, as he edged toward the shower. "Going to turn this on. You might want to move a little towards the door, in case I get a face full of ice water."

"Oh, god. You still have a boiler, don't you?" Langly groaned at the thought.

"Why? What do you have?" Reid counted the taps and turned his face away as he turned one, jerking his hand back from the cold spray.

"We went tankless electric with the new place. 'New'. You know what I mean. It's cheaper and faster, in the long run, and you never run out of hot water."

Steam slowly started to spill out of the shower and Reid edged back. "Fan," he said, to identify the sound, before he hit the button for it. "I usually just leave the door open, but I think that would defeat the purpose."

"You know where everything is," Langly reminded him, with a gentle prod toward the shower.

"I'm also about half an inch taller than you, and I'd block the water. Don't worry, you're not going to kick anything. There's an inset shelf in the back wall. Shampoo toward the wall, soap toward the water." Reid stayed where he was. "You have a lot more hair than I do. You get the hot water first."

"Conditioner?" Langly asked, hopefully, as he stepped over the side of the bath.

"Sorry." Reid followed as he heard the sound of the water striking flesh. "It's a two-in-one, but I know that's ... It's good enough for me, but I can pretty much just run a hand through my hair and it ... does whatever it wants, to tell the truth. If I keep it just a little long, it doesn't stick up anywhere weird."

"Philistine," Langly accused, sniffing the soap. "Tell me you have olive oil."

"Actually? I do. I don't cook much, but it was a gift. An encouragement to cook more. I probably would, if I was ever home for more than three days at a time." Reid blinked. "Which I suppose I am, now."

"I'll turn and face the wall, if you'll get the oil. And I promise not to get water in the bottle. I need like... a shotglass of it." Langly paused, continuing when Reid didn't move. "For my hair. Because you don't have conditioner, and I don't want to walk home with one giant nightmare tangle that I'm going to have to figure out how to untangle."

"I'll just bring the bottle." Reid grabbed a towel as he ducked out of the room. Moments later, he returned with more towels than he left with and the oil.

Langly kept his back turned until he heard Reid step back in beside him. "Trade with me? This has to stay on my hair for a few minutes, so you should take the water."

Reid inched past Langly, trying to decide how he felt about the quick brushes of skin on skin, and tipped his head back under the water, letting the torrent rinse away the few hours since the last time he showered.

"I put the oil on the floor, in the corner, so the bottle won't get too wet. Can I reach past you to rinse my hands?" Langly paused, but not long enough for Reid to manage an answer. "Okay, so, we're both in here and I've got oil on my hands... What I'm trying to say is I've got two greasy hands and you're naked. No. Wait. That's..."

The sound started as a snort but degenerated into a giggle before Reid finished the breath. Still laughing, he reached out blindly, letting the temperature difference guide his hand, until he touched Langly's shoulder, right about where he expected it would be. "Are we going to have a problem if I kiss you?"

"I really hope not. I'd rather not slip and fall in a bathtub." Langly caught the laugh and held on to Reid's arm as he cackled. "What is it with us and bathrooms? Is this just going to be a thing?"

"I'm pretty sure it's not a thing until the third time, and we're only up to two." Reid's fingers traced the line of Langly's shoulder, curling around the back of his neck. A deep breath followed, instead of a kiss. "This is an awful lot of skin."

"Far be it from me to tell you not to, but ... you don't have to prove anything, here."

"Yes, I do. To myself." Reid leaned in, glad to be almost the same height as Langly as he managed to land the kiss with minimal damage.

Langly's hands settled onto Reid's hips -- for balance, he told himself. But, as the kiss turned into that now-familiar all-consuming dance of lips and tongue, his thumbs circled the sharp points of Reid's hip bones, to ground the tingling in his hands. The fact that he knew it was desire did nothing to blunt the memory of that time he'd skipped current across his hand because he bumped the wrong wire. Or the other time. Or the other other time, but that time was serious and he actually fell off the roof, which was the last thing he wanted to think about right now, as Reid settled a foot on the corner of the bathtub behind him. Balance for whatever contortion kept Reid from being pressed flat against him.

Reid pulled back a bit, one hand pressed against the tile and his foot still braced behind Langly. "This isn't working. I want to want this, but I just keep thinking one of us is going to slip, and if you bust your head, we're going to have a serious problem, because you're supposed to be dead, and if I have to call an ambulance, this is not going to end well for either of us. I mean, it wouldn't be a happy ending anyway, but there's definitely some added pressure there."

Langly tipped his head down, resting his forehead on the bridge of Reid's nose as he laughed. "How big are your towels and how good are your drapes?"

"I can get it pretty dark out there. But, there's ... I mean, we'd end up in the chair."

"Because the bed would be pressure?" Langly teased.

"Because I don't have a bed. I sleep on the couch."

"I saw the bed when I was checking for bugs," Langly reminded him.

"It's ... not mine. Sometimes my mother stays with me, but right now, she's ..." Reid shook his head, trying to push aside his concerns about the latest study he'd gotten her into. If anything changed, he'd get called, this time. He made absolutely sure of that. "Working on something. Out of town."

"Even at our ages, I didn't figure you'd try something like this with your mother coming home." Langly laughed and tipped his head back up to try for a quick kiss.

Reid untangled himself and turned to the side. "You should rinse your hair, before the water gets cold. I'll see about making a dim room darker."

"Please come back and get me. I will die trying to cross that room in the dark." Langly let the water take as much of the oil as would go, as Reid stepped out of the bath and pulled another few towels out of the linen rack.

"And that is why I know exactly where everything is." Reid smiled wickedly, in the dark, wrapping a towel around himself and grabbing a few others before he stepped out the door. Towels weren't quite big enough, but they'd cut enough of the light to put the chair in deep shadow. He could definitely get the window right next to it covered completely.

Chapter Text

A few minutes later, Reid opened the door of the bathroom again to the sound of Langly wringing out his hair.

"Give me just a minute so I don't use four towels just for my hair. Figured out how to turn the shower off, which is much easier than on."

"Of course it is. On depends on the local water pressure and how long it takes to actually get hot water." Reid leaned in the doorway, visible only as a shadow against a slightly lighter background. "I remember staying in this motor inn where you had to turn the hot water all the way on, but you could only turn the cold water like... an eighth of a turn, or you'd freeze yourself out. And the hot water was hot enough to make tea, so just leaving the cold alone wasn't really an option. I think we were there for four days. I couldn't wait to get back to civilisation and my own shower."

"If I never shower in another cheap motel, I will give my thanks to whatever holy figures meet me when I die." Langly laughed and tied a towel around himself. "Okay, I trust you to get me to that chair in one piece."

Reid straightened up. "Two steps and trust me. How much do you weigh?"

"More than you," Langly was quick to reply, as he grabbed the bottle of oil, not to leave it sitting in the bathroom. "I don't look like a lot, but ..."

"Less than Morgan," Reid decided, tossing Langly over his shoulder and backing out of the bathroom until he could safely turn around.

"Jesus christ!" Langly remembered to breathe around the same time Reid finished dodging furniture across the room to the chair.

"I'm going to put you down now. The chair's right behind you."

"I can hear it."

As Reid set him down, Langly realised he could see fairly well. The room was much darker than it had been, but the light leaks around the towels left more than enough to see by, since he'd just come out of the pitch-black bathroom. He debated saying something, before deciding it was in his best interest not to mention it. He took a step back, bumped into the chair, and dropped into its vibrating embrace, setting the bottle beside the chair.

Reid awkwardly perched on the arm of the chair, and put Langly's thoughts into words. "It's not quite dark in here."

"You want to go put something on?" Langly asked, echoing his own mild discomfort.

"No, I'm good. You left your glasses in the bathroom." Reid coughed over a laugh.

"Maybe you should get a little closer, so I can see your face," Langly drawled, tipping the chair back and twisting to the side. "You may not have noticed, but I got you the wide version of this chair."

"And I'm supposed to believe you weren't thinking about getting into my pants?" Reid slid into the freshly unoccupied space, hip first.

"Actually, I was thinking that you take your legs with you into a chair, so the wider seat would give you more room. You're used to your chairs being too short." Langly ran his fingers down Reid's arm, and didn't get slapped.

"When did you notice?" Reid asked, following Langly's arm back up to rest a hand against his side.

"Video, later. Read the file Frohike grabbed, first, and ran back most of the desk footage. You walked out of there, and I was still trying to figure out if you were going to fuck us royally." Langly shrugged and slid his hand up to Reid's shoulder, down onto his back. "I expected we were going to have a problem, but I wound up liking what I saw."

"A recovered addict with a recent murder charge?"

"A man who knows the value of things left unsaid." Langly laughed and pulled himself closer to Reid, knees banging together and barely space for a breath between their chests. "I know. Me. The great documenter of things that should have been said. But, keeping your own shit to yourself is different. Your personal life is yours, as long as you're not hurting anyone with it. It's not like people knowing you have a girlfriend or that you got banned from casinos in five cities is going to affect the lives of millions of people."

"How do you know about the casinos? That's not in the file." Reid pushed his thigh between Langly's, breathing the question against the man's lips.

"I followed the loose ends. Everyone thinks their data is safe, but they might as well be hanging wards against the evil eye in the window. I'm not bringing up everything I found, because it's not relevant and I don't care." Langly felt Reid's thigh tense and his hand start to curl. "I had to know everything. I had to protect myself and my best friends from what you might have been. And all I found was that you aren't what I was afraid of, even if you are incredibly dangerous. I like that. It's a nice change of pace."

Reid took a deep breath, and the words that followed were barely above a whisper. "I understand that this is the part where I'm supposed to get angry. But, I'm not. You did what you had to do to protect yourself. It would be naive, at best, to expect anything less. But, if a word of what you found ever sees print--"

"It won't," Langly promised, nose tapping Reid's as he shook his head. "In the grand scheme of things? It's like I said. You're not that interesting on the scale we're invested in. I'm much more interested in dangerous abuses of power and whistleblowers getting murdered than I am in airing the hot fed's dirty laundry. It's not even that dirty, as far as I can tell. Frohike's done worse on almost all counts. I've done worse on most of them. Byers is weirdly straight, all things considered. You might have dirtier laundry than Byers, but I wouldn't put money on it."

"I'm pretty sure this isn't the conversation we meant to have in this chair," Reid pointed out, his hand relaxing and toying with the ends of Langly's hair.

"Is any conversation ever the conversation we meant to be having? I think not." Langly slid his knee up over Reid's hip. "I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be anywhere near here if conversations went according to plan."

"You make an excellent point," Reid conceded, licking Langly's lip instead of his own. The corner of his mouth tipped up and he fell into the kiss, one arm angled awkwardly against itself and the chair and the other moving up a bit so he could twist his fingers into Langly's hair, still wet and much less easy to handle than it had been dry.

Langly canted his hips against Reid's thigh, one hand holding the knot on the towel tight against his hip, while the other clutched at Reid's back. He'd always been weak for a good kiss, and Reid kissed like he'd thrown himself into studying it like he had everything else in his life. And this time, Langly was pretty sure he wasn't going to get stabbed, if he relaxed.

By the time their lips parted for desperate gasps of fresh air, the sweat so recently washed off had begun to trace tiny rivulets from where they were pressed together. Langly's hips rocked lazily against Reid's thigh, and Reid tried to decide how much he cared that only one towel remained between any part of them as his own slipped the knot and slid further off the skin it had been covering. Not that much, he decided, shifting his weight to pull the towel out from under himself and dropping it on the floor next to the chair.

"I feel like that was a statement." Langly's half-smile was invisible in the shadows across his face.

"I'm pretty sure that was the sound of me making a decision. Possibly a bad one, though I'm not expecting to regret it." Reid tried to get comfortable again, but couldn't figure out where to put the arm he'd been laying on. "I may be regretting my lifelong decision not to bother with a bed."

"I don't know how the hell you sleep without one, but the only time I ever got laid anywhere near a bed was outside a shitty motor lodge in Nebraska. There was a bed on the other side of that wall." Langly choked on a laugh. "A lot more clothes on, though. Congratulations, I think you've touched more of my skin than anyone in my entire adult life."

"Still not all of it." Reid's smile was awkward and much more visible in the tiny amount of light that spilled over Langly's shoulder. "I could fix that. As soon as I figure out where to--"

Langly pushed himself up onto the arm of the chair, and for a moment, Reid thought he'd made a terrible mistake.

"You should probably actually sit in the chair." Langly's face was still indecipherably shadowed. "If your legs fit, mine will, too."

An uncertain smile pulled at Reid's lips. "You sure?"

"I know the measurements off the top of my head. I'm pretty--"

Reid snorted trying to muffle a laugh. "No, I mean, are you sure you want to do that?"

"It worked out pretty well for the last girl who tried it on me." Langly waited for the chair to stop rocking before he slid into Reid's lap, the towel suddenly more of a suggestion than anything meaningful. "Of course that was probably twenty years ago, so you might have to remind me how this works."

"Oh, because of course, I'd know," Reid scoffed, pressing the buttons to recline the chair about halfway, mostly to keep the blood in his legs with Langly perched on them.

"You've got most of a degree in physics, right?" Langly teased, setting his hands over Reid's shoulders and leaning down, inches from a kiss.

"You're the engineer," Reid retorted, tugging playfully at Langly's hair as it fell into his face.

"No, I'm not!" Langly laughed. "I think the polite phrase is 'systems security researcher'."

"I think we were researching something else." Reid tugged a little harder and Langly's hands moved to make room for his elbows as he pressed his lips against Reid's.

Somewhere in the middle of that kiss, Langly started to shiver, and Reid dragged him down, pulled him closer, thinking he'd caught a chill. But, one of Langly's hands moved, distractedly pulling at the towel still pointlessly tied around his waist until he could toss it back into the room, somewhere. A reflexive grimace interrupted the kiss as he heard the towel hit what was probably a lamp.

"You didn't knock it over," Reid breathed, lips wet but yet unbloodied.

Langly took a few breaths and studied Reid's face, the faint light tracing the edge of it and catching in his eye.

"You okay?" Reid asked, hands stilling against Langly's back.

"Yeah, I'm great. It's just a little much. Which is why like the complete and total genius I am, I just threw the last piece of cloth in this equation across the room." Langly blinked a few times as the tremors in his arms neared the intensity of the chair's vibrations. "Definitely the most skin anyone's ever been touching all at once."

"Second thoughts?" Reid asked, as if the answer were of no consequence.

"None." Langly cleared his throat and glanced between them, as if he could see anything but darkness. "You're going to want another shower after this."

"I had already considered that well before we got here." Reid spread his hands comfortingly across the middle of Langly's back. "You want to try that again? What's wrong?"

"Nothing!" Langly laughed and shook his head, hair falling into Reid's face again. "It's just... different. More. Listen, I'm going to say a few things that might ruin the mood, but you asked."

"Should I keep my hands to myself?" Reid asked, raising a hand to push Langly's hair out of his face again.

"What the hell? No!" Langly's eyes widened in surprise. "Just leave me my lips so I can whisper horrible secrets you'll wish I never told you."

Reid turned his head, snickering against his own shoulder as he lowered one hand to Langly's ass and squeezed firmly. "Just checking."

Langly nearly bit through his lip. "Like I said, I don't get around much. Maybe five people. Maybe ten times. Maybe. Only one person more than once. Only one guy. But, I have never had my clothes off for it. Just... zippers and go."

"You're giving me terrible ideas. Really dangerously terrible ideas," Reid purred, writhing under Langly, as he stretched.

"I hope so," Langly murmured. "Because in my extremely limited experience, I really..."

Reid waited for the rest of the sentence, which didn't appear to be forthcoming. "You really...?"

"You ever start to say something and realise you sound like a fucking idiot?"

"Seventy-five percent of things that come out of my mouth go about like that."

Langly nodded. "I'm working on one of those."

"Let me help." The gleam of the light off Reid's wicked smile lasted only a split second as he swept all of Langly's hair to one side and tugged at it, nipping at the bared side of Langly's neck.

Langly's breath stuttered and his hips dropped and rolled, smearing the small puddle he'd left between Reid's hips.

"Yes!" Reid gasped, and the next sound from him was a guttural groan.

Determined not to get in the way of the sentiments that wanted out of his head, Langly let the pleasure wring words from his tongue, with no regard to what sense they might make. Fortunately, he could still string a sentence together, under the strain of most distractions, this one included. "I really want you to fuck me. There is nothing in my world like getting slammed into a wall and just... reamed. Hard."

A chill lanced through Reid at the thought and his own associations with the idea, the discomfort sparking in his toes like ice cold splintering crystal. "Maybe," he panted. "I don't think I can get any closer to you, right now, without altering fundamental laws of physics, but I want to."

And in a lot of ways, that was new, Reid thought. It wasn't that Langly was different -- not that he wasn't, but that wasn't the difference. He was different. He'd changed quite a bit, since the last time he'd even seriously considered something like this. This time, he was willing to be swept away by the combination of curiosity and desire, as long as he could keep it from interfering with anything else. And by his own admission, Langly was very good at both being a dirty secret and keeping them.

Reid's hands wandered, fingers tracing ghost-light lines against Langly's skin, as Langly arched down against him, dragging a wet line against the top of his thigh.

Langly bit his lip. He wasn't going to beg. He never had, and he wasn't going to start now. 'Maybe' was a far step from 'no', which was better than he'd expected, if he was honest with himself. Either way, he couldn't pay attention to enough of his skin at once. The inside of his ankle tingled warmly as he dug his heels into Reid's thighs and rolled his hips languidly. Just enough pressure that the muscles in his back started to tremble again in anticipation.

Reid came to a conclusion and started to breathe it against Langly's neck, but got only two words before he tugged Langly's hair, looked up into his eyes. "We should occupy the same space." Reid licked his lips, uncertain, and went with it anyway. "I want to be inside you."

Chapter Text

Langly leaned back so fast the chair folded, taking Reid with it, with a faint creak of protest from the chair's springs and hinges and a small shriek of panic from Reid, who grabbed Langly with both arms.

Reid cleared his throat, but still sounded a little squeaky. "Did I completely misunderstand something?"

An embarrassed laugh burst out of a still wide-eyed Langly, and he leaned to the side to grab the bottle of oil, which was what he'd sat up to do in the first place. "I forgot it wasn't my chair and it has a mind of its own."

"I think I may need to stop having a heart attack, before we go on." Reid managed a wheezy laugh. "If we're really going to do this, one of us should probably go find a condom, while I wait for my heart to climb back out of my throat."

Langly looked at the bottle in his hand and started three sentences before he found one he liked. "That's going to be you. I told you I didn't come here trying to get in your pants."

"I'm not even entirely sure where my pants are, right now," Reid quipped, tucking his own hair back.

"But, if you don't have one, I came out of the virus scare with a clean bill of health, and I haven't gotten laid in probably fifteen years. At least." Langly poked Reid in the chest and left his finger there, feeling the way Reid's heart still rattled his ribs. "And you, I know, last had a blood test two months ago, and I can probably name everything you don't have, which is a pretty long list."

"Yeah, and I'm due for another one, soon, so I'd rather not place any bets on that with the amount of other people's bodily fluids that end up near me in a week at work. Especially since you and a doctor is going to be a terrible combination."

"You already bled on me," Langly reminded him.

"I'm trying not to think about that." Reid patted Langly's ass. "You should get up, or I'm taking you with me. I have a box under the couch."

"Because you sleep on the couch," Langly guessed, grabbing one of the towels to cover himself as he got out of Reid's lap.

"I have trouble sleeping, sometimes," Reid said, as he made his way to the couch with only a hand to shield what the drapes didn't, like that explained it all.

"That's not even a couch. That's a loveseat. Why am I not surprised you have trouble falling asleep?" Langly intentionally misunderstood the statement, and Reid chuckled.

"It's surprisingly comfortable, once you get used to it." Reid held up a strip of three condoms. "I'm not getting up again, if you have another wild idea."

"Hmm. Two more wild ideas, huh?" Langly grinned, as Reid returned. "I'm going to have to think about that."

"You expect to be able to think? After last time? I am just... struck." A smile curled one side of Reid's mouth. "We'll see about that." He paused. "Actually, it would be great if you could keep thinking, because I have exactly no idea what I'm doing."

"I thought you'd done this before." Langly poked Reid with the bottle of oil.

"Not like this!" Reid gestured at the space between them.

Langly squeezed his eyes shut and a nervous laugh pressed out of him. "And my entire view on the process was wallpaper, every time. We're making it up as we go along."

Reid cocked his head, eyes narrowing in the dim light as he studied Langly and then the chair. As his eyes moved back to Langly, he nodded. "Yeah, okay. I can do this. Probably." He gestured at the bottle. "Is that closed?"

Langly nodded.

"Throw it on the chair and come here." Reid tossed the condoms into the chair and held out an arm, offering but not touching, despite how close they stood together. "I think I need to work up just a little more enthusiasm, before I try this."

"Is your virtue not up to the task at hand?" Langly continued to hold onto the towel with one hand as the other cupped between Reid's legs and slid upward. "Might have to do something about that."

"Do you have enough hands for the task at hand?" Reid was pleased that all the words came out comprehensibly and in the right order, as Langly's hand squeezed and stroked him.

"I'm not sure I can do naked, touching you, and standing up at the same time, and I've already almost knocked over one lamp, today." Langly's fingers curled just so, encouraging Reid to close the small space between them.

Reid caught the edges of the towel and wrapped them and his arms around Langly. He buried his face in Langly's neck, trying to hold the towel with one hand while the other pulled damp hair out of the way of his kisses. "Not the way I meant to spend today, but I might be willing to admit this hasn't been a bad idea, yet."

"Might?" Langly scoffed against Reid's shoulder.

"Hey, you almost took out a lamp and I have no idea what I'm doing." Reid tipped his head and squinted at the side of Langly's face.

"The perils of actual genius. Individually, we're deadly. Together we're a danger to ourselves and others."

"I don't know about you, but I'm definitely a danger to myself without the help, thank you."

Langly realised he didn't have enough hands to direct what came next, but he turned his head and awkwardly smashed his face against Reid's until a kiss resulted. "I am going to burn incense to whatever god decided I could have a night with you."

As Reid's free hand dragged down Langly's towel-covered back to cup his bare ass, he purred warmly against the thin lip caught in his teeth, diving back into that kiss while his mind tried to piece together a response. When Langly's next distracted sound of pleasure echoed off the roof of his mouth, he decided some things just didn't need answers.

Time turned to a slow drip like honey from a cold spoon, nearly still and then leaping ahead all at once. Langly's foot slid up the back of Reid's calf, toes curling against the flesh, and he wished he had at least one more hand. Possibly three, although that would probably be harder to keep track of. Still, with Reid holding the back of the towel... He pressed the backs of his bitten-stubby nails against Reid's chest as he slid that hand out from between them, freeing it to clutch at Reid's back, fingers buckling the thin flesh.

"You still trust me to execute your last wild idea?" Reid murmured with the breath they shared.

"I'd ask if you were still up for it, but..." Langly's hand gave a demonstrative squeeze, and Reid's lips pulled tight against a laugh.

"I don't really have the wall space for that, and I don't want to have to clean any books, so we're going to have to improvise." Reid nudged Langly with his hip. "So, I'm thinking if you put one knee on the seat of the chair and--"

"Over the arm. Which vibrates." Langly grinned wickedly. "I like the way you think."

"I know." Reid met the grin with a smug smile of his own. "Put the towel down so we don't ruin the upholstery."

"I can promise you it would take more than--"

"Oil."

"Okay, I can't make any promises about that," Langly conceded, stepping back and twisting out of the towel, leaving it in Reid's hand. A split second later, he realised what he'd done and that Reid wasn't looking at him, but at the chair. He still stepped back, reaching for the towel caught on the lamp, to spare himself the indignity of even the faint glow that lit the room. At least the neighbours probably couldn't see through that window. And that was another sequence of unsettling thoughts. How well could someone see through those drapes with a telephoto lens and who had the apartment across the road? He'd been in view of those windows, drapes or not, since he'd come in. By the time he looked back, Reid had tucked the other towel around the arm of the chair in a way they were mostly likely not to dislodge.

"You okay?" Reid asked, tearing the first condom off the end of the strip.

"Yeah, sorry. Somewhere else, for a second." Langly shook his head to clear it and then realised Reid was offering him the condom.

"That's a towel. That's ... It's the best thing I could think of."

A slow horror dawned on Langly as he realised what he'd almost subjected himself to, and he plucked the condom out of Reid's hand. "Yeah, all right, that'll hurt less like a slow murder, thanks." A moment passed while he fiddled with the wrapper and figured out which end was up. "Unlubricated," he observed, unrolling it onto himself.

"I don't really need them to be. It's just one more thing to clean up. Kind of defeats the purpose." Reid looked away, again, adjusting the towel over the window just beside the chair with one hand as he gestured to the chair, with the other. As if this happened every day.

"Special Agent Extra Virtuous hides his indulgences well," Langly quipped, trying to find a comfortable position over the arm of the chair.

"You've seen my file." Reid's eyes finally landed on Langly.

"I've seen enough files with your name on them to know exactly how well."

"And now think of all the things that probably didn't make it into the files." Reid plucked the bottle of oil from the chair as he circled around to stand between Langly's legs. "This chair really is a little short, isn't it."

"Bit, yeah." Langly stretched his leg and the chair tipped back. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the realisation strike Reid.

"Hang on." Reid made for the kitchen with no thought to eyes on him, and returned with a coffee can, which he jammed under the front of the chair. "Problem not solved, but probably appropriately addressed, for the moment. I hope."

"I'll keep my toes crossed. Hands are a little busy." Langly tightened his grip on the chair.

Reid took a deep breath and opened the oil. "Again, no idea what I'm doing, but I can guess. You're going to have to tell me if this is horrible."

"Don't worry. You'll know," Langly drawled, trying to relax as Reid's fingers traced his skin, followed by a dribble of oil.

As it turned out, Reid was a terrible tease, and Langly writhed against the fingers that stroked and pressed against his skin, rubbed his taint and traced his hole. The flat press of a finger pad, but never the tip pushing in. Langly made a sound of raw frustration as Reid's fingers dipped into the puddle of oil that had gathered on his balls, dragging a slick line along a path already well-traced.

Reid watched his hand on Langly's flesh, caressing places he'd have been hard pressed to imagine putting a hand before things he wasn't going to allow to interrupt this moment, so stop thinking about them, Spencer. A few deep breaths and another teasing press that wrung more little frustrated sounds from Langly, and Reid convinced himself to stop thinking about where he was about to put his fingers. He was in his house. There was soap in the next room. It was nothing that wouldn't wash off. He could wipe his hand on one of the towels for some respite, until then.

The first finger dipped in to the first knuckle and Langly's hips rolled. "Oh, fuck," he breathed. "Two, not one. One's weird."

Reid felt like his hand belonged to someone else as he pushed a second finger in, beside the first, and Langly made some incoherent sound of desire and relief, pressing back against those fingers.

Langly's hips canted up, legs flexing hard as Reid gently stroked his insides, getting a feel for his body. Memories of being left weak-kneed and fucked out beside an ice machine, drooling down the hotel wallpaper, as he tried to get his trousers back up flashed through Langly's mind at the sensation of being touched like this again, even if this was a lot less rough.

The clench of muscle on Reid's fingers felt distant, but pleasant, as he rubbed his fingers against the flesh that pressed against them like warm, wet satin. Here was a spot that made Langly tremble, here one that made him writhe. He remembered the weight of a woman against his hand, but this was something else entirely, and he let Langly's reactions lead him.

"Enough!" Langly's voice cut through Reid's reverie, and Reid stopped moving entirely, waiting.

"No, not enough. More. A lot more. So much more." Langly shook his head and looked over his shoulder. "Will you just fuck me, already?"

"You're impatient!" Reid teased, picking up the oil again, in his clean hand, and easing his fingers out, leaving Langly nearly shivering again, clinging to the chair.

"You have no idea the kind of patience I have demonstrated to this point, but maybe one of these days, I'll get a chance to show you," Langly retorted, closing his eyes so he could find all the parts of that sentence.

Reid looked at the bottle in his hand, having second, third, and fourth thoughts all at once. "You know, the degradation rate of latex--"

"I have had your blood in my mouth. If there was anything to catch, which there isn't, it's already too late, and has been for weeks." Langly ground out the words, eyes springing back open in a piercing glare of frustration. "It has been too late since you busted your lip on my teeth. Let it go."

"I'm just trying to be responsible about this!" Reid protested, pouring oil into his hand. "But, as you've pointed out, I've already been irresponsible about this, and the chance of me having something I could pass on is relatively small."

"Fucking microscopic," Langly agreed, lips still tense until Reid leaned forward again, pressing against him.

"You sure about this?" The gleam in Reid's eyes said he was teasing, and Langly stared like he could burn a hole in the man with his eyes alone.

As Langly opened his mouth to say something unbelievably tart, Reid pushed in, and Langly's eyes rolled back, his hands digging into the chair that still vibrated between his thighs. The words that fell out of his mouth weren't the ones he'd intended, but he had no use for those words any more, and they vanished in a surprisingly loud groan of agonised pleasure. "Yes! Oh, fuck yes! More! Oh, fuck, please, more-- Reid!"

Reid leaned down as he slowly pressed in deeper, burying himself in Langly's tight, hot body. When his lips met the back of Langly's shoulder, he caught his breath and prepared to be elbowed in the head. "You know, most people who get this close to my penis call me Spencer, but I know how difficult it is to moan plosive sounds."

The elbow didn't arrive, but the frustrated growl from Langly said the quip had landed perfectly. "I just want you to know, I hate that you're coherent enough to say shit like that."

"Then do something about it," Reid replied, and Langly dropped his hips in the middle of the sentence, so the last word came out as a squeak. "That counts," Reid panted, rolling his hips as he set the oil far enough out that they weren't likely to kick it over on the rug. He couldn't quite reach the edge of the desk.

Langly rocked back against Reid, setting up a rhythm that pulled down at the start of each thrust, grinding him against the arm of the chair in a way that made him wish they'd just plastic wrapped it, because the idea of walking fifteen miles after doing that to his balls was getting less appealing by the moment. Still, the pressure against his insides was even better than he remembered, possibly because he wasn't uncomfortably braced against a wall and getting mercilessly pounded by someone who didn't care, with the nagging sense someone else could walk by at any moment. He could take the time to enjoy this: the slow, hard thrusts and the tiny sounds of pleasure from Reid, every time he clenched. He had a head full of words and his mouth refused to put them in order, so he settled for, "Just like this..."

"This what you wanted?" Reid asked, pressing his lips against the back of Langly's shoulder.

Langly shook his head. "Better." He licked his lips and closed his eyes again, letting his body pursue its own pleasure while he tried to string more than three words together. "But, if you want to wring me out like a wet sponge and keep going, I'm not going to object to that."

"Wring you out like a wet sponge, huh?"

"Harder," Langly panted, more of an explanation than a demand.

But, harder was exactly what Reid gave, shifting one hand to put pressure on Langly's lower back, lifting his knee to the edge of the chair seat, accompanied by prayers the coffee can would hold, as he picked up the pace ever so slightly, letting the impact at the end of each thrust complete, before he pulled back.

"Harder!" This time it was definitely a demand, Langly's legs flexing cramp-tight as his hips angled up to press him tight against the arm of the chair and take Reid all the way in.

Sweat dripped from Reid's chest as he gave in to the demands of his own flesh, recklessly pounding into Langly, who arched and groaned, beneath him. His thrusts timed themselves to signals he didn't even register, consciously, until he could feel the effect -- like the fact that each thrust took two beats of his heart, a throb as Langly clenched just behind the head and another as his pelvic arch met flesh at the bottom of the thrust. Harder, faster, and if there were any way to do it, deeper, his heart quickening as his body moved faster, until Langly's entire body tightened under him.

Fifteen seconds passed between the time Langly stopped breathing and the first spurt he was distantly pleased he wouldn't have to clean off the chair. The stuttered exhalation that followed carried broken fragments of sound, but not a single complete word until the next breath. "Please don't stop."

There was a momentary hiccup, as Reid processed the sentence backward from the word 'stop', but the next thrust made up the difference. He watched his own sweat pool in the small of Langly's back, eyes travelling no lower lest he focus on what he was doing, instead of how it felt. And it felt incredible. This wasn't ninety seconds with his own hand to stop the noise in his head. It also wasn't the voluptuous softness that made him reconsider his views on density and impact, but that had been a different kind of incredible. This was raw, poorly-planned lust, where nobody had somewhere to be in the morning. The bloom of interrupted solitude and curiosity, in a way he should've expected those things to go together, but hadn't.

Reid's breathing fell out of time with his thrusts, ragged gasps, like he couldn't get enough air, and his legs trembled as he tried to keep the pace he'd gotten comfortable with, but the thrusts got shorter, punctuated with grinding. It was like stepping off a cliff -- his stomach twinged, and his heart stopped. He couldn't feel his hands or his feet, and cold tingles lanced up his wrists and ankles. He might've made a sound, but he couldn't hear anything over the rush of blood pounding through his head. He came to his senses with one arm wrapped tightly around Langly's chest, panting against a lock of hair that hadn't yet fallen over Langly's shoulder.

Chapter Text

"I think I have to sit down, now," Reid breathed, dizzily, his knees already wobbling

"Wait, wait, wait!" Langly grabbed at the arm around his chest, but succeeded only in toppling backward as Reid's knees gave out, behind him, knocking them both into a twisted pile that somehow managed not to intersect any other furniture.

"Okay, this hurts." Reid tried to figure out where all the parts of his body were and why so many of them were suddenly filled with pain. "I think I sprained my toe."

"I think we're lucky I didn't break your hips with my ass." Langly blinked at the ceiling and let go of Reid's arm.

"I'm not ready to swear to that, yet." Reid chuckled and tried to spit out Langly's hair. "Definitely lucky you didn't break my nose, though."

"Always tuck your head when you fall, now for more than one reason." Langly struggled to sit up until Reid nudged him. "Thanks. Gravity is not kind."

As Langly grabbed the chair and eased himself up, with a few long breaths, Reid grabbed the bottom of the condom, to keep Langly from taking it with him.

"Speaking of gravity, I should stop being on my back, because liquids move faster than you do."

Langly laughed and pulled the towel off the arm of the chair to wrap around himself. but within seconds he was sprawled in the chair again, body not quite prepared for standing. "You need a hand?"

"Probably," Reid admitted, stretching his free hand toward Langly, as he tried to put his legs in a more sensible position.

A minute more and the oil had been capped and the used condoms dropped in the desk bin. Reid knelt at the foot of the chair, from where he'd just removed the coffee can, with his head on Langly's thighs, Langly's fingers rubbing behind his ear, lazily.

"I should apologise," Reid sighed, only his lips moving.

"Because you're going to fall asleep with your face in my lap? I can think of worse things."

"Because I don't think I can keep doing this like this. I can do complicated. I can do long-distance. I just don't know if I can do cheap and disposable. I thought I could manage the ... thing after Vanity as just one night of reckless idiocy after a job well done, but here you are, again, and I can't just call this a one-off, any more. I mean, this is the second time. And I may be starting to actually appreciate your company. I'm sorry. If that's how this ends..."

"Reid, I have your last three psych reviews just about committed to memory, because I wasn't going to walk in here blind. I'm not walking into the fed's lair without my glasses on. Okay, I actually did walk in without my glasses on, but that's not the point. Metaphorically. You know how far I got into your records. What the hell makes you think I expected this to be zipless? Other than the part where I am the master of the invisible zipless fuck." Langly's hand moved just far enough to flick Reid in the forehead. "I didn't come here for this, but that doesn't mean I didn't know what kind of crazy I was sticking my dick in, well before there were any dicks involved in the conversation, today. I'm pretty sure I can live with that. I mean, if you can. Besides, there was zero possibility of zipless from the introduction of the word 'fed'. This has been contaminated since before the very first time you said 'maybe'. This is just a more enjoyable sort of not-zipless than the one where we're using each other for leverage. I've done that, before. And, honestly, if this turns into that, I'll do it again. But, I don't want to." He paused. "Okay, that sounded dramatic and romantic, and that's not really what I meant, either. Break it in the middle at 'friends you do'?"

"I'll be your dirty little secret, if you'll be mine." Reid chuckled quietly. "I know I can't talk about this, but you already know I don't really... do that."

"What happens in my pants stays in my pants." Langly hooked a leg around Reid's back. "It's a deal."

"Then I guess the other thing to put on the list of things we do is serial chair accidents, because this is definitely three." Reid turned his eyes up, smirking.

"I'd say we should try the couch, next time, but I definitely don't want to flip that over."

"The table behind it thanks you for your concern."

"And I'm bringing good lube, next time, too. And conditioner. But, thank your friend for the olive oil. A very thoughtful gift. You should mention you've finally gotten some use out of it." Langly ran his foot along Reid's back.

"Didn't we just establish that I'm not talking about this?" Reid nipped Langly's thigh and nearly got kneed in the teeth.

"So don't talk about it. People tend to fill in the blanks with whatever they think is right, if you're non-specific. Usually works for me, except that one time. And that other time. And the time I ended up with my arm in a cow's ass, but I may have made the mistake of confirming one of those mistaken assumptions, that time. It always works for Byers."

"I work with a bunch of profilers. Trust me, someone will notice something that blatant."

"Someone. You're good at not naming names," Langly observed.

"So are you. You haven't put a name on anyone I haven't met." Reid sat up and stretched, the finally-faint scars on his arms invisible to Langly at that distance, in the dim light. "You should move over. My back is not going to appreciate it if I fall asleep down here."

Langly whined wordlessly, unwrapping his legs from around Reid and shifting into the corner of the chair. "You should get a blanket. I'm hanging on to the towel."

Reid raised an eyebrow and the rest of his body, before disappearing into the bedroom that wasn't quite his. He came back in pyjama bottoms, carrying the top in one hand as he grabbed the folded blanket from the corner of the couch. Eyes lingering on the barometer on the table behind the couch, he offered the pyjama top to Langly. "It's cleaner than your shirt."

Langly accepted it, almost reverently, thin lips holding back the words piling up behind his eyes as he pulled it on and buttoned it, dropping the towel over the side of the chair. "This is a first," he finally said.

"Of course it is." Reid raised his eyes and smiled, lopsidedly, handing the blanket to Langly as he wedged himself into the other side of the chair. "Fifteen minutes against a wall doesn't lend itself to borrowing shirts. Besides, you're tall."

"Three minutes," Langly corrected, twisting around to lay half on Reid, as Reid had laid on him, the last time they tried to sleep like this. "Fifteen? Fifteen would've been a disaster."

"And somehow, you still like sex." Reid shook his head and chuckled, unfolding the chair and the blanket. "Three minutes? I can't imagine any of it was very good."

"Good enough to keep me interested." Langly shrugged and pulled the edge of the blanket over his shoulder. "You're definitely a whole new experience. Still have to figure out what to do with that."

"Start by not getting killed and we'll work in from there." Reid's hand closed against the sudden ache in his palms, where his fingers rested against Langly's back.

"Because you're not doing that to yourself again," Langly remembered, looking up from where his head lay on Reid's shoulder. "Thanks, I've done dead. I think I'll pass on doing it for real. Almost dead was bad enough."

"I have so many questions about the body bag, and I'm not going to ask any of them."

"Thanks. The answer to most of them is 'I don't know, and I don't want to know.'" Langly curled up, wrapping a leg around Reid. "Just so you know, this is terrifying and I'm probably going to get up ten times in the middle of the night to go pee, because something in the back of my head keeps insisting I shouldn't be this comfortable, right now, and I know exactly what it is."

"I'm going to be awake in three hours, anyway." Reid shrugged the shoulder Langly wasn't laying on. "I don't sleep much."

"Yeah, I noticed that. I sleep a lot all at once, but I don't do it often." Langly's eyes drifted shut. "You still haven't flipped out about me touching you."

"Yes, I have. Or, rather about me touching you. I just decided I was going to ignore it. That's not going to work forever, but I'm hoping I'll get used to it before that stops working." Reid knew that was going to be an ugly moment, and a horribly embarrassing one, and he hoped he had the sense to recognise it before he couldn't just back away and expect it to stop.

Langly's stillness grew more apparent. "I need to look at you better. I've never been that great at people, but this seems kind of important."

"To be entirely fair, you weren't looking at me at all. And I'm very good at not being noticed like that." Reid closed one eye to squint down at Langly. "I'm not upset you didn't notice. I was trying to make sure you didn't notice."

"Dirty secrets." Langly huffed amusedly. "You're still cuddly."

"I'm still not sure why. I have nightmares about being this close to people. But, you're right about it being uncomfortably comfortable."

Langly burst out laughing and buried his face against Reid's chest. "Isn't there supposed to be something about virgins and unicorns? Maybe it's not literal."

Reid choked on a laugh, sputtering and wheezing. "Did you just call me a unicorn? I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm pretty sure I'm not horse-faced, and I'm not that horny."

"I was going for 'rare and interesting', there." Langly cleared his throat. "Virtuous."

"Well, I've certainly come to value your particular virtue," Reid quipped.

"This is exactly my point. I'm the supposed virgin, and you're into my virtue. I'm pretty sure that plays." Langly poked Reid under the ribs, Reid's hand snatching at his fingers. "You're the unicorn."

"Three minutes? Seriously?"

"Probably less." Langly shrugged. "I was a lot younger. Back then, grab my crotch and I'd either get an instant boner or punch you in the face. Sometimes both. If my dick was out, I was getting off whether I wanted to or not. I can't tell if I'm slower now because I'm old or because you're a fucking tease."

"I am not a tease!" Reid argued, resisting the impulse to ask the obvious question. "I just prefer a slower, full-sensory appreciation of the event. I want to remember it, and I want it to be something worth remembering."

"I'll admit you've almost convinced me. I might still need a little more convincing. Maybe another demonstration or three," Langly teased. "Personal favourite, until now, was three minutes in a hotel hallway in the middle of a convention. And that fucker wiped his hand off on the back of my shirt, too. I could've done without that, but I don't think I have ever come that fast, before or since. ... Not that he cared if I did or not. He was in it for himself. So was I. Still good, except for my shirt."

"I'm not like that. I promise. If I ruin any of your shirts, it'll be in some bizarre Rube Goldberg style accident." Reid stifled a laugh against the top of Langly's head. "And it's... not a good time for me, if you're not having fun."

"Smart, funny, and polite. Yeah, you're the unicorn. Some kind of cryptid, anyway."

"I am not a cryptid," Reid complained, pinching Langly's hip.

"Okay, I don't know who the hell you spend your time with, but they must be some wild people, because as far as I can tell, you are very definitely a cryptid. There should be an X-File with your name on it, but I haven't found it yet."

"Most of the X-Files weren't digitised," Reid said, before realising that argument wasn't going to help his case. "And I'm still not a cryptid. And if I were, what does that make you?"

"Lucky," Langly decided.

"Definitely starting to like you, even if you do think I'm a cryptid. Which I'm not."