Trivial Pursuits

by lol_ur_mom

Summary:

Spencer Reid is eighteen and living in San Francisco while he gets his PhD(s). He's trying his best to move on from his shitty past, but it's not so easy when he starts a whirlwind relationship with Matt, an older MD-PhD student with a cocaine habit.

Notes:

I did say I would post the sequel and prequel concurrently, so here the sequel is. This is six years after the events of I Won't Leave If You Ask Me to Stay and four years after the events of This Is How You Die (though it isn't strictly necessary to read either of those).

I also want to do a sequel where Reid is sixteen and goes to rehab or something, but that's for later.

The first chapter is mostly smut, so if you want to skip that you can.

Chapter 1: Matt

The music throbbed in the packed space, and Reid could feel himself being made holy by the bass vibrating in his bones. It was the top unit of a duplex in San Francisco, just a neighborhood away from UCSF’s Mission Bay campus where Reid’s doctoral lab was. He was starting his third year tomorrow, but he never drank enough to get a hangover anymore. Mostly.

Reid held a cup close to his chest: God-awful rum and coke, plus lime juice he squeezed from a sticky plastic citrus. He couldn’t dance. Parties like this were too overstimulating, but in a good way. It was another kind of high to chase, this osmosis of energy from the crowd, the music, the everything. He had no rhythm, anyway.

“Hey!” someone shouted above the music, looking up at Reid. “You go to UCSF?” He was short and stocky, with olive skin and dark, curly hair. A pocket twink.

Reid smiled and nodded. “You?”

“Yeah. Fifth year. Name’s Matt.”

The math was easy, because Reid did it all the time. Fifth year grad student would be 27, at least, usually a year or two older. Reid was eighteen. “Reid,” he said. The telegraphic conversation continued haltingly—lots of shouted whats—until Matt grabbed his wrist and tugged. Reid bent down.

“Let’s go somewhere we can talk,” Matt said into his ear.

Reid nodded and let Matt lead him through the crowd and into a bedroom. Before Reid understood what was happening, Matt had plucked a baggie of cocaine from a cluttered desk and done a key bump.

“Fuck,” Reid muttered. He locked the door and faced the corner, crossing his arms. At his roommate’s recommendation, he was only wearing a sweater vest and his arms were cold. “I didn’t know this was your house,” he said to the corner.

“Well, it’s my roommate’s party,” Matt said. He was sniffing.

“Oh, Victoria?” Reid turned around and slid to the ground.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Yeah, sorry, about the…anyway. You just looked like the type. To—you know.”

Reid snorted, indignant. “A druggie? Used to be.”

Matt’s eyes widened. “Oof. Really, sorry. But you don’t look old enough to ‘used to be’ anything.”

Reid closed his eyes lightly. "It's fine. Just a bit surprising. Like seeing an ex you loved."

Matt laughed, short and high and closer to a cough. He fell back onto his queen bed, arms spread wide. "What program are you in?"

"Tetrad. A bit of genetics and a bit of biochem." Reid looked up at the door and realized for the first time that Matt had locked the door behind them. Now, the click of it echoed in his mind.

"Nice. I'm MD-PhD."

Reid whistled, low and long.

“I know, I’m a masochist.”
“Me too.” Reid cracked a smile. “PhD-PhD. I’m also in the psychology program at UC Berkeley.” He stood up, arms akimbo as he looked down at the bed.

“That’s a helluva commute.”

Reid crawled onto the bed, next to this stranger. “Not too bad on BART. Most of my work’s virtual or in the city, anyway.”

“Hello,” Matt said as Reid snuggled into his ribcage. “What for, anyway? So people can call you Doctor Doctor?”

“Yes.” Reid hesitated. He had come to the part of the conversation where he usually lied, but he was tired of lying. He was in the bedroom of someone he barely knew, someone who had done coke in front of him and not judged when he said he used to have a drug problem himself. “I graduated when I was sixteen. College, I mean, and I didn’t know what to do. So I got fully funded and decided to collect PhD’s. Could be worse.”

“Wait, sixteen? Sixteen? How old are you now?”

“Eighteen,” Reid said, as casually as he could, which wasn’t casual at all.

“Eighteen? Like eighteen now ? Jesus fuck, man.” Matt shifted to look at Reid, and Reid wondered if he was shifting away.

The age problem: Reid had always been with older men, besides Ethan. It was the curse of starting college early. In the gay world, age gaps were more elastic anyway, depending on who you were talking to.

Reid sat up and straddled Matt. “Yeah. That okay?”

Matt smiled. “Okay with me.”

Reid leaned down, kissed Matt. It was simple and chaste. A test run.

“What time is it?” Matt asked.

“12:45.” Reid didn’t look at his watch. It was a cool trick, and he took pride in it. 

“Good. Victoria said everyone was going to start heading to the Electric Church at about 1.” Matt paused. “You couldn’t even get in, could you?”

Reid rolled his eyes. It was always the same realizations, only in slow motion. “I have a fake.”

“Well—we’ll have the place to ourselves soon, anyway. Unless you’re an exhibitionist.”

Reid kissed him again, deep. He bit Matt’s lower lip. “Not unless you want me to be.”

“Ha ha.” His voice was more strained now. “I’m gonna go out for the last few minutes, though. Do you top?” Reid shifted off him and Matt got up, straightening his clothes.

Reid could’ve laughed, really laughed. Almost nobody asked him that. “Yeah, if you want. Not usually, though.” Reid had thought maybe topping would make sex easier for a while, as if it were just the position his trauma was linked to, but that was way back his freshman year of college when he was still with Ethan. Topping hadn’t fixed him, but eventually, time did the best it could.

“Okay, we’ll see. You coming?”

“Yeah.” Reid hopped off the bed.

Back in the main room—everything but the bedrooms was a long connected space—the music was still pumping, but there were fewer people now. Reid found his roommate, Sasha, in the living room, passing around a blunt and talking about new biomarker research.

“You going to Electric Church?” She looked up at him, smiling widely, stoned. “Also, have you met Yael? I feel like you two would love each other. She was a psych major. Very into it. Med school here? You know her?”

“Yeah, I think someone introduced me. Charlie, maybe?” Charlie: not an ex, exactly—Reid was too young to have any real ex’s in any of the SoCal grad programs—but Charlie was complicated. An ex best friend, maybe. A best friend who had wanted to fuck Reid, and then realized it would be years before Reid could even legally get into a bar. Reid could’ve told him that. “Anyway,” Reid continued. “I’m not going. Met Matt, Victoria’s roommate, and we might stay here. You’re good to get home?”

“Ooh, Matt? Yeah, have fun.” She turned back to the circle of friends.

Reid wished that he could have that, that he could have people who knew him and still treated him like an adult. People in the program forgot how young he was, sometimes, but he told the people he wanted to fuck, so he couldn’t keep it a secret from everybody.

Reid hung to Sasha, and then drifted through the emptying living room. He talked to another tetrad student, the normal third year stuff. Heard your quals went great. That’s the hard part isn’t it? Who was on your committee? Ugh, I heard they’re the worst .

It was two in the morning before he and Matt were alone—nearly alone, someone was asleep on the couch—again. Matt stood on his toes to kiss Reid again, and Reid groped his ass, practically lifting him by the muscle there. It was good, really good.

“Bedroom?” Matt breathed..

Reid nodded, looking down at Matt. He combed a hand up Matt's back and through his hair.

He kissed his forehead and then stepped back, following him into the bedroom. Reid sat on the bed while Matt fiddled with something—incense, it turned out, and then music. Matt sat on Reid’s lap, curling his legs around Reid. Reid held him and used his weight to shift until he was on top. He kissed his lips, neck, lower, lower. He tugged on Matt’s shirt, an annoyed noise cracking in his throat.

Matt laughed, sitting up half-way to take it off.

Reid left his on—he always waited—and kissed Matt’s chest. He reached down, palming Matt’s crotch. They were both half-hard. Reid mouthed at the bulge, and Matt thrust up needily.

Reid knelt on the carpet and yanked Matt’s jean shorts off, then his boxer briefs. Matt was longer than he’d expected. Circumcised. Reid took Matt’s wrist and put his hand on the back of his head. “Okay?”

Matt was propped on one elbow, looking at Reid. “God, yes.”

Reid swirled his tongue around the tip, up and down the frenulum, and then down and up the entire length of Matt’s cock before he eased his face down on it, going deeper and deeper. 

Matt was looking down at him, more caressing his hair than holding him by it. He was breathing hard. Then, he thrusted in earnest, moving his hand so he was holding Reid’s head and fucking his face.

Reid tried to breathe, tried to swallow, but he gagged and pulled off Matt’s dick, sucking on his balls instead. He eased Matt’s legs open, slid his tongue down.

“Fu-uck,” Matt groaned.

Reid rimmed Matt for a minute, and then looked up. “Lube?” His voice was hoarse.

“Nightstand,” Matt said.

Reid pumped some onto his fingers and fingered Matt, letting Matt gently fuck his face at the same time.

“Fuck, Reid—fuck me, please—” Matt said. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Reid was still completely dressed. He freed his mouth with an obscene pop. “Okay,” he said. “Just, Matt, I—don’t ask about my scars, alright?”

“What? Yeah, sure.” Matt was sitting up now, holding his ankles and letting his dick bob in between them.

“Okay. Good. Okay. Fuck, you’re so fucking perfect.” He kissed him. “Turn over.”

“Yes, sir,” Matt said, grinning. He flipped on his stomach, and Reid lifted his hips until he was on his knees, an isosceles triangle. 

“Don’t call me that,” Reid said breathily. He took off his sweater vest, finally, and then his shorts. He ripped the condom open and slid it on.

“Aye, aye, cap— fuck .”

Matt was tight, and good, and so fucking tight. Reid was going slow, and he stopped to get more lube, but goddamn . Reid pressed Matt into the mattress by the small of his back, fucking him faster now, and harder, bottoming out with every thrust.

Matt was making small noises, moaning everytime Reid’s thighs slapped into his ass. “Hold my wrist,” he said, and Reid did, pinning it to his back and thrusting harder, faster.

He let go to reach around and jerk Matt off, rubbing the head with his still-lubey palm. “Turn over?”

“Yeah.” Matt fell forward onto the bed and then rolled over.

Reid crawled up the bed, pushing Matt’s knees up and sliding a pillow under his back. “This good?” he said breathlessly.

“Mm-hmm.” Matt nodded, holding his knees where Reid had positioned them.

Reid saw the moment where Matt registered the scars, thick ropey things curling around from the back, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he slapped his dick onto Matt’s tight balls a few times and then positioned himself, grabbing more lube and then fucking the life out of Matt.

“Do you want to cum?” Reid asked, rubbing the head of Matt’s cock with his thumb.

“Fuck. Fucking make me,” Matt groaned, almost incoherent. “Wait, can I cum on your stomach?”

Reid shrugged, indifferent, and started fucking Matt again, jerking him off at the same time. He leaned down to kiss him—they were in missionary, now—and Matt jerked himself off while they made out, cumming on Reid and biting his bottom lip.

“Jesus,” Reid said. He fell to the side, and Matt straddled him.

Matt ran a finger through some of the cum and offered it to Reid. Reid sucked Matt’s finger, bobbing his head.

Matt smiled. “So fucking perfect.” He gripped Reid’s dick and pumped for a minute before taking Reid into his mouth. He swallowed Reid, pressing his nose to Reid’s pelvis before he came up for air.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Reid gasped.

“Do you want me to top, or suck you off, or what?”

“I want you to do what you just did for as long as you want.”

Matt grinned, almost feral. “I can do that.”

Reid came, and then they cuddled, and then the fucked again, cuddled, and fucked. Reid left after they had both fallen asleep at around five and had just enough time to leave and get ready for his first meeting of his third year at Mission Bay.

He was at a long table, spreading cream cheese on an everything bagel, when he saw Matt walk in the building, and he turned away, cheeks reddening at record speed. He dumped sugar into his coffee and hoped it was an apparition, or early onset schizophrenia. 

His cohort all sat in a small lecture hall, while one of the advisors talked about the student mentor program. Reid hadn’t seen Matt when he walked in, but he worried, half-zoned out the entire meeting.

“So don’t forget to look at your student mentor assignment. The next half hour of your calendar should be blocked off so you can get to know each other, and you’ll be meeting at least once a week after that for the rest of the year.” Linda was one of the directors of the cohort.

Reid stood in line to look at his assignment. Matthew Onasis.

“I guess we already kind of know each other.”

Reid turned around. This was just his fucking luck.

Chapter 2: Murphy's Law

Notes:

Ngl I've been a bit depressed so it's slow going but here's another chapter

Matt and Reid walked to Philz in the mild August weather, Reid trying to keep his head above the waves of embarrassment threatening to pull him under. He had fucked his student advisor the day before the new term. It was just his kind of luck. He wasn’t so much embarrassed that he had sucked a stranger’s dick and left without saying goodbye, but the idea of talking to that stranger: unbearable.

“Spencer? You okay?” Matt, who had gotten quite a bit ahead of Reid while he berated himself, his karma, and his luck, turned around.

“It’s Reid,” Reid said. It was automatic now, six years after he changed to Reid. The sting of Spencer was something that hadn’t faded with time; instead the wound of it scabbed over and each new bite was fresh and deep and left him bleeding. Spencer was what his father shouted before beating him. It was the name Gary Michaels had called him before raping him. It wasn’t going to be the name anyone ever called him again, not if he could help it.

“Reid, then.” Matt stopped walking, and Reid realized he had stopped, too.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was just surprised. I can—be normal.”

Matt laughed. “I doubt you, Spencer Reid, the boy wonder, can be normal .”

“ Reid, ” he intoned.

“Reid. But we can be civil. We can be adults?”
Reid nodded, and then laughed. “What are the chances?”

Matt smiled. “What are the fucking chances? I can’t believe they put me with you, anyway. Thought they’d put me with another MD-PhD. Guess they figured PhD-PhD’s were the same.”

“It’s fuckin’ suicide is what it is,” Reid said. “Two campuses, two dissertations. I dream of p-values.”

“Jiro dreams of sushi, Reid dreams of stats?” They were at the coffee shop now, and Matt opened the door for him.

“If I sleep at all. I don’t know how you have the time for this mentorship bullshit. I’ve never liked programs like this.” Reid was painfully aware of the irony: another relationship choreographed by bureaucracy that might actually turn out to be real. He reminded himself to call Morgan later, just to catch up.

“Well, from what I’ve heard, you’re almost done, right?”

Reid winced—graduation was an omnipresent stress—and turned away to order coffee. A mint and cream and sugar concoction straight from heaven. He found a table at the back, always at the back.

When Matt sat down, he had both their coffees.

“I love Philz,” Reid said. “Half the reason I chose UCSF was the mint mojito.”

“What were you choosing between?” Matt took a sip.

Reid considered how much to divulge. The truth: he had his choice of any genetics program in the country after his undergrad work. He had presented at a conference about his splicing work his freshman year, and the next day the emails had started coming in. MIT, Caltech, Harvard, Yale. Stanford, though he hated the vibe of it without being able to explain why. He had published in Science and Nature before he was sixteen; it was practically a bidding war for grad school.

“You know, a few California schools. I wanted to be in a city,” Reid said.

“What about family? Are you close to anyone in the Bay Area?”

Reid shrugged. “Are you?” He was being childish, he knew that, but Matt was being probing.

“I have some family in San Diego, so it’s not too bad a trip. I can’t imagine starting so young, though.”

Reid scoffed. “Yes, it’s so very tragic.” He attempted a trans-Atlantic accent and failed miserably. “How ever will I recover?”

“Well,” Matt bristled. “You know what I mean.”

Reid realized his mistake, realized that Matt didn’t know that school hadn’t cut some childhood short, because he hadn’t had a real childhood. A normal childhood, at any rate. Graduating early had saved his life. And starting grad school early had just kept the momentum going.

“Whatever.” Matt dismissed the silence. “I’m supposed to ask you about your plans after grad school, probably.”

There it was. Reid had never expected to live this long, and life after grad school still seemed like some ridiculous, far-away dream. Matt might as well have asked him about his plans once humanity colonized Mars. “I don’t really know. I can’t imagine myself in academia long-term, or industry. And there’s not a lot I can do that uses both degrees.”

“Why get the psych degree anyway? I’ve only ever seen your genetics work.”

Reid had some half-baked plan that involved the BAU, but he could never manage to say it aloud. He vividly imagined Matt’s uncontrollable laugh at the idea of Reid, doctor doctor, becoming an FBI agent. “I was interested in it,” Reid said mildly. “And I did do some psych work in undergrad. It was something about a g-patch gene and schizophrenia.”

“What got you into that?” Matt had somehow already finished his drink, and he was chewing on the half-melted ice.

“Oh, you know,” Reid said flatly. 

“No, come on, seriously. I just want to get to know you. I don’t even know where you’re from .” He said it like it was a travesty.

“D.C., what about you?” 

“Florida, originally, but my family moved to San Diego right before I started middle school. I did undergrad at UCLA, and now I’m here. Do you do a lot of one-night stands?”

Reid snorted. “Do you ? Look, let me know when you figure out if you want to talk about career plans or suck me off in the bathroom, because you’re obviously not sure which now.” Reid slammed back the rest of his drink before realizing he’d rather savor it, and then he stood up and walked out.

Chapter 3: Excitement

By the time Reid got home and started lining up his meal prep Tupperware on the kitchen counter, he had admitted to himself he had overreacted in the coffee shop, but he hadn’t yet quantified the overreaction enough to text Matt and apologize. Matt was overly self-satisfied, and his questions were annoying, and the one-night stand thing was certainly out-of-turn, and Reid wasn’t sure he actually needed to apologize at all. That was something Reid had never quite gotten the hang of, deciding whether he needed to apologize or not.

In the years since his father’s death and Morgan fostering and then adopting him, Reid had bounced between a few therapists in the few cities he’d lived. There was Janette, who was young and mostly dealt with abused children or kids with ADHD, who sometimes forgot Reid was probably smarter than her and had read at least as many psychology books as her, and who mostly focused on immediate coping skills. Journaling and meditating before bed to try to slow the nightmares down. Breathing exercises whenever he felt like Morgan was finally going to snap and belt him.

Reid was putting together pasta salads and overnight oats, and now he was too deep into remembering his entire therapeutic history to stop. In Boston, while he had been at MIT, there was Tanner and then David, after Reid’s addiction problems spiraled out of control. Tanner was Reid’s favorite. Quiet and queer, he reminded Reid of Morgan in a lot of ways. He would study Reid in the same way Morgan did, but with fascination, too. He gave Reid his PTSD diagnosis, and then asked about autism, but Reid had no interest in having that on his medical history. He imagined it would interfere with insurance and driving and God knew what else, especially if his pipe dream of the FBI ever became more serious. He hardly needed accommodations, at least academically, anyway. His stims had become more and more subtle over the years, and he knew how to handle the rare meltdown. Tanner had just given a vague warning about burnout and written something in his personal notes.

His phone buzzed, and Reid wiped his hands on a kitchen towel before answering. It was Morgan.

“Hey-o,” he said, sing-song.

“Hey kid, what’s up? Now a good time?” Morgan sounded slightly out-of-breath, like he’d just finished a run or walking Clooney, the dog he’d gotten when Reid left for college.

“Yeah, it’s good. Just meal prepping.”

“Ya love to hear it.” Morgan chuckled at his own half-joke, and Reid winced. 

He still hadn’t quite gotten over his poor eating habits, and all the nutrition information in the world couldn’t convince him three meals a day were really necessary, but routine had helped. Jannette and Tanner and David and (mostly) Morgan had helped. “Yes,” he said awkwardly.

“How was the first day?”

“Fine, good. I mean, I went back to lab a few weeks ago and I’m mostly done with classes, so not a lot was new. I went over my psych dissertation plan with my advisor and got the final approval.”

“Oh, the, uh, cancer mortality in schizophrenia patients across…something something barriers?”

“Socioeconomic,” Reid said, trying not to sound too condescending. “Yeah. That one. With the section on differential treatments for schizophrenia I think it’ll be good. Not Science or Nature good, but I might actually try to publish it in a smaller journal, or turn it into a review.”

“That sounds awesome, kid.”

Reid, as uncomfortable as ever with praise, quickly said, “How’s the team?”

“Oh,” Morgan said. “Gideon’s, Boston I mean, well—he hasn’t been the same. But he’s coping, I guess. Garcia asks about you, way too much if you ask me. She talks about that puzzle thing you two have been doing together all the time.”

It wasn’t so much a puzzle as it was a quickly escalating hacking contest, but if that’s what Garcia wanted to call it, Reid wasn’t a snitch. They talked for a few more minutes before Morgan went to bed—it was nearly eleven in D.C.—and when Reid hung up, he had a text from Matt.

Heyyy I just wanted to say you were right and I’m sorry about earlier

Reid opened his phone.

And I was wondering if you wanted to abandon the whole mentorship thing (let’s be honest you don’t really need it lol) and have dinner sometime this week

That was not what he expected, at all. He was expecting the reverse, not an invitation to apparently go on a date, a real date, with someone he had fucked at a party before he even knew his last name.

Reid typed, then deleted, and then typed again.

Hey I’m sorry too for kinda overreacting😅

He stared at the keyboard. Matt was hardly the oldest person he’d fucked, or the only person on drugs he’d fucked since getting sober-ish, but he was the only person who Reid had considered dating. Reid had hit the California age of consent months ago, but everyone in his world was a decade older. The youngest students he TA’d at UC Berkeley were still older than him. But Matt was—well, maybe not nice , but he was fun. He hadn’t asked about Reid’s scars. And the sex had been good .

And sure dinner sounds fun, Reid typed, and then he sent it.

Matt texted back an hour later, and they planned to do Italian at a restaurant in the Mission on Wednesday and go to Matt’s place after. Reid fell back on his mattress after they decided on the time. His skin was buzzing, and it took him a few tries to settle on what emotion was crashing like waves in his abdomen. Excitement.

Chapter 4: First Date

Notes:

More smut at the end.

Whoops it pasted wrong the first time.

Sasha picked out Reid’s outfit again. She had waited ages to be able to send him on dates, and he wasn’t going to steal her thunder now. Besides, as she put it, growing up in DC—Reid suspected she meant poor—had nullified any gay sense of style he had. If not for her, he would still awkwardly be wearing pleated slacks and sweater vests everyday, cosplaying as an academic in an attempt to be taken seriously.

Reid sat cross-legged on his mattress, watching her search his closet. “This is why you wanted me as a roommate, isn’t it? For this gay best friend stuff?” He set his glasses on the nightstand. “I don’t think it’s that serious. I mean, we already fucked. I’m not auditioning for the role.”

Sasha turned around, holding up a pair of yellow corduroys and squinting. “Honey, this is the reverse of gay best friend stuff. You’re supposed to be picking out my outfits. And it’s not about how serious it is, it’s fun . If you could let loose a little, you could actually have fun with clothes.” She put the corduroys back in the closet.

“Just make sure whatever you choose is easy to take off later.”

She laughed, and then she brandished hangars at him. One of his patterned knit cabana shirts, dark jeans, light blue undershirt. “Wear it with that leather bracelet I got you. And that leather necklace Morgan got you last year.”

Sasha had met Morgan when he helped move Reid in, and whenever Morgan was in town and could visit. She didn’t know exactly why a Black guy in his thirties was parenting a white eighteen-year-old, and sometimes Reid wanted her to ask.

“He’s gonna think I’m into leather or something.”

“Aren’t we all?” Sasha said sardonically. She dropped the clothes on Reid’s bed.

“You’re an angel,” Reid said.

“I know.”

Thirty minutes later, Reid was standing in front of the mirror, trying to persuade his wavy hair into curls. He gave up and dropped his hands to the porcelain sink. He examined his face, all its hard lines and sharp edges. His cheeks were too hollow, his cheekbones too sharp and skeletal. He smiled half-heartedly at his reflection.

“You okay, Reid?” Sasha stood at the half-open bathroom door. “You look great.”

“Do you think this is a bad idea? Matt?”

She straightened the back of his collar. “I think it’ll be fun. You’re not some virgin right out of high school. You know what you want. It doesn’t have to be serious.”

Reid got the necklace Morgan got him from its place in the drawer.

“That being said, if that dumbass hurts you he’s got the whole tetrad cohort coming after him.”

Reid smiled, rubbing his thumb over the smooth metal square. “Thanks Sosh.”

“Anytime champ. Now quit hogging the bathroom and go climb Matt like a tree.”

Reid awkwardly stepped around Sasha. “He’d make a very short tree.”

She laughed, and Reid went to grab his wallet and keys.

The restaurant was quiet and nearly empty, but the walls were plastered with loud abstract art, bright colors swirling on the huge canvases. Reid met Matt outside, awkwardly offering him a handshake and then allowing himself to be pulled into a tight hug. His chin nestled into Matt’s hair and he inhaled: Irish spring, sweat, the aggressively sterile scent of lab. They sat at a small table by a large window, and they ordered almost immediately. Reid got a pea and mint and burrata ravioli. If his twelve-year-old self could see him now—ordering expensive food at a fancy restaurant, smiling, dressed so gay— he would’ve laughed.

“Am I allowed to ask you personal questions now?” Matt said after the waiter took their menus.

Reid shrugged. “If you have to.”

“It’s a date , Reid.” He smiled.

“Alright, go ahead.”

Matt nodded to Reid’s chest. “Does that necklace mean anything? You keep touching it.”

Considering everything, it was a tame question. Matt could’ve asked about Reid’s scars, his skittishness, or, God forbid, his plans after graduation. “Oh,” Reid said softly, almost accidentally, as though the air had been knocked out of his lungs. “It’s—my friend got it for me, last November. Two years sober.”

Reid might’ve imagined it, but Matt’s dark skin paled slightly. “Oh. Do you mind…if I ask what—”

“It was heroin,” Reid said bluntly. “I was in and out of hospitals a lot when I was younger, and once I got dilaudid. Then I ran out of dilaudid and started buying whatever opioids I could find. Then heroin was cheaper. It wasn’t as bad for a few years, but after my first year of college, I just—” Reid didn’t know what to say because he still didn’t know how it had happened. When he was younger, with his dad, at least he knew what he was running from, what pain the pills and needles were killing. But once he got to college, all he was running from was ghosts.

“It’s alright.” Matt must’ve misinterpreted his silence, but when he put his hand on Reid’s, Reid didn’t pull away.

“I know,” Reid said. It’s alright? Of course it was: Reid was sitting in a fancy restaurant with a hot guy, and he had a warm, safe apartment to go back to later, or maybe not, because Matt really was hot, and he had people who cared about him, and he had Morgan, always, if nothing else.

Matt angled his hips slightly, and his knee touched Reid’s. Reid opened his legs so that Matt’s knee was between his own, and he knew he wasn’t going home tonight.

The rest of the dinner went well. Matt was funny, and good at accents, and he talked about his family a lot. It turned out he was bi or pan—the label didn't matter to him—and it turned out he wanted to do gynecology research. It was a severely underfunded and under-researched field, Reid knew, and Matt told him about his work with cancer causing viruses in vitro.

They split the bill and did the dance of picking out a movie to watch when they got to Matt's apartment. The air was mild and the sun setting as they walked out of the restaurant, hand in hand, Matt leaning on Reid's taller frame. Two blocks from the restaurant, they stopped at an empty intersection, and Matt pulled Reid's neck down to kiss him. It was dizzying, hungry. Matt put a hand on Reid's lower back to pull him close, and Reid was sure Matt would be able to feel his hard-on.

Then the traffic light changed. They broke apart and walked the next block and stopped at the light and then: Matt's tongue was grazing Reid's teeth, he was biting Reid's lips. They were the only thing that existed.

Blocks went like that, and then they were at Matt's door. Reid cupped Matt's ass while he unlocked the door, burying his nose in Matt's hair. "Come on, come on," Matt said as he struggled with the key.

"Fuuck," Reid said. "I need you."

Matt turned around and kissed him, opening the door with his free hand. He pushed Reid into the doorframe and pressed their pelvises together, holding the back of his thigh. "What do you want?" he breathed.

"I want you. I want it rough," Reid said. He moved Matt's hand to his own neck. Reid knew he was being porn-y, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Matt applied the slightest pressure to the blood vessels there and kissed him and Reid's head spun. "You're so fucking perfect, Reid," he breathed. "Let's go." He pulled back and slapped Reid's ass twice, holding the door open. 

In his bedroom, Matt started stripping without preamble, but Reid stood there like an awkward teen in a changing room. "You okay?" Matt said.

Reid opened his mouth. Closed it. Yes, I've never been more okay in my life, but I need to know you won't ask about the burns and the scars and all the reminders that I once wasn't.

He couldn't say anything, and he just stood there, gripping the hem of his shirt, slowly losing his erection.

"Reid? It's okay. I've seen you before."

Reid didn't know if Matt knew what he was nervous about, but at that moment, it didn't matter. He tore off his shirt and shoved his pants and boxer briefs down, and then he kissed Matt, and it was nuclear. 

Matt spun him around and pressed him to the closet door. "What do you like? And, you know…not like." He bit Reid’s ear and then the crook of his neck.

If Reid hadn’t said it so many times, he might not have been able to, drunk as he was on Matt, all of Matt. “Don’t hold my wrists behind me. No good boy stuff. And no smothering.” He bucked and pressed his ass to Matt’s dick. “I want you to take control.”

Matt moaned at the words. “Get on the bed.”

Reid looked behind him first. “I want to feel it tomorrow.”

“Oh, fuck, you will.” Matt pressed on his sternum, nudging him to the bed.

Reid fell back onto the bed, his dick bouncing on his stomach as he hit the mattress.

“You’re so fucking perfect,” Matt repeated. He straddled Reid, pressing his thumb into his carotid and kissing him deeply. With his other hand, he pinched Reid’s nipples.

Reid arched his back. He had always had sensitive nipples, but Matt was figuring that out early.

Matt sat up, still tugging on Reid’s nipples, smiling at the way Reid writhed at his direction, with every change in pressure. “Fuck,” he said. 

“Turn over.”

Reid did, and then Matt’s lubed fingers were roughly spreading him, thrusting shallowly into him.

Reid hadn’t prepped earlier. His eyes watered.

“You okay, baby?” Matt murmured.

“Yeah,” Reid breathed, his heart pounding. “Yeah.”

“You wanna be my slut?”

“Yeah,” Reid said weakly.

“Say it.” Matt’s voice had ossified into something harder, rougher, sexier.

Reid was trembling. “I wanna be yours.” He jolted with a thrust of Matt’s fingers. “I wanna be your slut.”

Matt lifted his stomach so he was on his hands and knees. “You’re gonna be such a good slut for me, aren’t you?”

“Fuck, Matt—” Reid inhaled, and Matt thrusted inside of him, and the pain and pleasure lit up his brain like a Christmas tree. “ Yes .”

Matt didn’t stop or slow down or let Reid adjust, and Reid loved him for it. This was how he most liked sex: when it became transcendent, the extra stimulation of pain lifting him out of his brain like it was a too-small container that needed to be dusted and Cloroxed and bleached.

Matt pressed into the small of Reid’s back, bending him so he could choke him from behind. “Just tap if you need a break,” he said.

Reid started making noises he knew were porn-y then, but they were also genuine. “Nuh, uh, uh—fuck, I need you, I need you, so fucking deep and good and—ah, uh—”

“Such a sensitive slut,” Matt said. “My slut.”

Somehow the words went straight for Reid’s groin, heat growing and flooding the too-small container of himself. “I think—already—I’m gonna—”

“Come for me, Reid.”

And Reid did.

After, they lay next to each other, Matt’s arms enveloping Reid despite their height differential. Reid was grateful for the warmth; the first few times Reid had bottomed for someone other than Ethan, they hadn’t cuddled after and Reid dropped back into loneliness, hard.

“That was better than heroin,” Reid realized aloud.

“I guess I’m your new heroin,” Matt said, and they kissed, and Reid agreed.

Chapter 5: Montage

Notes:

A little short but it's very much an in between chapter

They fucked everywhere, those first few weeks. When Reid ran samples at the Parnassus campus, Matt rimmed him in the bathroom, having him bite down on his sleeve so he didn’t make noise. Matt gave Reid plugs to take to work, and then he would text him and tell him to go fuck himself in the bathroom with them. They took a tour of Alcatraz and hopped a barrier to go blow each other in a cell. They fucked in bars and parks and both their apartments. Matt topped most of the time, but Reid did, too. Matt left Reid’s ass red and bruising and his dick hard after spanking him for ten straight minutes, whispering about what a slut he was, how sexy he was.

Matt never asked about the scars.

In September, Matt carried boxes of Reid’s stuff up the duplex stairs, and then they fucked on a pile of Reid’s unplaced belongings, Reid grasping at old band t-shirts as Matt’s thighs slammed into his, his back curling on the hard wood floor. They took an Uber to IKEA and made out in the frozen capsule images of dozens of homes. They ate meatballs off of each other’s tiny toothpicks. They saved each other the best flavors, and got so many flowers for each other (Reid used to work at a Whole Foods and had a good enough reputation there they just let him take them) that Victoria banned them from buying any more.

Matt fucked Reid’s face while he hung his head off the side of the bed, Matt’s balls slapping Reid’s face while he gagged and choked, tears dripping towards his hairline.

Matt fucked Reid softly, slowly, music playing and incense lit, his eyes burning into Reid’s.

Reid was the one who suggested they get tested, and so they waited in line at a UCSF clinic one Friday morning. Matt rested his ear on Reid’s shoulder and rambled about school. Reid buzzed. Testing always made him nervous. Morgan had taken him to get tested a few weeks after he had started fostering him, one appointment in a flood of them as Morgan realized all the care Reid had never received. It had been petrifying, the possibility of getting HIV or anything else from his abuser, and getting tested still petrified him. Froze him. If sex lifted him, euphoric, from his body, getting tested crammed him back inside of it, the arc of gravity’s rainbow crashing inside of him.

Reid looked away for a blood draw and pissed in a cup and then he was done. Pulsing with relief, he pushed Matt into an alley on the way home and yanked down his pants, falling heavy to his knees so he could suck him off.

Chapter 6: Show and Tell

Notes:

Not sure what possessed me to write this one. Deviated from the outline and a little repetitive from the other chapters and stories in the series. I've been thinking a lot about the men who let me stay with them when I was younger who would smoke me up before fucking me, and this disjointed chapter came from that.

The bar was in the Mission, and the second story had a tarped-over balcony looking over the street where Matt and Reid usually sat. They were at at drag show inside, though, where the music was pumping. Reid had his legs draped over Matt, and he was leaning back on the table. He had drunk a little more than usual, and the room felt delightfully liquid, nothing staying in its brightly colored container.

A queen dragged Reid onstage, wrapped his hands around a stripper pole. He smiled and awkwardly shimmied. Then he saw Matt whistling, heard the cheering of the crowd, and he danced like he meant it.  He was brilliantly alive in that moment.

At home, Matt groped Reid’s ass and kissed him. “You were so fucking hot up there,” he whispered.

“Yeah?” Reid said. He put a thumb on Matt’s sternum and pushed him away. 

“So fucking hot,” he repeated, slurring. “I need you so badly.”

Reid took off his shirt. “You’re high,” he said bluntly. “I’m going to bed.”

Matt groaned as Reid stalked across the room. “Come on, Spencer Reid.”

Reid fixed him with a cold glare from the other side of the bed. “How many fucking times do I have to tell you? It’s fucking Reid .”

“Fuck. Reid. I’m sorry . Please .”

“Do you seriously think you can whine your way into having sex with me?” Reid asked. “While you’re so high I don’t even think you’ll remember this?”

Matt blinked owlishly. “That’s not—”

“I’m going to bed,” Reid said firmly. Then, as if commanding it made it true, he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. He heard the click of a lighter, the sizzle of the flame held to a bowl. Just for a moment, Reid wondered if it was crystal, and for another moment, he wished it was.

He hadn’t realized either that first night he agreed to dinner with Matt or the night he agreed to move in just how often Matt did drugs. Would he be with Matt if he did? Was he still so self-destructive? Reid knew the answer was maybe.

Weight pooled on the other side of the bed as Matt laid down, and Reid heard him do another hit in the darkness. Weed, probably, but that didn’t stop the memories of Michaels shotgunning smoke into his lungs when he was fourteen, thirteen.

Michaels was lining up a shot with his camera, Reid was humiliatingly pliant. Michaels moved his limbs like he was a marionette, and Reid imagined himself wooden and hollow with a painted-on face. The flash of the camera. Smile, Spencer. Open up.

Reid turned over to face Matt. In the darkness, he groped along Matt’s arm until he reached the hand pipe. In the darkness, he couldn’t find three red things like David would tell him to, and so he lit up and inhaled. Five things he could see, four things he could touch—he set the pipe on the nightstand and palmed Matt’s arms, his stomach.

“Smoke me up and fuck me,” he whispered.

Matt didn’t say anything, just took the lighter. He sucked in the white smoke and grabbed Reid’s face, blowing into his open mouth. “I know you’re not here,” Matt said, dropping his hand. “You get this look in your eyes. You’re a thousand miles away right now.”

“Four thousand,” Reid said. “And four years.”

“I wish I knew what you were thinking about.”

Reid let out a sour laugh. “No, you don’t. I promise.” His high was filled with dark visions, Michaels in all of them. “Just fuck me. Please.” He hated how his tone drooped towards pleading.

Matt hit the ashy remains of the pipe one more time and kissed Reid, prying his mouth open with his tongue and blowing the smoke straight to Reid’s ruined lungs. He sat up more and leaned forward until Reid fell back into the bed. “What if I don’t want to fuck you when you’re like this?”

“Fuck you,” Reid said.

Matt pressed Reid’s knees towards him, tugged uselessly on the boxer briefs. “I want to know your triggers, Dr. Reid. I want to know what happened to you.”

“Who happened to me, and you’re my trigger,” he said breathlessly. He pulled away and yanked his underwear down. “Turn over.” 

Matt did. Reid sucked on his fingers until they were wet with thick saliva. He sucked on Matt’s neck while he fingered him, jerking himself off until he was hard enough to fuck Matt. “Is this what you wanted?” Reid said, slapping his dick against Matt’s ass.

“Fuck off,” Matt said.

Reid pushed his head into the pillow as he entered him, slowly, slowly bottoming out. He pressed into the small of Matt’s back and grabbed his neck as he thrusted.

Matt laughed, the sound strangled and breathy. “You can choke me while you fuck me but you can’t take your shirt off during sex, Spencey . So I don’t know how much you’re in control.”

Reid pulled out so fast Matt gasped. He pulled on his underwear, then shorts, and then a jacket.

“Reid,” Matt said. “Come on. We were—”

“Don’t.” Reid said. “And don’t wait up for me.”

Matt made a noise in the back of his throat. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

“What? No, tell me what you think would possibly excuse you not respecting my name for the millionth time. More than that, tell me why I would ever talk to you about what happened to me when that’s how you talk about the scars of it.”

“I’m sorry, obviously I didn’t think it would hurt you—”

“Oh, I’m not hurt. I’m fucking angry. And I’m not staying here to listen to your excuses,” Reid said, and then he left the bedroom, the apartment, and the building.

***

Reid still had a key to the UCSF library from his job there as a first year, and he took the empty midnight J-train to the Parnassus campus after walking to the market stop. He let himself into the dark library, disarming the alarm system with one lazy hand. He fished through his pocket for his phone and called Morgan.

“Hello? Reid? Are you safe?”

“Yeah, sorry, I—I’m fine,” Reid said, blinking forcefully a few times in an attempt to sober up. Though the high had probably worn off by now, it was hard to tell, giddy and alone in this large place. “I just wanted to call.”

“That’s good, Reid. I’m glad you called.” Morgan’s voice relaxed.

Reid didn’t say anything, but he sat down on the cut-pile carpet and pulled his knees to his chest.

“Did you want to talk about anything? Or do you just need company?”

“I don’t need —” Reid sighed. “I mean, I’m not going to do anything, kill myself or something, if you need to go. I just, was thinking.”

“What were you thinking about?”

Reid considered honesty. With Morgan, he could manage it. “Michaels. Smoking me up. I—you know I did heroin, opioids because of the hospital stay, not that that’s an excuse, but—”

“It is, Reid. It really is.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I would, Michaels had this box he kept the drugs in, you know, needles and all that—I would’ve killed myself before letting him touch my veins—but he would shotgun crystal before, you know, before. Before. I had a craving, that’s it. That’s all. But it’s weird, craving meth because it also feels like I’m craving—” Reid stopped. “Him. Being fucked like that.”

“Raped,” Morgan said.

Reid blanched but nodded. “Sorry, I know this probably can’t be, I mean, you have your own stuff to deal with.”

“I want to be here for you.”

“Can I ask a question? About what happened with—you?”

“Yeah, sure, kid.” Morgan sounded so, so tired.

“Did he ever, did you ever use?”

“Just liquor,” Morgan said. “Sometimes I would smoke weed.”

“Oh,” Reid said. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” He paused. “Kid, where are you?”

“The library.”

“Where’s Matt?”

“Home,” Reid said, his voice hard.

“What happened, Reid?”

“He was high. He wanted to fuck. He called me Spencer and said some shit he shouldn’t’ve.”

“Was he pressuring you to have sex?” Morgan’s voice was cold and deadly.

Reid shook his head and scratched his forearm. “No, no. Just, you know. My mind fell down and took off. I just wanted to be hurt.”

“Are you still talking to David?”

“No,” Reid said. “I’ll make an appointment, though.”

“ Reid,” Morgan said. Reid imagined him driving the heel of his palm into his forehead. “You know you do better when you’re in therapy.”

“I—it’s been four years ,” he said. “When do I get to be done healing?”

“It’s been two years since the scariest night of my life, Reid. Even if , and that’s a big if, you somehow disappeared your PTSD, I want you to have a space to talk about your addiction issues.”

“I’ll call him,” Reid promised. “I’ll set up an appointment.”

“Do you feel safe going home right now?”

Reid hesitated. “I know I am safe, but I don’t feel it.”

“Where can you go?”

“I can text Sasha,” he said. “Or I can go home anyway.”

“Is that a plan?”

“Yeah,” Reid said. “Thanks for picking up the phone.”

“Of course, Reid. I love you.”

Reid opened his mouth to say it back, but he choked. He always did. “Thank you, Morgan,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“When you’re ready, kid. Not before.”

“Thank you,” he repeated.

Morgan hung up.

***

He had to stop himself from acting quiet and afraid when he got back to the apartment, reminding himself over and over that he lived there, and Matt wouldn’t hurt him, and relax . Matt was back in bed when Reid got there. Reid crept into bed beside him. 

“Mmhmm,” Matt murmured. “You’re back.”

“I’m back,” Reid agreed.

“Spoon me?”

“Yeah,” Reid said. He curled his body around Matt’s, pressing his nose into his hair. He waited until Matt’s breathing had slowed before he spoke again. “It was an accident.” His voice was hoarse. 

“Hmm?”

“The scars.”

“Oh,” Matt said sleepily. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Reid said. “It was an accident. I accidentally fell into my father’s belt, over and over and over.”

“Reid—” Matt said. Reid heard the annoyance.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

Chapter 7: Dreams

Notes:

Hey there! I know it's been forever! Here's a chapter!

Reid’s eyes shot open in the darkness, and he inhaled carefully. When he looked to his left, Matt was sitting up in bed, legs hanging off the sides.

“You have nightmares, you know,” he said.

“I know,” Reid said. His voice was hoarse.

“I didn’t ask about them, even after you moved in.”

“Thank you,” Reid said, though he didn’t mean it.

“No, don’t do that. I know you wouldn’t want me to. To ask, I mean. But I thought you would tell me. Eventually. Talk to me about them, about yourself.” Matt turned around, shifting to sit cross-legged on the bed. “Talk to me,” he said, and Reid heard the shift to the imperative.

“I don’t know what to say,” Reid said evenly. He did know what to say. He knew what everyone who had ever wanted to fix him had wanted him to say, where they had wanted him to start.

“What do you dream about?”

“I don’t know, Matt. It’s not always the same. It’s not real, anyway.”

“But, like, what are they about? You—sometimes you talk, you twist around until you’re tangled in the blankets. I feel like you’re hurting.” Matt twisted the duvet cover in his hands.

“Sometimes you beat me to death in the bathroom, okay? You slam my head into the toilet and I bleed out on the floor,” Reid said. He felt cruel. He felt cornered. He felt powerful.

Matt sucked in a breath, and for a moment, Reid was afraid Matt was going to cry. “Really?” he asked, his voice small.

“Well, I mean, yeah.” The regret was already filling him. “But obviously not most of the time. Like, I also just, like, drown at sea or whatever. Other people kill or hurt me. It’s not like I think you would.”

“Good,” he said. “I wouldn’t. God. Jesus.”

“This is why I don’t talk about them. I don’t want you to feel bad. It’s not your fault. But it’s not mine either.”

“I know that. God. I know that.”

“Anyway.” Now, Reid didn’t know what to say. “Anyway.”

“Do you miss heroin?”

“Yes,” Reid said, so quickly he didn’t have time to think. “Not as much, but yes.” He paused. “Why?”

Matt shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think about it a lot. It can’t be easy.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Not really.”

Reid looked at him. He was beautiful like this, in the half-dark. He was always beautiful. “I never thought I would make it this far. For me, it’s a long time. Longer than I thought I’d have.”

“Jesus, that’s depressing.”

“Not to me. It’s—”

“Worth celebrating.” Matt’s hand reached for Reid’s.

Reid didn’t move away. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah.” Reid leaned in and kissed him on his cheek, the stubble there rough against his lips. “Let’s go to Crissy Field tomorrow.”

***

Waves reached towards them where they laid languidly on the cold sand. Reid took his shirt off stretching cat-like. The sun warmed his pale skin even as the breeze cooled him. He shivered.

“Close your eyes,” Reid said. Matt obeyed, and Reid took his hand. He dragged his fingertips over his skin, the thick keloids. “I’m not going to recite my medical history for you,” he whispered. “But—” Reid’s breath caught.

“Reid,” Matt said softly. “Reid. You don’t have to.”

“I know that. But. Okay—my father. He, it wasn’t ritualistic or anything. He didn’t make me choose the belt or kneel in salt or rice like some kids I knew. It was just fits of rage. A lot of the scars are from one incident or two. I’ve never gotten good at talking about any of it.” Reid brought Matt’s fingers to the pink, stretched skin in lines under his bicep. “Stove,” he said. It was easy to say, but it was enough, he thought.

“Jesus,” Matt gasped.

“Anyway, I was in and out of foster care, and then I got permanently removed—” (What a euphemism, for the days in jail and their aftermath) “When I was fourteen, and I’ve been with Morgan since. He gave me this.” Reid guided Matt’s fingers to the worn leather of the necklace. “He got me sober. Twice.”

Reid kissed Matt without letting go of his hand, and then he guided it down, down, further down.

***

There were dreams where he begged for his life in a bathroom. Dreams of being pulled out from under the bleachers by one ankle. Dreams of floods and biblical disasters. Dreams of needles and veins. Ethan, sometimes. I loved you , he whispered. I loved you too, Reid admitted, and then he woke up.

***

It became easier, living with Matt. Their lives merged seamlessly. They took long walks after longer days in lab. They proofread each others’ theses. They called each other Doctor as a joke, even though it wasn’t funny. They had sex sometimes. 

On one of their walks, Reid asked Matt about school, about when he knew he was gay. He traced circles on Matt’s wrist with his thumb, their fingers intertwined.

“I don’t know. It didn’t really come up because I wasn’t really interested in dating in high school, but I knew by college. What about you?” Matt let go of Reid’s hand and slung his across Reid’s lower back.

“I think everybody else knew before I did. Like there were lots of jokes and shit, even before I figured it out. My mom told me about Oscar Wilde and said she was afraid I’d be unhappy.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Reid agreed tonelessly. “Like a threat. I’m afraid I’ll make you unhappy. More about her own fears than me.”

“Is that why you don’t talk about her that much?”

Reid felt himself closing off and tried to pry himself back open. Crowbar through the gate, because that was what Matt wanted. “I don’t know. It wasn’t that, really. It wasn’t that big a deal at the time, or it didn’t feel like one. But she was like that in a lot of ways.”

“Selfish?”

Reid nodded. “But I don’t think it was her fault.”

Matt squeezed Reid’s hip gently. I love you, his hand seemed to say.

Reid leaned into him. I love you, too.

Notes:

Isn't wild that parents still make their kids kneel on salt? I knew a couple of kids who had to do that growing up. Shit's fucked.

Chapter 8: Everybody at this party has two faces

Notes:

title from everybody at this party has two names

I know this one is short, but it's the second one today so you're legally not allowed to complain. Thank you.

It’s Halloween again, and Reid is almost not drowning. He tells Morgan this, and Morgan makes a joke about how drowning is like being dead or pregnant: you either are or you’re not. Morgan doesn’t understand how Reid is just barely hanging on to the present tense, resisting the past and its hideous anniversaries like the damned holding onto a cursed life. Reid still laughs, and he still laughs at Matt’s jokes. He laughs, sometimes, and it feels like he might cry. It has been five years since his father’s death, three years clean. Matt remembers his birthday and brings him flowers at work. They eat at a fancy restaurant Matt had to make reservations at a few weeks ago. It’s Halloween again, and Reid is almost not drowning.

Matt wants to go to a Halloween party, and Reid does too, so he can’t articulate why it’s so hard to look in the mirror to put on the makeup so they can be twin skeletons together. I am already a skeleton, Reid says. He tries to smile. Matt laughs generously. They go to the party. Reid loses at Matt and ducks through a closed door, walking in on two people fucking, so he goes to the bathroom, where someone rails a line off the sink. Reid touches his face and it comes back white with paint, white with ghosts. He can see through it.

When Matt finds him again, Matt’s pupils are saucers, and Reid wants to cry.

“I’m gonna go talk to Jenna,” he shouts, and Matt grins stupidly.

“Okay, see you,” he replies.

Reid wants nothing more in this moment than to be nothing, be weightless and endless. He wants to become something sturdy and mindless. In the next life, he decides, he is a bedside table, a writing desk. In the next life, he is gone.

He perches on the arm of a couch and lets himself disappear into memories. He is Matt, Matt is him. He is easing the plunger down, letting the dropper into his mouth, filling his lungs with smoke. His wrists are not his, he is not his. He is on a bed. The sheets are white. He touches his face and his hand comes back smeared with ghosts.

“Reid!” Sasha says, and when he doesn’t answer, they are suddenly in the stairwell, and Sasha is tapping his wrists. Her voice echoes in the concrete space.

“I’m okay,” Reid said.

She snorted. “I’m glad. But I think our standards for ‘okay’ are a little different.” She looked up to the apartment they left. “Where’s your boyfriend? Are you on anything?”

Reid shook his head. “Just trauma,” he slurred.

She laughed. “I love you. It’ll do that though. October sucks.”

Reid looked at his watch. “It’s over, though. October. November, baby.”

“I’m glad you still know the months. I’ve missed you. We haven’t hung out enough since Matt.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you,” she said. “I take it you’ve been doing not well?”

“Really just the last couple of weeks. Trying to get through this fucking month.”

Matt burst into the stairwell, letting the heavy fire door slam behind him. “Hey! Hey Sosh!”

“Don’t call me that,” she said. “Why the hell am I taking care of your boyfriend at a party?”

“I’m sorry,” Reid said.

“No, honey, I’m happy to. But he —” Sasha glared at Matt. “Should be too.”

“I am!” he cried. “I just—” He sat down on the top step and sighed heavily. “I can’t read your mind Reid.”

Reid looked at him blandly. He hadn’t wanted him to.

***

That Wednesday, Reid met up with Sasha for coffee at the Mission Bay campus, going to the same Philz Reid had first gone to with Matt. He apologized again for not making enough time for Sasha that semester, and she forgave him again.

“To be honest, I could’ve reached out too. It’s just so busy this semester. Theses and TA’ing and everything. I hope I didn’t mess up things with Matt at the party.” She sipped from her black coffee.

“No, it’s fine. We have this conversation a lot. About how he wants to help me, but it’s not always clear how or when I need it. I mean, he was also blasted at the party, but,” Reid said.

Sasha cocked her head at him. “How is that, for your sobriety? I mean, I know I wasn’t completely sober, but I wasn’t Matt either. Guy’s a legend.”

“I don’t know. I honestly, sometimes I think it’s not the best. For me. And I don’t think I’m really the best for him. But, we are happy. And I’m meeting his parents this weekend.”

“Oh, wow. That’s good. That’s fun.”

They talked about work for a while and walked around the Mission Bay campus, the sun shining through the fog.

Chapter 9

Summary:

My outline said they had sex at the end, but then I just wrote smut, so I had to take it out, and now this is short.

My job now involves a shit ton of writing, so I haven't been writing outside of that. Sorry I left these abandoned.

When they met at the restaurant, it was raining hard, and Reid was cold, shivering in the sweater he had presented in that afternoon. He was in LA for a conference. Matt tagged along, and Matt’s parents, Callie and Nikolas, drove up from San Diego. They met at a small Mexican restaurant where they were led to a basement. The music was blaring through a speaker to Reid’s left, rattling him before they even sat down.

 They got apps and fish tacos and margaritas, except for Reid, who had agreed to drive.

 “It’s so good to finally meet you, Reid! Matt talks about you every time we call,” Callie said.

Reid nodded jerkily. “Yeah, good to meet you too.”

“I’ve got to say, you’re…younger than I thought you’d be.”

“Mom!” Matt said.

“I look young.” Reid broke a chip against his plate. The music seemed to swell in his peripheral. “I might go to the bathroom right quick.”

Matt squeezed his thigh. “Be back soon, please.”

Reid’s hand grazed Matt’s shoulder as he left. He found the bathroom and gripped the sink. He found his gaze in the mirror. 1…2…3…

Why was this so hard? Maybe it wasn’t. Ignore the music, the noise, breathe. Be normal. He went back to the table. The meal had arrived, and Matt must have told his parents to take it easy on Reid because they only asked him softballs about his research and teaching. Do they have good Mexican food where you’re from?

Reid dropped Matt’s parents off in the hotel drive and parked the car in the lot with Matt beside him, three-drinks-silly and pawing Reid.

They walked back to the hotel, after-rain ozone making everything pleasant and nostalgic. “Ugh, I can’t wait ‘til we get up there; hotel sex is just always better,” Matt said.

Reid laughed. “Not even minutes away from your parents.”

“Hey, tell me something? When’ll I get to me your parents? I know it’s only been a few months, but. I’m curious.”

“Well, you’d have to fly to D.C. to meet my mom, she doesn’t travel well, and my father’s dead.”

“What? You’re joking.” He looked at Reid. “You’re not joking.”

“No, he died when I was fourteen.”

 “How did I not know that?”

Reid shrugged and started to the hotel, but Matt didn’t follow. “It never came up. I don’t know. I’m telling you now.”

Matt followed Reid. “This feels bigger than you think it is. I mean, what else don’t I know about you? I feel like I don’t know anything about you. It feels like we’re gonna keep having this same fight.”

Reid pushed into the revolving door and strode across lobby. His fight-or-flight was kicking in. 1…2…3… He hit the button for the elevator and watched Matt catch up with him.

“I’ve told you so much embarrassing shit. I feel like our relationship is all one-sided.”

“I’m sorry. It never came up.” Mercifully, the elevator came. Mercifully, Matt stayed silent until they reached their room, when he dug through his bag for a pre-rolled. “Really?” Reid said.

The blunt bobbed between Matt’s teeth as he talked. “It’s stressful. It’s really fucking stressful. I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do.” Reid wrenched open their window, and Matt came over, blew smoke into the seven-story-thin air. Matt went from tipsy to inebriated in the time it took Reid to brush his teeth. “God, does your response to everything have to be getting high?” he asked. 

Matt ashed the blunt in one of those hotel glasses. “You’ve never minded before.”

“That’s not true. That’s not true.” Reid sat down on the bed, the edge closest to Matt

Matt inhaled, then grabbed Reid’s cheeks and kissed him. Reid let the smoke in and loved it, he thought. He loved Matt.

 “You’ve never minded before.”

 Reid coughed. “That’s not true.”

 Matt abandoned the blunt in the glass and straddled Reid on the bed. Matt kissed him, hard. Reid found Matt’s hand and brought it to his own throat.

 Matt leaned forward, pushing Reid to the mattress by his neck. It was all harsh, low breaths, and Reid moaning, and skin on skin on skin. Reid was finally out of his head, and it was glorious, but when they finished they were both still mad. Reid pushed down the fear.

 “You know me,” he said, sitting up and gripping the side of the bed.

 “When did your dad die?”

 “Four years ago. I was a junior in high school.”

 “Jesus.”

 Reid clenched his jaw and released. The moment stretched and pulled at his skin.

 “Alright,” Matt said. “I know you. I just want to know more.”

Chapter 10

Summary:

Another itty bitty one. Feeling very fluey. This writing is not my best, but I did write words.

Mentions of drug abuse, childhood sex abuse.

It was mid-November before Reid could breathe right again, surviving all his worst anniversaries once again. He survived the conference, too, and meeting Matt’sparents, and the flight back to SF. He gripped Matt's wrist the whole flight. He knew nothing would happen, and he told Matt so. Planes were the safest mode of transportation, he said. Matt just smiled and massaged Reid’s hand.

Reid started waking Matt up in the mornings with coffee. They went on long walks in the mornings through the Mission, and Matt would ask Reid questions. He asked about his favorite foods and music and hobbies as a kid. He asked about his relapse, what triggered it. How his father died. Reid answered, or tried to.

A few weeks later, Matt asked him if they could host a party one weekend, and Reid said yes. They sent out a digital invite. Reid made layered Jello shots and baked breadsticks, and Matt got seltzers and cooled them in the freezer. UCSF people started arriving around eight, and Reid had a cocktail that made everything a little softer and easier to deal with. Then another, then a Jello shot with Sasha and another with Matt. He was well and truly drunk, then, three drinks hitting him at once. He sat on the couch, head lolling onto Sasha’s shoulder, but couldn’t make out any of the conversation well enough to join in. Matt kept giving him cups of water, which he set on the coffee table half-drinken.

He stumbled to the bathroom, leaning on everything for support in between. He sat on the toilet and leaned on the wall until someone knocked, then he let the sink run before walking out, where Sasha was waiting, leaning against the hallway bookcase.

“Hey,” she said, “you okay, buddy?”

“Don’t buddy me.”

“Well, okay, you okay, man?” Sasha said. She held out her hand, and Reid interlaced their fingers. She hugged him.

“I’m okay,” he said. “Drunk.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“Too many people.”

“Let’s hang out in your room for a minute.” She pulled back from the hug and they walked down the hallway, swinging their arms, to Matt and Reid’s bedroom. They sat on the bed. Reid pulled the comforter and robed himself in it.

They laid on the bed and talked for a while. Reid drifted off, and when he woke from a nightmare, Sasha was gone. What was the dream about? He didn’t know. There was a red-faced man who could’ve been anyone. There was pain, and blood. It had only been an hour, but he was sober now, or soberish. He didn’t want to be. He rolled his leather necklace in between his thumb and forefinger.

He went back out in the party and didn’t see anyone he knew. He got some punch, tried and failed to break into a conversation, and went back to his room. He sat on the bed, traced the bananas on their sheets. He took off his necklace and set in on his thighs. He set his drink on the floor and flopped back on the bed.

Here is a memory: Michaels, handcuffs. Reid’s eyes rolling and the world spinning. No pain, because Michaels had fucked him dusted. No pain. Rewind the memory. Reid knocked on Michaels’s door, eye swollen shut, wanting that, the meth or coke or whatever Michaels could give him. Here is a memory, one of dozens.

Reid reached for the necklace. Twisted and twisted the strap. He called Morgan and let it ring to voicemail, then he hung up.

He drank the rest of the punch. He wondered if Matt had any coke in their room. He knew he did, and he knew where it was. His mind would always keep track, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it. He locked the door.

He sat on the floor in front of their closet. He dug through Matt’s drawers, listening for the sound of plastic on plastic on powder. When he found it, he clutched the bag, an eight-ball, and folded in on himself. Someone knocked on the door. “Reid?” Matt said.

“Hello?” Reid’s voice sounded far away.

“Can I come in?”

Reid didn’t answer. He scratched his forearm, scratched it hard.

“I’m gonna come in.”

Reid said nothing, and the lock flipped. Matt slipped through, holding the door shut to keep the party out. 

“Oh, baby,” he said. He lowered himself to the floor, sat cross-legged in front of Reid.

Reid didn’t or maybe couldn’t look up. He felt himself about to cry.

“Baby, hey, let it out.” Matt rubbed circles into Reid’s back. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Reid said. “I don’t know. I just—you know. It’s hard. Here,” he handed Matt the coke. “You know—this man, when I was a kid, as in twelve, thirteen, used to drug me to, you know, fuck me. After I got clean the first time.”

Matt’s hand stopped, and he clenched his hand around Reid’s shirt. “Yeah?” he said.

Reid sniffed. “Yeah. I was just—drunk. And I was thinking, about that, about him.”

“You were thinking about that? So you were…”

Reid looked up and met Matt’s eyes. He looked so, so sad.

“I dunno,” he said dully. “It wouldn’t hurt, for a minute.”

“Reid,” Matt said. “Reid.”

“I’m sober,” Reid said. “I’m clean. I can’t, and I know I can’t. I just—” Reid squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to exhale but his chest kept catching. “I just wanted it not to hurt. For a minute.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Reid.” He hugged Reid, and Reid broke, sobbing on Matt’s shoulders.

Reid cried for a long time. Matt nudged him up when his sobs slowed down, moved him to the bed. He took off Reid’s shoes, laid him down, moved the comforter up to his chin. He left and came back and laid beside Reid. Reid slept dreamlessly.

Chapter 11

Summary:

Another chapter. Aftermath of the night before.

My dialogue lately feels very robotic, but I'm not sure how to snap out of it.

When Reid woke up, morning light was streaming across the bed. It was beautiful in the way everything was, and it hurt him, in the way everything did. His head was pounding. It pounded harder when he sit up. He swallowed the two ibuprofen on the nightstand, then saw a glass of water and swallowed that too. He chugged it, and his stomach roiled. He laid back down.

When he woke up again, Matt was hanging laundry in the closet.

“Hey,” Matt said.

Reid groaned. He sat up. The headache was almost gone. He thought about last night, about the coke. He watched Matt for a long while. “Could you do me a favor?”

Matt turned around. “Yeah, of course.”

“I need—I should go to NA. Could you go with me? Not like inside. Just go with me.”

Matt sat on the bed. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I could do that. Do you know where one is?”

“Yeah, there’s one at the church down on Alabama Street. What time is it? Yeah, at eleven. I’ma shower. We’ll go.” 

He moved slowly, but he gathered clothes and went to the bathroom. He sat in the bath and let the shower run for a long time. He scrubbed too hard, then pulled back.

An hour later, he and Matt were walking down the street, hand in hand.

“I didn’t know you still did NA.”

“I don’t, really. I just—I keep track. Just in case.”

They sat on the front steps of the church.

“After this,” Reid said, “can we go to Crissy Field together?”

“Let’s do it.”

Reid inhaled and slapped his thighs as he stood up.

“Wait, Reid,” Matt said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Reid turned and went into the church.

***

Matt was still waiting on the steps when Reid came back out, and warmth rushed his chest. NA hadn’t helped. Reid had talked about the coke last night, looking at it in his hands. It had been so close, he said. He had been so close.

Matt stood up and offered him his elbow. They took the bus all the way north and walked through Cow’s Hollow. They talked without saying much, and Reid loved it. At the beach, it was too cold in November to strip and get in the sand, so they sat on the stones, huddled into each other. 

Reid didn’t know how to start. “I told you last night about Michaels?”

“Who?”

“Oh. Here.” He held out his hand and grasped Matt’s. “When I was twelve, there was this man in the chess club at the library. Michaels. I guess, let’s start sooner. My mom has paranoid schizophrenia. I don’t say that to, like, excuse what she did, how she treated me, because most people with schizophrenia aren’t violent, but she was. My dad was worse, but I didn’t really have anybody. It was just never… good, being at home, but the foster homes were worse. I started drinking and smoking and I was never good with my peers, so it was all rough.” He took a deep breath. “So when Michaels started helping me, it felt good. But it got worse and worse. He raped me, obviously. Drugged me. Took pictures. Days I’d disappear there. Have you done meth?”

“No,” Matt said. His voice cracked in the one syllabus. 

“Well, don’t. He’d smoke me up, you know. Made me take a nail, once. That’s the most you can do without injecting. And I was still living with my father, most of that time, so it sucked at home. Just constantly having to decide which was worse, being beaten half to death or being…that. It’s so— fucking hard to go through that and feel like you can become anybody else. I just felt so fucking used up, and it only ended because he died. Because he was murdered. That was a whole other thing.”

Matt was silent for a long time before he spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I never know who to tell, or how much, y’know? Because it’s hard to treat me the same way, knowing, but it is a part—a part of me will always be that kid in that bed, high out of his mind. I wanted to die a lot of the time, and now I don’t.” Reid paused. “I’m glad I told you, I think. It’s hard to tell people piecemeal, about the drugs and the abuse. I’m rambling now, because I’m nervous.”

Matt squeezed his hand. “Don’t be. I’m glad you told me, too. I just don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

Matt didn’t. They sat there on the shore for a long time, and Reid fell asleep on Matt’s shoulder. Matt woke him because his ass had fallen asleep, but he just readjusted and they stayed there. What Reid liked about Matt: he stayed, even when Reid didn’t.

They got food truck tacos after and ate them in the park. Matt looked like he wanted to say something: he kept opening his mouth and shutting it again. Finally, he said, “Don’t taken this the wrong way, alright, but are you sure it’s good for us to be together?”

Reid was too emotionally exhausted to feel betrayed, but he said, “Are you breaking up with me?”

“No, Reid, God no. I just mean you’ve been through so much, and last night never would’ve happened if I hadn’t had drugs in the house. You are younger, even though we pretend you aren’t. I love you, and I love being with you, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

Reid swallowed. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I love you, though. I’d rather keep trying.”

“Alright, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Chapter 12

Reid called Morgan during lunch the next day, told him about his almost relapse. “I was so close,” he said again. “It was right there.”

Morgan was silent for a minute, breathing into the phone. Counting, Reid suspected, taking a breath to calm himself and collect his thoughts, just like their respective therapists (probably) recommended. “I’m proud of you,” he said finally. “I’m glad your support system is working. I’m glad you went to NA. It sounds like you did everything right.”

Relief flushed through him. He knew that Morgan wouldn’t stop loving him, wouldn’t beat him, like he thought all those years before, standing paralyzed in the entryway of Morgan’s apartment, but it was endlessly comforting that he wasn’t angry or even frustrated. “Yeah, I guess so. I told Matt everything, finally. Michaels, all that.”

Reid wondered if Morgan’s patience was exhaustible, if Reid would always be able to tell him about his near-misses and mistakes. Was there an expiration date on Reid’s recovery?

Morgan grumbled something about Matt but Reid ignored him. They talked a minute more—Reid would go to NA for a couple weeks, make sure everything levelled out. No, Reid would not trade in California-sober for sober-sober. Three drinks at a party, Reid said, was not a gateway to meth, the torch lighter and the pipe.

“I don’t know, kid, it just seems like it would be safer. Easier. And it was working, your last semester at MIT.”

“This is working, too. You just said so.”

Morgan clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I guess so.”

“Look, it’s not—I’m not using anything in the same way I was using drugs. A little drinking isn’t replacing dilaudid, you know? And I like to feel like my life and what I can or can’t do isn’t so defined by everything. The trauma, my addiction. I like feeling normal.”

“Reid.” Morgan sighed. “I want that for you, I do. I just worry. It’s my job.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, before you go,” Morgan said, “I might have a case out there. I don’t know how the consult is gonna go. But I’ll let you know. It’d be good to see you, especially since I’m working Thanksgiving this year. Anyway, I love you, kid.”

“Love you, too.”

---

Late that evening, Reid walked the three miles home, turning everything over in his mind. He thought about Morgan taking him out for ice cream when he was twelve and bitter and everything was a fight that he could win. He’d tested Morgan so many times in those first few weeks of knowing him, and he’d passed every time. His journals from then were all scribbles, all in code because he was so afraid of being known to the world. If he read them now, he wasn’t sure he’d recognize himself. He thought about Matt, the impossibility of their relationship. It seemed silly that it had become so important to Reid so quickly. He was young, he knew that. As people were so fond of telling him, he had time. But he loved Matt, and he wanted their relationship to work. He just didn’t know how.

It was dark when he climbed the duplex stairs and dark inside the apartment. His keys clinked and rattled into the bowl on the shoe rack. He moved through the dark to the bedroom.

He was surprised to see Matt there, but he was even more surprised to see a pile of drugs (well, a small stack) on the bed.

“What’s this?” he said, setting his messenger bag on the floor.

“I’m flushing it,” Matt said. “I’m gonna get sober.”

Reid grinned. There was some pressure that had been on his shoulders, his neck, unknown to him, and now it was gone. “Well, you can’t flush it,” he said. “The fish ecosystems.”

“Oh, of course,” Matt said. His voice was caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “The fish ecosystems. How could I forget?”

Reid laughed, though he could’ve cried, too. He hugged Matt tightly and kissed his forehead.

Matt pulled back, his eyes shining. “I’ll call Kevin, all right? We’ll sell this, then go out to that Greek place with the money?”

Reid nodded, still smiling. He held Matt’s face, just for a second, before dropping his hands. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

---

When Kevin came an hour later, Reid and Matt were curled up on the couch, watching a terrible, awful reality show. Kevin poked through the grocery sack they’d given him with a seriousness Reid didn’t feel was necessary.

“Jesus, Matt, there’s probably fifteen, twenty grams of coke in here,” Kevin said.

“And two grams of molly,” Matt said.

“No wonder you’re such a legend,” Kevin said. “I’ll give you a thousand for it.”

Reid, who was looking out from the pass-through window in the kitchen, wolf-whistled.

“That’ll be just fine,” Matt said. “Cash?”

“Half-cash,” Kevin said. “I only brought five hundred. Rest over Venmo, or Zelle, or whatever the fuck.”

“What are you gonna do with it?” Reid said.

“Eh, I don’t know,” Kevin said. “I don’t super love molly, so I might sell it to my roommate at some point. He’s a big festival guy. The coke, I don’t know. I’ll sell some of it off. I don’t like having so much around.”

“Be careful,” Reid said. “Just—you know.”

Kevin laughed. “All right, Dr. Reid. I will.”

---

The Greek restaurant had huge gyros of unidentifiable meat and faded laminate flooring, and after they ordered, Matt said that was exactly how it should be.

“These new gentrified places, it’s all sterile. Cloth napkins and everything. If I want Greek food, I want it to taste like my yaya made it, you know?”

Reid smiled. “Sure, Matt.”

“Hey, speaking of, when do I get to meet Morgan?”

“Speaking of your yaya or speaking of Greek food?”

“Speaking of family,” Matt said.

“I don’t know. I have tickets to spend a few days in Chicago, which is where most of his family is, around Christmas. I don’t know if you want to meet the whole family at once though. He mentioned he might have a case here in a bit. So, then, if there’s time.”

Matt nodded thoughtfully.

“Do you know Greek, then?”

“Oh. No. But I was thinking about learning. Maybe take a summer off after my residency or something and visit. Wait a second, do you?”

Reid shook his head.

“Good. That’d be embarrassing.”

“Just French, Spanish, Russian, some Tagalog and some Arabic.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Matt said. “Never gonna beat that memory.”

“I’m shit at speaking all of them, though,” Reid said.

“I’m sure you do all right,” Matt said.

---

It was midnight by the time they got back from dinner, and both of them collapsed in bed. As they lay there, Reid listened to Matt’s breathing even out.

“Matt?” Reid said. “Are you awake?”

Matt shifted, hummed a little.

“I just—thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

Matt reached out and held Reid’s wrist, finding his pulse above the radial. Reid remembered falling asleep like that, his heartbeat against Matt, strong and fast.

Chapter 13

Notes:

So obviously there are a lot of similarities between my life and some of the less dramatic things in this AU---I graduated high school and college very early, though not quite as early as Reid; I had regrettable relationships with older men, some of whom wanted to hurt me and some of whom did not mean to but did anyway, as well as relationships that saved my life with mentors who did not always know how to help---but in funny ways, my life sometimes follows something I wrote in these fics. I moved or almost moved to some of the cities they take place in after I wrote them; now I am being hounded in a similar way as Reid is in The Comedown by a PhD program I have no interest in. Pray for me. I will probably take this note down. Here is a (relatively) very long chapter.

Morgan called him at six in the morning Pacific time and left a long voicemail that was punctuated with noise from the elevator, then the car, then the automated parking garage gate, then Morgan himself berating the robotic voice that wouldn’t let him leave.

“I’ve worked here for ten frickin’ years, and now I need the receipt? Anyway, kid, I’m headed to the airfield now, should land in six or so hours. Which is what, noon for you? I don’t know how much time we’ll have after the case—we’re actually down in Foster City—but I’ll let you know. Stay safe out there—oh, come on—okay, gotta go. Love you, bye. Jesus Christ, ever heard of a blinker?” 

Reid stifled a laugh as he took out his earbuds. The bus to campus was nearly empty. It was eight, his time, now, so four more hours until Morgan was in his time zone. A kind of nervousness permeated him at Morgan being in his city, though he didn’t know why. He met up with Sasha for lunch at the food trucks near campus, which were also nearly abandoned in the cold, and told her about Matt’s decision to get sober, which so far meant sober-sober, not the California sober Reid preferred. It had been two weeks, and Matt felt excellent, as he insisted on telling Reid, often. He had gone for a run that morning—a run—and returned to the apartment to prepare an elaborate omelet breakfast. “I just have so much energy, now that I’m sober,” he had said. He had been saying words like sober and recovery a lot. For all of two weeks, Reid did not say. He knew Matt was in the pink cloud haze that Reid remembered well from his own detoxes—the euphoric feeling your body rewards you with when you finally stop poisoning it—but he also knew that telling Matt this, that the feeling was not only temporary but dangerous, would do nothing to change that he felt it. So he just ate his omelets and politely declined the invitations to go for runs. He brought up meetings several times, but Matt felt like he had not been that bad and worried he would be out of place in these spaces with real addicts. Reid, who had been popping pills when he was twelve and doing desperate things for them by the time he was fourteen, had never worried about this. There was a prick of something he couldn’t name in his chest (didn’t he go to these meetings? Was Matt really above it?) but he ignored it. He suggested Matt could maybe go to one of the therapists on their university insurance. Matt said he felt fine, great actually—of course you do, Reid thought-screamed—and asked Reid when Reid had last gone to therapy, and that was that.

Sasha listened as he spoke and then was quiet for longer than Reid was comfortable with. They were sitting on picnic tables near the food trucks, and Reid ran a nail down the seam of one. “What?” he finally said.

“I don’t know. I just feel like I’ve seen this with other people before, you know? An addict boyfriend says he’s gonna get sober just for you. And he does for a while. And when he stops, you fall with him. I’m just worried.”

“Honestly, it hardly felt like he was an addict.”

“All your standards are fucked up, you know that. You’d be bleeding out and tell the paramedics you have a papercut. Just because he wasn’t, like, sharing needles or whatever baby Reid got up to doesn’t mean he doesn’t—excuse me, didn’t—have a problem. And just because he was functional doesn’t mean it wasn’t a serious one. You know that. Psych grad or what?”

“I mean, I know that logically. I just mean—well, I don’t know what I mean. I feel like all these people being negative about it are really handing me a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“All these people?”

“Well, Morgan,” Reid said, and then he stood to get their food from the truck’s window.

When he got back, Sasha said, “That’s hardly all these people. But if me, your closest bestest friend in the whole world, and Morgan, your—whatever he is, are telling you we’re worried, don’t you think you might listen?”

“I am listening,” Reid said. “I’m listening. God. I just want to give it a shot. Me and Matt have fun. Isn’t that enough?”

“You just mean the sex is good.”

“That too,” Reid said, and they both laughed.

---

Morgan was in his city, and he told him so, sending a selfie from the SUV on the way to the police station from the airport. Dark sunglasses, light reflecting white off his bald head. Reid reacted with a thumbs up and got a call from Morgan a moment later.

“What are you talking about, a thumbs up? Are you too cool for me now?”

Reid laughed. “I’ll change it to a heart, is that good?”

“You better,” Morgan said. “Taught you how to shave and now you’re giving me a thumbs up emoji.”

Then, a surprise: Penelope Garcia’s voice. “They grow up so fast.”

“Penelope came?” Reid asked.

“Just to see you, boy genius. Dark chocolate over here says you’re not coming to DC for the holidays, and I had to see you sometime.”

“Wow—I don’t know what to say.”

“Garcia says y’all need to work on your little puzzle, too. So some business as well.”

“Bureau business?” Hotch grumbled. “Because the American taxpayer covered her flight.”

“I didn’t know I was on a full FBI conference call,” Reid said.

“You’re not,” Penelope said. “Just the good ones.”

“Okay, give me back the phone.” Morgan’s voice again, clearer this time. “Are you free for dinner tonight? We can come up to the city. Maybe somewhere nice? Eight pm?”

“Yeah, that works,” Reid said. “Want me to make reservations?”

“Sure, kid. See you then.”

---

After ending the call with Morgan, he got a picture of a full cart at a craft store from Matt. Reid texted him, only kind of joking, Pls do not bring all of that into our home you are not going to learn to felt & knit & embroider all at once and Matt texted back Ur just a hater. Reid sighed and went back into the lab—the cells would not change their own media—but put his phone on vibrate in case Matt would call him and allow himself to be talked down from spending half of the cost of their sizable rent on craft supplies neither of them would use. Sure enough, he got a call before he had even finished sanitizing the culture hood. He peeled his gloves off and stood, unbuttoning his lab coat so that he could hold the phone in the crook of his neck.

Matt was so short of breath Reid initially feared he was having a panic attack. “Hey, Reid, left work—” Several shallow breaths. “Went for a run.” More breathing. “Ended up at this actually really cute place in the Castro.” Still more breathing. “Fucking gentrification.” 

“Matt—”

“Anyway, didn’t you say that you started knitting when you were getting sober? And it helped?”

“And then I overdosed in my dorm room, Matt.” Reid was being too harsh. He knew it. He should be more patient with this man who loved him and whom he loved, who, despite being years older, seemed so much younger than Reid, who had suffered enough for several lifetimes more.

“Well, Jesus,” Matt said. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Guess no knitting.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He sighed, walking out of the lab and into the stairwell. “I wish you would go to these meetings. There are people there who are just starting out, like you. I don’t know.”

“We’ve already talked about that. Asked and answered.”

“I don’t even know why I brought that up. What I wanted to say was that you really don’t need three hobbies to start with,” Reid said.

“Okay, but I don’t know what to pick. That’s why I was calling you, before you got all pissy with me.”

Reid breathed deeply, in and out, two, three, four. “Well, why don’t we look at my old knitting stuff tonight and see if you want any of it? Maybe we can start a project or something together?”

“Yeah, that’d be fun.”

“Oh, but also, Morgan’s in town. So I’m eating dinner with him tonight, so I’ll be home a little late,” Reid said.

“What? In town, now? Can I meet him?”

“Not tonight. But maybe while he’s in town we can do something.”

“Why not tonight?”

“I don’t know, Matt, I just don’t think it’s a good idea. A bunch of his coworkers’ll be there, and it’s the first time I’ve seen him in a while.”

Matt groaned. “You’re always delaying, Reid. We met my parents ages ago—”

“A month ago, first of all—”

“And I barely know anything about Morgan. I mean, who even is he, and, like, why’d he take in a random teenager—”

“Matt, stop.”

“Is that not weird to you? Some grown man seeking out abused teens—”

“That's enough.” Reid’s voice grew cold, and Matt stopped even colder. “I'd be careful about what you say next.”

“Sorry,” Matt muttered.

“Talk about asked and answered.”

“I'm sorry,” he said again, clearer this time.

Reid pressed his fist to the brick wall of the stairwell and tried to dispel his anger but couldn’t. “It’s like you’re always trying to find the one thing to get under my skin, just to see what’ll happen. You’re not even trying to hurt me, you just think it’s fun and that’s worse.”

“Reid, I’m sorry. That’s not what I try to do at all. I don't know why I said that shit.”

“I do,” Reid said darkly, thinking about Matt's dissipating pink cloud, how jittery Matt was feeling now, how irritable he would feel next. 

There was a taut silence where Reid imagined Matt was deciding whether to respond to his passive aggressive comment or not. Finally, Matt broke it. “Okay,” he said, sighing heavily. “I guess I'll see you tonight. I hope you have a good dinner with Morgan.” Matt sounded defeated, and that annoyed Reid. Why did Reid spend so much time angry or numb instead of the kind of sad that got pity without even deserving it? What would he choose, if he could?

Reid let the silence hang a moment before he said, “See you later. I’ll try to set something up with Morgan that we can all do together.” He hung up and was sure nobody had won.

---

Reid left work early and went to an NA meeting on the way to dinner. He still felt agitated after, so he decided to walk instead of taking the train, which, rather than calming him at all, just made him sweaty. He tried to think about all the progress he had made in the last three years, the last five. Yes, it had been three years since he last shot up, but it had also been ages since his last panic attack, or the last time he’d had the debilitating kind of flashback that made him hyper-vigilant for weeks. He did not flinch at raised hands anymore. When he got a haircut, he did not feel as though he were falling. These were victories, he reminded himself. These were parts of himself and his life that he had reclaimed and rebuilt. Even the easy, pleasurable sex with Matt—not borne from a self-destructive compulsion or something darker—was a result of getting better. He could remember a smaller, terrified version of himself, one whose logic was distant but legible, as through a window, one who was afraid to sit down in Morgan’s home for fear of being punished, and he knew he had gotten better, but he didn’t feel it. Better.

He was circling the block near the restaurant, thinking that maybe he shouldn’t be thinking about his progress at all and should instead be trying to think about whatever other, non-fucked up grad students thought about—his quals, his research, the petty lab politics—when a black SUV pulled up and Morgan hopped out. Reid found himself wrapped in Morgan’s arms.

“God, it’s good to see you, kid.” Morgan stepped back, his hands on Reid’s elbows to appraise him. “You’re taller than me, now.”

“Have been for a while,” Reid said, with a lopsided grin.

They stood outside talking while the others parked. When Reid saw Gideon walking towards them, ahead of the team and hands in his pockets, he said, “He came? How’s he doing?”

“Better, I think,” Morgan said. “He’s changed. But he’s getting better. He’s excited to see you.”

Reid snorted. “Excited?”

“Well, interested. You know how he is.”

Reid had not met Gideon until his college graduation, which the whole team came to. Reid knew Morgan wouldn’t have told him anything specific Reid wouldn’t want shared, but he also knew Gideon could probably fill in some of the blanks about why Morgan had custody and could profile the rest. Beyond this, which was true of the rest of the team, too, Gideon made him uneasy—some glimmer in Gideon’s eyes, not predatory, but, like Morgan said, interested. Like Reid was a specimen. Reid knew of Gideon’s early work when founding the BAU, interviews with serial killers, papers on what made them. Abuse, neglect, trauma. Genetic history of psychological disorder. Intelligence.

Gideon nodded as he approached. “Spencer,” he said.

“Reid,” Morgan and Reid said at the same time.

“Reid,” he amended. “It’s good to see you.” He pat Reid’s shoulder twice and stood back, scanning him appraisingly. “You’re looking good, and Morgan’s been telling us you’re finishing up your dissertation research.”

Reid laughed. “Finishing up is pretty generous. But I’m getting there.”

Morgan said, “He is looking good, aren’t you?”

“Very impressive,” Gideon said seriously. He nodded once and then walked into the restaurant.

Morgan gave a small shake of his head and a smile, which Reid returned.

Inside, they sat at a large corner booth. It was dim, and everybody’s smiles were cast in relief. Reid was happy, surrounded by these people who knew and loved him, who asked about his research and listened intently. He asked them about cases, and they dodged the questions, their smiles fading. Garcia, who was sitting next to him, squeezed his bicep.

“God, you're growing up already. You were this big, when we met, I swear to God,” she said, pinching her fingers together.

“I was twelve!” he said. “And not a short twelve, either.”

“Whatever you say, kiddo,” she said. “I’m just glad to see you like this, you know what I mean. All grown up.”

“Me too,” Reid said. “And it’s good to see you all, too.”

Dinner was warm, and it was good, and he was happy. And the FBI was paying for it.

---

As they finished up the meal, Morgan said he would drive Reid back to the Mission. Reid offered to pull the car around, and as he waited in the passenger side of the idling car, he flipped through the file that had been left in the seat. When Morgan climbed in the car, Reid said, “You know, these look like they may be bastardized versions of Santeria rituals.”

“You can’t be looking at that,” Morgan said, his voice mild. He started putting in the directions to Reid’s place on his phone.

“Sorry,” Reid said blithely.

“I’ll let the team know, we’ll look into it. Santeria, you said? Like the song?”

“Like the Afro-Cuban religion.”

Morgan laughed a little, setting his phone down but not pulling away from the curb. “I didn’t know you were still interested in the BAU.”

“I’m not,” Reid said quickly. “I mean, I don’t know.”

“You’d be one hell of a profiler, you know.”

Reid let out a short, bitter laugh. “And we both know why.”

Morgan just looked at him—that sad, knowing look that used to drive Reid crazy, that used to make him feel transparent and now made him feel seen.

Blinking hard and changing the subject, Reid said, “I was thinking you could meet Matt, while you’re here. Maybe dinner if you’re free tomorrow night. Or brunch when you’re done with the case.”

“Matt,” Morgan said. 

“Yes, he wants to meet you.”

“Right.”

“Morgan…” Reid said. “I want you to meet him. I like him. I live with him.”

“And you know how I feel about that.”

“Really? Do I?” Reid said.

“Reid, this was a good dinner, and I love seeing you. Do we really have to do this? Now?”

“No, we don’t have to. You could just say, ‘Great, Reid, I’d love to meet your boyfriend, your first really serious boyfriend, because I love knowing about your life and how you spend your time, and I love seeing you happy—”

“Damn it, Reid, I do love seeing you happy, which is why I don’t want to see you with this guy, this man who’s God knows how old, this addict—”

“I’m an addict!” Reid burst out. “I’m a fucking addict, Morgan, and I’m more of one than he is. How do people not see that when they say these things about fucking NA meetings, about Matt, they’re talking about me?”

“You’re in recovery, and he’s just started. That’s what I meant. You’re right, I should be more careful about my word choices, but what I’m saying is that you were living with this man when you had your closest call with relapse in a long time, and that scares me.”

Reid swallowed. He looked into the bright window of the restaurant he’d just left and felt both heavier and farther away from himself. Maybe Morgan was right, and maybe he should’ve left it alone, at least for tonight. Finally, he said, "That was before he got sober.” Reid knew he’d internally complained about Matt treating his two weeks sober like a new lifetime but he wanted to defend Matt. 

“Which was how long ago? It still scares me, Reid, and I’m not going to apologize for that.” Morgan gripped the steering wheel as if he was going to drive, but he didn’t.

“I just want to be able to be with someone without thinking about all this shit I’m carrying around, you know? And I’m getting there with Matt. I’m happy.” 

“I just don’t want to see you hurt. I don’t know about him.” Morgan looked at him again, eyes piercing and honest.

“Well, I do.”

“Oh, so you’re grown, now? Is that it?”

“I mean, yeah,” Reid said. “Yeah, I am grown. I’m nineteen. I mean, you trusted me enough to let me go wandering around DC when I was fourteen and live by myself in Boston when I was sixteen, but you wanna step in on my love life now?”

“Fuck, Reid, you know I know that was a mistake.”

“One you kept making.”

Morgan was quiet for a long time, staring out the window. Reid didn’t feel bad yet, for hurting him like this, though he knew he would later. It was so complicated, their situation: the gulf between what Reid needed and what Morgan had been able to give, between what Reid wanted and what had been best for him, between Morgan’s best intentions and the outcomes. And Reid had been the one to suffer for it—every time Morgan let him go home to his father, or let him go for a midnight walk straight to his dealer, or let him go to Boston, where he had the freedom and privacy to destroy himself all over again.

Morgan breathed out. “I know I made mistakes trying to raise you halfway. Trying to do what I could without overstepping the legal lines. Trying to let you have the freedom you would’ve out in the world so you wouldn’t feel trapped, not teaching you to handle it. I mean, what if I had just made you go to Georgetown and keep on living with me? Would that have been so bad? I think about it, and I know why I let you go to Boston, and I know that it was at least half because I told myself I couldn’t stop you, which isn’t really true. I see all of it now. But I was just making my way through it the first time.”

“I’m sorry,” Reid said, and he was. Already.

“No, I am. I think about it all the time. Not protecting you more, not protecting you better.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, kid. Even though you’re doing so well now, I just—I wish it could have been different.”

“I don’t want you to do that,” Reid said. His voice sounded flat to his own ears, and it surprised him, what he said, but it was true. “Have all these regrets about me.”

“You don’t need to protect me from it.”

“I know,” Reid said. “I don’t know. I just—nobody who actually hurt me is lying awake thinking about it. You shouldn’t either.”

“I’d rather be the kind of person who does than doesn’t.”

Reid laughed wetly. “I guess so.”

Morgan put the car in drive, finally, and they drove in silence most of the way, until Morgan said, “I want to meet Matt, okay? Maybe we can do dinner tomorrow. He’s important to you, and I want to meet him.”

“Thanks,” Reid mumbled.

“I love you, kid.”

“I love you, too.”

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 5 of All the Rage