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Reid shakes his head, taking a step away. “I don't –”
Morgan laughs, interrupting. "Come on, Reid. I saw the look you gave me earlier. You think I don’t know?”
“Oh please. I, no.” He shakes his head empathically. “I didn’t give you any look.”
“Oh no, no look at all. My bad. Just those big doe eyes lookin’ all longing-like in my direction, right?”
Reid could feel his face heating up, could feel the embarrassment as his hands moved of their own according, twisting together like an unsaid confession – and he could tell Morgan knew. Lying to a profiler was a futile task, and it was only out of sheer desperation that he was trying.
“Come on now,” he says, voice gentler but laughter still present. “Lots of people want the same thing, it’s normal. Nothing wrong with it and you know it. Human nature, Reid.”
“Baldness and wrinkles…”
“You’ve tried that before and no one bought it then either,” Morgan reminds Reid with a roll of his eyes, reaching out and stilling the younger man’s hands. Reid looks down, notices that even though he’s stopped his movement, Morgan hasn’t moved his hand away. He looks up, and Morgan smiles.
“Let’s go,” Morgan says, tugging slightly. Reid stands, allows himself to be pulled down the hallway toward the bedroom, giving half-hearted excuses to the party-goers around him when he passes too close to them.
Morgan stops short in the doorway, and Reid bumps into him, apologies ready on his lips when Morgan turns to shush him. “No excuses, kid. I know you want this.” Reid opens his mouth to protest and Morgan quickly hushes him.
It’s then that he hears the quiet laughter coming from inside the room. He peers over Morgan’s shoulder, and notices with a fresh blush that Haley is sitting on the bed, and she’s nursing Jack. He wants to turn and leave, to run before anyone else sees him here - because he knows they’d know – but Morgan tightens his grip on Reid’s hand.
Haley’s waving them in and against his will he follows Morgan in – doesn’t he always? – and sits on the bed at Haley’s request, as far away from her as he can, and looks everywhere else but her bared breast and the infant she was cradling.
“You can hold him when he’s done,” she says, a grin mixed of pride and amusement on her face. She’s a mother, she can’t imagine anyone not wanting to hold Jack, not wanting to love him, and she too had seen what Morgan had earlier while he’d been holding her son, crooning – Reid’s face, longing.
“You won’t break him,” Morgan says, whispering in Reid’s ear and causing a shiver to run up his spine. “You know you want to.”
Reid gingerly took Jack, looking in awe at the blue-grey eyes that looked back at him unwaveringly, and again curses his inability to lie to a profiler.