Work Text:
There have been times throughout his life when Spencer's wondered if perhaps his mother's obsession with classic love stories haven't colored his personal beliefs more than a little bit. In everything else, he's rational and methodical; he's the perfect scientist willing to carry out as many experiments as necessary to ascertain the kind of results he can stand beside and be proud of.
But then love comes into the equation and he's left floundering, caught somewhere between the socially awkward young man who can't quite relate to his peers and the little boy who was enthralled by every story of love at first sight that his mother ever read to him.
Spencer knew the first time he ever saw Derek. It was about a week before his official first day with the BAU and he’d stopped by the bullpen to meet with Gideon. They were in his office, a chessboard between them and mugs of cold coffee at their elbows, when Derek had stuck his head in the open door and waved a folder at Gideon. He’d smiled, the corners of his warm eyes crinkling, and Spencer had thought, Ah, so it’s you then. There were no explosions to shake him to the core, no fireworks to dazzle him, no earthquakes to knock him off of his feet. Just a small, quiet understanding that this was it. That Derek was it--the person he was going to love for the rest of his life.
Too bad no one thought to fill Derek in on that fact.
"You know, I just don’t get it,” Derek announces as he absently tips a half full beer bottle back and forth on the sticky table top, balancing it with a single finger at the mouth. His words aren't nearly as slurred as they probably should be considering the small army of empties gathered in a sloppy formation in front of him. Spencer looks up from the label he’s been meticulously peeling off of his own bottle and glances around their booth, not entirely certain who Derek's talking to.
Hotch and Rossi are still sitting across from them, their heads tilted toward each other in one of their low, intense conversations that always seem to involve more quirking eyebrows than actual words and tend to make Garcia comment slyly that they need to just fuck already and get it out of their systems before the tension makes one of them snap. Garcia’s on Derek’s other side, mostly asleep with her head pillowed on his shoulder, and Spencer wonders how many beers he’d have to drink before he could get away with trying that. And just the fact that he wondered that is probably a good sign that it’s time to cut himself off, he decides. He carefully puts his bottle down and balances a coaster on top of it as a reminder to not finish it.
Derek turns a little to look at him--Garcia’s head bounces and she makes a sleepy, disgruntled sound and wraps her arms around his bicep to keep him where she wants him. They’re already pushed practically flush together in the narrow booth, Derek’s body a hard, tempting line of heat from shoulder to knee, and his turning only presses their thighs closer, which is just distracting. Spencer glances down at where they’re touching, which is practically everywhere, then back up at Derek, who’s frowning. There’s a small furrow between his eyebrows that Spencer wants to smooth away with the pad of his thumb. He balls his hand into a fist, curls the other around it, and presses them down against the scarred wooden surface of the table. Derek’s still frowning and Spencer blinks.
Right.
He’d said something.
Spencer should probably answer him.
“What?” Oh yes, he’s all sorts of witty and clever. A regular genius response, right there.
Derek nudges him with his elbow. “I said,” he repeats slowly and carefully, “I don’t get it.”
Well, duh, Spencer thinks as he nods in what he hopes is a friendly, understanding way that in no way broadcasts ‘You’re an idiot and I love you and would not be in any way adverse to fucking you on this table in front of everyone right now’. “What don’t you get?”
“You.” Derek looks at him, head tilted and eyes narrowed. Spencer wants to kiss the confused look off his face. Instead, he grins and says, “Well, there is a movement to form a committee to declare me one of the unexplained marvels of the modern world.”
Derek’s expression goes blank, then his eyebrows lift and he tilts his head toward Spencer and stares at him, like he’s trying to look into him, through him, straight down into the innermost corners of his mind. “Really?”
“No,” Spencer says, leaning to bump their shoulders together. Derek’s face falls a little, like he’d almost believed Spencer and is disappointed. Spencer bites his tongue to keep from laughing. He grabs his beer back up, the damp coaster toppling off onto the back of Derek’s hand, and Derek looks at it like he doesn’t know where it came from while Spencer takes a swig.
He remembers halfway through swallowing that he’d decided to stop drinking for the night, and the beer gets caught in his throat, choking him. It burns when he coughs, tears springing up in the corners of his eyes, and Derek pounds him on the back, hard enough to hurt, until he gets his breath back. His throat stings when he draws a careful breath and there’s a dull ache between his shoulder blades, but instead of pulling away, Derek drops his arm across the back of the booth, the inside of his elbow grazing Spencer’s nape. Spencer shivers and can’t quite stop himself from smiling.
The conversation’s ground to a halt again, not that it ever really got started. Spencer gives his head a short, sharp shake and looks back at Derek. Derek, who apparently doesn’t ‘get him’. His almost smile grows, turning a little wry around the edges, and he motions at Derek with his bottle. “I’m an open book.” He pauses, nods thoughtfully, and amends, “Well, an open book that’s at least partially written Klingon. What don’t you understand about me?”
Derek rolls his shoulder in a half shrug that brushes his skin over Spencer's in a parody of a caress. It raises the hairs on the back of Spencer’s neck and makes a thrill of arousal ripple down his spine. “I don’t know, man.” He picks up his bottle by the neck and lets it swing loosely between his thumb and index finger. “It’s just, you’ve got a lot going on for yourself, you know? So why don’t you ever go?”
Spencer pauses, glances at Garcia, who’s drooling on Derek’s shirt, then back at Derek, and arches an eyebrow. “You want me to go? Because you’re going to have to get her to move first. I’m too old to exit tables by crawling out from under them.”
He'd be willing to get down under one for other reasons; maybe tuck himself snug in between Derek's knees, slip his cock out, and make him come quick and dirty before the waitress has a chance come back. It's such an old, often used fantasy that it he can conjure up the phantom weight of Derek in his hand, the imagined bitter taste of him on the back of his tongue, without even thinking about it.
“No, I don’t want you to go,” Derek says quickly, his arm slipping down around Spencer’s shoulders. Spencer forgets how to breathe, the air caught in his lungs fluttering like a bird with clipped wings. If Derek notices--No, Spencer thinks, stopping that thought before it can get away from him. There’s no if. Derek doesn’t notice, completely oblivious to Spencer’s reaction as he drums his fingers absently on Spencer’s collarbone and continues. “I want to know why you don’t want to go. Why are you always so happy to just hang out in the corner with the stuffy old guys?”
Hotch and Rossi look up at that, near identical glares on their faces, and Derek rolls his eyes so hard at them that his entire head moves with the force of it. After a moment, they turn back to their conversation and Derek inclines his head toward Spencer’s, so close that Spencer can count his eyelashes and feel the hot rush of his breath against his cheek when he speaks.
“You never go out. Why is that?”
Derek smells like beer and smoke from the bar and something spicy and dark that tickles the back of Spencer’s throat and makes him want to lean in even closer, press his face into the place where Derek’s neck meets his shoulder, and inhale.
He drank too much. He’d known that while he was doing it, but he’s certain now with the alcohol spreading warm and slow through his body. He runs his tongue over his lower lip, not really realizing he’s even doing it until Derek’s eyes flicker down to track the movement. Spencer feels trapped, caught and drawn in by Derek’s gaze, which is just twisted and wrong considering the man doesn’t know--probably doesn’t even suspect--what he does to Spencer, but then Rossi slaps his hand down on the table in response to something Hotch says and twists around to wave their waitress over for another drink, and Spencer takes advantage of the distraction to scoot to the side until he’s tight against the wall and there’s a sliver of cool, cool air separating him from Derek.
Spencer glances at the bottle he still has cradled in his hand, a little surprised to realize that it’s empty now. He doesn’t remember when that happened. Still, he decides as he looks from the bottle to Derek, then back at the bottle, that doesn’t mean he’s had enough to think the truth is a good idea. Which is why he just shrugs and says, “I just don’t.”
Derek frowns and shakes his head, like that isn’t good enough. “Reid. Reid,” he says intently, his fingers digging into Spencer’s shoulder, pinching his collar bone. “There’s a whole world out there, full of women who are dying to snap up a smart, successful, pretty guy like you. You should really take advantage of that while you still can. You know, before you turn into Rossi and everyone just thinks you’re that desperate, kind of pervy old guy.”
Rossi doesn’t even look up when he flips them off, and Derek grins and tips his beer toward him in a mock salute.
“Don’t be like that, Rossi. You’re an inspiration, a hero, everything I want to be. Hell, you’re the damn wind beneath my wings and you know it.” Rossi ignores him completely this time, but Spencer is willing to bet money that Derek mysteriously ends up with a few glasses of Rossi’s favorite drink on his tab at the end of the night.
Spencer shuffles and wonders if maybe he isn’t still young enough for crawling under tables to make an escape, and, as if he hears that thought, Derek’s attention snaps back to him.
"Seriously, man, when was the last time you got laid?"
Heat burns its way up Spencer's neck, pricks at his cheeks and the tops of his ears, and he opens his mouth, but nothing comes out except an almost inaudible click. Derek tilts his head to the side and frowns, the downward curve of his lips half speculative, half tentative pity.
"Have you ever gotten-"
"I think that's enough of that particular conversation," Spencer cuts in quickly. He snags Derek's beer out of his unresisting grip and downs it in a long, uneven pull that leaves Derek looking at him like he's some kind of nature documentary and is about to pounce on a gazelle or something at any moment. Spencer purses his lips, because that doesn't sound quite right, even in his head. "Consider my sex life to be written in Klingon. You only get to read that part if you put in the effort to translate it."
He expects at least some confusion from Derek over that, because that doesn't come out right either, but the other man just nods like it makes perfect sense and says, "Fair enough."
Spencer drops the bottle, which bounces once on the table, then topples over on its side with a dull clink, and he wonders if the same thing will happen to him when he tries to stand up. "I might have trouble walking," he says conversationally, because if nothing else it's a change of topic. Derek nods again, nods as if the words that are clumsily stumbling off Spencer's tongue are wise and important, not half coherent slurrings.
"I'd offer to help you, but I think I'm going to be carrying Garcia out of here and I only have so many arms," Derek says. Spencer twists around so that the back of his head's against the wall, one of his knees half on Derek's lap, and Derek's arm slides mostly off his shoulders, fingers trailing down over his bicep to hook into the bend of his elbow. Derek doesn't seem to realize what he's doing and Spencer doesn't pull away. He smiles, an easy, friendly smile that makes Spencer's pulse leap, and says, "Next time we go out? How about making it just the two of us. We'll cruise the bars, pick up some pretty girls. It'll be fun."
Spencer's drunk, warm and stupid all the way through with it, or at least that's what he tells himself, because why else would he smile, shrug, and say, "Okay."
Spencer wakes up the next morning to the grating, debilitating sound of construction going on across the street from his apartment, with a headache that threatens to pound his brain out through his eye sockets, and the vain hope that his agreement to go bar hopping with Derek was some kind of hallucination brought on by an over indulgence of beer and cheap hot wings. His cell phone chirps, right on cue, and he fumbles for it, nearly knocking it off his nightstand with numb fingers. The screen is bright, too bright, and he groans when the glow pierces his head like an ice pick, but there's an unread text message waiting for him. Apparently he's some kind of masochist, because he opens it and forces himself to read the tiny print, even though it blurs and swims in front of his eyes and leaves him feeling faintly sea sick. It takes a couple of read throughs before it makes sense.
Reid. 7 tonight at Ricochet. Don't forget. If you're late, you're paying for every round I drink waiting for you.
Oh God.
Not a hallucination then. Spencer groans and lets the phone slip from between his fingers and slide off the edge of the mattress. It hits the floor with a soft thud, and even that's too loud. He groans again and scoots further down his bed, pulling the sheets up over his head to make a safe, muted cocoon for himself. If he was independently wealthy, he could blow off the meeting, quit his job, and never have to see Derek again. The idea's almost as appealing as it is appalling, and Spencer spares a moment to wonder how much he could make at the casinos before getting busted for counting cards and tossed out on his ass. Probably not enough, he decides, so instead he curls up into a tight, uncomfortable ball and wills himself back to sleep.
He's going to need all the strength he can get if he's going to go out tonight with the man of his dreams to hit on women.