coffeebuddha | Fic: The Way You Lie, Part 4/? (Reply)

Title: The Way You Lie
Author: coffeebuddha
Rating: R/FRT (rating is subject to change)
Characters/Pairings: Spencer Reid/Ethan, Spencer Reid/Derek Morgan, eventual appearances by entire team
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.
Word Count: 2587
Summary: Spencer's angry, Ethan's in town, Derek's jealous, and nobody's telling the complete truth about anything.
Note: This is the sequel to Hot Like Mexico. Ethan and Spencer's back story for this fic can be found in Fall Apart. Hey look, it's that fic I didn't completely forget about! :D

Part One / Part Two / Part Three

'Oh, good. We've graduated from awkwardly pretending nothing happened to awkwardly avoiding each other,' Spencer thinks wearily when Derek spots him entering the bullpen and immediately changes his course to head back toward his office. 'This should be fun.'

The agonizingly slow movement of the clock is distracting, each second ticktickticking at the cusp of his hearing until he can barely concentrate on the paperwork piled precariously on his desk. He taps his pencil on the file he should be scanning through, the lead marking the cover with tiny dots, before jumping up with his mug.

Coffee.

Coffee will help.

Coffee always helps.

"Last night."

Derek doesn't look up from the file he's pretending to go over, doesn't even twitch a little bit. In all fairness, part of that is because the pounding in his head is so tight and steady that he thinks his brain might legitimately break if he tries to move, but there's no reason to let Garcia in on that, so he just grunts a little in acknowledgment when she drops into the chair across from him, obviously not going anywhere anytime soon.

She taps her nails--a deep purple today, to match the flower pinned in her hair--on the armrest of her chair for a few moments, and when he doesn't answer, she continues. "So. That happened."

White flecks flair up around the corners of his vision when he looks up and he kind of hates Garcia a little right now for not letting him wallow in peace. "Yes," he says carefully, his voice hoarse as if he spent all of last night shouting instead of drinking half a bottle of whiskey and complaining to Clooney. "It did."

Garcia tilts her head so that she can narrow her eyes at him over the top of her glasses, then arches an eyebrow. "Do you want to maybe, I don't know, explain why it happened?"

His chair is one of those ergonomic deals that he splurged on with his own money after the last house he flipped. It's like sitting on a black leather cloud, but it might as well be a made up entirely of red hot, metal spikes by the way his body protests when he settles back into the carefully designed cradle of it.

"If I say no, will you go away?"

Garcia mimics him, leaning back in her own cheap, wooden chair, then takes it a step further by propping her feet up on his desk, mindful to keep her skirt spread modestly down over her lap. She squirms a little, clearly getting comfortable, then flashes him a grin that pretty much screams I've got all day, buddy, it's your move to make. "You can try, but I wouldn't bet on it. You're not pretty enough to get out of acting like a dick, no matter what all the girls might tell you."

"I really don't want to talk about it," he tries anyway, because it's the truth and there's still the slim, slim chance that Garcia will take pity on him.

Her brow furrows.

Or not.

"Look," she says, biting absently at the inside of her lower lip. "We're friends, right?"

"You're my baby girl." Really, there's nothing more to say than that, and Garcia flashes him a quick smile.

"And you're my chocolate Adonis," she says with all the fondness of someone saying something like 'my schmoopy woopy pie'. "But as much as I love seeing you kicking butt and and taking names, Reid's new gentleman caller maybe isn't the best guy to be practicing on."

"Garcia," he says lowly, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

"I'm just saying," she rushes on. "It's not like Reid goes out of his way to be social and make connections, you know? We've worked with him for how many years now? And how many times has he mentioned going on a date or actually seeing somebody? God knows this is the first time I've ever seen him with anyone."

"Garcia," he tries again, because he really just can't deal with this right now. Not with the way his head is pounding and his stomach is clenching and a knot is tightening in his throat.

"He's our friend. Don't you want him to be happy?" She looks at him with such open, honest confusion that Derek has to close his eyes for a second.

"Yes," he finally grits out. "It's not about him being happy."

"Then what?" Garcia pauses, a hint of hesitancy creeping into her expression around her eyes. "Is it the gay thing? Because I never pegged you as being narrow minded."

"No," he snaps, his voice harder than he'd intended. Garcia blinks slowly, eases down a little lower in her chair.

"Okay," she says slowly, an eyebrow inching up. "Good."

"Yeah. Peachy," he huffs out on a bitter laugh. Garcia just stares at him, and in the silence all he can hear is the faint pounding of his blood in his ears, so he says, "It's just that guy. Ethan. He gets on my nerves."

Garcia swings her feet down, her heels hitting the carpeted floor with a soft clunk, and braces her palms at the edge of his desk, her fingers dipping down to cover part of the large calendar he has spread out over the top of it.

"Just so we're clear, you do know this isn't about you, right? It's about Spencer. Spencer, your colleague and your friend. Spencer, who you kind of upset when you just ran out on us last night." Derek opens his mouth to interject, but Garcia pulls a face that makes her look a little too much like his mother for comfort. "You're not the first person to disapprove of a friend's significant other, but if he's making Spencer happy, then it's really none of your business."

Derek swallows hard and very manfully resists the urge to do something like bang his head against his desk. It should be his business, a little voice in the back of his mind insists. This is something he should have a say in, would have a say in, except--

Except that it isn't.

Except that he'd had a chance and it's his own fault that he has no say in what or who Spencer does. Maybe if he'd kissed Spencer awake for another round after he'd woken up or if he'd cobbled together something resembling breakfast in Spencer's obviously under utilized kitchen or done anything other than pretend that a few months of borderline stalking and a night of really hot sex hadn't happened, then he'd be able to object with anything resembling validity.

But he hadn't and he had and this is all his own damn fault.

Derek scrubs a hand roughly over his face and sighs, which Garcia must take as an agreement, because she says, "Good. Now, how are you going to fix this?"

Spencer's expression stutters into surprise for a fleeting second, before locking down into a mask of tightly controlled blankness, and Derek has long enough to swallow and open and close his mouth about six times in mute preparation to say all the things he'd rehearsed on the way over, and then Spencer's knuckles go white and the tendons of his exposed forearm visibly tighten. Derek manages to get his shoulder wedged into the door frame and blurts out, "I'm an asshole," before Spencer can actually slam it fully closed in his face.

Or on his torso, as the case may be.

The announcement is enough to get Spencer to pause, though his lips twist unpleasantly to the side and he keeps the door half closed; Derek is fairly certain he can see Spencer mentally calculating exactly how much pressure he would have to exert and where in order to manhandle Derek back out. He'd like to say that it's one of the worst receptions he's ever had, except that would be blatantly untrue. It doesn't even make the top ten, but it cuts, hurting deep and sharp in his chest, as if it tops the list. Spencer still doesn't say anything and there's an entire canyon developing in the furrow between his eyebrows, but he's not actively shoving Derek out, which he can only take as a sign to go on.

"I'm an asshole," he tries again, because it seems to have worked before. The corner of Spencer's mouth twitches in a suppressed half smile, like he's agreeing, and Derek hazards a tentative smile of his own. "And I'm sorry."

Spencer tilts his head to the side and his eyes narrow to slits, and it's on the tip of Derek's tongue to point out the 'no profiling each other' rule, but his self preservation instincts kick in just in time and he bites it back. After several long, tense seconds, Spencer asks, "Do you know what you're sorry for?"

A beat.

"Other than being an asshole," Spencer clarifies.

Derek lets himself laugh at that, a small, fond laugh, because he's missed Spencer. He's missed Spencer, who's standing right in front of him, ready to bludgeon him with the sharp edge of his front door, and Derek wants nothing more in this instant than to reach out and touch. He wants to fall to his knees, frame those slim hips with his hands, press his cheek against the crease where his thigh meets his hip, and just breath Spencer in. He wants Spencer to want him to do these things.

Instead, he shoves his hands into his pockets and digs his nails into the flesh of his thighs.

Instead, he says, "I was out of line. If I wanted to do something, I had plenty of opportunities. I had no right to act like your, I don't know, jilted girlfriend or something."

"No, you didn't," Spencer agrees, and if his voice is still miles harder than Derek is used to, then he can at least take comfort in the fact that the door is slowly inching open again. "I don't need your approval or your permission to do anything in my personal life."

"I know," Derek says, already swaying further forward into the apartment. It smells subtly different from the last time he was here, something dark and woodsy coloring the air in an undertone, and his stomach clenches at the implications of that. "I know you don't, Spencer. God, man, I just..."

The door freezes in its progress, and Spencer's expression, which had finally started to soften, stiffens again. His voice is dry and brittle as autumn leaves when he asks, "You just what, Morgan?"

I just want you to stop looking at me like that.

I just want to wake up next to you and know that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

I just want to go back and fix everything I fucked up.

I just want you.

"I just want to fix this, so we can be...okay again." It's a half truth at best, and it hurts to say that and not any of the myriad of things that spring to mind, but even more than he needs Spencer in his bed, he needs him to be happy. Derek isn't used to that. Yes, he has people he cares about, people he's close to, but with the exception of his mother and his sisters, he can't think of a single person whose personal happiness he's ever wanted to put before his own. But now there's Spencer, and Derek thinks he might be willing to give up everything he has if only it would make Spencer smile at him again the way he did that night, so open and easy and guileless.

The realization of that slams into him so hard that he physically can't breathe, and it only gets about ten times worse when, without actually moving, Spencer deflates, sort of crumpling in on himself in a way that makes Derek want to wrap him in a fuzzy blanket and ply him with coffee and episodes of Star Trek until that fucking broken look is off his face.

"That's not going to happen overnight. You get that, right?" Spencer rubs the back of his neck, his fingers slipping under the rumpled edge of his collar, and exhales slowly through his nose.

"I know," Derek says, and without his meaning to, his voice goes soft the way it does when he's soothing Clooney through a thunderstorm. "Garcia told me I should try making some kind of grand gesture to show you that I'm serious."

Spencer doesn't answer, but he arches an eyebrow and his lips twitch in another almost smile.

He pauses, then swallows the bitter taste of his wounded pride, and says, "She also told me that Ethan's playing at some club tonight?"

The club is a lot newer and cleaner than Derek had been expecting. Hearing 'jazz club' had made him think of some gritty, dirty backroom where the people sat huddled around small, round tables, each just barely illuminated by a solitary flickering candle, while the musician performed in a corner under the glow of a bare light bulb. True, there's a 'No Smoking' sign that no one seems to be paying attention to and the lights are low, but there's a sultry, romantic vibe to the room that, Derek is loath to admit, radiates out from the soft spotlight trained on Ethan. It makes him cringe to even think it, but for the first time Derek can sort of see his appeal.

There's something raw and untamed in the way Ethan plays. Derek's always thought of pianists as stiff and proper, but his long, lanky frame sways freely as he pounds away at the keys. His hands fly, almost independent of his body. The music darkens, sending shivers down Derek's spine, and Ethan's face contorts with an agony that's echoed in every note. The volume dies to a whisper, and Ethan bends nearly double at the waist, his forehead pressed so hard against the top of the piano that Derek can see his skin turn white at the edges. The music climbs rapidly, and the pit of Derek's stomach drops like when he takes a turn too fast on his bike, like the entire world's about to fall out from underneath him. Ethan's head falls back, his eyes closed and his lips parted, completely rapturous.

His elegant, nimble fingers do more than just press down on the keys. They caress them, tease them, coax them. He strokes them as devotedly as a lover until the music's wild, building higher and tighter and faster until Derek's breathless, so focused on the sound that he barely notices when Spencer blindly fumbles to grab his wrist and leans forward in his seat, his own breathing a little uneven. The music breaks, bright and sharp as shards of glass raining down around them, and Ethan slumps a little, his head rolling loosely back and forth from shoulder to shoulder as he picks out a lazy melody. He looks at their table, his dark eyes half lidded, and smiles a small, secret smile that makes Spencer's fingers flex around Derek's wrist.

Derek swallows thickly and reaches for his glass, dislodging Spencer's hand. He's pretty certain the other man doesn't notice, might not even realize he grabbed on to him to begin with, and in this moment Derek's also pretty certain that he doesn't entirely blame him. Ethan's an infuriating, unrepentant bastard, but he's damn good at what he does.

Thank you for reading! Feedback is always appreciated!

It feels really weird to be writing this fic again. I feel like I've changed some as a writer since I started writing this last year and I'm not sure how well my writing now flows with my writing from then, but I've always intended to finish this and I finally feel like it's the time to do that, so hopefully it's not too jarring.