Title: The Moment
Author: layered
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pairing: Gideon/Reid
Rating: M
Summary: Takes place in/after "Broken Mirror".

***

Spencer Reid didn't look at pornography. He didn't read smutty magazines or think about naked cheerleaders. What turned Reid on - really turned him on, so much that his eyes went a little dark and his pulse raced and his blood pounded in his ears - was when Gideon started doing that. That thing.

The phone rang on and on, and it usually would have annoyed Spencer. A phone ringing, no one answering it even though they were watching it. Hearing it. It would've driven him insane, usually. But this was different, watching Gideon stare at it, so intent. Watching him pick up, and hang up. Watching him get steadily more and more self-assured, more confident - smiling that smile. Watching Gideon take control over a situation and do exactly the right thing, the only thing, to alter the unsub's behavior. That was pornography, to Spencer Reid. Pornographic and lewd and bordering on obscene.



And he was so hard.

Every time Gideon grinned, every time he hung up on the guy or told him he had the wrong number, every time the phone rang, it felt like a surge going through him. Down his spinal column, caressing every single vertebrae, every cell in his body, following nerves and veins and skin, all the way to his lap. He didn't even want to think about what this new development in his sexual psychology would tell someone profiling him.

The words of the unsub - semi-autistic? - barely even seemed to graze his eardrums. They were static, nothing more than background noise, because everything Reid was hearing, was Gideon's voice, Gideon's breathing, Gideon's pulse - he knew he couldn't really hear it, but he could imagine it. Not quick like Reid's own was. Slow. Steady. Calm.

Because, everyone always said Reid knew everything, but he didn't. Gideon knew what Reid didn't. Gideon knew that he was smart enough, cunning enough, knew that his abilities and knowledge were there. He knew enough to have faith in himself, and Reid didn't have that. Didn't have it enough professionally or personally; didn't have it enough that he snuck away, while the Davenports were weeping. His lack of faith in himself was really why he couldn't face Gideon like that, flushed and bothered.

The thing about Gideon, though, was that it was his job to know what people wanted, basically. That was what behavioral sciences were really about - knowing what people want. Serial killers, rapists, arsonists, kidnappers. They all wanted different things, and that's why they did the things they do. So when Reid came back from the bathroom with that telltale glow about him, yet also that almost childlike-guilt, like a kid who's been sneaking sweets, Gideon knew. When he pursed his lips just a little, after everything was finished and they were talking, and he said that Reid should just enjoy the moment (and if he were dropping clues any heavier, they'd have been bricks), Gideon knew that what Reid wanted most, was for Gideon to kiss him.

Reid has always reminded Gideon of Euripides. "The bold are helpless without cleverness." Reid hunched over his laptop, when they got on their flight back to Washington, and Gideon watched him. He found himself doing that a lot, and it was no wonder. Even more fascinating than any of his cases was Dr. Reid. Borderline autistic, maybe. Too smart for his own age, forced in with peers always years older than he was. And something submissive about him, something so very submissive. He didn't scramble for approval, didn't beg for validation. Spencer Reid didn't demand recognition. He sat quietly and waited for it, waited for weeks or months or years, not realizing his own worth.

"Do not consider painful what is good for you." Euripides, again, and Gideon stared hard at the back of Reid's head. Studied his hair, carefully, the neat part. Reid probably did it with a ruler and a comb, he realized. He'd never really noticed how ridiculously perfect it was, before. It matched his clothes, neat sweatervests and ties, but something about it bothered Gideon.

What was good for Jason Gideon right then, was standing up and clearing his throat. "Dr. Reid, if I could have a word with you." Reid, of course, was out of his seat like a jack in the box; while Hotchner and Morgan laughed and "ooh"-ed, like Reid had just gotten called to the principal's office in highschool, Gideon was weighing his options. The plane wasn't exactly big, after all. The luggage hold would really have to do, where they'd put all of their personal belongings. Small, cramped, dark, but the only real shot at privacy at thirty thousand feet.

"What is it that you wanted to speak with me about?" Reid spoke as if he'd chosen his words carefully, rehearsed the way he was going to say them in his head on the way back there. Gideon smiled a little bit, shut the door partway behind them. Without saying a word, he reached out and ruffled Reid's hair, completely destroying the part, making part of it hang in his face and part push back behind his ears. Reid trusted Gideon so implicitly that he didn't even pull away.

He just closed his eyes, caught his breath, tilted his head to the right by just a fraction, a gesture he probably didn't even know he was making.

"Why did you do that?" Reid finally asked, opened his eyes to look up at Gideon. He didn't even reach up to fix the hair, just let it hang there, and Gideon felt struck by it. Exactly how boyish he looked, how ruffled and openly disheveled. He'd never seen Spencer Reid like that before.

"Because," Gideon answered, absentmindedly, picking a piece of lint from Reid's sweater. Reid looked up at him, eyes half hidden behind his hair, and then he did it. He pursed his lips again, wet them with the very tip of his tongue, pink like cotton candy. "You want to kiss me."

Reid didn't say anything. "Silence is true wisdom's best reply," Euripides sprung into his mind, again, and Gideon knew enough to take the lack of answer as one in and of itself, and let his hand rest on Reid's shoulder. Reid shuffled his feet, but didn't move closer or away, didn't move at all. Gideon, though, Gideon could stand and wait for hours, just to see what Reid was going to do.

"Can I?" His voice cracked in the middle, and Gideon wanted to push him just a little more. Like he'd pushed that unsub on the phone, like he pushed the unsubs in every interrogation room he'd ever been in.

"Yes," Gideon finally answered him, after making him wait for a few long seconds. It was a weakness, that he wanted to appease Spencer Reid. That he wanted to make him comfortable, when it was normally his first instinct to make people as uncomfortable as possible. "You may."

Spencer Reid's mouth was soft, his lips thicker than they looked. It pressed, feather-light to Gideon's own, before he pulled back again. Gideon smiled a little bit and studied Reid. The way he dropped his head a little, the way his shoulders lowered, the way his hair fell into his face and his cheeks went a little pink. He leaned closer to Gideon, at least, and that was a relief.

"It's okay," Gideon's approval, praise, and comfort was all rolled up into two little words. He wrapped his arms around the smaller man, kissed him hard and strong, the way he wanted to be kissed. Gideon knew what Reid wanted, without any words passing between them at all. And Reid pressed forward against him, kissed back, clung to him with his hands digging into his shoulders. Desperate and needy touches. Little tugs at his arms and shoulders.

Reid wanted, and Gideon knew. But the storage hold of a private plane wasn't the place to do it, not with the rest of the team out waiting, listening for raised voices. So Gideon pulled back, because Reid couldn't do it, and he smoothed his hands down the younger man's arms, hoping to heal swollen lips with smaller, softer kisses, pressed like butterfly wings. He pulled back, and smiled a little more, the half-smile that only ever seemed to surface when he was with Dr. Reid.

"It's okay," he said again, and reached up to push Reid's hair back. He didn't have a ruler and a comb, but he thought he did a decent job at straightening his part.

"I know," Reid said, softly, and then he smiled. "Enjoy the moment, right?"

***