Devil's Lover

Chapter 2

Before, Gideon had been disinterested in her. She kind of missed that now. He watched her with eagle-eyed scrutiny as she tried not to squirm in her chair. Hotchner paced behind her. She had the weirdest déjà vu sensation, as though she was eight again and had just been caught setting explosive runes in the boys’ bathroom.

“A big part of what we do here relies on our ability to completely trust one another,” Gideon said, his face relaxed and almost smiling. She didn’t trust that expression for a second. “We need to know that you’re not bringing any prior grievances on board that will affect your teamwork, especially with Dr. Reid.”

She smiled in what she hoped was a much more reassuring manner than the hidden smile on Gideon’s lips. Now, that was a man with layers. Creepy, smirking, secretive layers. “I have no problems with demons,” her mouth said firmly, while her brain screamed Doyle, Doyle, Doyle on a scratched loop like a broken record. “Sergio was just startled. I can speak with him.”

Hotch coughed politely, drawing their attention. “Yeah, he’s not the first to react like that. We call it the Reid Effect. It happens with kids too.”

Gideon chuckled bizarrely. She blinked. In a single second, the atmosphere had switched from interrogation to conversation. She almost had whiplash. “He’s also impossible to get through airport security.”

She was never going to understand these people.

They gave her the desk across from Reid, and the look in Hotchner’s eyes as he’d showed it to her suggested that she’d better get to work rebuilding the bridges she’d broken. So, she made two mugs of coffee on the now working percolator and sat down to wait. She couldn’t start on anything until the medical magi cleared her for duty, and the inactivity was making her restless.

“They heavily discourage biting your nails during the course of the circle apprenticeships,” said that low voice from behind her. She tried to ignore the way it made her palms sweat against the warm ceramic mug in her hands, despite the cold chill the spark of fear brought. “I’m surprised they didn’t train it out of you then.”

Doyle, Doyle, Doyle.

She turned and smiled at him, her arm burning anew. She was really going to have to recalibrate that rune tonight when she got home to her kit. “Yeah, they’re not as strict about it in the rune classes. It’s mostly potion mages that need to be careful about that.”

He shrugged and sidled to his own desk, eyeing the mug there. “Oh. Is this mine?” As he passed, she caught a waft of his scent, bitter and rich all at once. Her gut cramped at the memory of it.  She doubted anyone else in that room would even notice his scent or, if they had, they’d simply assume it was deodorant. But she knew it. Intimately. Doyle.

She really needed to get her s**t together. “Yeah. JJ said you like sugar, so I put lots in there.”

The way his face brightened at the mention of sugar would almost have been adorable if she wasn’t busy trying to stamp down memories of that touch and that scent and that man. “Oh, I do! I love lots of sugar.” He tasted the coffee and twitched, making a face like Sergio when she brought the wrong cat food: “…. err, perhaps I like more than lots of sugar.”

She’d put five spoonfuls in. She shot him a reproachful look. “What do you do? Put it in with a shovel?”

“I don’t use a spoon,” he said with another crooked smile, and her palms were sweaty again except this time it was heat and fire that did it instead of icy fear. The memory of Doyle faded slightly and let her look at him properly; faded sweater vest, leather messenger bag and all.

He was cute.

And, really, nothing at all like Doyle.

“So, is it standard procedure to have our medicals together?” Celine teased as she and JJ waited in the waiting room of the medical bay. JJ just flicked a lock of hair behind her ear and looked bored, reading the magazine sitting on the stand next to her out of the corner of her eye. Upside down. Was everyone here weird, or had she just been mistaken in thinking she was normal all these years?

“Nah, we were almost due anyway so they booked us in together. All us girls. Garcia should be here soon too.” Inexplicably, JJ looked expectantly at a blinking modem sitting on the desk near the door as she said this. “The guys are in for later this afternoon, except Reid.”

Celine stared at the modem too, because JJ seemed to be waiting for something and she’d be damned if she missed it. “Why not Reid? If you’re all up for your annuals, that is.”

Her arm burned suddenly, and she almost jumped out of her seat with shock.

“Because I’m secretly a girl,” said a familiar, glum voice from the vacant seat next to her. She turned, and Reid was slumped in it with his long legs sprawled out ridiculously into the room and butt almost hanging off the front. He was the very epitome of a monumental sulk-fest.

“A very pretty girl,” JJ said reassuringly, without even sparing him a glance. “Sit up straight, Spence.”

“You’re like a f*****g cat,” Celine told him, rattled by his sudden appearance. “What, did you teleport here? I didn’t see you walk in.”

Reid blinked owlishly and slowly sat up, tucking his legs back so his knees hung out at awkward angles. He still slumped, just the other way now, bending forward like a noodle that had been cooked for a couple of seconds and then forced to sit in a hard-backed waiting room chair.  “True teleportation is actually limited to a few select species and, besides, the anti-teleportation protections throughout the building mean that if I was, somehow, capable of teleportation and I attempted it for some reason, I would be—”

“Spence.” JJ’s voice was a warning.

“—vaporised,” Reid finished. Then he smiled. JJ nodded and went back to her magazine, tilting her head so that she was reading it at a ninety-degree angle instead of upside down. Reid’s smile turned somewhat desperate as Celine didn’t respond. It almost hurt to see. At some point, Celine suspected that someone had taught Reid that he should smile if he messed up some sort of basic social interaction, and the kid had obviously never quite unlearned that.

“BAU?” someone called, sticking their head out of the medical bay.

Celine stood. “Can you tell me more about the rune system here?” she asked Reid as they walked to the door, him close enough to her heels that she could feel the air displaced from his footfalls. She wasn’t faking the interest in her voice. “I need to learn my way around them, and you seem to know plenty.”

“I’d love to,” he said, sounding genuinely delighted to be asked. “Hey, where’s Garcia?”

She realized suddenly that he’d never actually told her how he got there without her noticing him.

Reid had vanished as soon as they got in, following a sallow faced man into an adjourning room. The door sealed magically as soon as it closed, making Celine’s ears pop with the change in pressure, an astoundingly powerful sealing spell. She glanced at JJ, who looked unconcerned.

“Ryder, Celine?” called one of the magi, tapping the corner of a bed with his clipboard. “Says you’re new? You need creds then?”

Celine flinched when she saw the kit they’d brought out to draw the sigil on her palm that would symbolise her employment with the FBI. It was positively barbaric. “Ah. I’m a fairly accomplished rune mage. If you give me the spell-ink, I can—”

JJ quavered with silent laughter next to her as the man shook his head, his face unchanging. “No can do, Agent Ryder. Licensed runic mage only. Besides, we gotta lace it with a GPS and tie it to your Unit Chief, and your clearance isn’t even in the same ballpark as what’s needed to access those spells.”

JJ nudged her with her shoulder. “They call him The Butcher,” she teased with a wink. “Reid’s productivity dropped by like seventy percent for a week after he got his creds—he couldn’t hold a pen and his coffee at the same time with only one hand. And the coffee won.” Celine stared at her. She was kidding, right? This was a government position. Surely, they had the best?

“Agent Jareau? Basic medical and mental checks?” the man asked, ignoring Celine now that he’d shown her where to sit. “Righto, this bed here, and please alert us if, at any point, you feel your defensive spells being triggered so we can respond adequately.”

The door banged open, and a blonde woman with wild, garish clothes and half a trinket shop on her arms bustled in. “Am I late?” she babbled, doing a half spin on the spot and practically running—or as much running as one could do in bright purple heels—towards the third bed. “Hello, you must be Celine! I’m Penelope, Penelope Garcia, and I am so sorry I’m late. I took a wrong turn at the modem on sixth and ended up down near the basement, somehow, my god the wiring here is older than Gideon. Oh god, don’t tell him I said that. Oh god, he probably already knows—”

“Technical Analyst Garcia?” the man said incredulously, looking down at his clipboard like it had betrayed him. Another man was entering the room, snapping latex gloves onto his hands and humming the Star-Spangled Banner under his breath.

“Yes, that’s me,” the woman said all in one rambling gasp, taking a deep breath to calm down. She blinked when she saw the humming man. “Oh, is someone getting credded? Poor them.”

Her hand was on fire, her brain felt like mush, and she was so f*****g unimpressed with the level of mages that the f*****g government hired. The hell kind of treatment was that? She hadn’t made someone bleed while casting since she still had her food delivered to her mouth via aeroplane.

She sulked on the bed alone, waiting for the magi to return to do her mental check. All that was left now was making sure she couldn’t be compromised by their unsubs, then she could slink back to her desk and put something cold on her hand. She looked down and almost clenched her fist in anger at the sight of the hastily wadded up bandage on her hand, spotted with blood and spell-ink.

So. Goddamn. Sloppy.

They’d asked her to deactivate all her own defences for this procedure, and she felt vulnerable and naked sitting there with her magic locked away tightly. Even with the stinging bite of the aptly nicknamed Butcher’s runes fading on her palm. She lifted the corner of the bandage nervously, not quite sure what to expect.

And there was a tug at the back of her mind, the awareness of trying to recall a memory that had slipped away. She paused, curious, then reached back for it.

Oh. Not it.

Him.

“I wouldn’t look yet,” Reid’s voice hummed, rattling around in her skull. It was strange, hearing his voice instead of Sergio’s. “You won’t be able to see much but ink and blood and it won’t work properly until the spell sets. A few hours, maybe.”  His voice was much nicer than her cat’s. It didn’t itch at all. Actually, it was… sweet. Hard to grasp, the feeling fading on her brain almost instantly. If Sergio’s voice was hay-fever and cat dander, Reid’s was the sensation of cotton candy dissolving on a tongue. It didn’t make much sense, but magic rarely did.

It was also hot as hell.

She bit her lip and clenched her thighs together, making sure her emotions were firmly squared away from him before reaching back and replying with just her voice: “How the hell did you get in my head?” It wasn’t as nice talking back to him as it was having him just talk to her. Their magic clashed when it met and slipped off each other. It made it hard to focus and gave the impression that if she shoved at him, even a little, she could push him out.

“I wasn’t trying to. You’re very… loud.”

She thought about telling him to piss off. Then, she reconsidered. It was boring here, and he took her mind off her hand. “Where are you? Why are you in a separate room? It’s not like we had to take our clothes off.”

“I’m one of only three employees here aligned with the dark. They have to ship in a dark aligned magus from DC headquarters to do our annuals—and this is the only room where light affined magic doesn’t leech in and interfere.”

“… Interesting.” Beyond interesting. There was no way Reid should even be able to sense her, let alone slip into her mind like really dorky smoke. It explained the weird clashing their magic was doing—her light affinity and his dark were oil and water to each other.

“I shouldn’t even be able to sense you,” Reid continued, and now he sounded intrigued as well as the full impact of their conversation seemed to sink in. She could actually feel the repressed excitement he was barely containing at this unexpected discovery, clearly not as practised at compartmentalizing his feelings as she was. She should probably teach him that, if this was going to become a habit.

Was it going to become a habit?

She glanced at the clock, probably going to be here a while. She envied Garcia and JJ and how quickly they’d been released—and why was Reid still here? “Can you tell me more about the rune-work here? It’s boring as heck waiting.”

There was no real way to describe feeling someone laugh, but she smiled when his chuckle echoed back at her. It was kind of infectious. “Okay. This guy won’t notice I’m not listening to him anymore anyway. He’s awful at this. I do most of my shielding myself. So, in the sixties…”

Reid beat her to work the next day, busily scribbling at a report when she walked in. She put a cup of coffee on the desk in front of him, watching as his nose twitched as he snapped back into the world of the living at the scent of it.

“Yum, thanks,” he said, his eyes slipping back down the complicated series of calculations he appeared to be writing in the margins. She hoped he wasn’t going to hand that into Hotchner. She was pretty sure there was a doodle of a monkey under his thumb. She was also pretty sure that he hadn’t even processed she was there, not really. Trapped in his own head.

She put her left palm between the paper and his nose. “Check it,” she said, and activated the sigil. It blazed, delicate lines gleaming silver and showing the FBI symbol in full glory. It was actually really finely done, even if he’d been rough putting it there. She probably could have made it neater but nowhere near as intricate.

His hand lifted off the desk and paused, hovering just above her palm and blinking, coming back to himself and pulling back slightly. “May I?” he asked politely. She nodded. His touch was feather-light, tracing the lines of the symbol with the pad of his thumb as though checking for lumps or ridges that would give away the rune when she deactivated it. There were none, she’d already checked. Just some mild pinkness to the skin that would fade quickly. She refused to focus on the way her pulse sped up at his touch as well. That was just the natural response to an attractive, young—except she had no idea how old he was, really—man showing a marked interest in a part of her body.

“Is it weird having a rune you didn’t cast on you?” Reid asked curiously. He didn’t take his finger away. He did the opposite. She let her hand drop to the desk, deactivating the sigil, and he let his hand rest on top. It was warm and dry and, yeah, she didn’t actually want him to take it away, except it would be really strange if Hotchner glanced out the office and saw them holding hands. And he was still running his thumb in circles on her skin, and goddamn she really needed to get laid before dealing with him anymore.

“Not really,” she replied, with none of the strain of her hyper-focus on the touch of his skin showing in her voice, “I have others. And this one has benefits.”

“Gets you out of parking tickets easily enough,” said a cheerful voice behind them. Reid’s hand snapped away to fall into his lap and out of sight. “Morning, Ryder. Morning, Pretty-Boy. Hey Ryder, did you enjoy your date with our rune mage?”

The rant she launched into about unprofessionalism in her craft as Morgan pulled a face like he regretted asking was just long and blistering enough that she could look again at Reid after without her neck burning.

Barely.

She looked him up once after fighting the urge for days. Sergio was still refusing to come back to work with her and, when she’d pushed him, he’d shoved a very vivid scent-memory of Doyle’s sweat at her and vanished. She wasn’t the only one with a fixed memory, apparently.

She wanted to prove that Reid was different; to Sergio and to herself. She also kind of wanted to know just what exactly Reid was. And it wasn’t hard to find his file in the database and pull it up. It did leave her feeling guilty though, and she scanned it quickly with her index finger resting on the escape key. Her arm prickled uncomfortably, but she was used to that by now. It did it practically from the moment she got to work until the moment she left it. She really needed to recalibrate it.

 Info

Name: Dr. Casper William Reid

DOB:July 27,1992

Holy s**t, he was young. You never really knew with demons, especially the pretty ones.

“What are you doing?”

Celine mashed the escape key and spun around guiltily, finding herself face to face with trinket-shop woman—Garcia—from the medical bay. She’d been meaning to introduce herself properly, but Garcia had been busy doing… something computer-y… and it had slipped Celine’s mind.

“Um,” Celine said. There was really no point lying: “Reading Reid’s personnel file.”

The woman frowned. The look didn’t suit her face. “I know that. I know all. I basically am the intranet here, you know. But why? I mean… out of everyone’s, his is redacted to high hell and back. I don’t even have clearance to read it.” She blinked and suddenly grinned. “Actually, don’t answer that. Our Junior de-man is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma wrapped inside a sweater-vest—it was the first thing I did when he started here as well. Hi, we haven’t met properly yet! Also, by the way, Reid’s been watching you read his file for like ten minutes now.”

Celine turned her chair with a numb sense of resignation and found Reid perched on the side of her desk; he resembled some kind of gangly, overgrown bird holding a coffee cup and, inexplicably, a troll doll with a vivid blue Mohawk. “Hi,” he said with a crooked smile, and she dropped her head to the desk and groaned.

“Wear a bell, damnit,” she mumbled into the wood, and he laughed. “What are you?”

He touched her hand and she glanced up into his face. She’d almost nailed the knack of ignoring her bizarre attraction to the man. “I’m me,” he said, very quietly, and there was something like an apology in the tone.

She slipped out of the barriers the magi had firmly erected in her mind. She shouldn’t, not really, her slipping out meant that anyone could slip in. But she didn’t want to say this bit out loud: “I’m sorry for snooping.”

A wry chuckle in her head sounded almost immediately after, slightly muted and without any of the melty sweetness to it. He must have his own shields down to be able to hear her.

Risky.

“Don’t be. I understand.”

Two weeks after she’d begun at the BAU, there was a knock at her door. Her arm burned. She opened it to find Reid standing there, looking sheepish, slamming the door in his face out of reflex.

She liked him, liked him plenty. Probably too much, really. But that was at work. She couldn’t have a demon in her home. Not after Doyle.

“Go away,” yowled Sergio furiously, his tail lashing. “Make him go away, or I will!”

Goddamnit. She opened the door again, and he was still standing there, his face stunned. “You shut the door on me,” he said, his voice the most f*****g woeful thing she’d heard all day, and she’d spent her morning listening to Attenborough narrating baby geese jumping off cliffs on TV.

“You’re at my house, Reid,” she snapped, and she couldn’t keep the bite out of her tone.

His face shuttered, and he stepped away. Something rustled in his hand, and she looked down to find a bag hanging from his fingers loosely. The bag was damp with condensation from something warm inside. She could smell it. Chicken tikka masala, her favourite.  There was the outline of DVDs against the plastic.

Well, s**t.

“Okay,” he murmured, and vanished. She swore, loudly and inventively, until the neighbour across the hall banged on her door angrily. Then she swore a little more because that neighbour was a b***h and her kid kept throwing gum at Sergio.

She closed the door. Her arm prickled. She opened it again. There was a carton of curry against her door, a DVD underneath, and a hastily scrawled note on the top, already smearing from the heat: Sorry, Em. I should have called first. Peace offering. Smiley face SR

“Oh my god, he actually wrote the word smiley face,” she told Sergio incredulously, shoving the carton under the cat’s nose so he could see. “What is with this guy?”

Sergio blinked. Then his fur puffed up. “Oh my god,” he snapped in a mock-falsetto of her voice. “You’re actually attracted to him. A demon. Again! Do you have a fetish for them or something?”

“I’m not attracted to him,” she lied, and flipped the DVD over. Solaris. In the original Russian. All 165 minutes of it. She’d told Morgan she’d wanted to see it, ignoring the raised eyebrow he’d given her. She hadn’t even realized Reid was nearby.

That seemed to be an ongoing theme.

“Liar. If you invite him in, he’ll probably sneak in during the night and have his way with us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Incubi are extinct.” She pulled her phone out and hesitated only a second before pulling up his name and shooting off a rapid-fire text. “And you’re a cat.”

“Cats have rights of consent as well, you know.”

He couldn’t have gone far. After all, he couldn’t teleport.

To Not-Elf : I’m sorry. Sergio is being a weirdo about you coming in.

He replied so quickly she had a suspicion he’d been hanging around outside just waiting for her to guilt-trip herself into texting him.

Not-Elf : Oh. Do you want to watch the movie? S. R.

To Not-Elf : Yes. I really am sorry. Maybe your place?

“Celine.” Sergio growled to emphasise his point. “If this goes wrong, I’m not going to save you this time. I lost six lives saving you from the last demon.”

“Reid’s different.”

Not-Elf: I don’t have to come in. S. R.

“Here lies Celine Ryder. Beloved by few, because she was awful to them all. I’ll have them engrave, ‘I know he’s a demon but I thought I could change him’ on your headstone—”

To Not-Elf: … I’m not watching a movie in Russian in the hallway.

“—or maybe ‘He kissed like an angel, so I forgot he was a demon.’ That’s pretty poetic. Elizabeth would like it, I think.”

Not-Elf: Window. S. R.

She looked up to find him waving at her from the fire escape near her kitchen window. Sergio spluttered, cut off mid-rant by his sudden appearance. She slid the window open and shook her head at him, trying not to laugh. “You just signed a one word text, you realize how redundant that is right?” He just blinked at her, and she sighed. “Are we actually going to do this?”

He slid onto the windowsill, making himself comfy and crossing his legs. Then he grinned and her stomach lurched. “I’ve sat in weirder places,” he said, and she didn’t doubt that at all.

“I’m having no part in this,” Sergio growled, and vanished.

More chicken for them, then.

Three hours later, Reid was still on her windowsill, it was getting dark outside, and she was actually having a lot of fun. At some point, she’d noticed he was shivering and had handed him a blanket. Then the movie had ended, so she’d put on another. And made popcorn, which was perched between his legs since he couldn’t reach into the apartment to get it until she asked him in. Which, she wasn’t quite ready to do yet, despite the fun.

She didn’t even mind that she had to move her TV into the kitchen for him to see it clearly, or that the open window was letting the cold air in, or even that she was sitting on the counter with her ass almost in her kitchen sink.

Okay, she minded the cold a little.

“You’re shivering,” Reid pointed out, peering around at her with difficulty.

“Yeah well, I have the damn window open, and you have the warmest blanket,” she said, rolling her eyes at him. “I’m a rune mage, I don’t do weather.”

“You can have the blanket back,” he offered, slipping it off his shoulders.

“Don’t you dare. You’re a guest—if you take that off, I’ll shut the window on you.”

“Is this how you treat all your guests?” He pulled a confused face. “That’s not… polite.” Then he fell silent, and something odd crossed his face, a strange reluctant longing. “We could… I mean. You’ll have to come out here but we can… share.”

Oh. Oh.

Yes.

“No,” she said softly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She hoped he didn’t ask why. She tried to think of something to say but her mind fumbled, rambled uselessly. The one time she needed to think of a good lie, all she could think of was the truth: because you’re sweet and kind and yeah, really pretty. And I don’t do pretty, and I’ve never done kind, but I want you. If I come out there I’m going to practically be in your lap, and if I’m sitting in your lap and you do the things you do I’m going to want you… Because I don’t trust myself to say no.

“Because you don’t trust me.” He sounded sad. She hated that she’d done that to him. It was necessary because if he thought she’d hurt him, he wouldn’t get too close.

She looked away and leaned back so he couldn’t see her to profile her. “Maybe it’s time the night came to an end. Maybe… maybe we can do this again? Another time? With warmer… blankets.”

Maybe I’ll invite you in. Maybe you’ll say yes.

Maybe I will too.

“Alright. It’s a date.”

She leaned out the window to get the blanket and the bowl of popcorn and felt the barest whisper of humid air against her cheek in a soft kiss, even though he was standing an arm’s length away.  “By the way,” he said with a shy smile. “You might not do weather… but I do…”

When he vanished from sight, she fancied she heard the rustle of wings.