A/N: Here is the next chapter. It took super freaking long to write for some reason so I hope you enjoy it!

~PT

Pride

Reid woke up feeling warm and more comfortable than he should be. He quickly became aware that he was lying in someone's lap. He shifted and turned onto his other side, facing the person. It took a couple moments for him to realize that his boss, Hotch, was looking blearily down at him.

He sat up quickly, looking at Hotch with an embarrassed expression, "I'm so sorry," he whispered.

Hotch was fully awake now, "Why are you apologizing?" He asked just as softly. The late afternoon sun was peeking through the windows lighting up a portion of Reid's face.

Reid shrugged but blushed.

"You were having a nightmare."

Reid looked around quickly, wondering if anyone else had seen them. The plane was dark and it seemed that the rest of the team was still asleep.

"I, um, just wanted to make sure you were comfortable," Hotch sounded unsure of himself.

Reid just raised an eyebrow at his boss, but settled more comfortably into the other side of the couch. He yawned and tried to trick his eyelids into staying open by blinking. He made a humming noise deep in his throat. He was still so tired.

He almost fell off the couch as he tried to stretch his shoulders. Hotch caught him by the arm and chuckled. Reid blushed again and sat trying to reconcile his brain to being awake. He looked over at Hotch, who seemed far more alert than he. His boss stood and went over to his bag and got out a toothbrush and toothpaste. Reid yawned and figured he should have coffee or he would fall asleep again. He heard the pilot say over the speaker that they were starting their final descent into Quantico. No one else stirred yet, but as soon as they felt the wheels jerk out, they would. It was like clockwork. Reid was usually the only one awake to see it because the team almost always fell asleep after a hard case. He would wake from a nightmare, or try to stay awake so he wouldn't have one and he would watch as the team all came awake at once. It was both amusing and slightly creepy. He got up and stretched again, making his way over to the coffee maker and starting it automatically. He stood there swaying as Hotch came out of the plane bathroom. Hotch smiled slightly at him and as he passed he said, "Pour me a cup, too? Just 14 ml of cream."

Reid blushed as he recalled how worried he was about getting the amount of cream right that morning that Hotch had stayed over. He nodded and smiled back.

Reid had a graduated cylinder in his bag and he fought with himself over using it. Finally deciding that he shouldn't, thinking that Hotch would just make fun of him, he approximated the amount of cream and then quickly fixed his own sugary drink. Hotch was reviewing the case files on the table in front of him when he set down the coffee.

The serious man nodded his thanks, without moving his eyes from the pages.

Reid almost blurted out that he had a graduated cylinder in his bag but didn't use it so there was more chance for error in the approximation, but bit his lip and simply nodded back.

Hotch smiled and they sat in silence until the wheels jerked into landing position. Reid watching in amusement as the team all came awake at the same instant. Morgan's eyes snapped open and he took his headphones off. Elle stood up and stretched while Gideon blinked tiredly and Put his glasses back on his nose.

"You don't do that," Hotch murmured, taking a sip of his coffee.

"Hmm?" He replied, looking out the window to see the city below.

"You are always awake before everyone else."

Reid blushed at the thought that Hotch had noticed something like that. He shrugged and continued to sip his coffee, "I just don't sleep as much."

"On purpose?"

Reid shrugged again, unsure of how to answer.

After a while he said, "You don't usually do it either; wake up with the wheels."

His boss gave him the eyebrow as if to say, 'Is that so?'

He nodded, smiling over his coffee cup.

They sat in silence until they landed twenty minutes later. The team shuffled off the plane, and started their after case rituals. They each went to see Garcia to say hi, and just to see if some of her vigor and attitude would rub off on them and help them get through the post case paperwork. Sometimes they were lucky and they arrived back home just in time to stumble to their respective homes and get some sleep. However, if they arrived anytime during a normal work day, they were required to get some of the paperwork done while the case was still fresh in their minds. Then they would start on the consultations and they rest of their work. Thankfully, they would only have a few hours at the office and then they could go home. Reid started a pot of coffee, and moved to his desk. He went through his drawers until he found his favorite pen, and started on the mountain of paperwork by his computer. By the time he looked up again, it was dark outside and the majority of the team had left. He vaguely remembered Morgan touching his shoulder and saying goodnight an hour earlier.

They thought that he didn't notice, but he knew that both Morgan and Elle slipped files into his pile, and made him do them. He was aware when it was his workload, and when it was theirs. The sad part was that they knew he didn't have anything to do at home. Most of the time he didn't mind helping them out, so that Elle could meet up with her friends and Morgan could go woo ladies at the bars, but sometimes he wished they didn't always know that he had nothing to do. He wished that he had something to do outside of work and some days he felt like his team was holding him back from finding that something.

But that was silly. They wanted the best for him. At least he thought they did.

Most days he didn't get home until ten or eleven and had just enough time to grab some dinner from a local take out place and then sit in his flat for hours on end, waiting to fall asleep, and waiting to go back to the familiar setting of the BAU.

Sometimes he would head home and forget to get any food, his mind still whirling with other things like the case they just solved or the consultations he wrote in on. And he arrived at his place where he had nothing but coffee and freezer burned things in his kitchen that he wasn't sure were safe to eat. So he would make coffee and forget that he was even hungry, by immersing himself within a scientific journal or a documentary on TV.

As he finished up his last file, and put it in the 'done' pile he realized that he had almost stayed past the time that Hotch usually goes home. The man usually had several other things to attend to, but it seemed as though Reid had gotten the majority of his teammates' files, so he hadn't even realized that it was past eleven. He stretched in his chair, and gingerly rose to his feet.

He was still feeling sore and he was just glad that their last case hadn't required a lot of legwork. He slowly got into his jacket and started to pull his bag over his shoulder. His ribs protested and he groaned at the pain.

"Are you feeling ok?" Reid almost jumped as he hadn't heard Hotch come up behind him; he spun around and immediately regretted it. His hip was healing but it popped loudly and he cried out, putting his hand on his leg to steady himself.

Hotch grabbed his shoulder, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. What are you doing here so late?"

"Oh well, I think I got more than my fair share of Elle and Morgan's files so I was just finishing them up."

"What?" Hotch looked at him sternly, removing his hand to cross his arms in front of him.

"I-I thought you knew?"

"Knew what?" Hotch was not happy.

Reid gulped, thinking that he should have kept his mouth shut. He didn't want his teammates to get into trouble, even if he wished they didn't do it so often. The look on Hotch's face demanded an answer, and he started to ramble his way into a response that wouldn't get everyone in trouble, "Well… Elle was meeting up with her friends at the Lady Luck tonight and I think Morgan had plans even before we went on the case and he was telling me that he wanted to leave early when we got off the plane so they gave me some of their files and I don't mind really-"

"Did they ask you to do the extra work?"

Reid sighed, knowing that Hotch would immediately get to the actual issue, "No. They never do."

Hotch uncrossed his arms and glared at the young genius, "How long has this been going on?"

Reid was quiet, unwilling to answer because it had been going on for years. Ever since he started working at the BAU. Apparently it didn't matter what he said or didn't say because Hotch was too good of a profiler to be thrown off.

"That long? This can't keep happening. You deserve your time off just as much as you do. Why did you think I knew? Do you think I would condone this behavior?"

Reid pushed his hair out of his face and just mumbled that he thought that's how it worked around here.

"No, we all do our part. Equally. As a team."

Hotch turned away, heading for the door, but Reid grabbed his arm, "Please don't get them into trouble. I could've told on them but I really don't have anything to do after work… and they do. It's alright."

Hotch turned and took in the man's earnest face, "I cannot let it continue. However, I will not make a big deal out of it."

Reid blew out a breath he had been holding in relief, "Good, because Morgan is going to be so pissed anyway."

Hotch glared at him, "He has no right to do this. I thought you guys were friends."

"We are…"

At that moment, Reid realized that he was insanely hungry. He cocked his head, thinking this was the first time in a very long time that he actually felt hungry. Usually, he ate just enough to keep going. His brain, more frequently than not, seemed to think that food wasn't an immediate necessity and converting the time of day into binary – was.

Hotch also cocked his head, no doubt confused by the sudden change of expression in his subordinate.

"What is it?" He asked in concern.

"I'm… hungry," Reid said as if he didn't believe he actually was.

Hotch suddenly threw back his head and laughed. Reid watched with his mouth open slightly as his boss' demeanor changed completely and his worry erased by the happy expression.

When he finally settled down, he grasped Reid's elbow and towed his behind him towards the door.

"Let's feed you, then. Know any good places around here?"

Reid was smiling, unsure of how he had managed to cause Hotch to laugh so hard, and very pleased that he would be spending more time with Hotch. Outside of work, no less.

"Uh yea! There is a decent Indian food restaurant down the block. We can walk to it."

They ambled off, in a comfortable silence, but when they got to the restaurant, they saw that it was closed.

"Oh whoops, I forgot it's the weekend and their hours are shortened for the day."

Hotch gave him a weird look, and Reid picked up on his train of thought.

"Yes, I know I have an eidetic memory, but I've been…," The young genius paused, before finishing lamely, "preoccupied."

Hotch snorted in response and turned back towards the Federal building.

"What say you to raiding the local mini-mart near here and eating whatever we can find?"

Reid hurried to catch up with his boss's purposeful strides, "U-uh Y-yea, that sounds great."

Hotch didn't ask, he just opened the passenger door for Reid, and rounding the hood of the SUV to climb into the driver's side. As Reid hastily climbed in, he banged his head on the handle above the door that was used to stabilize oneself during a drive.

"Fuck!" Reid muttered, and rubbed his head gingerly.

He felt Hotch staring at him and he blushed, "What is it?"

Hotch's lips turned up in a little smile, "You are so accident-prone. Since when do you swear?"

Reid pouted as Hotch started the car, "I'm not that bad." This sullen statement only made Hotch's smile widen.

"Plus, I'm not a kid, I swear at times. There are just usually more intelligent things to say other than a curse word that evolved from meaningless middle English."

Hotch looked at him incredulously, "I've never heard you say one before."

Reid was quiet before saying, "You haven't been around me long enough to hear it."

Hotch nodded in concession and they sat in silence before reaching the mini-mart.

Reid went straight to the candy section and also grabbed a cup of noodles and brought them to the counter. Hotch was right behind him with a similar meal of a package of ramen and a frosted sticky bun. Hotch tried to pay but Reid put his foot down. If Hotch acted any more like they were on a date, he would explode.

"We can just go to my house if you like; I have an eight hundred watt microwave with a little more than one cubic feet of internal space."

Hotch laughed at his statement, "Oh, well that's much better than my microwave, I don't even know the brand let alone the wattage or internal capacity."

They slid into the car, Hotch pulling out of the parking lot and heading to Reid's flat. The whole time, Reid told him how to find out the wattage of his microwave even if he had thrown away the owner's manual.

"…If you put a grape inside and it starts to spark at ten seconds it is almost a twelve hundred wattage. It then decreases by the hundredth place each second it takes the grape to spark."

Reid finished up his spiel as he let them both into his apartment. Hotch's eyes looked a little glazed, and Reid realized that he had just rambled about microwaves for more than 8 minutes, "I'm sorry, I got carried away." He apologized sheepishly.

"It is useful information. Just in case I'm playing trivial pursuit and the question is 'how can you tell the wattage of a microwave through the flammability of a fruiting berry'."

Reid laughed at this, thinking how great it was that Hotch was teasing him.

They microwaved their dinner, and sat in front of the young genius' flat screen. When he turned the device on it was to the pause screen of the latest episode of 'The Vampire Diaries'. He blushed and quickly changed it to a sports channel.

"We don't have to watch this, I know you hate sports."

"I don't hate sports, per say…" But he turned the remote over to Hotch. When he changed it to BBC America, Reid glanced at him, "You don't have to watch what I like either."

Hotch chuckled and then settled on the discovery channel. They watch the third day of shark week and Hotch talked about Jack's favorite stuffed toy which was a hammerhead shark from the Atlanta Aquarium and Reid regaled him of the time he was pushed into the shark tank at the local aquarium in Vegas while in high school. He had tried to make the teacher believe that he had been pushed but she didn't believe him and accused him of causing a scene.

He had actually had a good time that day; he liked seeing the animals, even if it ended up being much too close for comfort.

They talked until the food was gone and the episode was over. Hotch stood and groaned, stretching. Reid tried his hardest not to stare at the man's shoulders straining against his shirt.

They said goodnight, and Hotch turned to leave.

All of a sudden, Reid couldn't let him go. He wanted to run out after him and tell him exactly how he felt at the moment: utterly in love with him. He did run out but instead of confessing himself, he just said, "Hotch!"

The man turned around, his eyebrow quirked in a question.

"Um. Thank you," he muttered as he patted the man awkwardly on the shoulder.

Hotch smiled his little smile and brushed his knuckles along the outside of Reid's arm and turns once more to leave. The man stands there until he can't see Hotch any longer and his arm stops tingling from his touch. It wasn't until the cranky old lady across from him opened the door a crack and scolded him for 'lurking' outside her door in the middle of the night and shook the cat that she had in her arm at him.

He hurried back inside, and for the rest of the night he thought of how peculiar it was that his stomach had just scored him both nourishment and a closer look into his boss' life.

A/N: So please PLEASE review, I run off of the motivation they give me!

Loves,

~PT