Chapter 2
BAU headquarters
FBI building
Quantico, VA
09/28/05
11:00 am EST
Spencer
Spencer was supposed to head downstairs with Morgan to get lunch as soon as they finished the morning's paperwork. As usual he finished a good hour ahead so he pulled out his chess set and began playing himself, which, he thought, is the exact opposite of playing with yourself, but its better I not think of that.
Just as he was about to nail it Gideon stopped at his desk and moved white. "Check." He claimed. "Checkmate in three moves."
Spencer looked over the board and contemplated imprecations in Latin. "What?" Where on earth was he getting checkmate in three?
Morgan looked over. "You know you'll beat him when you start learning."
Learning? Seriously? "Learning what?"
"To think outside of the box," Morgan replied. What the hell does that mean, anyway, Spencer thought.
Elle called down to them as she headed into the bullpen, "Question for you."
Morgan looked up. "Shoot."
"The Footpath Killer, why did he stutter?"
"Come on, Elle, we've all asked him and he won't say. He wants us to figure it out."
"Oh, okay. I'm up for a challenge."
Spencer looked up as JJ brought Elle a stack of work and introduced herself. He liked JJ, he truly did. She was sweet and kind and gentle in all the right ways as well as very efficient and very attractive. But that didn't make her quite…quite. It wasn't enough to make him reconsider.
Then Hotch was calling them up to the conference room, and it was beginning all over again.
Galois House
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA
09/28/05
8:00 am PST
Thom
Thom Hartmann rolled over at the opening strains of music and whacked his snooze button again. He didn't want to get up. He had been having the most delicious dream and he didn't want to stop. More specifically he didn't want to open his eyes and see the empty bed in the room. Why is it that the right thing always feels so wrong, he wondered?
"Good morning sleepyhead."
He cracked one eye open to see Milly Bennett standing there, dressed for the day in soft tweed pants and a rich blue tunic, a brown and blue striped silk ribbon dancing in her hair, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. At least she was polite about it. "Go away." He grumbled and snuggled down.
"You do this every morning." She put his coffee on his nightstand and sat in his desk chair. Not on the other bed, not ever anymore.
"I've noticed."
"It's not like he's dropped off the face of the earth."
"It just feels like it."
"I miss him too."
"I know. But you have the rest of your family." Not that I particularly want the rest of my family, Thom thought. Once again he felt the pang of deep anger about the whole sorry affair.
Milly was quiet a moment. "You're my family."
He cracked one eye, looked at her, and lifted the covers.
She crawled under them and hugged him close, letting him bury his head into the crook of her shoulder. He craved her, not like that, but he did love her so. "I miss him too." She repeated. "Two hundred and thirty-two days."
"I'm sorry." He gave her one more squeeze before leaning back to look at her, "Only a small lifetime."
"I know. We'll survive it. In the meantime get up." She detangled herself and got out of his bed to fetch her tea from his desk. "I have enough trouble with everyone else in the mornings; I don't need my other lover off his feed as well. You need to get up and get breakfast."
"Shrew," but he was sitting up and reaching for the coffee. When the covers moved she quickly shut her eyes. "Relax, peaches, I'm wearing underwear." He told her, "Just for you." But he kept the blankets up to his waist, for propriety more than anything. "You have office hours this morning?"
Milly grinned wickedly. "Yes. There's a paper coming due in my freshman class. What percentage of the class do you think will come by looking for an extension?"
Thom chuckled. "You should have told me earlier; we could have started a pool." He did crave her, but for now the frustration was deeply pleasing. "Will you sit for me later?"
She blushed and smiled. "Yes."
S-
All right, you noble bastard, I confess. I miss you. There, now it's been said. I also admit that you were right in not going any further as it only would have made the pain more acute. Feel free to insert an I Told You So into your next letter, you earned it.
On the plus side I've been accepted to the Mechatronics Lab at George Washington. I supposed I have you to thank for that as well, your recommendation carried quite a bit of the weight. So it looks like you're going to need an apartment big enough for three after all. Well four, at least on week-ends if Sharon gets her way. How are you going to explain that at work?
Before you ask, yes, I still think of you. Hope that doesn't put you off.
(Included in this letter was a delicate, finely detailed line drawing of familiar young woman reading in a garden.)
BAU headquarters
FBI building
Quantico, VA
09/28/05
11:00 am EST
Spencer
"Wow. Back to college." They were packing up their files, making sure their go-bags were prepped for Arizona and not, say, upstate New York. Garcia was helping, and providing moral support. "I remember college; it was like an endless party."
"Oh really?" Elle asked. "Were you in a sorority?"
"No, CalTech doesn't have sororities, they have houses. You settle in one as a freshman and then it becomes home for the rest of whatever. It's kind of like the system at Hogworts, you know, once a Gryffindor, always a Gryffindor."
"It's actually modeled after the residential house systems at Oxford and Cambridge, Garcia." Spencer pointed out as he looked through the reference materials. "Although I suppose was Hogworts was as well."
"Yeah, I was a Pageboy, in Page house. Spe labor levis et spe vinum gravis! May the work be light and the drinks be heavy!" She looked over at Spencer. "You went to CalTech, didn't you? Which house were you in?"
Oh hell, this was what he got for letting himself be distracted. "Oh, um, do we have any more legal pads?"
"Yeah, in the cargo hold on the plane. Come on Reid, what house were you in? I bet you were in Dabney, weren't you? All the geniuses were in Dabney."
Shit. She'd easily spent more time in the other houses than he had, she'd catch a lie. Well, it was coming on to time to admit the truth anyway, so what the hell. "I was, um, in Galois."
Garcia's eyes widened and she came around the desks to look at him. "No way! Oh my god, what was it like? Who else was in there with you?"
He couldn't help it; everyone reacted to Galois like that. He grinned at her. "Friends," he chuckled as her jaw dropped. "I'm going to go grab some more pencils."
Elle turned to look after him. "What was that all about?"
"Okay, at CalTech your house is, like, your social world. You do the intramural competition thing, you go through the house traditions, you eat in your house dining hall, and you prank the other houses, whatever." Garcia was practically running over herself in excitement. "And houses are always holding social nights, inviting other houses over for events, meals, that kind of thing. Except Galois, they never participated in anything. No competitions, no social events, they were ruled unprankable by the president's office, nothing. They're located in some undisclosed location off-campus so no one can find them. They don't exist in the campus computer network; everything about them is kept hardcopy so the information can't be hacked. They don't even participate in rotation, when freshman pick their houses, they're invitation only. That makes them the smallest house on campus; I've never even met anyone from Galois before."
"So why all the secrecy?" Morgan asked.
"No one knows! The most popular theory is that they're all working on DOD projects or something." Garcia nodded over her coffee cup. "Which, given Reid's brain, I would not be surprised."
"Oooh," Elle purred. "Dr. Reid gets mysterious at last."
"I always knew there had to be something." Morgan agreed. "I always knew."
T –
I told you so. Also, you're welcome. I think you and Ben-Tzvi will get along fine.
Short answer, I'm not. They may want to know who I live with, for security sake, but they don't need to know the details. Granted this team will probably figure them out, but I'm getting tired of hiding from them anyway.
I miss you too.
No, it doesn't put me off at all. I refuse to bow to convention and tradition in my personal life, we're already freaks, and we might as well be happy ones.
I still think of you.
.
Some dialogue taken from Criminal Minds Episode 01x02 "Compulsion". No copyright infringement intended.