A/N – hope you are enjoying the story! Thank you for reading, and offering any comments – I'm always eager to hear if Reid starts not sounding like Reid!
The station was mostly unlit at 7:30 the next morning, and Reid was too busy thinking about the theories he'd begun formulating to pay his surroundings much mind. It was a sticky, confusing problem, and so, he rationalized later, he could certainly be excused for starting when he felt a cool, smooth touch on his wrist.
"Coffee?" she was in the middle of saying, when he jostled the cups against her, spraying hot liquid onto her chest, so it came out "Co-oof!"
He reached towards her, wanting to apologize, to help, without a clear intention, and his fingers grazed her forearm, bringing their skin in contact again, as she brushed the front of her uniform with a wry grin. The contact set off a tiny vibration at the base of his spine; his fingers despite himself pushed gently against her a little more before withdrawing.
"I do apologize, Dr. Reid - I should know better than to sneak up on someone early in the morning." She tilted her face away from the coffee spots and her eyes met his, her smile spreading. "I always felt these uniforms were too monochrome, anyway. It's a good thing they're almost black."
"I'd noticed you were also a fan of the 'sienna ambrosia', and I prefer a brew from outside these doors, so I took the liberty. . . " He found himself once again hesitant, wishing he had more time simply to gaze into the varegated irises. They were an unusual color. And, lovely.
"Oh, no, no, thank you, that's really kind of you. Are you OK? Can I get you a. . . " he trailed off, not sure what to suggest. He reached towards her again, saw with embarrassment that he was reaching at her chest, and pulled his hands back sharply.
She continued to look at him, and her gaze somehow felt deep, analytical. He saw the telltale crinkling of the skin near her eyes before her mouth curved into a genuine smile, as she extended the one remaining cup, and said,
"How about an UnSub, Doctor? And you can put a coffee on my tab." He exhaled a short laugh, barely vocalizing, and dropped his eyes momentarily.
"Okay, I . . uh, great." She bent towards him, placing the cup on the conference table near him. "I'll worry about mopping up." He watched her walk away, surprised at the intensity of his own reactions.
"Tab," he repeated, sotto voce, as he walked back to the conference room. "Tab."
He wished he'd thought to tell her she could call him Spencer.
Then wondered what he was thinking. This woman was just being friendly. True, she was unusual, exhibiting more intelligence than most detectives they'd worked with in the past. And she was open to the team - but she was the one who had called them and asked for help, so it made sense that she would be. Even bringing him coffee was just a kind gesture.
He chided himself internally, refocused on the case files, and drank the coffee - much better than the station brew. Only a very tiny part of his conscious mind, he knew, was preoccupied with wondering how it was that Oliver. . . Calla Oliver . . knew exactly how much sugar he took, and what lay behind her oddly lyrical turn of phrase.
The case. Right. Something about their analysis so far irked Reid. He couldn't determine what the problem was, but he also knew that hunches could result from the subconscious aggregation and analysis of data that didn't consciously register, with varying degrees of accuracy. So he was unafraid to pursue one he couldn't dispell. The eight victims had been found in the same location - astonishingly, despite the news coverage, in the six days since the initial bodies had been discovered, a fourth set of twins had been left behind in the library's Dumpsters.
They had lived in different locations in the city - one of each set of the first female twins lived near one another, on the Upper West side, but their siblings lived in Chelsea and Queens, respectively; one of the sisters had lived in Ohio, while the other lived in the Bronx.
The most recent set of victims had actually lived together, in their parents' former house on Staten Island. The usual rules of geographic profiling just didn't apply; there were too many disparate data points.
Victimology was similarly frustrating. Different ages, different races, different genders, to start. Garcia had been unable to find anything connecting all of the victims; transaction histories, professions, activities - they were registered as different political parties or hadn't ever voted. They had different banks. They were born in different states. Some had additional siblings. Nothing connected them except twinship.
And that seemed to be all they really knew - they could form hypotheses based on twinship and identity, but they also couldn't figure out how the UnSub was selecting targets. It wasn't as though twins were on some register. (Well, one pair of twins had belonged to a local group, but none of the others had.) And inferring from census data, the UnSub had also refrained from hunting other twins, or even one of a pair, like the woman whose sibling lived in Ohio, that were closer or more connected to his first victims. Reid sighed, and ran a hand through his hair.
He dropped the case file on the table and stared without focus at the wall momentarily. They could predict a lot about the UnSub from the disposition of the bodies and the selection of twins. And the cases here didn't match anything similar outside of New York City. There was enough to build a preliminary profile, which they would then revise. But he was frustrated - this case seemed to have more open questions than was usual, and he had more than his usual impatience to answer them.
He reached into a plastic bag at his right, still absentmindedly, and unwrapped a tiny rectangle of chocolate, before realizing that he had consumed half of the bag without realizing it had been there at all. He didn't know where it had come from.
He felt a minor twinge of guilt and looked around the room briefly for someone to apologize to, or enquire of, but the room was empty. He rationalized that this room was exclusively for the use of the BAU anyway, and he couldn't imagine any of his team being honestly upset with him for eating so many of the candies. He'd probably bear some teasing, but no real resentment. He crumpled the tiny red wrapper in his palm before tossing it at a tiny wastebasket in the corner. Of course, he missed, and he walked over to retrieve the paper, bending over the plastic receptacle to drop it in. As the paper made a tiny thunk against the otherwise empty plastic bag, his eyes widened, and he reached into his pocket to dial Garcia as he hurried back to the table.
In five minutes, he was flipping excitedly through pictures and dictating something to the technical analyst, pausing briefly midway for another miniature chocolate. Garcia chastised him for eating "in the middle of these photos", but he was too focused to respond. Finally, finally, they had something. By the time Garcia hung up, the bag was empty.