Chapter 45

The question was coffee.

Spencer stood in the BAU the next morning, his first time here in a good ten months now. He had missed this place, this feeling of being well and truly deep in a citadel of safety. Now he was debating coffee before his debriefing. Given his memory his was going to be the more in depth interview, Laura was still too fragile to interview too intensely. Now, did he want coffee?

As he debated himself he heard familiar voices over by the pot. "Is it true?" Kevin asked.

"Is what true?" Garcia answered.

"Did Dr. Reid make a baby?"

"Yeah, and then the Unsub killed her so you'd better be really really kind and gentle or else."

"Of course," Kevin was quiet a moment, then. "Have you ever pictured it?"

"Pictured what?"

"Dr. Reid with a woman."

"What!?"

"Which is not to say I think he's gay, it's just…oh, come on, everyone figured he was more like Spock or something, completely asexual…."

"So what does that mean?" Spencer asked, pointing to her bracelet. "Assuming it has meaning."

They were curled up in the bed, trying really hard to actually find a point of mutual sexual arousal. Approximately an hour before the Unsub had come down and told them to start breeding. Those were his literal words, breed. Get with the humping. Make him a boy. Breed. Now. Just like they were animals, nothing more.

And then he threatened to turn off the water if they didn't comply by dawn.

He knew the protocol in situations like this. Pacify the Unsub, do what he wants so long as no one's life is at risk, try to talk him out of action only if you're sure of the profile, and wait for the team to come after you. Having sex with a woman he found both charming and physically attractive should not be all that onerous a demand assuming he could gain her consent. And he had, it had only taken a few moments of discussion over how close the team might be to finding them for her to realize that they needed to do what needed doing to get more time.

Unfortunately when the Unsub chose his victims he did not take orientation into account.

It wasn't that he was gay, if pressed he'd say that if you had to go straight to the genitalia he'd only ever fantasized about women. But in truth other than a certain aesthetic pleasure (Lila in her bikini came to mind) he didn't go straight to genitalia when it came to sexual arousal. If pressed and allowed to answer outside of the narrow gay/straight/bi range he'd whole-heartedly admit to being sapiosexual. He was drawn by intelligence, sparkling wit and deep conversation. He found people bursting with ideas and knowledge and curiosity about the world attractive as hell. This was why he'd never felt any pressing need to actually meet Maeve, their correspondence and phone calls really had satisfied him. But then so had the late night discussions he used to have with Ethan all the time. If truly and deeply pressed he'd probably count both as past relationships.

Of course no one ever pressed because everyone thought he was asexual. He'd even overheard discussions about it around the office on more than one occasion (Kevin was the worst gossip). Truth was he was not asexual. After much discussion with Maeve and some research he'd come to the conclusion that he was demisexual, someone who only became sexually interested after a relationship was solidly in place. He simply could not pull off a one night stand. It wasn't a choice to remain chaste or pure; the plumbing simply would not work. That was why he'd pushed Lila away, he didn't want to be embarrassed or make her feel ashamed somehow because he wasn't physically responding to her advances, like he had with JJ after she'd had two beers at the baseball game.

And here he was with a woman he'd known all of two weeks. Attractive as hell to be sure, bright, intelligent, deeply interested in her field and in all related disciplines, well-read, opinionated but with the facts to back it up, he could talk to her intently for hours. He had been talking to her for hours, in the two weeks they'd been stuck down here with only each other for company he had yet to be anywhere close to bored. But still, two weeks. And now their life depended on his plumbing. And worse, on hers.

Now they were curled up in the bed together, closer than they had ever been with anyone, well into each other's personal space, trying to find something, anything, to get the fire going. "Oh, it's silly." She said, lifting her wrist up to get a good look at the thing. It appeared to be a kind of chainmail, links of black, white and grey. But the move pressed her closer to him; he could feel the warmth of her now, her solid presence. "Campus fad."

"Okay, but what does it mean?"

"There was this woman who opened a kiosk in front of the bookstore. You know the kind, right?' He nodded, transient sellers of small bits of jewelry or t-shirts or other gift items would routinely set up on college campuses, sometimes for a few weeks before moving on. "Well, she was selling chainmail jewelry. Some of the religious groups on campus decided to all buy white bracelets to show that they were choosing to stay pure until marriage, because this needed to be shared with everyone for some reason."

"Of course." Colleges and socio-political posturing went hand in hand. "That's not white."

"No, it's not. People started wearing black if you were off-limits, married or committed and red if you were open to anything, but that didn't last long. She was, of course, also selling rainbow pride bracelets, which also became popular, and then the ones who bought white bracelets started buying pink or blue bracelets to show straight-pride, their term, and then she started selling the pink/purple/turquoise combination for transgender people…"

"…and all of a sudden you had to wear your sexuality on your wrist or people would look at you funny."

"…so said my housemate. And given that it applies to this situation…" She held up her wrist again. "Asexuality, in all its various shades. 14,000 undergraduates, 7,000 graduate students and 1,600 faculty members and she sold exactly three of them."

Damn. She might be kinda perfect. If only there wasn't an Unsub in the way. "Oh, hey, I should get one of those."

Of course she got it right off. "Great." She rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling. "We're gonna die down here."

Garcia dismissed Kevin in that way that only she could and came around the corner to find Spencer woolgathering. "Did you hear that?"

"Well, I…"

"Okay, so Kevin is clearly full of crap."

"Clearly." He was not asexual. He just needed someone highly intelligent who shared his beliefs about home and family and approximately 340 hours of physical proximity to get to know them intimately. If you took into account the usual two dates per week of an average of six hours per date that meant that from meeting someone to bedding them would take him about seven months, or roughly two weeks of forced 24/7 contact. Given those conditions his plumbing worked just fine, and as it turned out she was also demisexual and hers worked as well, with a little coaxing. That was the night they'd made Maggie.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm trying to decide if I need caffeine to go up against Strauss."

She tugged him toward the pot. "Take every advantage you can."