Part 4 – Acceptance

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.
- Brian Tracy

Chapter 61

Six weeks after the New Year, nearly three months after his rescue, Spencer Reid was finally cleared and ready to go back in the field. "Cuff me." He said to Blake as she walked past his desk that morning.

"What?"

"I finally finished physical therapy on my hand. Cuff me." Spencer offered up his wrists, pleadingly.

"No."

Spencer sighed and turned to his other desk mate, "JJ?"

JJ sighed deeply. "If I don't will you leave it alone?" Spencer shook his head. "All right." She came around the desk and cuffed Spencer's hands behind him. "Now what?"

"Hold on." Spencer replied, wiggling slightly in his seat. "Statistically being a member of the BAU has one of the highest risks for kidnapping or being held hostage in the country…"

"…and your experiences skew the numbers…."

"…so knowing a bit of magic is potentially useful." He handed her back her open cuffs.

JJ stared at them a moment. "Okay, how did you do that? I thought your thumb healed."

He smiled, "Magic."

She groaned and took the cuffs off is finger. "Oh, I hate it when you do that," she said as she went back to her desk.

Spencer just smiled as he tucked his handcuff key back into the slit in the back of his belt and went back to work. He had lost a noticeable amount of grip strength in that hand since his injury, but as it was his non-dominant hand it was manageable. It didn't interfere with his shooting ability, which was his most notable concern, and he had yet to find anything short of manhandling wood and other heavy items around the house that was difficult, and for that he wore a brace. Surgery would restore full functionality to those tendons, but then he wouldn't be able to slip cuffs like he could now. For him it was an acceptable trade off.

"So is Laura okay with you going back in the field?" Blake asked.

"She claims to be, and every indication supports that. We have a security system in place on the house and Stuart is right downstairs if there's any kind of crisis." Stuart, adjutant professor at Howard Law, worked at a free legal clinic, openly homosexual not that it mattered. So far he'd been an outstanding tenant and neighbor and was quickly becoming a kind of casual friend.

"Not worried about her being bored while you're gone?"

"Between the course she's teaching at UDC, that project she's working on with Tonya, the classes at the textile shop and the house she'll probably only realize I'm gone in the evenings."

"I thought Tonya was still at Cornell." Blake said.

"The project is part of her graduate theses."

"What is Laura teaching?" JJ asked.

"Home economics. Apparently with the ongoing downturn in the economy and a lot of the current trends in the gourmet world there's been a renewed interest in things like household financial management, basic cooking and food preservation, household and textile repair, that sort of thing. UDC decided to try a class at their community college, she got the position and it filled up it about three days. She has a waiting list. She and Tonya are trying to set up a program to cover the same ground in a series of smaller courses at community centers, specifically targeting people on government assistance programs, Laura's handling curriculum while Tonya is working with grant money and public acceptance."

"Public acceptance?" JJ asked.

"I'm guessing something about upper class college kids thinking they know better than the locals and trying to tell them how to live their lives while destroy their native cultures." Blake replied.

Spencer nodded, "Except as Laura points out most native cultures and cuisines don't have a problem working within a budget. It's when you think that 'native cuisine' means Pop-tarts and Chicken McNuggets that you have a problem. It helps that the community center they're working with is in Tonya's old neighborhood."

"What is she teaching at the textile shop?" JJ asked.

Spencer opened his mouth to answer but sat there a moment. "I honestly have no idea. The colors are pretty though."

That got him chuckles. "How is the house going?"

"We have walls." They'd put the boards up themselves over an exhausting week-end, but hired someone else to tape and mud, whatever that meant. "We should be painting…at some point."

JJ was grinning. "No clue, do you?"

"Not at all. I, you know, lift, hold." Do what Morgan and Laura told him. Sometimes he provided input between two or three options. Apparently some aspect of the kitchen was going to be white because he thought black in a kitchen was too dreary. Eventually it would be a lovely home.

"Is she going to be able to keep all that up once the baby comes?" Blake asked with a smile. "Assuming you two are still planning that."

"We are. The only thing she plans to keep working on at that point is the project with Tonya and that's something she can work on from home."

"Ah."

Movement caught his eye, so he looked up in time to see Garcia walking a file to Hotch's office. Of course. "So, where do you think we're going this time?" Blake asked.

"Not someplace warm." JJ replied.

By the time he finally got to bed in Minot, North Dakota it was about the time the early rising Laura was having her first coffee. Spencer stretched out in the bed, propped his tablet, and started pinging her video conference line. When the connection opened she was sitting there in her favorite morning spot, curled up in a ridiculously large rocker she'd insisted upon, hair mussed, still in her 'Property of the FBI' pajamas, knitting in her lap. He knew that there was a coffee mug somewhere nearby, and that she had been listening to the news and watching the day begin. "Good morning." He said as he lay down. "Did you sleep well?"

"No. This place is too empty. We need pets." She replied. "How did you sleep?"

"I haven't yet." He admitted, yawning. "I wanted to talk to you first. Not a dog." By now he knew that she tended to be very efficient once decisions were made.

"Why not a dog?"

"They don't like me. And I'm honestly afraid of them. And JJ is terrified of them; I don't want her to be afraid to come around."

"Okay, what about cats?"

They discussed the merits of cats until he fell asleep.

Four days later he walked in to the simple, homey smells of dinner cooking. There was chicken baking in that smell, he thought, and potatoes boiling, and a faint tinge of garlic that said that they would be mashed, and perhaps there would be green beans involved. "I'm home." He said as he put down his bags and coat.

Laura stuck her head out of the kitchen and smiled. "Welcome home." She said. "We missed you."

He grinned as he walked over to collect his kiss and hug. "We?"

She nodded to a new basket, over by the fire, full of odd looking mounds of creamy fur. He walked over and started stroking them. Immediately two bewhiskered faces popped up, blinked sleepy blue eyes at him and started sniffing the new person. "Meet Archie and Oliver." She said. "Siamese, rag doll crosses. The rescue group had a litter."

He started scratching a head, and the purring started. "Nice to meet you," he said to them, "Welcome home."