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“Spencer, do you want some coffee with that sugar?” Prentiss teases as she fills her mug from the carafe, watching the younger man drop cube after cube of sugar into his own cup.
“No, thanks,” Spencer replies, the joke going completely over his head. He just grabs his cup and moves to his desk, brushing past Morgan, who had just come in.
“Okay, I know he’s not the most socially aware, but even the walking encyclopedia should’ve gotten that,” he grins. Prentiss shrugs.
“Maybe I’m just not as funny as I thought.”
Meanwhile, Hotch is in his office, studying a new stack of case files that Rossi brought in to get a second opinion on. The two men are staring at the desk, where pictures and reports were spread across the surface.
“Daily briefing in ten,” JJ reminds them as she walks by, popping her head into the office. Hotch nods in thanks but Rossi speaks up before she has a chance to stride away.
“Nice perfume, JJ,” he comments. “It suits you.” The young woman smiles and continues on. Rossi looks to his old friend. “Was that too weird to mention? It was pretty strong.”
“Hm,” Hotch hums noncommittally, still looking at the case files. He’d noticed earlier that JJ had switched from her normal perfume to something that imitated the scent of an Alpha. It wasn’t uncommon for people to wear perfumes or use body wash that mimicked the scent of a secondary gender. Many people preferred cheesy ‘Natural Alpha Musk’ or ‘Soothing Omega Cleanser’ to lilacs or fresh linen. It was a hot trend recently, even though the majority of people with secondary genders actually tended to by scent-neutralizing washes and soaps, their secondary gender producing enough scent on its own that combining it with ‘Autumn Sweater’ was too much. Still, a lot of people desired to smell like Alphas or Omegas, whether because they like the smell or they want to stay with the trends.
The thing is, Omegas are rare. Alphas are even rarer. While about 95% of the population has no secondary gender, Omegas make up almost 4.5% and Alphas are barely more than half a percent of all the humans in the world. The reason for this is still debatable, and scientists have a conference every few years whenever someone thinks they’ve found the reason that Alphas and Omegas have such a low birth rate. Even without knowing why there are so few people with secondary genders, the study of them is an ongoing one, and anyone involved with the criminal justice system had at least a rudimentary knowledge of the A/O lifestyle. That being said, a lot of people with secondary genders like to keep that fact on the down-low, because it was some sort of useless social badge of success if your boyfriend or girlfriend was an Alpha or Omega. Their rarity made them highly-sought after.
“This medical report suggests that the unsub was an Omega.” Hotch points at a report, then at another picture. “And this woman told the police that she remembered seeing scent-neutralizing deodorant in her kidnapper’s bag when he dropped it. The unsub could be an Omega who’s lost their Alpha and is trying to find replacements.”
“And when they figure out they can’t replace their Alpha with random people taken from the street, they kill them,” Rossi finishes Hotch’s thoughts. “I think you’re on to something here. Let’s take this to the team debrief, JJ should be able to contact the lead investigator of this case.”
They quickly shuffle the case files together and move to the BAU’s debriefing room, where JJ, Garcia, Morgan and Prentiss are already waiting, coffee mugs in hand and the projector heating up.
“Where’s Reid?” Hotch asks, glancing around. “I saw him come in earlier, looking a little pale. Is he okay?”
“Oh, worried about Pretty Boy?” Morgan grins, but Garcia kicks him in the shin under the table when Hotch’s eyes shift to the other man’s. “Ouch, sorry, geez. Yeah, we saw him getting his coffee a few minutes ago.”
As if on cue, Spencer stumbles in, trying to swing his messenger bag from his shoulder without dropping his cup. The bags under his eyes are darker than normal and he seems even thinner than usual, and Hotch has to take the cup from his hand before the contents splash all over the table.
“Sorry, sorry I’m late, I got distracted,” he mumbles. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing, sugar,” Garcia assures him, whipping a ziploc bag with a cookie inside from her giant pink purse. “Here, you look like you need something to eat.”
“Oh, no thanks, Penelope, my stomach’s been picky the last couple days,” Spencer waves the bag and her concerned look away. “I’m fine. What do we have for today?”
JJ hums but begins her debriefing, and her somewhat strong Alpha-scented perfume fills the room. Nobody seems to mind but Spencer, who has to take nervous sips of his coffee and keeps the cup near his nose to disguise the smell. After a few more minutes of fidgeting, Hotch, who was sitting next to the boy, leans over to whisper in his ear.
“If you’re not feeling well, you can take the day off, you know,” he tells Reid. Hotch moves to lean back, but for some reason can’t keep himself from taking one last breath, right by Reid’s neck. The kid smells different somehow, and Hotch can’t put his finger on it. “Go home. Get some rest. You look exhausted.”
Reid mumbles something and shakes his head.
“I’m fine for now,” he says quietly, even though the whole table has stopped the debriefing to eavesdrop. “I’ll use one of the overnight rooms if I need it later today.”
Satisfied, Hotch leans back and turns his attention to JJ, then starts as he realizes everyone is watching him and Spencer.
“Continue, please, JJ,” he prompts after a solid ten seconds of everyone staring at them. JJ clears her throat and keeps talking, and the meeting is over after another fifteen minutes. They’ve decided to take the case of the lonely Omega if the police can’t track them down in the next 48 hours, so they don’t have to board the plane today unless something comes up. Each agent returns to their desk to do paperwork, and Garcia sidles up to Prentiss.
“Isn’t that a different sweater vest than the one he was wearing when he came in?” Garcia says in hushed tones. Prentiss glances over at the genius and purses her lips.
“You’re right, this one’s softer and thicker. It’s not even cold in here, I wonder why he changed? That’s the one he keeps in his go bag.” The comment seems to persuade Garcia into action, and she marches over to Reid’s desk.
“Okay, kiddo, spill the beans,” she demands, and both Morgan and Prentiss lean closer to hear Reid’s answer. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Spencer splutters, way too fast to be believable. Garcia ‘uh-huh’s sarcastically.
“Sure, honey. Drop the act--you changed into a fluffier sweater, you look even more tired than usual, and you passed up the opportunity to eat a cookie made by the best cook in this room. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, I’ve just been feeling under the weather lately,” Spencer replies, looking down at the stacks of paper on his desk. “Not getting much sleep, not feeling hungry. And I guess I just got chilly, so I put on a thicker sweater.”
“You feel a little warm,” JJ swoops in from out of nowhere, her motherly senses tingling and placing her hand on Spencer’s forehead. “Why don’t you go lay down in one of the overnight rooms for a few hours? We’ll let you know if anything comes up.”
“Yeah, okay,” Spencer agrees, and JJ and Garcia sheppard him out of the office and down the hall in the direction of the overnight rooms, where basic beds are set up for agents who need to spend the night in the office or who have pulled all-nighters are. They bundle him up in the generic white sheets on the bed and tuck him in like Henry, then shut the light off and disappear just as fast as they had appeared.
“Is Reid all right? I haven’t seen him in a few hours,” Rossi asks a few hours later, when they’re all sitting down in the BAU room to have lunch.
“Garcia and JJ mothered him into taking a nap in the overnight rooms,” Morgan explains. “Thought he was looking peaky, so some sleep might help. He didn’t look too good during the debrief this morning.”
“Yes, I saw,” Hotch says. “He suggested the same thing. Hopefully he’s feeling better by tomorrow, we might need to fly to Colorado if the local police can’t find the Omega.” Everyone makes noises of agreement and continues to eat. Ten minutes pass before one of the researchers knocks hurriedly on the door and opens it without waiting for a reply.
“Agents? Something’s going on out here, I think you should see it.”
Hotch leads the way out of the office and into the hallway, where a small group of employees are clustered around the door to the room Spencer had been asleep in. The BAU agents push their way through the crowd until they can see what’s going on.
Spencer is sitting on the floor, just inside the doorway, surrounded by sheets, pillows, blankets, sweaters, and a number of random soft things that he seems to have found in the office; Prentiss’ jacket, his sweater vest from earlier that morning, a pillow from Rossi’s couch, even the thick blanket that Hotch keeps in one of his desk drawers for when he needs to sleep in his office. It’s this blanket that he has wrapped tightly around his now, snuggled deep into the mound of soft things he’d piled on the floor.
“What’s going on here?” Morgan demands, and one of the researchers closest to the door is the only one brave enough to answer.
“I was walking by to the copy room when I saw him come out of that room,” she points at the overnight room across the hall, “and carry all the blankets, sheets and pillows into this one. I wouldn’t have paid attention but he was muttering to himself, so I stopped to make sure he was all right before I saw all the stuff on the floor. It’s like--it’s like he’s--”
“Nesting,” JJ finishes when the researcher trails off. “He’s nesting. Spence, are you an Omega?”
She tries to take a step closer to the young genius, getting closer than anyone else, when a loud growl quiets everyone else in the hallway. It falls silent, and JJ looks up at Hotch, who looks even more shocked than anyone that he was the one who growled. He clears his throat awkwardly and moves in front of JJ.
“Reid, can you hear me?” he asks, waiting for the shaggy mop of hair to move from where it’s cocooned in blankets. It shivers, then raises to reveal large brown eyes blinking owlishly in the light of the hallway spilling into the darkened room.
“Hotch?” he rasps. “Hotch, I need more blankets.”
“No, you need to go home,” Hotch answers. He reaches out and snags his blanket by the corner, tugging on it. “Get up.”
“What? No, Hotch, you don’t get it,” Spencer sits up and tries to tug the corner back. “I need this. Don’t you see? I need it. I need more pillows, too. Can you bring me more pillows?”
“Spencer, look at the room,” Hotch says quietly. “You’re building a nest. Why would you do that?”
“Statistically, 93% of Omegas build nests in the days leading up their heat to prepare for their Alpha,” Spencer rattles off automatically. Then he looks sad. “But I don’t have an Alpha.”
“Reid, you didn’t tell anyone that you’re an Omega,” Hotch says, speaking far more gently than any of the agents had ever heard. “So we don’t know what to do. What do you need?”
“I need an Alpha,” Reid wails, suddenly emotional. He yanks the blanket from Hotch’s loose fingers and rolls around in his castle of fluffiness, wrapping himself back up in the blanket and burying his nose in the fabric. Hotch sighs and stands back up, turning around to see that his team had shooed everyone back down the hallway and out of sight.
“They’re professionals, they understand that we need some privacy,” Morgan tells him. “I didn’t see this coming.”
“Nobody did,” Rossi replies. “The kid doesn’t have an Alpha? If he’s an Omega, with a job as stressful as ours, he would have needed one to help him through his other heats. Who did he use?”
“No one,” comes the muffled voice from the nest. “First heat.”
Prentiss gasps audibly, and even Hotch’s eyebrows raise. Rossi rubs his forehead..
“Twenty-six and he’s just now having his first heat?” he muses. “Spencer, do you know why you haven’t had a heat until now?”
“Stress,” comes the soft reply, and JJ nods.
“Makes sense,” she says. “A woman’s menstruation cycle can be interrupted by things like stress, anxiety, et cetera. I don’t know a lot about Omegas but it’s not a surprise that it’s taken so long, with the amount of stress from this job.”
“So what do we do?” Morgan asks. “We’ve got an Omega about to hit his first heat, with no Alpha to call and I really don’t want to check him in to an Omega facility if we can find a better solution.”
“We could call his mother?” Prentiss suggests, but Rossi shakes his head.
“She can’t help us. Spencer said it’s his first heat; she won’t have any idea how to help him.” He sighs again. “If he really doesn’t have an Alpha, an Omega facility might be the best place to take him for his first heat. I can call around, see if someone can suggest--”
“I can take him home,” Hotch interrupts. Everyone stares. “I can help him. Since he’s only in the nesting stage, he’s still able to consent to an Alpha’s offer.”
“But you’re not…” Morgan’s words die out as Hotch looks pointedly at him, and the man’s eyebrows climb his forehead. “Oh. Jesus, Hotch, you don’t think that’s important information for us to know?”
“Not really,” Hotch dismisses him and turns back to the burrito of sheets on the floor of the overnight room. “Spencer, look at me, please.”
“No.”
“Spencer.”
“I don’t wanna. It smells good in here.”
“That’s because it smells like me,” Hotch says, and Spencer’s head whips up so fast he’s surprised he didn’t hear it crack. “You’ve got my blanket wrapped around your face, Spencer. Think about it. What does it smell like?”
“Smells like Alpha,” Reid mumbles. “Smells good. Like you. Alpha. Wait.”
The team waits with bated breath as Reid takes a long sniff and then explodes out of the burrito, tangling all his long limbs in the sheets and sending pillows everywhere before he’s able to climb to his feet.
“You’re an Alpha? How did I not notice?” he tripped one last time before making it into Hotch’s arms, where he snuggled into the older man’s chest.
“Scent-neutralizing hygiene products,” Hotch reminds him. “You use them too, apparently.”
“Mhmm,” Spencer hums. He stares up at Hotch with wide eyes. “You said you would take me home? Why would you do that?”
“I want to take care of you, Spencer,” Hotch says.
“You could just take me to an Omega facility, not all of them are bad…”
“Spencer,” Hotch said sternly, and waits until the genius is looking into his eyes. “I want to take care of you.” The way he stresses ‘take care’ is obvious, and Reid’s eyes widen even further. “I have for a long time, but I thought it would be inappropriate to make a move. Now that everyone knows you’re an Omega, and someone’s bound to find out I’m an Alpha, things are going to change.”
Morgan clears his throat.
“Spencer, I need you to make a decision. I can take you to an Omega clinic where you can spend your heat in a room, with toys to satisfy yourself. I can call your mother and ask if she knows of any Alphas that can help you. Or…” Spencer looks hopefully at him. “Or I can take you home and help you through your first heat. You still have at least another 18 hours before the full effects of your heat hit, so there’s time for you to think things over if--”
“I want you! I want you to help me,” Spencer insists eagerly. He glances around at the other BAU agents watching like hawks and pulls Hotch’s head down so that he can whisper in his ear. “Hotch, I’ve been crushing on you like a teenage girl for years now,” he confesses. Hotch feels his cheeks heat up before he dips down to give Spencer a fast, hard kiss, hooking his arms under Spencer’s knees and shoulders to carry him bridal-style.
“I guess that settles that,” Garcia nods shortly. “Let’s get you guys on the road.”