Chapter Text
Richard Bach wrote: “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.”
Spencer had never had a proper nest before, or at least not one that was considered “proper” by every omega magazine he had researched in his early teenhood after he presented.
He wasn’t even sure his childhood home had the room for it, so he made do with what he had at the time- some of his stuffed toys, a really soft cardigan that carried the scent of his mother and a big university sweatshirt that had once belonged to his father but by the time it was needed for his nest was devoid of the scent that could have brought him comfort- So no, Spencer knew his nesting habits weren’t all that normal.
When he joined the BAU, he wasn’t expecting his habits to change all that much. After all, he had always considered himself somewhat of a recluse, and it had taken him by surprise how his coworkers insinuated themselves into his life, almost inconspicuously.
It all started on his first case abroad.
The case had taken them to Gettysburg, a small town in rural Pennsylvania that had been the center stage of four very graphic murders targeting brunette women in the area. Penelope had used all of her technologically induced power to get them a good place to stay at, but she had only managed to get them a dinky bed and breakfast that was near the police station where they would be working.
After looking at the outside of the place, no one in the pack was expecting much of it. It wasn’t necessary for anyone to voice their thoughts; with the size of the building in mind, they would be sharing rooms.
Spencer followed everyone inside, trying to stay near Gideon. He didn’t know the others very well yet and the only Alpha that was familiar was him, so he tried to inch slowly to his side as Hotch talked and made the arrangements with the receptionist.
“What do you think you are doing?” Said Gideon, giving him a once over.
“I…just” He didn’t want to seem weak willed before his mentor, but he thought it was only logical that they would share if it came to choosing roommates.
“I know you are young and have little experience, but if you want to be a good profiler, you should at least know some basics about the culture you live in”. Gideon sounded exasperated, and Spencer got it. He knew he sometimes could be a burden, but as he watched Gideon walk away and join Hotch at the receptionist's desk, he couldn’t shake the feeling of inadequacy that lingered in him.
He looked around nervously, his hands twitching, everyone seemed busy, Morgan and Greenway were chatting away about some party they had gone to the past weekend, and Agent Jareau seemed to have banished or at least wasn’t near at the moment, so he resigned himself to stand awkwardly near a column and watch Hotch, his new pack leader, as he tried to accommodate everyone.
After a few minutes of fast talking and frustrated looks here and there, Hotch came into the centre of the hallway and announced, “We have to share two rooms. It is what it is; Gideon will be with me. Morgan and Elle, you two are together.”
A cacophony of “Yes, boss” and “As you say, Bossman” came from both of them, and soon they departed, keys dangling from their hands, leaving Spencer dumbfounded and alone in the reception hall.
Had they forgotten about him?
Suddenly, he felt a hand poking him on his shoulder, and turned abruptly, coming face to face with Jennifer. “Did I scare you? Are you still getting accustomed to sensing us?”
“Yeah, something like that,” he tried to excuse; being in touch with his senses while in a pack was something that took time to get used to. The BAU required every team to be a pack; for regulating stress, they said.
Bullshit is what he thought.
For keeping them in line is what everyone really heard.
Reading every book he knew about pack dynamics was one thing; experiencing it? It seemed like plunging into a 4 feet deep pool without knowing how to swim. Using his nose to track his packmates and recognize their scent or being capable of distinguishing them from the rest of the world was definitely a hard task still.
He knew logically no one was expecting him to grasp how the pack functioned immediately, but he struggled with not really knowing how to act. These were people he was supposed to trust. It was important in their line of work. He wanted to seem integrated and like he knew his place in the pack. Gideon had already scolded him about the importance of it.
Even so, being on guard all the time was exhausting.
“Did everyone get the keys to their rooms already?” Asked Jennifer, looking around for a familiar face. “I was outside getting our nesting supplies from the van but I got delayed cause´ I couldn’t find yours,” she said and looked at him with confusion.
“Why would I need nesting supplies?” Spencer said, blinking back. It seemed like the conversation had derailed from the topic of rooms.
An awkward silence filled the reception hall.
“For the nesting room? You know…The place where we are sleeping?”
“I didn’t know hotels offered nesting rooms” he mentioned, looking down at his feet and grasping the strap of his carrier bag tighter. He looked up, and there it was again. Jennifer was looking at him with pity. Avoiding eye contact, he managed to escape her gaze. He hated when people looked at him with that look on their faces. He wasn’t a pup anymore. It was just that the magazines he had read had mentioned nothing about omegas and hotels.
He should have splurged on travel ones.
“Just follow me, I bet you’ll really like it, I’m sure its nothing like the ones at our homes but ill be cozy enough” She said and turned left taking the small stairs to the second floor not looking back but expecting Spencer to keep up with her.
“Every hotel has to keep up with regulations, so even this kind of place has a secure lock to our room. You, the members of the pack, and I are the only ones who can enter. As a part of the check-in, Penelope has already sent our fingerprints to the receptionist, so we should already be coded in,” she explained and stopped in front of an unassuming wood door that stood between another two. The only difference between them was the lock; the others had an old door lock that seemed to require a key and this one had a surprising modern one, with a space to put a thumb on top, just like Jennifer had described.
“Jennifer, did you know that statistically fingerprint scanners have a one in ten million false acceptance rate, which makes it a lot more possible for someone to land a lottery jackpot than an unauthorized person gaining access to them? That is, of course, unless the power is out, which just turns them a little useless,” he rambled, just to fill the silence.
“Yeah…didn’t know the specific numbers but more security is required to gatekeep nest rooms than normal rooms, so it doesn’t surprise me,” She said turning to face the door and unlocking it with her finger “And what did I tell you already? No one calls me Jennifer, call me JJ,” and with that, she entered the room.
Spencer followed her lead.
Jennifer, JJ, that is, was right. It wasn’t anything like his nest back home, what’s more, it wasn’t anything like any nest he had ever seen in real life.
They were both standing in a small space that had a place to leave their shoes; if he looked up, he could see that a half of the floor was covered by a giant mattress that was neatly made up with the fluffiest set of bedding he had ever seen as well as an assortment of pillows and throw-overs.
In one corner of the room, there was a small window that let in a dim, yet cozy, light. Adjacent to the wooden flooring, there was an entrance to the bathroom, and a designated area for a small dresser.
“Do we…” He hesitated and balanced on his toes as JJ was taking her heels off “Are we sharing a bed?” He didn’t know how to feel about that, he hadn’t mentally prepared to share more than a room, with two beds, with Gideon, and now he was thrust into the position of sharing a room and a bed with another member of the pack.
“You know how it is. We omegas stick together, no mean smelly alphas to taint our nest,” JJ said, almost jokingly and smiling at him.
“Of course, no mean alphas around…” Spencer joined, trying to appear confident and like he knew what the fuck they were talking about.
He didn’t really want to nest with someone else, and that seemed like the path they were taking. He hadn’t shared a nest since before his mother was hospitalized, so it hadn’t been part of his routine for years.
He didn’t cope well with changes.
“You can leave your bag over there on the dresser. I know you didn’t know to bring your nesting stuff, but we can share, I don’t mind,” she kindly told him.
But he did mind.
He minded very much.
He was very careful with every piece he selected for his nest. Every texture had to be tested against his skin and found agreeable enough to be incorporated. No offense to Jeniffer, but he didn’t really trust that she was so discerning with her own stuff.
How was he going to balance integrating himself with the pack and, at the same time, maintain his sacred order and privacy?
For now, he would just have to “suck it up” as Gideon would put it; he would deal with it tonight.
After leaving their bags and refreshing themselves in the bathroom, they left together for the police station. The walk only took them a few minutes and despite the slightly awkward small talk, he felt himself unwind as JJ confidently led the conversation; he wasn’t the best conversationalist, but he had a grasp of what social cues were expected of him at this type of occasion so he could focus on answering asinine questions about how pretty he thought the town looked in the spring weather with all the trees in bloom.
Arriving at the station was almost anticlimactic; everyone turned to look at them and the strong alpha smell almost overwhelmed him, but it was almost an unwritten rule that small conservative towns practically never employed omegas at what might be considered a “dangerous” job.
He expected someone to make a comment.
No one said anything.
The FBI rarely visited such a small town, much less two omega agents, making him acutely aware of their scrutiny.
The team had arrived before them and Spencer could see them talking closely together in an office at the back.
After saying goodbye to JJ, who’s job mandated her to establish a common ground with the chief officer of the place, he entered through the door with little hubbub.
“What took you so long, pretty boy? Was the nest at the hotel fine?” Morgan exclaimed as soon as he saw him.
“Yes, it was adequate,” he responded, avoiding Gideon’s gaze and taking a seat in the nearest chair.
He felt a little betrayed by the lack of warning Gideon had given him about the sleeping arrangements in the hotel. He knew it was his responsibility to educate himself about his own gender, but as his mentor, Gideon was familiar with his peculiar upbringing. A word of warning would have been of help.
The team dedicated the rest of the morning to putting together the victimology. It appeared that all the women who had been killed were omegas with signs of sexual violence and had no connection to one another, which was rare considering the size of the town. The information they had wasn’t of much help since statistics revealed that omegas were the most common victims of sexual crimes, so it didn’t narrow down their profile by much. After a lunch break, they decided to separate and go in pairs to interview the victim’s family to get a better sense of what they were dealing with.
Hotch assigned him and Elle to visit Agatha Parker’s family, the last victim to disappear, whose house was a little out of the way, just at the entrance of the woods. The sun was already setting when they arrived and the cold of early spring made itself present as Spencer felt a chill running down his body. Elle gave him a calculating look but said nothing as she knocked on the door. After all, he doubted she had questions. They had already talked about how the interview was going to go in the ten minutes car drive to the place.
The Parker family was kind and welcoming enough, considering the circumstances, but they didn’t seem to have any new information. The air was heavy with their grief and even if they were FBI agents, the alpha of the family didn’t seem too happy to have them encroaching on his territory in times of vulnerability, even if it was unconscious.
Either way, they took notes of her routine again in case that something had passed through the heads of the officers who had interviewed them the first time. Just before they set out to leave Spencer heard the boards of the wooden floor crack and when he turned around he was met with a small girl peaking through the archway to the hallway.
“Thats Nora, our youngest,” said Mrs. Parker. “She’s a shy little thing, and with everything about our precious Agatha going on…”
Even Spencer understood what she meant. Nora’s wide brown eyes, clouded with unshed tears, darted nervously around the room.
The weight of Roy Parker’s unwavering attention settled on Spencer and Nora as he finally looked up from Elle’s grilling, the full force of his gaze making Spencer uneasy.
He couldn’t seem to stop shivering today.
After that, they quickly said their thanks and goodbyes, promising to do everything they could to catch Agatha’s killer.
Leaving the house, he felt a little out of place; he looked down as they walked down the stair of the porch, pinching his sweater between his fingers to found someway to ground himself a little. He was sure of their team ability but it felt like they were giving the families false niceties, at the end of the day it wasn’t a certainty that they would catch the person who did this.
“What’s on your mind, Spencer? Did your poor sweater do something to you?” Elle said, stopping next to the car. “Want me to fight it for you?”
“No? Why would I be angry with a piece of clothing?” he said, looking up at her shoulder.
The silence stretched for a few minutes.
Another tremor coursed through him.
“It was just a joke Spencer, don’t…don’t worry about it,” she replied calmly before opening the passenger door to him. He had almost entered the car when she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Uh-Uh; stop right there; did you think I wouldn’t notice you’ve been shivering since we left the station?”
“I mean… yes it’s a bit breezy but we are about to be in a car and did you know that the estimated temperature inside a car after ten minutes when the outside is at sixty degrees like today is of seventy-nine degrees Fahrenheit and that would make it optimal travel conditions,” he explained to her.
“How…Why do you know that?”
“Oh well, it’s a simple mathematical formula developed at Stanford University. I can send to you the article I read it in-”
“No, no,” she smiled placatingly. “That won’t be necessary, Spencer.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, but, for my peace of mind, here,” she told him, unwrapping a thin purple scarf from her neck and offering it to him, “it won’t do much but it might protect you more than having your neck uncovered,”
He looked at it for a few moments and guardedly accepted it.
Elle sighed, as if some weight had been lifted off her shoulders “Ok, now, time to go back before Hotch thinks we are taking a leisure walk by the forest,”
“Yeah…” he entered the car and looked through the windows to the forest with its menacing trees looming over them. “wouldn’t catch me dead strolling through them, they are very eerie”
“Amen to that,” Elle said and started the engine.
They all reconvened at the station. He expected some joke coming from the team when he saw that everyone’s gaze lingered on his scarf covered neck, but no one said anything apart from some interchanged looks between them.
Elle seemed smug, somehow.
As every team member recounted the interviews, they all took notes, trying to find similar patterns on the victims’ routine, but it was getting late, the clock at the wall of the meeting room showing it was half-past eleven.
“Everyone, take a thirty-minute break, get coffee or dinner. It’s going to be a long night,” announced Hotch as he stood up from his chair, Gideon following after him.
“Elle and I are going to get some takeout from next door, anyone want something?” Said JJ grabbing her purse.
“No, thank you,” he replied as he stretched his arms above his head, the hemline of his sweater riding up slightly. To his left, Morgan coughed.
“Are you getting sick? It gets pretty cold here at night,” said spencer turning to face him.
“No, i just swallowed wrong” he explained. Spencer noticed he was blushing and didn’t comment further. He didn’t want to question him if he was that embarrassed about getting sick. Alphas could be like that sometimes. It was an instinct developed through thousands of years of evolution to not want to appear ‘weak’.
Since he had poor judgment regarding what was acceptable to say in these scenarios, he decided to step aside.
“I’m going to get coffee; do you want one?” he offered in an effort to be nicer to his new pack member.
“Yeah, thanks, pretty boy,” Said Morgan smoothly, having quickly recovered from his coughing fit. “That’s really nice of you. Holler if you need any help with it.”
“Ok,” he answered and left the meeting room in search of the precinct machine coffee.
With a quick scan of the office, he easily found what he was looking for due to its small size. No one was around the coffee machine, even though the police station was full of officers centered on stopping the serial killer.
Lucky him.
He quickly made the two coffee orders; his, filled with enough sugar to give him a boost during the entire night and agents Morgan black. He was a profiler after all, and he had paid enough attention to him in the short time they’ve been working together to know how he took his coffee.
Pleased with his work, he turned around to get to the meeting room, balancing the two full cups, when he felt a force knocking him off balance and making him spill the coffee on both himself and his hands.
He almost didn’t register the hot blistering pain in his hands as the threatening face of a police officer came down near his ears and whispered, “Well… aren’t you a little clumsy thing? Why did the FBI bring some random omega to catch this guy?”
The distinct and disgusting scent of sulphur emanating from the guy met Spencer as he inhaled in shock. This was an alpha, and an angry one at that.
Was it because he felt the FBI was stepping on their toes? Hotch had warned him about that possibility.
He should have paid more attention.
He subtly looked around, hoping to catch the eyes of someone who could help him, but the others in the room deliberately avoided his gaze and it made him realize that this was planned. With his team separated, they took the opportunity to really make him know what they thought of someone like him interfering with what they surely considered “their investigation”.
Spencer gulped and answered, trying to project as much confidence as he could muster. “I’m not some random omega. I’m a doctor and an FBI agent and you are invading my space.”
“Am I now?”
“Yes, so I will be leaving,” he responded, sounding more like he was talking down a dangerous beast than to another person. He reached behind him for the table, feeling it as he went to his left without breaking eye contact with the officer, hoping to turn quickly to the corner where he knew the bathrooms were.
Once there, he twisted the first faucet he saw and put his trembling hands underneath the cold water; it was an instant relief and he couldn’t help the sigh that left him.
When the itching and pain had subsided, he looked up at the mirror and found that his sweater had a big brown stain on the front; definitively ruined. How would he go outside and meet his team in this condition? It wasn’t appropriate. And also, he didn’t want to face that officer again; he was lucky enough they hadn’t followed him to the bathroom.
And then he felt the door open.
He jumped, splashing some water around and looking frantically for a way to escape when he came face to face with someone he knew.
Morgan.
“What the hell happened, pup?” he said as he slowly approached him, looking somber.
“What are you doing here?” he questioned. For him it had only been a few minutes, he couldn’t have disappeared enough for worrying his coworker.
“You are usually quick when it’s about coffee, and I had a bad feeling. Call it intuition or our growing bond as pack telling me that something was not quite right,” he responded, shrugging his shoulders. “Whatever makes you comfortable. "
“I was just clumsy,” he said as an explanation, but even he knew it was a feeble one.
“Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“Yes?”
“Ok pup, let’s do this. You don’t have to tell me who did this to you, but let me take a look at your hands; deal?”
“Deal,” he said sounding more certain that he was; truthfully, he wasn’t really comfortable with someone touching his hands, but he understood the psychological need to make sure that one’s packmates were physically healthy. Yeah, that was it. And he wasn’t even lying to Morgan. He really didn’t know the police officer’s name.
Morgan’s hands were hot to the touch and Spencer had to fight his instinct to retract his burned hands, but after a few minutes of strained silenced, he must have arrived at the same conclusion Spencer had. They were superficial burns and would heal rather quickly.
Slowly, as if gauging his reaction, Morgan took both of his hands in his and took them to his lips, giving them a gentle kiss.
Spencer could swear he felt his brain having a short circuit. Was that normal packmate behaviour? He didn’t remember the books he had read on the theme talking about this type of physical contact. Although granted, they were a little outdated and this…
This felt nice.
“If someone does something like this again, remember, they are not just attacking you, they are attacking all of us. Are we clear?”
“Yes” he gulped.
“So,” Morgan said, taking distance and taking the warmth of his hands with him, “what are we going to do about your sweater? That can’t be comfortable. Do you have a spare in your messenger bag?” He said as Spencer’s hand softly fall to his side again.
“No, everything I have I left at the hotel,” said Spencer quietly, chastising himself for not having the hindsight of preventing something like this.
“Right, look Spencer, here’s what we are going to do,” he proposed as he made movements to take his black hoodie off him.
“What do you think you are doing, Morgan?” Spencer exclaimed as his voiced rose a pitch above normal.
“Easy there, I have a long-sleeved shirt below it,” he mentioned casually, like almost getting naked in the bathroom of a police station was an everyday thing for him.
Huh.
Upon further consideration, given Morgan’s athleticism and the beauty norms surrounding them, it was logical that he tended to misplace his clothes in various places.
He was promptly handed the garment, and they stared at each other for a few seconds.
“I need a little privacy to change,” Spencer said, gently reminding him.
“Right, yes, of course; I’m going to be outside, getting sure that no one enters, ok?”
“Ok,”
And just as quickly as he had entered, Morgan left, carrying his distinct scent of gunpowder with him, although it was tinged with something sharper than usual.
In an effort to not delay the team more than what he surely had already he swiftly pulled the hoodie through his head, taking care that Greenway’s scarf stayed in place, and turned to give himself a one over in the mirror before facing the crowd.
The sweatshirt fell neatly at his sides; the length was okay but because of their different builds it engulfed him. Spencer felt a little self conscious without his clothes. This was as far removed from his usual style as it got, but he had little choice in the matter.
He looked down at his feet, trying to breathe deeply one more time before leaving, and suddenly Morgan’s scent filled his head.
It had an inexplicably soothing effect on him.
Spencer opened the bathroom door and found Morgan leaning against the wall in front of it, eyebrows furrowed and gaze intense.
“Ready to go?” he tenderly asked him.
“Yes, do you have any hypothesis about the unsub?” said Spencer, trying to make conversation.
“None that we haven’t discussed already,” he mentioned and started walking towards the hallway, with Spencer following close behind. “I think we could all use a good night's sleep to clear our heads, but this motherfucker is devolving way too fast for us to stop and rest,” he continued as they rounded at the bullpen.
Spencer stayed even closer to Morgan’s back, if that was even possible. He tried not to look around the room, in case Morgan recognized something on his face or his smell that could give away the officer who had corralled him before.
When they arrived at the meeting room, he sighed with relief. He had escaped the possibility of Morgan having a confrontation because of what happened to him and making himself a bigger burden than before.
The others were already sitting around the table with the files, and transcriptions of the interviews spread out.
“Took you long enough,” Said Gideon without lifting his eyes from the report he was reading “Care to explain to us why you keep changing clothes?”
Spencer blushed, feeling chastised, and was about to consider committing the suicide act of lying in a room full of profilers when Morgan took the lead.
“I spilled my coffee on him. It was an accident,” said Morgan as he took a seat on one of the unused chairs, not leaving much room for questioning.
The following hours of research were tense with the possibility of another body being dumped and discovered. Finally, when the first rays of light were illuminating and painting the sky of a beautiful pink, two things happened:
They came up with a solid enough profile to deliver to the police force.
And someone discovered the body of Agatha Parker.