Strength of the Pack - Section Three

[welfycat]

Back to the Master Post





Section Three

They returned to work on Monday, Spencer a little bit embarrassed to hear from Garcia about the altercation in the hallway that had taken place because of him. Of course, he'd been even more embarrassed to hear her coo at how adorable he'd been and how she just wanted to take him home with her if Aaron wouldn't have gone all sinister and threatening. Spencer had blushed and Garcia had told him not to worry about it, reached up to ruffle his hair, and then dashed off to her office before Spencer could even think of retaliating.

He'd spent most of Sunday sitting in Gideon's home library, curled up in one of the armchairs and staring at the spines of the books he'd devoured within the first two weeks of his stay. Over dinner, which Gideon had pried him out of the library in order to come down to the kitchen, Gideon had assured him that the situation wasn't as dire as it seemed and the pack wouldn't let his form fade.

Spencer had thought about saying that he wasn't sure he minded if it did fade, but that wasn't entirely accurate. He wasn't bothered by being a shifter, especially now that he was part of a pack, but he had assumed shifting was something that was uncontrollable for everyone; that shifting just happened and that was that. On Saturday seeing the rest of the team shifting in and out of their forms easily had disabused him of that notion, but he couldn't imagine reaching that point. He wouldn't mind losing his ability to shift into his form, but not if that meant dying. Not now that he actually had something to live for.

When Spencer had looked up, he found Gideon watching him knowingly with that eerie way Gideon had of seeming like he knew every thought that was passing through his mind. Spencer shrugged and went back to moving the pasta that Gideon had cooked around on his plate. "I'm a fast learner," he'd finally said, and Gideon had let the subject matter drop.

"Hey, pretty boy," Derek called when Spencer reached their desks.

Spencer put down his coffee and his bag and then turned to stare at Derek. "Why do you call me that?"

Derek blinked in surprise, like he'd never even thought about it. "I give people nicknames, that's what I do. Garcia is my baby girl and you're my pretty boy."

"You don't have a nickname for Hotch," Spencer pointed out as he took off his coat and sat down.

Derek grinned. "I most certainly do, but I am sworn to secrecy."

Spencer decided that was probably something he didn't want to know and continued on. "You don't have a nickname for Gideon."

"I do have one for him, but it's not something that I'd ever say while he and I were in the same city. He has ears like a rabbit." Derek nodded and then glanced around the room to see if Gideon was in the bullpen or his office.

"Relax, he's teaching at the Academy this morning," Spencer said. "Besides, dolphin would be a better simile."

"A dolphin," Derek repeated.

Spencer nodded. "Dolphins have the best sense of hearing in the animal kingdom, with both a larger auditory nerve and the ability to detect a greater range in frequency."

Derek stared. "Sure. Like a dolphin."

"JJ? You don't have a nickname for her," Spencer pressed.

Derek nodded. "Ah, like I told you, you don't mess with JJ. She'll kick your ass."

"You mean she'll kick your ass?" Spencer asked.

"That too," Derek said. "That woman is fierce."

"You know it," JJ said as she walked by their desks and handed them each a small stack of files.

Derek groaned playfully and grinned when JJ took the time to come back and swat him on the shoulder.

"Don't listen to a word he says," JJ said with a knowing look at Spencer. "He is a bad example."

Spencer nodded earnestly and flipped open the first file on top of his stack. He was still new at doing consultations, but Derek and Gideon both offered their expertise when he asked for their help. When he glanced up he saw that Derek was feigning submission; he'd also opened up a file and was holding his pen as if he were about to take notes.

JJ looked sternly at both of them before she walked back to her office, though as soon as she had closed her door Spencer chanced looking over at Derek and found him leaning back and flipping his pen up in the air.

"What happened to not messing with JJ?" Spencer asked.

Derek winked. "Sometimes playing with fire is fun."

Spencer smiled, though he wasn't exactly certain what point Derek was trying to make. He turned back to the case file from a police department in Tempe, requesting advice on how to proceed in a series of suspicious accidents that seemed less than accidental.

Nearly two hours later, Spencer heard Derek sigh heavily and looked over. The work they did, reading all of the details about vicious murders and assaults, was sometimes hard to stomach. Spencer had talked through a few of the cases with Gideon in the evenings, asking the most important question of all: why? There were answers, most of which were based in psychology; environment, development, genetic predisposition, and interactions among those variables, but none of them could really touch on what he meant by the question.

"What's wrong?" Spencer asked, following Derek's line of sight up to Hotch's office.

"Bad case, coming our way." Derek nodded at where they could see Hotch through the window, standing behind his desk and nodding to JJ.

Spencer closed his eyes and focused in the direction of Hotch's office, but still couldn't make out distinct words in their conversation. "How do you know?"

Derek stood up and started cleaning up his desk. "I know Aaron."

A moment later, JJ and Hotch came out of the office and Hotch walked to the balcony that overlooked the bullpen. "BAU team in the conference room in five minutes."

Spencer stood and started to tidy up his work area as well, glad that he'd washed the clothes in his go-bag yesterday.

"Spencer, a word please," Hotch said before walking back into his office.

Confused and a little startled, Spencer shut his desk drawer and turned to Derek to see if he knew what was happening. Derek just shook his head and gave a half shrug. "Better get up there, pretty boy."

"One day I am going to be impervious to that," Spencer warned as he hurried away, fighting back the flush he could feel coloring his face.

*****

"Why?" Spencer asked immediately after being informed that he was to be staying at Quantico instead of accompanying the team on cases. The qualifier of 'for the time being' didn't make him feel any better.

Hotch leaned so that he was resting against his desk. "Because I didn't realize that your form was still a young cub, not even to the juvenile stage of development yet. I can't bring a member of the pack out into the field if they're completely helpless."

Spencer frowned and folded his arms. "It's a moot point. I'm not going to shift in the field." He thought about pointing out that he wasn't particularly threatening in his human form either, but figured that wouldn't help his case.

"You don't know that. When you have more control over you ability to shift and have grown to the point where you're able to defend yourself in your form, I will reassign you to field work." Hotch glanced at the closed door. "I know that's not what you want to hear."

"I have't shifted for almost five years before last weekend, I think chances are pretty minuscule that I'll shift on a case," Spencer said, not willing to back down easily. A lot of people looked at him and thought that he wouldn't stand his ground. They saw a timid geek or a kid who should only be just out of high school; they didn't see someone who had gone to the university when he was twelve or someone who had taken care of his mother for years without any assistance.

"Even if there is the possibility, when we know there's a risk, we minimize it. You can stay here with Garcia and still work on the case. You are still providing valuable input." Hotch turned away, obviously considering the matter closed.

"Your premise is faulty." Spencer said flatly.

Hotch turned back, a folder hanging forgotten in his hand. "Excuse me?"

"You want me to be able to control my shifting and for my form to grow, but you and Gideon both believe that I need to be spending as much time with the pack as possible in order to continue activating my bond with the pack which in turn should enhance my ability to shift. If the rest of the pack is gone half of each week or more that will only hamper the connection that is part of the condition of my return." Spencer paused, waiting until he was sure he had Hotch's full attention. "I could stay back at the police station when the team is apprehending unsubs, and I would always be in the company of another pack member."

Hotch sighed, glanced at his watch and the file, and then looked back to Spencer. "If you leave the police station you stay in the sight of myself or Derek. No exceptions. If you feel like you are starting to experience a sensory overload or any other precursor to shifting, you tell one of the team immediately. If I discover that any of these conditions have not been met, you will be remaining here until your form is grown. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Spencer said quickly, both proud and a little shocked that he'd managed to persuade Hotch. He waited until Hotch tipped his head toward the door and hurried out ahead of him to where the rest of the team was waiting in the conference room.

Derek raised his eyebrows curiously when Spencer slipped into the chair next to him. "What was that all about?"

Spencer shook his head minutely and tipped it in the direction of the door when Derek was about to continue pressing him information. Hotch entered a half beat later.

"JJ is going to give us a quick briefing while they fuel the jet. We'll be on our way within the next half hour." Hotch didn't sit down.

JJ pointed the remote control at the screen on the wall. "Ponderay, Idaho. Small town of just under 1,000 residents, burgeoning commercial area. Yesterday morning a crew getting ready to pour concrete in a section of the mall that is under construction saw something in one of the segments that had been tunneled out. They found the body of a seven year old boy inside. By nightfall, the local police had found four more bodies, all of children under the age of ten. They are still attempting to identify the children."

Spencer stared blankly at the screen as she clicked through the screens showing the construction site and the bodies of the children laying in the morgue.

"Isn't it most likely that this is the unsub's dumping ground and they're long gone?" Derek asked, his voice unsteady for the first few words before he regained control.

"The medical examiner says that one of the children was killed within the past twenty four hours, and another within the past five days." JJ said. She turned turned off the screen without waiting for requests to view any of the pictures again.

"Garcia is already working on attempting to identify the children from the photographs, dental information will be sent directly to her as soon as it's available." Hotch's expression was carefully neutral. "It's doubtful that the children are local, but it's probable that the unsub will return to Ponderay and even more likely that the unsub has a history or connection to the area. The best way to find the unsub will be to determine where he is taking the children from and what that connection is. Wheels up in fifteen minutes."

The team reacted instantly, grabbing their files and hurrying from the conference room. Spencer grabbed his go-bag, satchel, and coat from his desk and rushed to the elevator with Derek. With any luck he'd be able to read the file during the five minute drive to the airfield and have something to offer the team by the time they were in the air. All thoughts of his own problems were washed away in the rush of adrenaline, though Spencer found himself nodding ever so slightly to the sound of Derek's heartbeat as they stood in close proximity.

*****

Derek stuffed his hands deeper into the pockets of his jacket and shifted his feet on the gravel. It was still early afternoon but the thick cloud cover darkened the sky. There were patches of snow on the ground and he was certain the wind chill coming off Lake Pend Oreille had dropped the temperature below freezing. The lake had been a point of contention in the case; if the unsub had placed the bodies in the lake, it was likely they wouldn't have been found until spring at the earliest, long after decomposition had made the children much more difficult to identify. The question was why, and so far all they'd come up with was that the location was somehow important to the unsub. They had called in specialists to excavate the area who were still working their way through the sections of concrete that had already been poured.

He could practically hear Spencer's teeth chattering as they walked through the construction site for the third time in as many days, this time armed with maps and blueprints. It had been Spencer's idea to come out to the dump site again and Aaron had agreed and sent Derek along with him. If it wasn't for the fact that they were meeting dead ends and had only a basic working profile, Derek would have probably protested.

When Derek turned he found that Spencer had wandered away from the tunnels where the bodies had been found and was once again moving in the direction of the small inlet that would be near the parking lot when the structure was finished. He also noticed that Spencer seemed completely focused on the papers in front of him and was not paying attention to the rough terrain under his feet.

"Reid!" Derek shouted, a few feet before Spencer would have tripped over a low beam. "Watch where you're going," he added when Spencer looked up and appeared confused.

Spencer nodded, looked around the area, and then changed his course slightly.

Derek sighed and shook his head, following close behind because he was sure Aaron would be equally mad whether it was an unsub or falling over a cinderblock that caused Spencer to get hurt.

"You and Hotch live together, right?" Spencer asked, still looking down at his map.

Derek raised his eyebrows, but he'd already learned that the quickest way to get to the point with Spencer was to just answer his questions. "Yes, we're mates."

Spencer flipped over to the mall blue prints again and turned to look across where the foundation and metal frame of the mall was slowly reaching up into the sky. "And you moved in with him right away?"

"About two months after I joined the pack," Derek said, a little bit confused when Spencer switched maps again and walked a few more paces before looking back at the mall.

"And JJ and Garcia are together?" Spencer peered over the top of the map. "They live together?"

Derek nodded slowly. They'd hit it off almost immediately and had become inseparable except for when JJ left on cases. "What are you thinking in there?"

Spencer folded the map back and turned to Derek. "Well, I'm actually thinking that it has to be against some regulation to have intra-team relationships. But the important part is that you live together."

"Pack relations take precedence over standard bureau regulations. But why does our living situations matter?" Derek asked, walking over that he could stand next to Spencer and look down at the map.

"We already had Garcia look at all the occupants of the cabins that used to centered around the dump site," Spencer started, pointing to the copy of the pamphlet advertising the old hunting cabins that had been leased during the early 1980s.

Derek frowned as he looked at the map. "And she didn't find anything, not that there was much for her to go from. But the hunters who brought their children with them that would fit the age range of our unsub are basically all accounted for."

"Right, but she didn't check the maintainer's cabin, did she?" Spencer asked, pointing to two cabins on the old map. They would have been located directly where they were now standing.

Derek flipped open his phone and pressed two on his speed dial.

"Speak and you shall receive," Garcia intoned, sounding a little less cheerful than usual. Derek had no doubt that the case had been weighing heavily on her, especially since they'd only been able to identify one of the children so far.

"Baby girl, can you go back to the cabins that were formerly on the construction site? Look for the owners, maintainers, anyone who would have stayed long term and their families." He was certain there was nothing Garcia couldn't find if there was a record of it.

"On it. I'll call you back in ten." Garcia ended the call before Derek had a chance to respond.

Derek slipped his phone in his pocket and looked up to find Spencer wandering a few steps away. "I still don't get what that has to do with me living with Aaron."

"Well, I was thinking that sometimes people in relationships don't always live together, and sometimes people who live together aren't necessarily in relationships." Spencer looked up, shivering violently as the wind blew harder and rattled the maps in his hands. "And I was curious."

"Of course," Derek said, smiling a little - more than he'd smiled so far during this case. He took off his scarf and wrapped it over the one Spencer was already wearing. "Now, if we're finished standing around, can we go back to the station?"

Spencer nodded, struggling to fold the maps in the wind. "Please."

*****

It was late when they made it back to the hotel, though they'd been keeping late hours on the case since they'd started at the beginning of the week. Garcia had called Derek back just as they'd reached the police station and the entire team had crowded around as she relayed the information she had found about a man and his two sons who had lived in the proprietor's cabin. The older son had run away, been found and returned to his father, and then had disappeared in the forest less than a year later. The team was able to read between the lines as Garcia read what she'd found on the younger of the children, who fit the profile they'd developed eerily well.

Derek kicked off his pants and climbed under the covers, half listening as Aaron finished in the bathroom. They had their own room, which was unusual when they were on cases, but the nearest pack was over fifty miles away on the distant edge of the lake. The hotel they were staying in didn't have any suites available, which wouldn't have made a difference to Aaron if he'd been concerned about a local pack. Spencer was staying in the room next to them, with a pair of doors connecting the rooms, while JJ and Gideon were in connecting rooms directly across the hall.

When they'd arrived on the first night, Derek had thought Aaron might make Spencer sleep on their couch, but Aaron had eventually decided that it was safe enough. Derek thought that was probably lucky for Spencer because the couch was in the same faux rustic decor that the entire hotel was decked out in.

Aaron slipped in the bed next to Derek and turned off the lamp. Neither of them had been sleeping particularly well, the unsolved case and lack of leads hovering over them each time they shut their eyes. Derek was hoping that a solid lead and their potential unsub's name and picture passed out to every local police department in Idaho and the surrounding states would be enough that his mind could rest for a few hours. It was all they could do until morning, when they would canvas the area and try to find someone who had seen their suspect.

Derek yawned and moved closer into the center of the bed, relaxing as he felt Aaron's arms wrap around his chest. "How much longer is Strauss going to let us stay out here?" He'd heard Aaron on the phone earlier in the evening, reporting their progress.

"At least a few more days," Aaron said.

"If this was in a city this would be a high profile case," Derek pointed out. "She'd give us more time if there was media involvement." Cases involving children being taken and murdered were usually a media frenzy, but the isolation of the town and lack of bereaved parents leading the call that their children had been taken dampened the coverage of the case.

Aaron sighed and settled them further under the blankets. "Just like I told JJ, it would be a bad idea to bring the media in on this."

"I know, he'd panic. Maybe descend into a frenzy," Derek said, because he did agree with that part of the profile. "But is that better than never catching him because we get recalled?"

"He could disappear if he saw that we know who he is. Go to another state, start killing again and it will take another four years before anyone finds the bodies," Aaron said.

Derek shook his head. "His disposal site is too important to him to just leave."

"Maybe," Aaron allowed. "No more case talk in bed. We can go over this again in the morning after the canvas."

Derek accepted that much at least. He always had a difficult time turning his mind off during a case, even when he desperately needed the sleep. "Goodnight," he said, rolling over so that he could kiss Aaron. He pressed his face against the side of Aaron's, a mimicry of what he would do if they were in their wolf forms.

Aaron returned the kiss and then pressed his face down so that he could kiss under Derek's jaw as well. "You smell like Spencer," he said.

Even in the dark Derek could see Aaron's slight confusion. "Spencer was cold so I put my scarf around him when we were walking through the disposal site. He put it back around my shoulders when we returned to the police station."

Aaron sighed and leaned in, putting his mouth down near Derek's collar bone and nipping the skin lightly. "Try not to get too attached," he said quietly.

Derek set his head down on the pillow next to Aaron's. "It might already be too late," he admitted, feeling a little bit guilty that he'd let himself bond so quickly. But then it had been that way with almost all of the pack; Garcia had grinned at him and called him 'hot stuff' and it had been all over, and all JJ had to do was raise her eyebrows and he was there. He and Aaron had barely been out of each others company after they met for nearly a full month, and this felt like something far closer to that. It was like Spencer had somehow wormed his way into his awareness and Derek couldn't even explain it.

"That's what I was afraid of," Aaron said, pulling Derek closer.

It took a long time for Derek to fall asleep that night, his thoughts now mixed with pieces of the case and Aaron's belief that Spencer would leave them. When he woke up almost two hours later from vivid and disturbing dreams, he found Aaron still awake. Aaron was distant in the way that meant he was keeping careful track of his pack as they slept.

*****

They flew back to Quantico on Sunday afternoon, worn and defeated. After additional research they were as certain as they ever could be that Jamie Handler was their unsub. Several of the people in town could recall him passing through every so often throughout the year. The forensic archaeologists had uncovered another four bodies of children that had been buried deeper, including one that they had been able to identify fairly rapidly - the older brother of the unsub. The unsub's name and picture had been sent everywhere, the citizens of the town had been quietly alerted, but they had been unable to locate the unsub before Strauss had insisted they return to Quantico and Aaron had reluctantly agreed.

Sometimes knowing they'd done everything they could wasn't enough and the flight back was quiet as they all worked through that knowledge so they'd be able to move on to their next case.

It was almost dinner time, which was when Derek would go pry Aaron from his office, when JJ approached his desk in the nearly empty bullpen.

She perched on the edge of Spencer's desk and folded her arms. Spencer had gone home with Gideon a few hours earlier.

"Why are you still here?" Derek asked. He hadn't even realized that she was still in the building.

JJ frowned and looked away. "Will you go stop Garcia from searching for the identities of the children? I don't think she's been home at all this week and she just told me that I can go home, but she has work to finish."

Derek sighed and stood up. "I'll go get her. Go up to your office and I'll have her come to pry you away from your work." He went to JJ and pulled her into a quick hug, letting her rest against him for a moment before she pulled away.

"Thank you," she said quietly, her wane smile disappearing almost as quickly as it had appeared.

"Any time," Derek said, waiting to make sure JJ went back up to her own office before heading in the direction of Garcia's lair.

Derek knocked once on Garcia's door before letting himself in, immediately seeing why JJ didn't think that Garcia had been home. "Baby girl," he greeted before pulling up a chair so that he could sit down next to her.

Garcia glanced over, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. "You can go away now. I know that JJ sent you."

"Then you already know what I'm going to say," Derek said, spreading his hands in mock surrender.

"You're going to say that the case is over and that there is nothing more we can do," Garcia said, not looking away from her computer screens as her fingers typed furiously.

"I'm going to say that they have another team working on identifying those bodies, a team that has more equipment and resources than you do in here." Derek sat his hand on Garcia's shoulder, only to have it shrugged away. "You've done everything you can possibly do. If you were going to be able to find them, you would have found them days ago."

Garcia finally turned away from her keyboard and glared. "There has to be something. There has to be someone looking for these children; a missing notice, a picture posted on the internet, a face on a milk carton. Something!" She grabbed one of the photos she'd printed of one of the children, a girl of about eight. "This one is has the form of a swift fox, though she wasn't old enough to have shifted yet. Why isn't her family looking for her?"

Derek leaned forward and let Garcia come forward into his arms. "Hey, I know," he said as he ran his hand down the back of her hair.

She dropped her head to Derek's shoulder, her breathing hitching as she quietly cried. "We've only managed to identify two of the nine," she said, "I can't just leave them."

"You aren't, I promise. The forensic team is still working the case, and they'll forward information to you as they learn more. Keep them running through your databases in the background, but you have to put them away now so that you can focus on other cases." Derek patted her shoulder one more time as she sat up.

"Alright," Garcia agreed, wiping under her glasses with one hand. "Give me five minutes to set up a continuous search."

Derek leaned back and watched as she went back to her keyboard, screens flashing and information steaming by faster than he could keep track of.

A few minutes later, Garcia stood up and gathered the photographs of the dead children and pinned them to the lower corner of one of her boards. "The system will send me an alert if it gets any matches, and I can feed in more information as I receive it from forensics."

"Good. They are lucky to have you watching out for them," Derek said, gathering Garcia's coat and purse and walking her to the door of her office. "Now let's go pry JJ from her office before you lose her to case files again."

*****

Spencer tugged the blanket tighter around his shoulder, very aware of his bare chest and the loose sweatpants that rode low on his hips. It was Friday afternoon and the entire pack had taken off from Quantico early for what Aaron called a pack night. They'd had a late lunch as a team, then Aaron sent Spencer to practice attaining his form under Derek's supervision.

"You need to relax," Derek said, probably for the fifth time in the past hour. "You're not going to get anywhere if you don't relax."

Spencer opened one of his eyes and then the other, focusing on Derek's semi-blurry form. "This isn't exactly the most relaxing thing I've ever done." He glanced around the small back porch of Aaron's house that had been converted into a sun room. It was a clear day outside despite the chilly weather. Inside the room was reasonably warm, but Spencer shivered every time he looked at the snow. Spencer did have to admit that he was more relaxed now that Derek was wearing pants, even if Derek's bare chest was slightly distracting.

Derek opened his eyes and stared back at Spencer. "What is the most relaxing thing you've ever done?"

Believing that Derek sounded honestly interested, Spencer decided to answer truthfully. "I spent nearly three days without a break solving a math problem for my doctoral thesis. I imagine the experience is something that comes close to the described experiences of meditative enlightenment. I'd go into details on the math, but I highly doubt you'd be interested without being knowledgable in the background material."

"Are you sure that was meditative enlightenment and not almost passing out from hunger and exhaustion?" Derek asked.

Spencer thought about it and then shook his head. "I felt rather invigorated when I'd finished."

"Uh huh," Derek nodded slowly. "Close your eyes again and keep focusing on your form."

Spencer closed his eyes obediently, but didn't let the instruction disrupt his thought process. "We've been sitting here for nearly an hour. Is this how most shifters learn to shift into their forms?"

"No, it's not. Most shifters focus on controlling the urge to shift, not on trying to achieve their form. Stop thinking and relax," Derek reiterated.

Feeling his mouth and nose twitch, Spencer couldn't keep himself from responding, "I can't just stop thinking. Nobody can."

Derek's sigh seemed loud in the enclosed space. "Alright, time for a different approach. How did you feel just before you shifted in the bathroom? Maybe we can recreate that sensation so you can find the path to your form more easily."

Spencer opened his eyes again and reached for his glasses. "I don't really remember much beyond going to lunch with you. Mostly I felt itchy and uncomfortable. I could feel the pack kind of pressing on me, and I could hear everyone really well. Too well."

"That's it?" Derek asked.

Spencer shrugged. "Pretty much."

"Okay, how about the other times you've shifted?" Derek asked. He leaned back on the palms of his hands.

"I've, uh, only shifted twice before. It was a long time ago." Spencer looked down and started tracing the pattern on the edge of the blanket with his fingers.

Derek frowned. "But you still remember how you felt before you shifted, right?"

Spencer nodded; he remembered very well. "Abject terror." He watched carefully as Derek sat up straight again.

"Do you think that's why you're having trouble shifting?" Derek asked. "Maybe you associate shifting with being afraid?"

"I don't think so," Spencer said, shivering again when he looked outside. He didn't think that it was the sight of snow making him feel chilled this time.

They sat in quiet for a minute before Derek spoke again. "You can tell me about it? Maybe we can find something else other than fear, something you can use as a focal point?"

Spencer sighed and rubbed his hands on his pants, wondering when he'd clenched his fists. He hadn't talked about shifting to anyone before, but he'd never had anyone he could talk to about almost anything before either. "I was in high school; I'd just turned eleven years old. One of the sophomore girls, Alexa, asked me to come out to the Field House after school." He stopped talking when he realized that he was blushing.

"This Alexa, she was pretty?" Derek asked knowingly.

Spencer nodded and swallowed. "She'd been nice to me before, sometimes. Talked to me when other kids wouldn't, if there was nobody around. I liked her."

"What happened behind the Field House?" Derek asked when Spencer didn't continue.

"Alexa wasn't there; but about half of the football team was." Spencer clutched the blanket wrapped over his shoulders tighter to his chest. "They laughed at me. Said that I was stupid for thinking Alexa actually wanted to see me. Asked what I'd thought she was going to do with me. I didn't know, which was what I told them, and they just laughed some more."

Derek nodded. "What caused you to shift?"

"They started pushing me around. I got knocked around plenty at school and they were relentless, but this was different. Mob mentality, I suppose." Spencer took a slow breath, hating that it was getting harder to breathe when this had nearly been ten years ago. "They grabbed me and tore off my clothes. They had rope and duct tape. I couldn't get away. And then, I don't know. It was like being pulled in half and I kind of remember the sensation of running, but I don't remember the journey. When I woke up, I was curled up naked on the back steps at home and it was in the middle of the night."

When Spencer looked up, he found Derek watching with his expression open in sympathy. "You didn't realize that you'd shifted?"

Spencer shook his head. "Not right away. A few days later, after the people who had been there were all avoiding me, I guessed. I asked my mom if my father was a shifter, but she was just confused. I tracked him down about a month later, and he told me that he was a shifter; we both were. I tried to ask him some questions, but he was busy. He told me not to come back. Strangely, the football team left me alone after that."

"They probably considered themselves extraordinarily lucky they didn't have a vengeful mother leopard hunting them for hurting her cub," Derek said.

Spencer shrugged uncomfortably. "I suppose."

"Okay, close your eyes again," Derek said.

Spencer did so, because it was easier than meeting Derek's gaze.

"Now think about the moment you shifted. Block out the scene and just focus on that very moment. What were you sensing?" Derek asked.

He recognized the technique as one that they used when interviewing victims to get a recollection that wasn't colored by fear. Spencer pushed the football players away from his memory and tried to create the perfect picture of that moment. "It was loud, but I couldn't understand what they were saying anymore."

"Good. What else?" Derek prompted.

"I wasn't cold anymore. And there was pressure all over my skin even where they weren't holding me." Spencer opened his eyes. "That's a little like I felt at Quantico before I shifted. I could feel everyone on the team even when I wasn't in the same room as them."

"Okay, so it stands to reason that your primary focus senses are hearing and touch," Derek said.

Spencer nodded slowly. "Gideon said that all of my senses would adapt slightly in my human form."

"That's true, but most shifters have one or two senses that manifest more strongly in their human form than is typical. Your focus senses are the ones that will become overwhelmed most quickly, particularly when you're fighting the urge to shift," Derek explained.

"Being surrounded by various types of sound might help me shift?" Spencer asked, purposefully leaving out the possibility of a lot people touching him. He liked the team and felt closer to them than he had to anyone except for his mom, but the idea of having all of them touch him at once made the hairs on the back of his arms stand on end.

Derek smiled. "Probably not, but we'll hold that idea in reserve. Do you want to tell me about the other time you shifted? Maybe we can isolate something there that will help."

Spencer didn't really want to share that experience anymore than he'd wanted to share the first, but he was willing to try if it would help him learn to shift. "I was fifteen and finishing my first two graduate degrees. My advisor in the Chemistry department had been working with me for the entire year. He stayed late with me in the labs because they didn't let students under the age of eighteen work alone. There was only a month left in the semester, which was when I was going to graduate and I'd already been accepted to Cal Tech for my first doctoral degree."

"You don't have any idea how smart you are, do you?" Derek asked.

"I have an IQ of 187, but the concept of an 'Intelligence Quotient' is flawed at best," Spencer said, though he'd understood what Derek had meant.

Derek shook his head. "So you were busy being a genius and probably nearly blowing up their labs every other week," he said to remind Spencer where they'd left off.

"I only ever made one experiment explode and that was on purpose," Spencer said. "Technically it was an implosion, but it still set off the fire suppression system."

Derek laughed. "Uh huh. Keep going before I have to get Garcia to take you to the federal labs to get tested for mutant radiation."

Spencer smiled uneasily, wishing he could keep talking about some of the projects he'd worked on instead of his experiences with shifting. "I'd been finishing a series of basic experiments concerning the Bromate-Bromide Ion Reaction as a baseline for a larger section of my paper on Chemical Kinetics. It was late and usually by that point Ben was ready to close up for the night."

"Ben was your advisor?" Derek asked.

"Yeah. Doctor Burrelt, actually, but he always told me to call him Ben. He'd taught one of my undergraduate chemistry classes, and he'd always encouraged me to ask questions and arranged some lab time for me then as well. He was one of the reasons that I chose chemistry to do my graduate work in instead of physics." Spencer tugged at the edge of the blanket again and looked outside for a moment. "That night he hadn't told me it was time to wrap up, and I figured that he was busy with one of his own projects or grading papers or something. When I finished my documentation I realized it was really late, and that we should have been out of the building an hour ago."

When Spencer looked away from the tree line and the clear November sky he found Derek watching him intently. The corners of Derek's mouth were tight. "Go on," Derek said.

Spencer swallowed hard and looked down at the floor. "He kissed me. And I thought it was strange because it was the first time I'd ever been kissed when it wasn't my mom. I kept thinking that when he stopped I would tell him that I didn't want to kiss him. But he didn't stop. He had his hands holding my arms and I was pressed against one of the counters. Right after that, when he came closer, I shifted. It felt just like at the football field."

He looked up just in time to see Derek shift into his wolf form. Derek's body almost seemed to fold in on itself as fur covered him. The entire process took less than five seconds.

Derek kicked his hind legs, managing to untangle his paws from the pants he'd been wearing. He turned to Spencer and his eyes locked onto him.

Spencer didn't know if Derek even recognized him, he couldn't remember enough about being in his form to know if he'd understood that the team had been with him. He sat carefully still under Derek's observation.

Derek let out a soft whine and stepped forward to touch his nose to Spencer's bare hand. Derek stayed for a moment and rubbed the side of his muzzle against Spencer's knuckles. Then he gave a short bark and slunk through the large dog built into the back exit.

*****

Spencer had been sitting in the sun room by himself for nearly ten minutes when JJ came in. She picked up Derek's discarded pants and folded them neatly, setting them on top of a shelf before she sat down across from Spencer.

"Garcia suggested you might want a friend right now," JJ said, "and I thought maybe you'd want to try a different approach to shifting for a little bit."

"He just shifted and then left," Spencer said. He'd watched as Derek had ran through the backyard and up into the trees. The minutes after Derek's departure Spencer had spent staring at the forest. He was almost able to pinpoint Derek's movements; the small bubble of pressure from where Derek had pressed his muzzle prickled uncomfortably as Derek went farther away.

JJ frowned. "That has nothing to do with you."

Spencer glared back. "Given that he took off after I told him about Ben, I'd say that it does have something to do with me."

"Think outside of yourself for a minute," JJ said, looking remarkably threatening just by putting a hand on her hip and raising her eyebrows. "Despite what you may think, shifting isn't as simple as choosing to do so. Just like when you were in the bathroom at Quantio all shifters encounter circumstances where they can't help but to shift. Derek will be pretty damn embarrassed when he comes back, and he'll apologize. You don't need to make that more difficult for him."

Spencer blinked in surprise. "I'd never told anyone about that before," he said, defending his response.

JJ softened a little. "I understand. And the timing is unfortunate, but you need to trust that Derek wouldn't have shifted right then if he could have stopped himself. I promise that it wasn't intentional."

Spencer tried to will himself to believe what JJ was telling him and found that he mostly could. "If you say so."

"I do," JJ said.

Spencer looked up at JJ and narrowed his eyes. "Was the entire team listening to us talk?"

JJ shrugged. "Gideon and Garcia can't really help what they hear. They're basically tuned into the members of the pack. It's a survival instinct."

"Like the way that I can usually feel where the team is if they're close enough?" Spencer asked.

"Pretty much," JJ agreed. "Now, shall we try focusing on getting you to shift?"

Spencer shook his head. "I think I'm done."

"Nope. You need to be able to shift even when you're upset or worried or whatever else is going on. It doesn't do any good just to practice when you're feeling well. Close your eyes." JJ sat tall, even though she was nearly a foot shorter than Spencer when they were both sitting on the floor.

Spencer tried to wait JJ out, but when she raised her eyebrow again he took off his glasses again and shut his eyes.

"Since hearing is one of your focal senses, I want you to concentrate on the sound of my voice. As you come closer to shifting it will sound like I'm speaking louder," JJ instructed.

"Why do you call Garcia by her last name if you're together?" Spencer asked. It was a question he'd been wondering about for some time.

JJ gave a short huff of laughter. "Because that's what she prefers to be called, even by me. Now focus on my voice and try to recreate the sensation of starting to shift."

Spencer did his best to listen to JJ as she talked him through what shifting felt like for her, but mostly he listened for the sound of barks or howling coming from the woods as he tracked Derek's location.

*****

It took Aaron some time to catch up with his mate. His wolf form wasn't able to give a more accurate length of time other than a run that made him breathe hard and slow down so he could keep up a steady pace. After finding Derek he ran alongside as they looped around the edge of the pack's lands before heading deeper into the forest toward the small cabin they had built a few years earlier. He knew, even in his wolf form, that the need to check the edges of their pack's territory this time was Derek's alone. Aaron was just along for the run. He wasn't about to leave his mate alone in case there was another local pack hunting near the area.

Aaron shifted outside of the cabin door and opened it. He checked inside in the dimming daylight before he let Derek enter. Everything was undisturbed, exactly as they'd left it from a few months earlier, and Aaron turned on one of the battery operated lanterns and closed the door as soon as Derek was inside. He put on sweatpants and a jacket; the air was too cold for him to be comfortable walking around naked. Derek had lain down on the rough wooden floor next to the door and seemed disinclined to shift back into his human form.

"Whenever you're ready," Aaron said as he opened another of the plastic storage containers and pulled out a blanket. He settled on the low platform they'd built and leaned against the wall, unsurprised when a moment later Derek crawled up so that he was leaning against him.

He wrapped the blanket around Derek and ran his hand soothingly down Derek's side and rested it in his fur. This was the first time Derek had shifted without meaning to in more than a year and Aaron was certain he knew at least part of the cause, if not the specifics.

From the start, from that very first day Jason had dropped Spencer off in the bullpen, Derek had been focused on Spencer - almost like he was attuned to him. It hadn't concerned Aaron at first because it was natural for a senior member of the pack to take an interest in the welfare of one of the cubs. As they were never going to have biological children together, it made sense that the cubs in the pack were surrogates of sorts, and Aaron had been thankful that there had been one less person he had to be watching closely.

It had been nearly a month later when Aaron realized that while Jason's feelings towards Spencer were paternal, Derek's didn't quite fall into that category. That had bothered Aaron for less than a week before he realized neither Derek nor Spencer had the slightest clue, even though JJ and Garcia had obviously made the connection shortly after Aaron had. Now the only thing Aaron was concerned about was protecting his mate when Spencer decided to leave the pack and set out on his own.

"What are you thinking about?" Derek asked, the weight of his human form resting against Aaron's side.

"You," Aaron answered truthfully. "And Spencer," he added when Derek continued to stare at him.

Derek closed his eyes briefly before he rearranged them so that they were both cuddled under the blanket. "You heard what Spencer said?"

Aaron shook his head. "I just felt that he was distressed, and then you shifted and took off running."

"Damn." Derek sat up, pulling away from Aaron. "Did you check on him before you followed me out here?"

"No, but Garcia was rousing JJ when I left. I'm sure they're with him," Aaron said.

Derek shook his head and then folded his arms. "I shouldn't have left him like that."

"It wasn't a conscious decision, he'll understand." Aaron said, reaching so that he could rest his hand on Derek's forearm. "It's pretty cold for you to be sitting around naked."

Derek sighed but adjusted the blanket so it was draped over both of them, even though he wasn't resting against Aaron anymore. "Sometimes we don't do enough. There aren't enough of us to catch every murderer, rapist, and child molester, but that doesn't seem like a good enough excuse." He turned so that he was looking in Aaron's direction.

Aaron knew that there were very few things that could provoke his mate to shift without it being his decision to do so. Given Spencer's distress at the house and Derek's current condition, Aaron could read between the lines well enough to decipher the gist of what had happened. "When I first started working for the BAU there was a case that we spent a week solving. It turned out that the unsub was the father of the four people he'd murdered. The fifth child, a young man who was studying to be a lawyer, we reached just in time to prevent the father from killing him as well. I shot the father, because there wasn't time for anything else, and Jason and I rushed in to free the young man from where he'd been bound."

"He survived?" Derek asked when Aaron paused.

"Yes. He was roughed up, but nothing life threatening. As I stayed with him, while Jason went to direct the ambulance and the rest of the first responders, he looked at me and asked me why no one had done that twenty years ago. And I didn't have an answer for him." Aaron shrugged. "When I told Jason a few days later, Jason told me that there was no one to answer for those crimes but the people who commit them. We do everything in our power to stop them, but it's never enough and never will be."

Derek frowned. "That doesn't seem like very useful advice."

"Maybe not. But he's right. We can't save everyone, and we can't change the past," Aaron said. He wrapped his hand around Derek's. "But, maybe there are fewer people who need saving because of what we do."

"The only person who can really save you is yourself," Derek said quietly, twisting his hand around so he could clasp Aaron's.

Aaron nodded, opening his arms to wrap around Derek as Derek leaned down to rest against Aaron's chest. "We should talk about Spencer. When you're ready."

Derek tensed momentarily but stayed where he was. "You're my mate, Aaron." He leaned up to kiss Aaron but stopped when Aaron shook his head.

"I know that. That doesn't mean you can't have feelings for other people. Doesn't mean I can't have feelings for other people either," Aaron said simply.

Derek eyed him uncertainly. "I always knew you had a thing for Gideon."

Aaron rolled his eyes and accepted the kiss that Derek had been trying to give him. "I'm worried-"

"I would never cheat on you, not even with Spencer," Derek interrupted.

"As reassuring as that statement is, if you'd let me finish, I was about to say that I'm worried about you," Aaron said.

"Worried about me leaving you?" Derek asked, his brow furrowing as he pressed his body closer to Aaron's. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I know you aren't." Aaron knew that was Derek's fear speaking, but it wasn't his own. "I'm concerned that when Spencer leaves-"

"If he leaves, not when," Derek interrupted again.

Aaron frowned but continued. "I'm concerned that you'll react poorly to him leaving the pack, and that will only be exacerbated if you don't acknowledge that you've grown attached. You just shifted from feeling Spencer's distress. There were other factors involved, but you've worked cases and interviewed witnesses with similar backgrounds without shifting, or even feeling the need to do so."

"I am attached," Derek agreed. "He's a good kid, and he needs someone to look up to."

"But that's not all it is," Aaron insisted.

Derek's eyes narrowed as he pushed himself up enough to look at Aaron. "He's a cub, Aaron."

"Yes, but he's also an adult in his human form, and he deserves your honesty. Otherwise you're just going to confuse him." Aaron said. "I would do anything to keep you and the pack safe and well. I don't want you to be hurt by leaving this unresolved if Spencer leaves."

"He won't leave," Derek said.

Aaron considered Derek for a moment, realizing that it was more than just stubborn refusal to admit the possibility that Spencer might leave the pack. "Why do you believe that?"

Derek frowned and turned so that he was facing in the direction of the house. "I could give you a profile, list all the reasons that it would psychologically make sense for Spencer to stay with the pack regardless of his form."

"But that's not why you believe," Aaron stated.

"No. I just can't imagine our pack without him. He belongs here." Derek stood up and started folding the blanket.

Aaron pulled off the shirt he'd briefly worn. When he surfaced he'd cleared his expression of dismay and settled on a worried neutral. "Are you ready to go back to the house?" he asked as he slipped off his pants. He put the clothes and blanket back in the storage containers.

"If we don't go back Gideon is probably going to track us down, and then he'll be upset because we needlessly took him away from whatever he's cooking for dinner," Derek said. He turned off the lantern and put it away; both of them were now shadowy figures in the dark. "Race you back to the house."

Aaron opened the door and watched as Derek's form ran past him into the rapidly darkening forest. He latched the cabin door, making certain it was secure, before shifting and galloped after Derek. They wound up running together, paws landing side by side in the dirt, though Derek leaped ahead the last few feet and onto the deck so he could claim victory.

*****

After dinner - a pot roast that the team had devoured just as quickly as they would have in their wolf forms - most of the pack settled down in the living room. Jason went out for a run through the woods, declining each of their offers to go running with him. Spencer hadn't offered, but had gone to the window to watch as Jason slunk off into the night.

Derek made a fire in the fireplace, sitting on the floor and tending it with a fascination that Aaron thought wasn't entirely healthy. Spencer was sprawled on the floor a few feet away with a blanket spread over him and a pile of books to either side, one pile that he'd read and the other he was working through.

JJ had shifted shortly after they'd eaten and Garcia had followed. Both of them had tore through the house, leaping and skidding through the halls until Aaron had corralled them and shut them in the living room where they had less space to be destructive. They'd apparently exhausted themselves and were resting together on a rug near Jason's armchair.

Aaron had a pile of files that he'd brought home, most of them financial and administrative paperwork that came with leading the team, but a handful of case files that he needed to review before he made a decision about what to do with them. After an hour of quiet, Aaron put his feet up on the couch and began the process of consolidating and organizing reports for their last case. He watched in amusement as Spencer crept closer to the fireplace but turned his gaze mostly back to his papers when Derek tugged the book Spencer had just finished out of his hands.

"Good book?" Derek asked quietly.

Spencer shrugged as he moved so that he was sitting upright with his long limbs directed towards the warmth of the fire. "Interesting theories but poorly presented. There are far better research studies that have been conducted into the participants of violent organized crime. I can recommend some papers if you're interested."

Derek nodded. "Good to know. You do realize that if I ever need to know anything about, well, anything, I'll just ask you?"

"What if I'm not around?" Spencer asked.

Aaron allowed his eyes to wander up and he rolled his pen between his fingers.

"Then I'll call you. You're on my speed dial." Derek seemed unfazed by the question.

Spencer stared for a moment and then nodded. "Okay."

"Hey, pretty boy." Derek put down the fire poker he'd been fidgeting with and turned to Spencer. "I'm sorry I ran out on you earlier."

Aaron couldn't tell because of the fire backlighting both of them, but he thought that Spencer was blushing. He had no idea how Derek thought that nickname was an indicator of brotherly affection, though he could remember denying his own feelings for Derek for nearly a month. He'd come to the realization one night after he'd shifted and had spent the night waiting outside Derek's hotel room door.

"It's okay," Spencer said. He ducked his head and then suddenly straightened his body as he frequently did when he was uncomfortable.

"It's not okay," Derek said, glancing around the room and briefly looking at Aaron for reassurance. Aaron met his eyes and twitched one hand to indicate that it was up to Derek to decide what he wanted to do.

Before Derek could speak, Spencer haltingly reached out and put his hand on Derek's knee. "It is. JJ said that you have your own history, and that sometimes shifters can't help shifting when they're upset."

"JJ said that?" Derek asked, his eyes flickering to where JJ and Garcia were resting together.

"Not in so many words, but I got the message," Spencer said. "If you, if you want to talk, I'll listen. I'm sure I'm not your first choice, but I'm here."

Derek sat still for a long moment and Aaron prepared himself to get up in case Derek shifted again. It wasn't uncommon for emotional or physical distress to lead to a series of uncontrolled shifts in form.

"I know you're here," Derek said finally, placing his own hand on top of Spencer's. "And you're by no means my last choice. There is a huge list of people behind you. Ending with Strauss."

Spencer's mouth quirked slightly, but his gaze didn't leave where their skin was touching. "She doesn't seem to like me very much. She called me a dangerously intelligent cat last week when I gave her my Academy completion forms to be signed. And then she said that animals aren't supposed to be smart."

Derek's hand tightened around Spencer's until Spencer pulled away. "Sorry," Derek said when Spencer tucked his hand under the blanket he had resting over his lap. "She doesn't like any of us, though I imagine your form doesn't lend you any favor in her eyes. Strauss barely tolerates a wolf pack in the BAU. I can't imagine that having a leopard roaming halls makes her feel any more goodwill towards us."

"I guess. It's not a big deal, it just caught me off-guard," Spencer shrugged.

Derek glanced over to the couch again and Aaron nodded grimly. He wasn't about to let Strauss bully any member of his team, especially someone who was practically defenseless to the machinations of the higher politics in the FBI.

Spencer sighed and looked back towards the fire. "I don't think I'm any closer to shifting of my own free will than I was before."

"It's not going to happen overnight." Derek scooted closer and put his arm around Spencer's shoulders, and Spencer didn't duck away. "Before you know it you'll be running through those woods with us like you were born with four paws."

Aaron gave up on the file on his lap and watched Spencer and Derek sitting together by the fire. Somehow he felt that conversation had probably made things worse instead of better.

*****

Section Four