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Alex Blake never expected to be a profiler. As a kid, she couldn’t tell what anyone was really saying whenever they talked to her. The meaning of their words was hidden behind layers and layers of vocal inflection, body language, and facial expressions. Alex had to force herself to process every piece of every conversation that would help her understand what was really being said.
She liked the words themselves much better. No matter how hard someone tried, they couldn’t say that good meant bad or red meant yellow. Sometimes she sat down and read the dictionary for hours at a time, just to learn what all the words meant. She couldn’t understand why everyone else didn’t place the same value on the real meaning of their words. Relying on body language to get the point across in a conversation seemed so unnecessary.
When Alex was young, she could definitely see herself becoming a linguist. She couldn’t imagine herself becoming a profiler.
Somehow she ended up being both. She trained herself to recognize what different facial movements meant; people cried when they were sad and laughed when they were happy, but the opposite could also be true. Figuring out people’s intentions was still just a guessing game when they weren’t talking to her.
But if someone was speaking to her, Alex could discern their meaning without too much trouble. Every word that they said to her was analyzed for its true meaning, any particular connotation that it might have based on the speaker and the situation, and the tone of voice that the speaker used. Her mind worked overtime processing spoken language.
Most of the time, Alex didn’t mind. She knew that it was a survival skill she’d developed in order to avoid ridicule and look credible, because no one would consider hiring a linguist who couldn’t understand idioms or metaphors. Sometimes, it was even fun. She never let anyone know how hard it was for her to pluck meaning from their speech. Alex got so good at this that the FBI hired her. That was good, that was really good.
She was stuck into a unit full of people whose collective goal seemed to be to disguise their words as thoroughly as possible. That was bad. Alex’s brain went into overdrive processing even the non-essential conversations that took place in the break room. Each day at work was tiring in a way she couldn’t begin to describe. It felt like translating everyone else’s words left her no energy to form her own.
She was in her thirties when she decided to find out why she had so much trouble with social cues. She got lucky. It only took six months for the Bureau psychologists to give Alex an answer.
Autism. Alex was autistic. She latched onto that word as soon as the last syllable left the doctor’s mouth, hailing it as the answer to all of her questions about herself. Why did she have to put so much effort into understanding people? Because she was autistic, and allistic social cues confused her. Why did everyone think she was too blunt, too unemotional? Because she was autistic, and she didn’t know her voice was considered monotone and flat.
Her diagnosis explained things that she hadn’t even connected to her problem with social cues. Alex had always been hypersensitive to noise, but hyposensitive to light, smells, and tastes. She had never thought that sensory processing disorder could be to blame for this, but that explanation made a lot more sense than anything Alex herself had ever come up with.
Even with her new word for herself and the diagnosis that proved it, her job didn’t get any easier. Technically speaking, some accommodations were provided for her, but they were shit. A few of her coworkers took it as an opportunity to mock her when they thought she couldn’t hear them.
Alex was beyond relieved when she received word that she was transferring to the BAU. That relief lasted for about two hours before she thought of a depressing possibility. What if the BAU in Quantico was full of the kind of people that she currently worked with? Alex didn’t want to consider the possibility, but it was there. It was there, all right. It haunted her.
But then she got to know them. As Alex built relationships with each member of the BAU team, she came to realize that she had been worried for absolutely no reason at all.
-
Spencer Reid reminded her of herself so much that the first casual conversation she had with him gave her whiplash. His interest in linguistics was just as intense as her own, and he spoke in clear, grammatically correct sentences that Alex barely had to pick apart to glean his meaning. This kid clearly understood the way that Alex’s brain worked.
Spencer was the BAU’s resident autistic, as Alex quickly found out. He was the one who helped her get her work accommodations straightened out while she got settled in. The people who facilitated the paperwork seemed to know Spencer pretty well. When Alex asked him why, he told her that he was autistic. Simple as that. It was just a simple statement of fact, but it had a tremendous impact on Alex’s mood.
Spencer seemed so comfortable saying that. “Oh, it’s because I’m autistic.” Alex couldn’t imagine saying that, throwing that word out into the world for all to hear. She wasn’t ashamed of being autistic, just... cautious. Spencer had none of her caution. He didn’t even try to mask his neurotype the way that Alex did; if he didn’t understand something, he just asked the speaker to rephrase it. Sometimes Alex envied the level of ease that Spencer had. She felt a little better when he admitted to her that he was just trying to fake it until he made it.
-
The next person that Alex learned was autistic was Garcia. She took a little longer to figure out than Spencer. Garcia spent most of her time in her office with her computer screens, whereas Alex worked in the main office with the other field agents. The two women didn’t see much of each other during work hours.
Garcia didn’t ping Alex’s autism-radar—she really needed a better name for that—until after Reid’s girlfriend was killed. The analyst talked about how she felt the same things Reid was feeling and how she didn’t know how to help but knew she needed to do something, and it clicked in Alex’s head. Hyperempathy, poor social skills, plus all the time she spent complaining about the lighting being too bright in every room but her office... Garcia was autistic. Alex had even seen the woman holding a mug with a rainbow infinity sign on it, the neurodiversity pride symbol. Why hadn’t she figured it out until now?
Logically, Alex knew that she didn’t see that much of Garcia and that Garcia probably masked a lot of her autistic traits. Alex was guilty of this too. They were both in this awkward limbo where they probably knew that the other was autistic, but neither of them wanted to say anything in case they were totally wrong.
Garcia popped the awkwardness-bubble on Alex’s birthday. The team had a small, low-effort party at Rossi’s house, complete with a cake that the author had baked himself and presents from each member of the team. Garcia gave hers last. It was in a small bag, which was unusual. Normally, the analyst went all-out for birthday gifts.
Alex opened the bag and found one of those three-pronged ball-bearing devices that spun around when she flicked it with her finger. It was small enough to fit into her pocket, and it was dark green, her favorite color. Garcia watched anxiously as Alex gave it a trial spin.
“Do you like it? I got it for you because you’re always talking about how it’s hard to concentrate when you haven’t had coffee and you guys usually can’t get coffee on the jet. So I thought you could use this instead, maybe? It’ll last longer than a cup of coffee.” She offered Alex a tentative smile. “Do you like it? I could always take it back and get you, like, a year-long discount at Starbucks or—“
“It’s great,” Alex interrupted. She slid the spinner into her pocket and pulled Garcia in for a hug. “Thank you, Penelope.”
-
Hotch fit what Alex called the ‘Hollywood autism profile’ almost to a T. He was blunt, work-driven, in love with his little routines, and lonely. Sometimes, even Alex found herself falling into the ableist thought pattern of ‘he acts like a robot. He doesn’t emote. Why?’ Even as those words flitted across her mind, she knew they were unfair. They were the product of a life lived according to non-autistic rules. Alex herself didn’t emote much.
Hotch was the most 'conventionally autistic' BAU employee, if there even was such a thing. Shockingly, he turned out to be the only one of them without an official diagnosis. His parents had been desperate to write him off as just a garden-variety weird kid.
Spencer would’ve probably had the statistics on how many 'weird' kids turned out to be neurodivergent, but Alex didn’t. She did know that Hotch was more than just weird, though. She never talked to him about it outright because she had no idea how to approach the subject with him. She assumed that it was an open secret, the way it was with Spencer. Everyone either knew the facts or inferred them, but no one brought it up. That’s what Alex assumed was going on.
The reality of the situation, as it turned out, couldn’t be more different. Everyone else had assumed that Hotch was just a weird, lonely, workaholic single father, and they had attributed all the signs of autism to one of those traits instead. Alex and Spencer were the only team members who had put two and two together before Hotch did it for them.
He broke the news to the team on the way to Ohio in the jet. They were heading up to the town of Peninsula, which was located practically inside of a national park where an unsub had begun preying on camp counselors.
“The counselors that have been found dead all worked at a summer program for autistic children. Local police believe that some children in the camp may have seen the unsub, but the kids won’t talk to the police. We’re hoping they’ll talk to us. Reid, Blake, and I will go to the camp facility when we land and try to get them to tell us something.”
“Why are you going, Hotch?” Reid asked. “I mean, I can guess that you’re sending Blake and myself because we’re both autistic, but what about you?”
Hotch sighed. “You’re correct, I’m sending you two because you’re autistic,” he said, nodding his head. He stared down into the jet’s floor while he answered Reid’s question. “I’m autistic as well. That’s why I’m going. The three of us will be able to relate to the children in a way the local police can’t.”
Alex had been watching this exchange quietly from her seat, only contributing by nodding when her assignment was given. She spoke up after Hotch answered Reid.
“Do the locals know the reason that the three of us are doing this?” she asked. She didn’t want to tell them too much personal information about her coworkers.
Hotch shook his head. “They most likely won’t ask. If they do, tell them to talk to me about it.”
“Understood, sir.”
-
Alex found out about Rossi on the same case she found out about Hotch. She and Rossi were driving to meet with the family of one of the counselors to gather more information. It was about a two-hour drive from Peninsula to Centersburg, but it was the only way. The father was housebound, so bringing the family to the local station was out of the question.
Rossi drove. Alex looked over the case files for the first forty minutes before she gave up on finding any hidden connections. There was no new information to be found in the papers they already had; that was the whole point of driving southwest for two hours in the hope of gaining new information.
Rossi didn’t say much. He had the radio tuned to a local station that played a mix of alternative music and classic rock. Alex didn’t really care for those genres, but it was the only clear signal they could get. Besides, Rossi kept the volume at a reasonable level.
After an hour of traveling with only the noise of the radio, Rossi spoke to Alex. Traffic was slowing down on the highway ahead of them, in all lanes on their side. It looked like a jam was in the works.
“I’m surprised Hotch didn’t pick me to stay with him,” Rossi said, referring to Hotch’s current endeavor of doing some cognitive interviews with the kids who had been awake when their counselors were taken. Once again, he’d said that at least one autistic person should be present for each interview.
Alex frowned and glanced over at Rossi. “What do you mean?” she asked. What was he implying? Alex felt the old processing wheels turning once more.
“There’s something I haven’t told the team yet,” Rossi began, speaking hesitantly. He sounded worried, almost. What was he worried about?
“Just after I retired, I switched to a new doctor. I just wanted to make sure that my health was okay, wouldn’t have to make any surprise medical payments, that sort of thing. The good news was, I didn’t have any eminent illnesses hanging over my head. That’s the good news. The bad news was, he wanted me to talk to somebody who specialized in diagnosing autism in older adults.” Rossi thought for a moment, then corrected himself. "It wasn't bad news, just unexpected. And expensive."
Oh. Oh.
Alex nodded along with Rossi’s story. “So, did you? Did you speak with a specialist?”
“Oh, you bet I did. And I paid for it, too. Did you know that getting diagnosed with autism costs about seven grand?“
“Yeah, I know. My diagnosis was confirmed about two years after I started in the Bureau.”
This time, Rossi nodded along with Alex’s story. “You didn’t get a government employee reduction on the bill?”
“I did, but there were some... complications that made it an even seven anyway.”
“Ah.”
They rode in silence for about ten more minutes. While amplified guitars and garage drumsets played on the radio and miles and miles of corn passed by through the window, Alex turned this new information over in her mind until it made sense to her.
Rossi was methodical, yes, but he didn’t have a daily routine the way that Spencer, Garcia, and Alex did. His whole day didn’t have a routine; various small tasks throughout his day had routines to them. Rossi always got the same coffee before work and he nearly always sat in the same seat on the jet. Those were routines, Alex decided. He had more, but she couldn’t think of them.
The most common denominator for all autistic people was sensory processing disorder. Rossi almost certainly had that, although he was the best at hiding it out of all five autistic BAU employees. He seemed to be very sensitive to textures. He couldn’t stand the feeling of cloth at his throat, hence all the V-necked shirts he wore and all the top buttons he left undone. This sensitivity carried over into his taste in food. Alex remembered Spencer telling her that Rossi refused to eat any kind of restaurant noodles because he thought they were too mushy and the sauce always tasted like wet clay with red food coloring. Word-for-word quotes from Rossi were always fun.
The one autistic thing that Alex was having trouble finding evidence of in Rossi’s life was a lack of social skills. The man was a pretty big flirt and he was well-liked. His skills didn’t seem to be lacking.
Chameleon, Alex’s brain piped up, tossing a random word in front of her and expecting her to figure out what it meant. It was bad enough when other people did this, but her own brain? That was downright frustrating.
Chameleon, chameleon, chameleon. The word echoed through Alex’s head. They changed color to fit their surroundings. Rossi changed his entire demeanor to fit the situation at hand, and he did it much faster than was considered ‘normal’ or ‘typical’. For him, it wasn’t normal or typical to do that in the first place, so he learned how to. Alex knew that was true. She could profile her own teammates just as well as any unsub.
“Oh, we’re moving!”
Traffic had indeed began to travel forward once more. Rossi slowly crept up the lane at a steady thirty miles an hour, almost fifty below the (illegal) speed that most people drove on that highway.
“Thanks for telling me,” Alex said to him. Rossi glanced away from the road to flash her a smile.
“Just don’t tell the team until I’m ready, okay? I want to be the one to tell them.”
“Yeah.”
Alex settled back into her seat and watched the corn fields rush past the SUV. She felt more at ease than she had in a long time. It was just her, an autistic woman, and Rossi, an autistic man. It was just them in the vehicle, and back at the camp there was Reid and Garcia and Hotch. All autistic people.
Alex wasn’t alone.