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“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
- Masanobu Fukuoka
***
It was, oddly enough, Rossi’s idea at first. They were sitting around the table on his back patio, drinking and nursing their wounds (physical, emotional) after (another) especially difficult case, when he suggested it in the same blasé tone he had suggested the evening drinking. “I’m thinking of selling this and buying a farm. We could all live there.”
After a moment of stunned silence, the team broke out into confused laughter. Rossi, give up the mansion? Rossi invite all of them to live with him?
Garcia recovered first; she’d actually had similar thoughts since that day years ago when Kevin had come up with the same idea. “Lots of land and seclusion? Isn’t that, like, practically inviting serial killers to come murder us all? Slowly? With evil?” She leaned away from Rossi into Morgan, who looked startled, mainly due to the fact that Garcia thought Rossi might be serious.
“Come on, you know I know better. There would be security. Lots of it. And really good wi-fi,” Rossi added, raising his eyebrows. Garcia narrowed her eyes at him, trying to figure out if he was joking or not. It was hard to tell sometimes, with Rossi.
Hotch broke his “what about the kids” look with JJ to glare at Rossi. “Really, Dave?” he deadpanned, but he couldn’t exactly hide a spark of hope from his tone. It had been a long case in a series of long cases in a long year in a long life of long years. And anyway, Jack really liked goats.
“Do you even know how to farm?” reasoned Reid. “Do any of us know how to farm?” He looked around the table and was met with shrugs. Rossi sipped his scotch and dropped the subject.
***
No one brought it up again for months, though they didn’t go over to Rossi’s again during that time either. JJ had all but forgotten about it until she was back from maternity leave with Grace and came upon Reid scanning a book on goat husbandry.
“Hey Spence! Are you… are you thinking of buying goats?”
Reid looked up from the book startled, then back down as though he could hide it from her.
“Wait, Spence, is this about Rossi’s idea? Did you think that was serious?” JJ sat on the corner of Reid’s desk, blocking his immediate escape route and trying to look him in the eye.
“Well, I did have an inheritance from one of my uncles, just collecting interest. I was going to use it for Henry’s college fund, but with what I’ve won at casinos in the past five years, that will probably be enough to cover it. And since you’re really the only one who didn’t grow up in a city or at least a suburb then someone should really learn how to-”
“Whoa, Spence, hold on, really? Are you serious? You didn’t really think he meant that, right? I mean, what about the team? What about this job? I thought you loved it!”
Reid smiled at JJ a little sadly. “I do. I did. I love the team, JJ. I love all of us. But I wouldn’t do this without us. I would still want us without the job. I realize that now.”
“Spence… I get it, I really do. Just. Even with all that… I don’t think Rossi really meant it. It’s a pipe dream. Just, don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, so to speak.”
Reid’s face lit up with a huge smile. “Don’t assume I don’t have chickens, JJ.”
***
Another long case in the same long year; Rossi found Hotch at his desk, head in his hands, as the team decompressed and fussed with immediate necessary paperwork before they could go home for the night.
“What’s up, Aaron?” Rossi asked, sitting in one of the chairs in front of the desk. Hotch looked at him grimly, giving Rossi a sad smile.
“I just heard from Jessica - she wants to move in with her partner. They’re still going to look after my father-in-law, but. As much as I know she wants to be a part of Jack’s life, I don’t want to hold her to that responsibility. She’s given up a lot of her life since Haley - left. I don’t know if I can do this without her.”
“Did she say she couldn’t watch Jack anymore?” Rossi asked pointedly.
“No, of course not. But I don’t want to keep taking from my family. Not with the ones I have left.”
Rossi sighed. “Aaron, look. You’re a great father. And you’ve never asked more of anyone than what they could give.”
Hotch looked up sharply at that, glaring darkly at Rossi. He rushed to clarify: “You never asked more than what anyone could give. You know that.” Rossi rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment. Well, there was no time like the present, in the end. “Come on. Let’s all go to my place, there’s something I want the team to see,” he said, getting up and taking the after action reports out of Hotch’s hands. “I’ll go get the others.”
It wasn’t difficult to convince everyone to go over to Rossi’s before heading home; as much as they were thrown together in stressful situations, sometimes the need to decompress together outweighed the need for solitude or the comforts of a normal home. Rossi insisted that they take the SUVs, nodding at Reid to drive the second one, despite Morgan’s protests. “He just probably thinks you’re more tired than I am,” Reid told him, entirely unconvincingly, as Morgan climbed into the passenger seat. They were mostly quiet on the drive, Garcia and JJ talking quietly about Henry and Grace in the back, until they had driven for a half hour and it became apparent that they weren’t, in fact, going to Rossi’s house.
“Where’re you taking us, pretty boy?” Morgan asked. The other SUV, with Rossi and Hotch, was still in front of them, but they’d left the city already.
“Rossi has a surprise for us, that he wanted us all to see,” Reid explained, turning suddenly off the main road onto a gravel drive, slowing behind the other car.
“What is this?” asked Garcia, leaning up between the seats as they passed through an electronic gate and continued on the gravel path. Reid parked the SUV next to Rossi’s further in.
Once everyone was out of the cars, looking confused or annoyed, Rossi smiled smugly and pressed a button on his phone, activating floodlights behind them. “Ta da! Home sweet home, BAU,” he said with poorly attempted sarcasm; he couldn’t stop smiling. Reid was next to him grinning fit to crack his face open. Behind them was an outpost of small cottages around a larger house, as well as a barn and a few outbuildings to the back. The beginnings of a vegetable garden appeared to the left, as well as the rustling of animals in a pen beyond them.
“Dave, what is this?” Hotch asked quietly, as if the rest of the team wasn’t about to ask the same thing.
“I told you. A farm. We could all live here. It’s mostly self-sustaining - solar and wind power and all that green mumbo-jumbo. Most of the plants haven’t really taken, but Reid’s absorbed a library of farming books, so between us all we can probably figure it out. We’re smart people, right?” He stuck his hands in his pockets, completely self-satisfied.
The team turned to Reid, who gave an innocent smile. “Reid?” Hotch said, with a confusion that sounded almost hurt.
“Hotch, I had all this money, from this inheritance, okay? And Rossi needed help with this. I guess he knew I’d agree with his idea - that maybe we just needed to be together more than we needed the job.” He shrugged and held up his hands in a “what do you want me to do” gesture.
Morgan blew a loud breath and put his hands on his head. “Damn.”
“Look, people,” Rossi intervened. “You don’t have to make any decisions now. The electricity is on, the houses are mostly done, why don’t we just take a look around, see what it’s like, okay? It’s late. There’s wine and frozen pizza. You don’t have to think past that yet.”
They went up to the main house, which contained a large living space on the first floor and a huge dining room table - a round table. The team sat around it, mostly in shock. Rossi sipped his wine, grinning paternally. Reid traced invisible patterns in the wood grain.
JJ broke the silence first. “So… this is for real? You really mean for us to all live here? How exactly will that work?”
“There are six other houses besides the main house - this is Rossi’s,” Reid explained hurriedly, in his element. “His idea, he gets the big house. But we can all eat together here, or have time to ourselves at our own places. There’s wi-fi, Garcia, and a gym out the back, and a guest house. Right now we only have chickens and goats and a donkey, and there’s a pond that’s stocked. There aren’t slaughterhouse facilities but I figure no one was really going to volunteer for that, but there is a cheese cave, and the garden is fairly extensive, so a lot of our fresh food will be taken care of. The town isn’t far away, so we could also sell our products there, assuming we have extra…” He trailed off, glancing at the stunned expressions around him.
“You really sure you wanna give up the BAU, kid?” Morgan asked quietly.
Reid looked at his hands on the table. “I might get some beehives. It’s what Sherlock Holmes did when he retired, too. Raise bees.”
Morgan groaned into his hands. “Guys, this is a lot.”
Rossi put his hands up, placating. “I know it’s a lot. You’ve seen it. Now you can think about it. That’s all I’m asking.”
“What about income? We can’t live all live on Reid’s goat cheese making skills alone. Especially with our families,” JJ said.
“It’s a start. We have money until we get settled. I’m writing another book, and so is Reid. We can do consulting work. The town would probably love some self-defense teachers. It’s not the same. But what I’m saying is, it could work.”
“We’ll all give it some thought,” Hotch said decisively, making eye contact with each of the team in turn, and tabling the topic for the evening. It had still, after all, been a long case.
***
After Reid and Rossi, Garcia was the first to move in to her cottage. She’d given Reid a list of necessities so her tech would be set up and arranged to her liking, and Rossi welcomed her with a celebratory WoW mission in the main house.
JJ was next, with Will and Henry and Grace. The farm reminded her of her childhood, and she liked the idea of the kids growing up being able to run around outside without the dangers of the city. They loved playing with the goats and chickens, and Rossi went to the local shelter and adopted five dogs that they trained to regularly trace the perimeter fence of the farm, and which made Henry ecstatic.
Reid went back later to adopt a cat to keep mice out of the barn, and then found a farmer who would sell them a goose for protection, along with the donkey that had been an early resident.
“A goose?” Hotch asked, as they were discussing the latest developments at the round table before Garcia presented a case.
“According to the ancient Romans, geese were kept to protect residences and temples, and even saved the city from being attacked and overrun by enemies, when they warned of intruders on the Capitoline Hill, at the Temple of Juno Moneta, which means Juno the -”
“We get it, kid,” Morgan said. “What about the donkey?”
“Oh, donkeys keep coyotes away from the goats.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
***
Morgan and Hotch gave in and moved to the farm around the same time; it was easier for someone - usually Will - to look after Jack, without Hotch having to worry about bothering Jessica. Morgan was convinced by Rossi offering him the house that needed the most work to complete still - Morgan took it on as a project.
When the last house was finished, they all left the BAU. It was harder than Reid thought it would have been, for all the doubts he’d had over the years. What helped, though, was that the people he actually most enjoyed spending his time with and working with were still going to be the ones he woke up tomorrow and saw on a daily basis.
It didn’t take long before Reid got Morgan and Rossi to convert one of the rooms in the main house into a library. They moved most of Reid’s books into it, as well as a large portion of everyone else’s too. There was a special climate controlled and locked section for all of Rossi’s expensive first editions. Morgan installed an exterior door and a big desk, and it became a local library for the town for a couple hours a day during the week. Reid insisted on being head librarian, so to speak, and didn’t really trust anyone else to manage the lending of the books - since most of them were actually his. It wasn’t long before several patrons had notes in their files that they were to pay fines up front and then get reimbursed when they returned books in a timely manner and unharmed.
Jack, Henry, and Grace went to the local school, but Reid and Garcia gave them separate lessons on the side in math, technology, and engineering. Rossi continued to be a best-selling author. Morgan taught some self-defense classes, but it ended up being mostly volunteer work; he found himself in demand as a fix-it man in town, not only on the farm. JJ and Will took up a lot of the farming duties, along with Reid, but, not really having had any experience, they weren’t making a huge surplus, and mostly just kept up with it to sustain what they could for their own use.
Hotch and Garcia did mostly consulting work - Garcia on computer programming and Hotch on legal cases - but that eventually devolved into Hotch mainly helping Reid with the beehives. It was meditative and dangerous in a completely absurd way. Hotch thought that the eccentricity of it suited Reid, and he liked being a part of it.
***
The townsfolk thought it was pretty weird. Of course. At the local farmer's market, Reid overheard the woman who always sold really good homemade pies whispering to someone he didn't recognize about "those crazy commune folk" as she blatantly shot glances at him.
"What is it?" asked Hotch, returning from the car to sit with Reid at their little table, selling honey and cheese - which were the only products they could consistently make with any sort of success.
"Still no intra-team profiling. We had a rule." Reid muttered, fiddling with their display.
"Reid, if you think it takes a profiler to know when you're upset, I have some bad news for you." That got a smile.
"It's weird, our farm. People think we're strange."
Hotch sighed. "Reid, we are strange. We're a group of coworkers who all quit our jobs to live together on a farm. I took my son out of school so he could be taught set theory at age 10 by a genius who also names our goats after characters from The Canterbury Tales."
"Not all the goats."
"Not all of them. The point is, it's not traditional. It's not normal. But look at us. When have we ever been normal?"
Reid gave Hotch a confused look. "You were. You were the epitome of traditionally normal."
"I was," Hotch conceded, staring at his hands a moment before looking back at Reid. "I was and I had a good life. But I don't have that life anymore. And what I loved about it wasn't the fact that it was normal. And what I have now I love for the same reason."
Reid twisted his mouth, trying to follow the logic. Hotch intervened before he could get out the obvious question.
"What you have to ask yourself is, if people think we're strange, do you care?"
At that moment a young family came up to their table, asking about the goat cheese, and Reid was off on an explanation of the process from the birth of the goat to the moment that the mother paid him for the cheese. He looked back at Hotch, grinning.
"You're right. I don't."
***
In the summer, Alex and James came to visit from Boston, staying in the guest house. Sometimes Kate, Chris, Meg, and the new baby would stay for a week or so, as well. It was a while before they could get Emily to come back over from England, but she was able to stay for a month when she finally got away.
They were sitting outside around the fire pit under the stars, drinking wine and toasting marshmallows long after the kids had gone to bed.
“So this is really a thing you’re all doing, huh?” Emily said, again, for about the fifth time since she’d arrived.
“It is really a thing we are doing,” answered Rossi.
“Don’t you miss it? The BAU? Profiling? Catching the bad guys?”
Garcia shrugged. “I don’t miss the gross pictures.”
“I don’t miss it the way I thought I would,” Hotch admitted, smiling (smiling!).
“We keep pretty busy here,” Morgan added.
“There’s room for another house,” JJ said, smirking. “Just saying.”
***
“What about you, Reid,” Emily asked later, when it was just the two of them waiting for the fire to burn out so they could go to bed.
“What about me?”
“I remember you had concerns, about what you were doing with your life. If you’d let yourself down with your choices. If you hadn’t done enough.”
“I remember.”
“Well? Do you think this is the best choice? Running a library? Home-schooling three kids? Raising bees?”
“And goats. Don’t forget the goats. I named one Sergio.”
“Right. And the goats. Do you really feel you’re making the right choice? I mean, with your intelligence, you can do whatever you want with your life.”
“I know, Emily. I guess it never occurred to anyone measuring my - ” Reid made sarcastic air quotes, “- ‘vast potential’ that maybe, with all my intelligence, I just wanted to be happy.”
Emily smiled. “Okay, Dr. Reid. So, are you happy?"
“Yes. Yes I am.”
***
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama
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