"World domination? This is what you think about on plane rides when you forget to bring a book?”

Some people were born oracles. Some were trained to be oracles. Others made a good attempt but never obtained the status. Those without the gift of sight, or without the skill to read the signs and speak to the truth, they remained at the Temple of Knowledge as aides in service to those who were true oracles, or cared for the tomes and scrolls.

This boy was a true oracle. He had been from a very tender age, so young that he himself could not remember a time before. He had vague memories of a woman he knew was his mother, even mistier and more fragile memories of a man who must have been his father. He did not know where they were now, even if they were still alive. He could not remember his real name. He did not remember where he was from, only that it had been dry and sandy and arid, so he assumed it must have been one of the desert regions within the Roman Empire.

The priests of the Temple of Knowledge learned of him, and came for him, and bore him away as was their right by law. A talented gift such as his should not be wasted. He could not be left to live and die in obscurity. He was brought to Rome, where those who needed his answers, great minds and lesser minds alike, could come and question him as needed.

Senators, consuls, ambassadors, soldiers, and ordinary men and women came to the Temple of Knowledge for answers, either to read the books therein or to consult the oracles. Nearly everyone came once. Some came more often. Others came every day, sought out a favorite oracle, lived and died by the advice on questions fabulous and mundane.

Answers flowed from the oracles in exchange for their favored method of payment. Oracles manifested their gifts in various ways. Some could answer questions when they consumed certain foods, or certain wines, or burned certain types of spices or incense. Some needed to fast to go into a meditative trance. Gold – the coin of every realm – could be a great motivator. Offerings of silk and furs were used as payment as well. This particular young oracle’s gift manifested itself when he felt great happiness or great pain. Any supplicant who wanted answers from him had to make him feel great emotion. This marked him as a special type of talent which had to be trained and honed as he blossomed past innocent youth and ripened into true maturity.

The priests who had first sought him out as a child learned that tales and fables and fantastical epic sagas were his greatest source of happiness. Therefore while he was a child, in between questions from supplicants, he was allowed to wander where he pleased and fill his mind from the supply of scrolls and texts and tomes around the Temple of Knowledge. He was tutored in many diverse subjects by the greatest minds, and surpassed almost all of them. In short, he was so voracious that he exhausted the temple’s vast resources both written and oral. When he had read and listened and could recite from memory the knowledge of the temple, he was then allowed to venture around the City of Rome, to taste other libraries and private collections of books, and to explore the city itself. Rome proved an interesting tutor in its own right.

When he was deemed to be of an appropriate age, the priests began his training in other methods of feeling great pleasure or great pain, that is to say, he was trained in the art of making love. Any great philosopher will tell you love is the greatest source of either happiness or despair. Some might have called the practice of exchanging sex for divine truth “prostitution for the sake of religion”, but that simple analogy failed to take into account that it was the oracle who received the pleasure and the supplicant who drew wealth, or peace of mind, or invaluable knowledge from the transaction, a complete reversal of the usual exchange between those who sold sex and those paid for it. There were others who might have argued that equating the act of love with the emotion of love was a mistake, but for some, there is no way to separate the two halves of the whole.

The priests of knowledge learned that when properly motivated or rewarded in this new manner, with acts of love, the young man’s accuracy as an oracle grew ten-fold. It was never revealed how they exactly they learned this, but for several weeks, there was an undeniable spring to the step of one Master Gideon, the young oracle’s main tutor. The priests congratulated themselves on this miracle, for they knew what his abilities were worth. They knew having such an oracle could bring great acclaim and wealth to the temple.

As a precaution, it was decided that the young man should no longer be allowed to wander the streets of Rome unescorted. Even if he had not been a great oracle, it was becoming harder with each passing day to disguise how alluring the young man was becoming as he matured. The Thirteenth Legion had threatened to kidnap and hold him as a lucky talisman, not a threat one took lightly. The priests tried to hide his masculine beauty in ill-fitting togas and bad haircuts, but it simply didn’t work. That kind of radiant gorgeousness found a way through all such disguises. If the young oracle should leave the protected walled gardens and buildings of the temple, he was to be accompanied by at least two, hopefully three, even four soldiers at a time. It took months to assemble a suitable team of protectors.

The young oracle took a very dim view of being held prisoner because of his abilities, and simply would not believe the priests when they mentioned the alluring beauty concern. The oracle might have considered hiding some fraction of that talent, but when in the sacred trance, he could only speak the truth, and there was no hiding the vast amount of knowledge that his mind held. At least he could still see supplicants, though he had not failed to notice that the status and the income of his supplicants was rising. His clientele was becoming almost exclusively wealthy citizens, powerful men and women, philosophers and intellectuals, and high ranking soldiers.

His cadre of protectors was always made up of high-ranking soldiers. He grew to be fond of some of them because they were drawn from all corners of the Empire itself—Rome, Gaul, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hispania, Germania, and even one from the Northern Isles past Britannia. He could spend hours with them, asking them questions about themselves, absorbing their tales of far-away homes and lost families.

One soldier in particular, Aaron, was in command of the group that protected the oracle, and he always paid special attention to the young man, probably because Aaron had visited him as a supplicant and knew what a powerful oracle he was. Aaron came to see the oracle every single day whenever he was in Rome, even if he wasn’t on duty. Once Aaron had come to see the oracle twice in the same day, even though he was supposed to be finding a villa ahead of his impending marriage. When he came to visit the oracle as a supplicant, Aaron took his sweet, delicious time bringing answers from the oracle. Questions about his expected change in marital status had occupied his thoughts recently.

“Why does my wife nag at me when I come home? Why is she never happy with me? I gave her a villa. I gave her my name. I am trying to give her a son. How long do I have to keep fucking her before she’s going to get pregnant? I give her whatever she wants—silk and jewels and slaves and precious things. But she is never happy with me. Why is she never happy with me?”

It seemed to the oracle that these were rhetorical questions, angry ones at that, and the truest answers were not manifesting themselves fast enough to make Aaron happy. The oracle was positively exhausted beneath Aaron by the time the soldier had worn his way through this litany of complaints about his unhappy state of matrimony. The emotional stress of Aaron’s state of agitation did not prevent him from noticing how ragged and worn the oracle was by the time the questioning stage was finished.

The young man heaved for breath, and lay in a sweat-drenched heap on his settee. When he opened his eyes and gazed upward, Aaron was regarding him with concern in his penetrating dark eyes.

The young man moaned hoarsely, and touched Aaron on the shoulder in a familiar fashion. He gave a shiver and a whisper of a laugh as he attempted to compose himself.

“It’s beyond me how any woman could be unhappy with you in her bed,” the oracle answered, the heartfelt words tumbling from unwise lips. The trance was on him, and he could only speak the truth. The startled soldier gave the oracle a curious look as he processed the answer. Slowly, Aaron’s brooding face transformed itself with a handsome smile.

He didn’t need a verbal answer. He had only to look upon the glowing face of the oracle as the young man sat up, pulled a silken robe around his nakedness, and took a sip of wine from a goblet resting on a small table. Aaron gave the oracle a strange look. He reached over and pulled the silken robe open. He took the goblet of wine for a moment to sip from it, and then he gave the goblet back. He moved close enough to the oracle to study his eyes and the truths that might be there. He was making the oracle tremble, not with fear but with another emotion, unnamed, unguarded, unfamiliar to the young man in spite of all his years of training.

“Perhaps if I tried harder, I could also please my wife,” Aaron decided. “May I return tomorrow with another question?”

“Yes, please,” the oracle replied, unable to stop watching Aaron as he dressed in his golden uniform, draped the blood red cape around his shoulders, and departed once more.

Once Aaron had gone, the cadre of soldiers guarding the oracle that day peered silently back into his private quarters, called an “alcove” though it was comprised of a pair of suites with windows and a balcony. The oracle noted their curious eyes, and the teasing smiles which wreathed their faces. He shooed them away with annoyance, throwing a golden sandal in their general direction.

The oracle took himself to have a bath in preparation for the evening, which might bring another supplicant or might not. He shared the communal bathing pool with a sister oracle who arrived at her answers in the same fashion that he arrived at his. She was a plump, beautiful woman with long hair dyed a gorgeous henna red. She lazed about on a carved niche in the marble pool. When she saw him, she watched him with knowing eyes. She pushed her hair back, took a drink of wine, and popped a grape or two from a nearby bowl into her wide red mouth.

She patted the carved niche next to hers. He swam across the heated waters towards her, and nestled into the space with his tiny thin butt. He felt so small next to her, like a child, although he was well into his twenties.

“Brother, you may not have heard yourself, for you were deep in the trance, but he made you invoke several higher powers.”

“He was troubled. He seems unable to give his wife a child. She’s unhappy with him.”

“If I might offer a smidgen of insight?” she purred, pinching her finger and thumb together.

“Of course, sister. You have many more years of experience at this than I have. I would welcome your insight.”

“He would stand a better chance of getting his wife with-child if he wasn’t here every day, filling you with his seed.”

The younger oracle gasped loudly in surprise, and turned a color not unlike the blood red cloak of his favorite supplicant.

“I don’t mean to offend you. I speak only the truth, ” the sister oracle added, taking another drink of wine and offering him a few grapes.

“Reid? Did you hear me?” Garcia repeated. “Wow, when you go to a happy place, you lock the door pretty tight, don’t you?”

“The DNA results? Do you have them? Quit staring at Hotch’s butt and give me the damn folder.”

Reid shuffled the folders in his hands and gave her the one she wanted, sinking down further in his chair in embarrassment as Hotch sent a questioning look towards the both of them. He was clear across the nearly-deserted office, talking with Morgan. Had Aaron heard what Garcia had said?

“Sorry I snapped at you, woobie,” Penelope added, caressing Reid’s hair with long nails and finger tips.

“I wasn’t staring at Hotch’s butt,” Spencer whispered hotly, letting Garcia smooth his hair much the same way a dangerous tiger lets the circus trainer poke him with the whip until that last and final time when the tiger has had enough of the trainer’s shit, and it explodes off its haunches, seizes the trainer with its savage claws, and sinks razor sharp teeth into his tender, delicious throat. Reid was pondering how much blood would be involved in such a tiger strike, and how long before the trainer would bleed out around himself into the sand on the arena floor.

“Of course you weren’t, sweetie,” Garcia tittered happily, smacking him on the head with the folder before strutting away.

The oracle looked forward to Aaron’s visits perhaps more than he should, finding his company most agreeable even when he wasn’t a supplicant at the temple. The oracle especially enjoyed Aaron’s morose and grim company when he and his fellow soldiers followed the young man around the city, when the oracle would visit noble citizens and lose himself for hours inside their personal libraries. Whenever he roamed the city in the company of his cadre of protectors, they never failed to bring the notice of onlookers. It was rumored the oracle was of royal blood, rumored he was the son of a wealthy senator, rumored he was a great sorcerer from the Northern Isles, rumored he was the spawn of Hades who would bring about the downfall of Rome. None of these were true.

There had been more than one attempt to abduct the young oracle (not just by the Thirteenth Legion), for his reputation was growing, and there were those who knew how much they might profit from the young man’s gifts. His cadre went from four to six, then to eight. He felt smothered by the protection and chaffed under it.

He had been taken captive not long ago when he and a sister oracle had slipped away from the temple to explore the city on their own, as he once had been allowed to do. His sister oracle had been returned relatively-unharmed, but he had spent two days at the mercy of a sadistic and deranged madman who had seen the oracle as a divine messenger capable of releasing him from his mortal woes. The oracle was questioned endlessly. When pleasure failed to produce the desired answers, the madman had resorted to pain—so much pain that the mere mention of him made the oracle shiver with fright.

If Aaron had not located and recovered the oracle in the nick of time, driving his knife blade through the bearded savage and rendering him both mortal and immortal in one strike, the oracle would surely have died. Aaron had personally carried the oracle back to the temple, and had stayed by his side as he recovered from his injuries. “Wife be damned,” Aaron had muttered when his brother-soldiers reminded of his familial duties.

As it was, the experience had left its mark on the oracle. Where once he chaffed against being held prisoner in the temple and being followed everywhere by his cadre of protectors, now he feared to be alone or to step beyond the sacred and protective temple walls.

When the details of his captivity were reported to Master Gideon, they were then discussed among the other, elder priests at the Temple of Knowledge. The young oracle feared he would be denied the privilege of meeting with supplicants and hearing their questions. All he had ever wanted was to feel useful. To have that simple pleasure taken away from him would be the final crushing blow. He was drawn down into a terrible depression which colored the tone of his world for many days.

The soldier Aaron and Master Gideon spent several visits talking privately in one of the walled gardens of the temple, sequestered in silence so that no one might overhear their conversations. This height of secrecy only drew the curiosity of the oracle, who planted himself above them in one of the tallest towers, where he might watch their conversations if not hear their exact words. Aaron was agitated and angry. Gideon was patient and slow, but insistent. Their moods confirmed the oracle’s fears—he would never again leave the temple or be allowed to visit with supplicants, in particular, the soldier Aaron. The despair that spread over the young man caused a deep rift in his heart, and made him decide to throw himself from his tall tower down onto the streets of Rome below.

The oracle was halfway up the waist-high stone wall at the very top of the tower, when a voice behind him drew his attention. He whirled around in surprise, and slid to the ground. He nestled his bottom back against the wall of stone, grateful for the coolness of the shadows as he brushed the tears from his tired eyes.

One of his cadre of soldier-protectors was behind him – the woman from Alexandria. She was called Discipula, which the oracle took to mean she was a type of apprentice. Her dark brown eyes and dark black, straight-cut, shoulder-length hair evoked memories of long-dead pharaoh queens. She carried her tall, thin frame in a very regal fashion, in spite of her unorthodox occupation as a soldier. She wore the same golden uniform and blood red cloak that Aaron wore, and being this close to those colors made the oracle happy and sad at once. She had never come to the oracle as a supplicant but always as one of his protectors. Maybe that made him trust her more quickly than the others. She approached the oracle now, bowed her head to him, and spoke.

She pushed his hair off his cheek, out of his face, bending sideways to look into his soul through his eyes.

“Is the oracle not well?” she asked, getting down on the stone floor with him, her boots scraping the rock, her metal armor catching the sunlight. She moved her sword and folded her legs, touching his knees with hers. “Are you not well, precious one?” she asked again, taking his hands into hers, stroking his fingers gently. Her motherly touch found a path down into his loneliness and sorrow which no one had found in many years. He could not answer her questions. His throat was too tight with unshed tears.

The oracle crawled into Discipula's arms, folded himself in her embrace, and remained there as she petted his hair and whispered soothing words to him. She wrapped him in her blood red cloak, and rocked his sorrows away.

“Perhaps that’s not the going rate for a genius,” Emily laughed quietly, digging around in her pocket. She produced a couple nickels and a quarter. “Here. Tell me what deep and life-altering thoughts are rolling around in that brain,” she requested, slipping 35¢ into his palm.

“Do you ever wonder what the world would have been like if the Roman Empire had never fallen?” he asked, making the change disappear one coin at a time.

“World domination? This is what you think about on plane rides when you forget to bring a book?” Prentiss mused, sitting down across from him and bumping knees as she rearranged her long legs to fit around and between his, crossing one leg over one knee.

Reid shrugged in a self-deprecating manner. He shifted back into his seat to allow her more leg room. Prentiss dropped her foot to the floor, and a shower of pennies fell down from her pant leg into her shoe and all across the carpeted floor. Reid gave a wide grin and bent to help Prentiss pick up her change.

“How the hell do you do that?” she wondered, chucking pennies at him one coin at a time in rapid fire series. One slid down his shirt, and he winced, curling up, knees clenched, arms folded protectively across himself. Prentiss got two more down his collar, and then started to tickle him with one hand and sprinkle change into his clothes with the other. Reid writhed around, cackling and yelping as cold metal slid against bare skin and pointed fingers gouged his ribs and arm pits mercilessly. As Reid’s giggles rose into helpless, uncontainable screams, Hotch stirred in his seat behind them. He was not happy to be roused from slumber.

“Shut up. Now. Don’t make me pull this plane over,” Hotch murmured sleepily, reaching a hand back and raking over Reid’s face, clasping Reid’s ear, then his chin, then his hair.

Prentiss continued her onslaught for a moment longer before rising from her chair and slinking quickly away. Hotch’s hand retracted when Reid fell quiet again. Spencer panted for breath, and he unbuttoned his shirt to chase the pennies Prentiss had stashed there. There was no one else down at his end of the plane so he didn’t think twice about undressing halfway while in public.

“You okay?” Hotch murmured, his voice close enough to Reid’s ear that Spencer knew Aaron was on his knees, leaning over the seat from behind him.

Aaron reached down and helped Reid pick pennies off of his waistline and from his sides. When Reid tugged his shirt tails free of his belted pants, several pennies dropped into his seat. Not thinking first, Aaron let his left hand follow the pennies under and around Reid’s lap and backside, even down between his legs.

“Lift your butt,” Hotch ordered, and Reid obeyed without question. He planted his feet on the floor and leaned back into Hotch, catching his breath a time or two, as the rising movement had put him in the crook between Hotch’s neck and shoulder. Reid was inhaling the hint of cologne and feeling the delicious bristle of Aaron’s short dark hair. He could feel Hotch breathing against the side of his neck and down across his chest. Hotch’s broad right arm caught Reid around the chest, locked around his ribs, held him aloft as the young man squirmed. Arm hairs tickled Reid’s bare skin as the intruding left hand searched around under his backside for more coinage.

“Put it away, sit still, and be quiet. Or else,” Hotch warned, stuffing the change back into Reid’s left pants pocket. The right arm released him, withdrew with a teasing slither across Reid’s bare skin. Reid blinked and bit his mouth closed, eyes wide as half dollars. He tried to remember how to breathe as he buttoned his shirt closed once more. His phone vibrated, and he jumped in surprise. It was Prentiss.

‘You’re welcome, and thank you,’ the screen read. The message had included several >=) (wicked smile emoticons).

Reid turned around carefully, stretching to get the top of his head and both eyes above the back of the seat. He leaned to his right to see past the back of Hotch’s head. Emily was at the other end of the plane, grinning broadly at Spencer as he deciphered her message. ‘You’re welcome’ was for the unexpected gift of Hotch’s hands groping all over Reid’s half-bare form. ‘Thank you’? That was easy to discern too. From Emily’s seat, her view of Hotch on his knees in his seat, roughly man-handling Reid—it could not have been more perfect. It must have been quite a sight, Hotch’s fine, muscular ass in the air like that as Reid squirmed around helpless in his grip. Reid glared at Prentiss, and gave a bitchy little growl.

Hotch woke up again, opened his eyes, looked to his right, and narrowed a dangerous gaze at Reid.

Reid squeaked in fright, turned around, sat down, and balled up in his seat. “Good boy,” Hotch added, reaching up and back to pat the top of Reid’s head.

Aaron returned the next day to visit with the oracle, and he brought a treat with him—several sweet and priceless pears. He joined the oracle on the settee, where he peeled and sliced the ripe fruits one at a time, using his knife blade to feed the oracle each bite gently hand to mouth. When the fruit was gone and Aaron was finished, he tasted the echo of sweetness and pulp in each kiss he touched to the oracle’s waiting mouth. Aaron peeled silken robes off the oracle using the same knife and the same delicate, careful touch he had used to peel the fruit. He ran juicy, sticky hands all over the oracle’s body, devouring him with kisses and licks as if he too was an exotic sweet. Aaron tossed questions at the oracle as he pleasured him – easy questions.

“Do you like that?”

Emphatically yes.

“Do you like this?”

Yes, again.

“May I touch you here?”

“Is this all right?”

“Do you want more?”

Aaron lay back against the settee and pulled the oracle onto his lap, sliding inside him, holding his hips and rocking him up and down at a fast, steady pace that filled the oracle with such immense pleasure he could have answered every riddle in the known world had it been presented at that time.

When the oracle recovered himself, Aaron stretched the younger man out on his hands and knees on the cold stone floor and rode him again, pillowing his face in the blood red cloak until even that fine, thick material could not hope to contain the oracle’s cries of pleasure.

Aaron monopolized the oracle for so many hours that Master Gideon came to his alcove to make sure the young man was not harmed. By that time, the oracle was nearly asleep in Aaron’s arms, wrapped up like a child under the blood red cloak. It wasn’t unheard of for a supplicant to harm an oracle if the answer received did not or could not make the supplicant happy. The master was being cautious, not nosy. After what had happened recently to the oracle, Master Gideon was being protective in his own way.

The oracle felt Master Gideon’s eyes on himself and Aaron as they lay whispering together on the settee. Aaron felt the eyes and knew it was time to leave. He picked up a rough cloth and dipped it in a water bowl. Aaron used the damp cloth to wash the oracle’s face, removing all traces of fruit and such from his boyish features. With Master Gideon still watching, Aaron bathed the oracle’s hands as well. When Aaron made as if to wash the oracle from head to toe, Master Gideon decided it was time to intervene.

"Time to go, I'm afraid."

“I wish to take the oracle into the city tomorrow,” Aaron said as he dressed. Master Gideon watched the soldier with wise and knowing eyes.

“I regret it has become too unsafe for him to travel into the city.”

“I will protect him,” Aaron promised.

“I do not think it is wise to tempt the gods this way, or the Thirteenth Legion for that matter,” Master Gideon responded. The oracle blushed and stared down at his bare feet.

“I will return tomorrow,” Aaron promised, reaching down and stroking the oracle’s cheek. The young man watched Aaron leave, and then settled his fawn-like gaze on the serious concern in Master Gideon’s eyes.

* * *

“Reid?”

Reid jolted back to reality to see Gideon was frowning at him. Spencer stopped watching Hotch across the plane, where Aaron was devouring a ripe pear, hand dripping with sweet juices.

“You were lost in thought, a treacherous place for you.” Jason attempted to smile away his annoyance. “It’s your move, but as it stands, it’s easy to see your mind is elsewhere, and I feel like I’m taking advantage of you with this game. Why don’t we stow the board?”

Reid did as he was instructed, putting away the black and white pieces as he always did, starting with the pawns and ending with the highest pieces of all. He nestled the queens into their resting places, not missing the way Gideon was studying him. Jason patted the seat to his right, and Spencer bounced across the space, nestling into the seat, pulling his knees up to his chest, hugging his ankles. Gideon crossed his arms around his own middle, linked his fingers together, and studied the young agent’s unconscious body language.

“This case was hard on you,” Gideon decided. Reid shrugged and did not offer a verbal answer. The case hadn’t been hard. It had been gory, vengeful, and soul-crushing. There were no answers that would suffice when it came to understanding why a man would slit the throats of his four children and then of his wife, and then open his own veins into the kitchen sink over the dirty breakfast dishes. There were no answers at all. The BAU team hadn’t come as profilers—they had arrived like angels of death on the wings of scarab beetles.

Gideon put an arm across the seat and gently pushed Reid’s knees down.

“Stretch out and sleep. It’ll be a long flight back. You sleep all bunched up like that, and you’ll be stiff when we get there.”

Jason unfolded a blanket and covered Spencer with it, waiting until he was sure Reid was asleep before he gingerly put an arm around the young man and pushed his hair out of his eyes. Reid was totally unaware he was sleeping on Gideon’s shoulder. Hotch came back from washing his hands and walked past the two of them, giving Gideon a faint smirk. Gideon bristled at the silent accusation in Hotch's look. Aaron paused at the overhead bin, giving Jason two pillows and another blanket. Hotch moved back to his own seat far away. Gideon could feel those dark eyes on him though, watching him.