For Eric,

Much love.

Part I

There are moments in life when you can see it coming—the train is barreling down the tracks towards you. It can't be missed. It's there. It's large and you would have to be blind to miss it.

This moment was not one of these. This moment was a cold smack in the face that seemingly had come from nowhere. It had come from nowhere—it had come from wherever she had come from. Out of the blue. Right off the streets and into this library. Of all places, this library. The feeling had followed her in, walked right up to the young man and smacked him in the face. And now, cheeks red and eyes wide with disbelief, he was staring across the room at the girl.

He didn't believe in love—not of the fairytale kind that so many people did these days. Soul mates. Destiny. One true love. With all the hate he had seen in the world, it was a wonder he believed in love at all. He trusted in his team mates and believed in loyalty and the power that understanding and devotion had. But he had no real use or time for delicate, sweet love that poets filled their books with. Shakespeare was the worst of them all. But Keats was up there too. The great English Romantic writers who believed in nature and youth above intelligence and industry. Or the Bohemians who had no time for reason though they masked that idea by spouting about their need for truth. All had their ideas and all believed in love. Something that connected two people across continents and time eras and language barriers. It was improbable. People could love and people could learn to love but anything beyond basic human interaction and comradely was a fool's need for acceptance and complete approval—the dupe's way of surviving the treachery of life rather than developing a skill to set one apart.

No. He didn't believe in love. But this girl was…something. Something else. Something different. Something beautiful.

She couldn't be much younger than him. Perhaps she was the same age, perhaps older. For all his knowledge the young man had never been good at guessing age. She was standing on her tiptoes up against one of the rows of books, attempting to reach something just a hair out of her reach. Huffing she sighed and walked a measure away before she found stool, dragged it back to her original location and was finally able to retrieve her book. A large one. Old. Yellow pages the young man could see. Most likely records as she was standing in that area.

He watched her gingerly walk across the floor, find a chair and sit to read. Instantly she was gone—lost in a world of names and stories that the book held and unwilling (or unable) to be bothered by anything else. It appeared the young woman's face was legitimately plastered inside the book—nose to page and all. He laughed, thinking of himself.

At point she moved the book out of the way for him to see her expression and it was always different. There was nothing stoic about her when she read. When something intriguing happened, she gasped. When something entertaining happened, she smiled broadly. At time she even laughed and he was left wondering what in a big book of records could be funny.

Perhaps it was that question or the other ones brimming on the tip of his tongue that made him stand. He was halfway towards her before he realized he had stood at all. Pausing for a second to regret this decision he was just about to turn away and make a B-line for the door when she laughed again. It was sweet and calm—a quiet giggle as if she knew how one was to laugh in a library. Nothing too big or outlandish—just a chuckle to release the tension. There was no sadness in the laugh. To her it was a moment of complete and utter happiness.

With that laugh the siren called again and he couldn't stop moving. Not until he was standing before her chair, and looking down at her. The one probably now was that the tongue that had once been so thick with questions was suddenly dry and flat—useless. He stammered for a second, fortunately unable to attract her away from her reading. At last he formed a few words and managed to spit them out,

"Good book?"

The spell of the book was broken and she looked up. Brown eyes. Deep brown. To his great amazement she wasn't frowning despite having been stolen away from her reading.

"Very good," she said. She was British he realized. From the Liverpool area guessing by how she used her R's. He had no idea how or why he knew that but such information (practical or not) was always on his brain.

"I'm new to the area," she continued, "and just reading up on what's what around here."

A rather long, awkward silence went by as he mulled over what to do with that sentence. But she didn't stop smiling. After a grand while he finally said, "Well…uh…welcome…let me be the first to welcome you to the D.C. area."

She smiled brighter now—bigger and bolder with those brown eyes.

She held out her hand to him, "Well, thank you. My name is Hermione."

Without thinking he took her hand in his—sweaty palmed and all, "Hi. I'm Spencer. Spencer Reid."

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