Disclaimer: Hi guys. Bye guys.
Author's Note: A bitty two-shot occurring to me on my way from Marrakesh to my hotel when I went on a holiday in Morocco. I don't know what to say about it, but I think it's kinda sweet, so - you know - read on and be happy? Love youse.
"This is an intervention."
"An intervention of what?"
"You've isolated yourself for far too long, Spence, enough is enough."
"I've been working on my thesis, you guys know that."
"And now you've finished it we thought it was time for you to come out."
"So we're taking you on a vacation."
"A vacation?"
"Yes. Em and I found a nice, reasonably priced place in California."
"So we're going to spend all day at the beach, you, JJ, Henry, and I."
"And there's no discussion. We already paid for the tickets and there aren't refundable."
"... Fine. But I want to pay for my own expenses, I'm not a charity case."
"Yeah, sure."
"Whatever."
-o-
"MOMO! Guess what!"
"WHAT MAMA?"
"It's time for our first ever bi-annual vacay! BEACH TIME BONANZA!"
"Our what, mama?"
"We're going on a holiday, sweet-cheeks! A whole week of the two of us lying on the beach and getting tanned and playing in the sea. Yay?"
"YAY!"
"Yay. And please don't scream honey, Daddy's trying to sleep upstairs."
"Is he coming too?"
"Of course, he is. Silly child. And guess what?"
"What?"
"Dee's coming too."
"YAY!"
"What did I say about screaming?"
-o-
"Does anybody else feel the need to visit the restrooms?" Emily pushed her giant sunglasses up onto her forehead and gave the two other grown-ups an inquiring look. Henry was busy digging a river around his sand castle.
"Yeah, I guess I wouldn't mind," Spencer admitted. He rose and turned his attention elsewhere, courteously, while Emily gave JJ a quick peck on the lips and followed him up. She wrapped her sarong around her hips and they walked towards the small building containing the bathrooms further back the beach.
"Regretting coming yet?" Emily asked lightly and gave Spencer a teasing smile.
"We only just came here," he objected. "But I wouldn't rule the possibility out – your girlfriend wouldn't let me bring any of my new books. Or any of the reports I printed out, exclusively to read during the flight and sunbathing."
He ignored Emily, when she chuckled at his obvious disgust with the phenomenon.
"It can't be that bad, sunbathing."
"Do I need to explain to you the statistics concerning skin cancer?" he asked, his voice flat and slightly cold.
"Calm down, Spencer. You're wearing factor 50. If you'll ever get the slightest bit of color I'll be surprised. And should you end up getting skin cancer from this, I'll happily pay for your treatment, that's a promise."
"You don't seem to get how serious a subject cancer is-"
"And you don't seem to know how to relax and chill. I'm going to pee, and when I come back outside I expect you to not speak about fatal diseases, alright?" She disappeared through the door with the big L on and Spencer narrowed her eyes slightly after her.
He actually really liked her.
He smiled awkwardly to the small girl sitting between the toilet doors, who looked up tentatively when he passed her.
If he was to be completely honest he was enjoying himself a bit. It was somewhat nice to be outside of his apartment and JJ and Emily was good company. Plus Henry was an intelligent kid and made Spencer feel less awkward than practically every other kid he had ever had the misfortune to get acquainted with.
He exited after taking care of business and outside let his gaze wander over the forest of beach umbrellas in colorful patterns and to the sky where the sun was beating down relentlessly. The girl was still sitting in the same spot as when Spencer had entered the bathroom, her gaze steadily wandering back and forth over the swarm of umbrellas.
"All done," Emily said and exited the other bathroom with a sunny smile."No more diseases?"
"You were pretty quick," he commented and they started walking back.
"Well, I was the only one in there, so it wasn't as if I had to queue as we women usually do. It's not that we are that slow at the actual act, but the slight difference in speed accumulates queues a lot faster then you males. Besides, I've always been a fast-"
"You were the only one in there?" He halted abruptly. Emily stopped too and turned slightly to look at Spencer with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah, why?"
"I was the only one in the Gents' too."
"So? That's not unusual is it?" She put her hands on her hips.
"No, but that young girl sitting outside."
"Oh. She wasn't waiting for someone in the restroom. Do you think she's lost?" Her eyes widened with realization and worry. Spencer pulled his bottom lip between his teeth.
"I'm not sure. Do you think we should go back and ask?"
Emily walked past him towards the restrooms without replying and Spencer hurried after her.
"Hey sweetie," she said and sunk to her knees in front of the girl who looked at her warily. "Are you alright?"
"My mama says I'm not to talk to strangers," the girl informed Emily and gazed between her and Spencer.
"That's very wise of her," Emily said and looked thoughtful.
"I might help if we introduced ourselves then?" Spencer suggested and looked at the girl. "My name is Dr. Spencer Reid, I'm twenty-nine years old and I live in Washington DC where I work as a professor at the George Washington University. This is Emily Prentiss, she's a bit older than me but threatens to hurt me if I ever tell anyone how much. She lives fifteen minutes away from me in DC and she's actually a FBI agent."
"Really?" the girl asked with wide eyes and Emily nodded. "I'm Madelaine Lynch, but everyone calls me Momo. I'm seven years old. I live in Chicago with my mama and daddy."
"Are you lost Momo?" Spencer asked and the girl nodded miserably. "Do you need help to find them?"
"Yes please," she said and looked up at him with a pleading look.
"Alright," Emily said determined and smiled. "Did your parents tell you to go to the bathroom if you got lost?"
"Mama did," Momo said and nodded.
"It's probably one of the other ones," Spencer said and crouched next to Emily. "Do you know what direction your parents are?"
"I'm not sure," Momo said and looked down.
"We split up?" Emily asked and looked questioningly at Spencer.
"That's probably wisest. You go North and I'll go South?"
"If you take Momo I'll swing by JJ and Henry and tell them where we've gone. Do you have your cell phone?" She rosed and brushed the sand off her knees.
Spencer rose too and patted the pocket in his kaki shorts. "I hate that conception but I always carry it on my person."
"You don't by any chance remember your mama's or daddy's cell phone number, do you Momo?" Emily asked and nodded resigned when Momo regretfully shook her head. "Okay then, will you be alright walking with Spencer?"
Momo nodded.
"We'll be fine," Spencer assured his friend, sounding a lot less sure than he actually felt. He felt immensely proud that the girl hadn't burst out crying or anything yet, and was secretly terrified of the idea of being alone with her.
"I'll see you later, call if you find anything."
"Will do," Spencer said and watched Emily hurry back towards JJ and Henry. "Okay then, Momo, shall we start?" The girl nodded and climbed stiffly to her feet. "How long have you been sitting there?" he asked with a frown.
"I don't know," she replied and took a few stumbling steps. "A long time I think."
"Do you think," Spencer said and bit his lip in thought. "If you were seated on my shoulders I think you'll be able to see further, don't you?" The bright smile he received in reply made him feel warm inside in a way only Henry and sometimes JJ had managed in the past. "Alright then, let's try that shall we?"
It wasn't easy, positioning a seven year old on his shoulders and then standing back up, but Spencer managed after a few seconds of swaying to regain his balance and taking two tentative steps forward.
"You're really tall," Momo said from above him.
"So I've been told," he said back without really knowing why, but her chuckle made him smile. "And here we go."
Ha walked in silence for a while, feeling pretty sure that Momo was busy trying to catch sight of her parents from her higher vantage point.
"Did your parents bring an umbrella?" he asked when he realized he should probably make sure she hadn't gotten a heatstroke and fainted.
"Yes. It's red with yellow flowers on it," Momo replied and Spencer fell into silence, relaxed now he was sure he didn't walked around with an unconscious girl on his shoulders. "If you're a doctor shouldn't you be working in a hospital and not a University?" Momo then asked.
"No, because I'm not a medical doctor. You know, the kind you visit when you're ill?" He wasn't sure how to put it to a child, when he so often before had to explain to adults how he wasn't able to give them second opinions and prescriptions.
"There's other kinds of doctors?" Momo asked with a note of surprise and curiosity in her voice.
"There is. When you study something for a very long time and write papers and articles on the subject you can become a doctor too." To put it very simply.
"So you're really smart?"
"I'm actually really, really smart."
"Cool," Momo sighed and wrapped a pair of warm, small hands around Spencer's forehead, shadowing his eyes from the sun.
"Actually I once went to school here in California," Spencer said.
"You did? That's so cool! Did you go to the beach every day, I think I would. Unless if school was really fun."
"I hardly ever went to the beach, actually. I think I only went a time or two during the three years I went to Cal Tech when I think about it. Both times when my friend JJ came to visit."
"I have a friend call MJ back home. We used to play together all the time, but then he started pulling my pig tails so now I don't like him anymore." Spencer could feel how she relaxed more and more for every passing minute while he felt his shoulders tense up at about the same rate. He was very thankful that the restrooms came closer and closer.
"He probably does that because he likes you, boys does that when they're your age."
"That's stupid," Momo declared and Spencer had to agree with her.
"He just wants your attention."
"Then he should ask for it. It hurts when he pulls on my hair."
"I know the feeling," Spencer agreed and Momo pulled playfully on a lock of his hair.
"Does this hurt?" she asked and bowed forward to grin into his face. His right hand flew up from her leg to stabilize her.
"You didn't pull hard enough for it to hurt, but I think you already knew that." Her grin broadened.
"I did." She leaned back and Spencer moved his hand back to her leg.
"We're almost by the restrooms now, can you see anyone you know?" he asked and narrowed his eyes in the direction of the restrooms. These were apparently more used, as a queue had formed from the ladies'.
"I'm not sure," Momo said slowly.
"Does anyone look like someone you know then?" Spencer dreaded the thought of walking further or even just back to the others. His shoulder was close to cramping.
"I think that might – MAMA!" A big, blonde woman turned around at the call and then started sprinting towards the startled Spencer, who could only watch her, paralyzed, as she crossed the distance with a speed he could only dream of achieving.
And with an energy he could hardly remember having possessed himself at any time.
Momo kicked her legs and Spencer awkwardly slid the girl to the ground in front of him.
"MOMO!" the blonde woman cried and swooped the little girl up in what looked like a bone-crushing hug. "Where on Earth have you been?"
"I'm so sorry, Mama," Momo said and folded her arms tightly around her mother's neck. "I was playing and forgot to watch out for you and then I realized I could find you so I went to the bathroom as you said and you weren't there and I waited but you didn't come and then Doctor Spencer and Emily came and they said they'd help me."
Spencer remembered Emily and shot her a quick text to inform her that he had found Momo's family.
"I'm so sorry honey-plum," Momo's mother said quietly and put the girl back on the ground somewhat reluctantly. "And if you ever wander off again, I'm gonna buy you a leash."
"Sorry Mama," Momo said and looked at the ground with an air of embarrassment.
"And now you're going to borrow my phone and call you father and tell him to call off the coast guard." She handed the girl a cell phone, so pink and glittery Spencer had a hard time believing it was the mother's and not the daughter's.
"I will," Momo said and took a few steps away before pressing some buttons on the cell and putting it to her ear.
That was all Spencer saw before he felt the air leave his lungs with a surprised huff, as soft looking arms with surprising strength enveloped him and pressed.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," the women rambled, seemingly unable to stop.
"It was nothing, I'm sure anybody would have done the same," Spencer said, his cheeks heating because of the unfamiliarity of the situation.
"But you did, and knowing that you were a doctor – gosh, now I just feel silly with the way I was going worried sick." She let him go and beamed at him.
"I'm not really that kind of doctor," Spencer muttered.
"You have a doctorate?" she asked, looking pleasantly surprised. "You can hardly be more than twenty-five!"
"Actually I'm twenty-nine and I don't have a doctorate, I..." he took a deep breath, but something compelled him to tell the woman in front of him. To assure her that he wasn't just the run-of-the-mill pervert delighting in picking up small girls and helping them find their parents. "I kinda have three."
"Three?" Her eyes looked ready to fall out her sockets. "What, are you some kind of genius?"
"I really dislike that term," Spencer muttered and looked down at his feet. Momo's mother was silent. When he looked up at her he saw something in her eyes he couldn't quite discern, but it looked eerily disturbing.
She seemed to pull herself from some kind of daze. "Oh, sweet lord of Techies, I'm so rude – I completely forgot about my manners in my relief to see by careless daughter again! I'm Penelope Garcia Lynch, thank you so, so much for finding and fetching her – my husband went to alert the coast guard, I kid you not. Oh, and please let your girlfriend – Emily was it? - know how grateful I am too!"
"Oh, no! She isn't my girlfriend," Spencer corrected frantically, again without really knowing just why he had the incessant need for Penelope to know all the details. "She's dating JJ, my best friend from High School. And I texted her that I found you, so she's probably already back with JJ and her son."
"Emily has a son?" Penelope asked with interest.
"No, JJ does. She had him with her last boyfriend, but then she met Emily and so she broke it with him and now she's happily together with Em." He frowned. "I have no idea why I'm telling you this."
"Don't sweat it, Genius Boy. So you're here with you lesbian friends. That's nice." She smiled, big and flashy and just a tad intimidating. "So, are you gay too? Or bi like your friend JJ?" The question sounded casual, but Spencer had a feeling it was far from.
"Actually JJ and I started being friends after meeting in our High School's LGTB-club," Spencer said and watched with fascination the interest being turned on in Penelope's eyes.
"So you a twenty-nine-year-old homosexual genius, with three doctorates and probably a stable job?"
"I currently work as a lecturer at the George Washington's University, so yes, I guess so." Penelope just kept smiling.
"You know what?" she asked, with a strange determination in her eyes, that quickly told Spencer not to discuss with what would follow. "I'm going to invite you out for dinner as a thank you for finding my daughter. Both you, Emily, JJ, and JJ's son."
"Oh?" Spencer realized was the only thing he could produce.
"Yes. What hotel are you staying at?"
"Hotel Sea View, it's just by-"
"I know where it is, we live there too. Small world, isn't it?" He nodded. "So, we'll meet you guys in the foyer at six thirty, before the kids get too tired and hungry, and then I'll have reserved a table somewhere decent and not too far away. Deal?"
"Yeah," Spencer's mouth said, completely without the blessing of his mind who was still trying to figure out just why Penelope looked like she had won the lottery.
"I'll be seeing you then, you should probably return to your own party and tell them to clear their calenders for tonight, no one says 'No' to Penelope Garcia."
Spencer nodded and gave Momo a small wave before retreating back towards the direction he came from, feeling terribly like he had missed something important from their brief encounter. He just couldn't pinpoint what.
He returned to Emily, JJ, and Henry still feeling slightly dazed and a bit confused.
"Penelope asked us out for dinner," he informed the women and sunk down on his towel.
"Penelope?" JJ asked and looked up from where she was cutting an apple into smaller pieces for Henry.
"Momo's mother. We're meeting them in the foyer at six thirty. Apparently they're staying at the same hotel."
"That sounds nice," Emily commented and lifted an eyebrow at him.
"I'm not entirely sure, but I think so," he said, closed his eyes and hoped that his factor fifty sunscreen was going to keep him safe as he sunk into sleep.
-o-
"DADDY!" Momo screeched and launched herself into her father's arms.
"That was some scare you gave us there," he admonished and took a deep breath, inhaling her scent, finally feeling calmed down.
"How did you find her?" his wife's best friend asked and sauntered over to wrap a comforting arm around her shoulders. "In the phone she kept talking about Doctor S and Em, from the FBI."
"I've found the perfect guy for you," Penelope beamed up at him and Kevin smiled and closed his eyes, concentrating on the wonder of holding Madelaine again.
"You found another one?" Derek looked at Penelope with his eyebrows disbelievingly halfway up his forehead. "What 'bout your yoga friend's friend? And what's with you setting me up with every gay guy you stumble across?"
"Hush, heathen! And that guy's old news, Spencer is perfect for you, I'm not kidding. He's cute, refreshingly shy, smart, out and proud since he was in High School and apparently almost Albert Einstein-levels of smart." Penelope smiled excited. "We're meeting him and his lesbian friends and their son for dinner tonight. You're going to love him!"
"He does kinda sound like my type," Derek admitted.
"Kinda? Kinda? That's exactly what you told me you liked." Penelope narrowed her eyes at him.
"Alright, he sounds just like the kind of guy I like, but what about me? What if I'm not his type," he said without the Morgan cockiness he always seemed to posses.
"Derek, sweetie," Penelope said and wrapped her arm around his waist as she watched her daughter and husband locked in a tight embrace. "You're everybody's type."
He gave a small chuckle.
"If you don't want him, Uncle Dee, I'll take him," Momo said from Kevin's embrace. Derek frowned.
"We'll see about that."
Penelope felt immensely proud that her daughter seemed to have inherited her gift for manipulating the men in her life.