He had fallen asleep. She had told him she would be out in two minutes and by the time she had returned he had fallen asleep. She contemplated waking him up by 'accidentally' banging pots and pans together. Her dilemma increased when she saw Spencer slowly sliding along the sofa, his head going to hit the wooden arm-rest of the sofa.
She cursed under her breath as she rushed to stuff a pillow under his head before it hit the wood.
Was she to allow him to crash at her place? She didn't really know him that well. Well she was going to let him spend the night... only she had not imagined the night to go like this. A snort escaped her. Oh well, she thought as she went to tend to the teapot she could hear almost boiling over in the kitchen, might as well let him catch up on his sleep. He did look at peace... She thought about how not less than five hours ago she had been outside Penelope's friend and colleague, David Rossi's home, whom she had met earlier that evening, arguing with her friend about the awful man she had set her up with earlier that week. And now another strange man was in her house sleeping on her sofa. Funny how things work out.
Five Hours Ago
"You set me up—,"
"Okay can you please stop acting as if I set you up to get you killed?"
"—with that weird ass self-absorbed—,"
"Okay, okay! But I promise this next time—,"
"And he would not stop—next time?—there will be no next—,"
"—trust me, he is so cute and sweet, you will—,"
"—I thought you were setting me up with that Spanish guy—,"
"—and I was—what? Spanish? No, no, that's not going to work out."
"—Why won't it work out? What did you—" But Anna could not complete what she was about to say for the door swung open startling them into silence. They had been standing in front of Penelope's friend and colleague David Rossi's house arguing when the door swung upon.
"Hello?" An old man—Anna assumed was David Rossi—said.
"Hello," said Anna, alarmed at the sudden interruption.
"Hi," Penelope said, also feeling Anna's alarm and possibly even embarrassment.
"Hi?" The old man said again.
"Hello," Penelope whispered again.
"You said that already, Penelope. Come in," an old man said to them, with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes.
"Hi, yes, yes, let's go in— I'm just—how much of our argument did you hear?" Penelope asked entering with Anna in tow.
"I seemed to have only missed the ending," The man—David—said. Penelope groaned as she shrugged out of her coat.
"Well, this—this is my friend Anna," Penelope waited as Anna removed her coat and turned to Rossi to greet him. She gave Penelope's friend an uneasy smile knowing that he had just witnessed an embarrassing fight between her and Penelope a second ago.
"Hi, I'm David Rossi. Pleasure to meet you."
"Hello," Anna said smiling politely and shaking the hand he had offered. The bell rang causing Rossi to excuse himself.
"Oh look who made it," Penelope said dryly, causing Anna to raise her eyebrows questioningly. Penelope was never less than a ray of asphyxiating sunlight about people and greeting people in general. The less than enthusiastic response from her had surprised Anna causing her to curiously see who had come in.
"Nice to see you too, Penelope," the man who had entered said with a roll of his eyes, but Anna had spotted the hint of a smile beneath it. Oh my, Anna thought to herself.
"It's Garcia, to you!" Penelope said, not entirely unkindly. "Anyway, meet my friend Anna."
"Let's all move to the garden, shall we? We've got the dinner all laid out," they all heard Rossi say from behind.
"Hello," the man who had entered a few minutes ago said, his eyes suddenly much dimmer—Anna noted interested— as he turned to greet Anna, "I'm Luke Alvez."
"You're... You're Luke Alvez?" Anna asked, letting out a snort of disbelief, and her eyes widening with surprise.
"Yeah, is something the matter?"
"No," Anna said realization dawning on her, "Not at all," she said resolutely as her eyes began searching for Penelope who had fast disappeared towards the garden, listening all too well to Rossi's instructions, after introducing them. "Excuse me," Anna said as she walked forward faster but soon lost the confident swagger as she entered the garden and a hoard of unknown people who had all stopped what they were doing to stare at her. Most of them were White but she had spotted two black people too, and plus Luke seemed like he was Latino, she all in all four people of colour, not bad she thought. Made her feel a little safe.
"Um," she said awkwardly, fighting the urge to bite her lip or tug at her hair, "Hello," she managed to mutter. Penelope waved her over.
"Hey guys, this is my friend Anna. Anna, all of these people here are my world," Penelope announced proudly and Anna had to fight the feeling of envy that flooded. All of her family, all of her world was back home, and she was in this strange country—but wasn't this why Penelope had invited her here? So she could stop feeling so miserable and homesick and meet some new people? Anna smiled nervously at everyone and fought the instinct to bow in greeting.
"Hello," she said again as she walked towards Penelope and the White blonde woman she was speaking to.
"This is JJ, and her husband and kids…," Penelope began introducing everyone and Anna felt she could not remember anybody's name except for the first woman she had been introduced to for her baby was so adorable that Anna could not help but ask to hold him. His name was Michael and he was the most precious baby—until he started tugging painfully at Anna's hair, after which she had been glad to return the toddler to his mother. Anna had caught Penelope in a small argument with Luke and was reminded of why she had come into the garden in the first place.
"Penelope," Anna said in a sing-song manner, "a word, please?"
"What is it?" Penelope asked, her eyes flitting towards where Luke was standing laughing at a story someone, whose name Anna could not remember, was telling.
"Luke Alvez," said Anna dragging her eyes away from him to give her friend a meaningful look.
"Yes?" Penelope blinked.
"He's Luke Alvez." Anna jerked her head in his direction.
"Yes…? If there is a point can you please make it before we become fossils?"
"Fine. You like him," said Anna in an accusatory tone.
"What? No!" said Penelope with her face crumpled up in a frown and a huff of exasperation escaping her mouth.
"Yes. Which is why you didn't set me up with him, which is why," Anna said but her eyes snagged on something behind Penelope, "Oh my god. He likes you too!" exclaimed Anna seeing the curious looks Luke Alvez kept throwing their way.
"And this is why you didn't set me up with him, because—,"
"SPENCER," Penelope shouted, interrupting Anna and walking hurriedly towards the dinner table taking a seat after hugging a strange man, "Oh you sweet boy, you're here, finally. Come meet my friend, Anna."
Anna was forced to look away and greet the person Penelope had called out to. He gave her a perfunctory awkward smile and if Anna didn't know better she would have taken offense. But she didn't for she was still distracted by her friend's sudden evasion. She begrudgingly took a seat across from Penelope seeing as her friend had pushed her in the direction of the stranger. Anna gave her a 'We're not done talking about this ' look which Penelope pointedly ignored.
"Hi," The White man named Spencer said as he took a seat next to her. "I'm Spencer Reid."
"Sorry, what?" asked Anna, confused.
"Spencer Reid," the man said again, his eyes squinting.
"I'm—," began Anna but was cut off by the man.
"Anna, I heard," Reid said, nodding at Penelope who was engrossed in a conversation with the blond White woman from earlier...JJ, was it? Anna wasn't sure. "How do you know Penelope?"
The man asked.
"Mutual friends," Anna said quickly, not sure if Penelope had wanted to reveal to her friends and colleagues that she had brought someone she had befriended when both of them were drunk out of their minds at a random club. Mutual friends was a safe place to locate one's friendship temporarily, Anna decided.
"So, Anna, what work do you do?" The black woman—Tara—who was seated next to her, asked her.
"I work as a translator and an editor."
"Oh, what languages?"
"I translate Korean prose and poetry to English for my publishing house while working as an editor there."
"Sounds interesting," said Tara, cupping her chin with a palm.
"Yeah, it is good work. What exactly do you guys do? Penelope wouldn't tell me. Asked me to ask you directly," asked Anna serving herself some pasta.
"Well, we work for the Behaviour Analysis Unit of FBI and we catch criminals—serial killers mainly—by studying their behaviour," Tara answered.
Anna felt her eyes widen with admiration and astonishment. "Wow, I did not know that. Does that really work?"
"Yes…," The woman said.
"All of you do that?" Anna looked around the table, some were busy with their conversations and had not followed her conversation but Spencer next to her had for he said,
"Yes, we're all Behaviour Analysts."
"How long have you been working?" asked Anna, turning to Spencer.
"13 years," he said without missing a beat.
"You never got tired of it?" asked Anna but she was interrupted by someone.
"Uncle Spencer," a voice interrupted—Henry's, "can you show us your magic tricks?"
"Only if you finish your greens," his mom said, giving Spencer a meaningful look.
"Yes, if you eat your greens, I will," Spencer promised him.
The little boy whined loudly at that, his eyes falling on Anna. She raised her eyebrows and gestured at his food.
"Eat your greens," she said. She resisted glaring as she would have done with her own cousins back home. Here they had different ideas about raising kids. Not good or bad, just different.
"Where are you from?" The boy asked, instead, taking Anna by surprise.
"I'm from—," Anna began but paused as she suddenly sensed everybody at the table had gone silent, presumably curious themselves. Why hadn't they asked? She wondered. "India," she completed and could swear a sense of satisfaction had come over the adults at the table of having been fed the information they had been so politely pretending they were not curious about.
"You know magic?" Anna asked Spencer after a while.
"It's just science," Penelope chimed in.
"Science is magic," Spencer argued.
"Well I'd love to see some," Anna said. "If and when Henry finishes his greens, of course," she added with good measure, earning a smile Spencer and Henry's mother. Once dinner was done, Penelope, Anna and Henry were pulled aside by Spencer who asked them to pick cards and pulling pennies from behind everyone's ears. Anna decided she had had fun at the party. Everybody was nice and kind and she had fun talking to Spencer who was a bit of a Know-It-All but not the way men usually were. More in a naïve childlike need to tell the facts.
She was impressed and kind of secretly miffed at how good he was with tongue twisters, something she had considered her specialty. "Okay, okay, so can you say this," she began with an evil smile, "nega kheurin kheurim mot kheurin khereumigu neega kheurin kherim chal kherin kherim-ida."
And lo behold the bastard repeated it perfectly much to Anna's frustration.
"Don't let him get to you," the dark haired-white woman, called Emily, said to her, "he's insufferable with his eidetic memory and IQ of 187."
Anna gaped. "Y-you have an IQ of 187 and an eidetic memory! That's unfair. You've been practically cheating the entire time."
Spencer only shrugged, unabashed. When it was time to go, they were reluctant to separate.
"It was nice meeting you," he said, smiling softly and shyly. And though his eyes flitted nervously from her fa face to the floor, Anna noticed them to be light brown in shade when they rested on hers. He also had long eyelashes, Anna noted, from under which he would shoot her nervous looks, though he was much taller than her. He was so pretty.
"Yeah, it was," Anna smiled.
"Ya know," Penelope declared in an exasperated fashion, "she does live a block away. Perhaps someone could walk her home."
Anna felt her face heat up in embarrassment at the very loud and transparent suggestion. Spencer looked twice as embarrassed with the way his face had turned beetroot red.
"Um, is it alright if I—," he asked, awkwardly, "If you don't mind—,"
"Yes, please. But are you sure you're not too tired?" Anna asked, nervously tucking her hair behind her ears.
"I'm fine," Spencer had declared and they had talked the entire way of random things and when they had reached the bottom of the Anna's building it of course only felt natural to invite him upstairs. It would be against the rules of decorum and propriety after all to let him go like that. He had walked her home after all. An entire block.
She had sat him down and put the tea to boil—because she didn't drink coffee and thus didn't have any to serve either—and returned only to find him asleep on her sofa.
What does one do with one fast asleep Spencer Reid? She wondered idly as she took a seat across from him.