Essential Listening: In Love With a Boy, by Kaya Stewart
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The sun was shining on the eclectic little market in a leafy corner of Stafford, Virginia. It was busy, but not uncomfortably so. They had waited until long after lunch to visit today, because the market had held a children's event in the morning, and neither of them had particularly wanted to be caught up in that kind of chaos on their day off. Not this week.
SSA Grace Pearce ran her eyes over the spines of the books on offer at the second hand stall, exchanging pleasantries about the warm weather with its owner, whom she saw every weekend when the Behavioural Analysis Unit was actually in Washington. She didn't always buy a book, but the guy was friendly, and he recognised a long-term customer when he met one. Really, both of them were waiting for Doctor Spencer Reid to choose a book, which could take some time – he had read most of them already.
One of the downsides of an eidetic memory and a twenty-thousand-words-a-minute reading speed.
She glanced at him, fondly. He was standing a few feet away, utterly lost in a crumbling, fabric bound book that might have been published at the turn of the last century, and had obviously had several previous, rather affectionate owners. As always when he was reading, Spencer was entirely detached from the world, a peaceful, focused expression on his face. She watched his eyes flicking back and forth across the page, his longish brown hair falling across his face, and wondered how she could have spent so long pretending that she didn't like him.
Lately, what had started as a strong friendship had developed into something decidedly more intimate, and while there was a part of the back of Grace's mind that thought this was a terrible idea, the rest of her couldn't care less.
He looked up then, and caught her watching him. Spencer quirked an eyebrow at her, a slow smile spreading across his face that made Grace's stomach do loops. Aware that she had been well and truly busted, she wandered away to a florist's stall, where she busied herself choosing flowers, pretending that the smile she was presently wearing had nothing at all to do with a particular young genius.
Since the rather fateful rainstorm a few weeks previously, they had been taking things slowly, and apart from one key difference, for all intents and purposes their behaviour hadn't changed. Their co-workers still thought they were endearingly close (and endearingly clueless), they still bickered over science-fiction, they still hung out most days outside work…
Tucking her flowers under her arm, Grace felt Spencer's hand close gently around her own.
"Hungry?" he asked, as they strolled on, Grace trying not to fall into the beat-walk that was the police-officer's automatic, measured step, and Spencer trying not to fall over anything.
"Yeah," she admitted. "I blame the churros stand, personally."
Spencer laughed and they changed direction. "Churros it is."
The trouble was, this new change in their relationship felt so comfortable and so right that it was easy to maintain the illusion that everything about it was straightforward. Working together at the BAU (where fraternisation wasn't exactly prohibited, just a little frowned upon), romantic entanglements could get very complicated, very fast. Still, for the moment things were only just beginning to blossom, and that was fine with Grace.
Simply knowing that the other felt the same was enough for them – for now.
And if the occasional qualm about what might happen if it didn't work out, or how they could continue to work together if it did, or the ghosts of past experience had to be quashed, then Grace was happy to do it, as long as she got to remain in this blissful, daydream world of sunshine and warmth.
Walking back to Spencer's apartment, they paused on a corner and he stole a churro out of her packet, and she kissed the cinnamon and sugar right off his lips.