Finally, when the clock in the corner read 8.00pm, Hotch stopped us. "We'd better break for the day. Go home, get some rest, and I expect to see you all bright eyed at 7o'clock sharp tomorrow morning." There was a sudden clamor as everyone began to stack papers and move chairs back under desks where they belonged. Then, one by one, very noisily, they all left. Prentiss said hurried goodbyes to everyone except Spencer and I before hastening out the door; everyone else paused to say good-night to the rest of the office. Soon, Spencer and I were alone with Hotch, who was fiddling with the blinds on the far set of windows. He turned and found us still standing there behind him.

"Good work today, Clearwater," he said gruffly, as though the words hurt his teeth. "I didn't expect you to hold your own against them."

"Sir, if I'd known how serious this was, I would've waited for a smaller case before bringing her," Spencer said apologetically. Hotch gave a tired smile, the first I'd seen on his serious face.

"It's all right, Reid," he said, picking up an official-looking briefcase from behind a desk, "next time I'll pay more attention to what you're saying. Although, having said that, having you here hasn't been nearly as problematic as I thought. I fully expect to see you here tomorrow morning, doing the same standard of work." I grinned happily.

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Now, you two go home and relax for a while." I almost laughed; I could tell Spencer wouldn't relax at all, and I knew I couldn't possibly. It had been too much of an exciting day. Hotch tried another smile, failed, and left the room. Spencer gestured that I should follow.

"Do you want a lift anywhere?" he asked, graciously holding the door open. I shook my head.

"I'm not really ready to go home yet," I said slowly as we huddled into a lift. "I was going to go for a walk down to the wharf to prepare myself for Charisse." He laughed through his nose.

"Do you want company?" he asked, his hand brushing my shoulder as he reached over to the lift button. I smiled, surprised.

"Yes, please." He smiled back and struck up a conversation effortlessly, as though he did it all the time. I wasn't expecting that. He seemed like the kind of person who found conversation difficult.

"So how old is Charisse?" he asked.

"She's 24. She was advertising for a flatmate because she wanted to get away from one of her not-nice boyfriends… I think she wanted the company more than the extra cash. She pays most of the rent, and the flat's not small."

"I didn't realise yoga teachers were paid that much."

"They're not," I replied as the lift doors slid open, "but she takes yoga and Pilates classes at three different locations: two gyms and a dance studio." He made a faint 'oh' noise and we walked in a comfortable silence for a while. I turned my phone on and flicked Charisse a text: walking with friend from BAU. Txt when coming home. I looked up at him to find that his soft brow eyes had been watching me. "What?"

"You did really well today, you know," he said casually.

"Thanks," I said. "Prentiss didn't think so."

"I don't know what's wrong with Emily," he replied thoughtfully. "She's not usually like that. She takes her job very seriously… I think she just thought you'd slow the rest of us down." He was trying to make me feel better, but he was just making me feel worse.

"What if she's right?" I asked, voicing the thought that had been running through my head in the quieter moments of the day. "What if I am just slowing you all down?"

He looked at me, genuinely surprised. "Juliette, you're not!" He stopped walking then, turning to face me. "Even Hotch admits it! You were the one who realised we were looking for a woman. I hadn't even considered the possibility –"

"But what if that was wrong? And you all accepted it because you wanted to believe that I could do this, but there's a guy out there laughing his head off because we've walked right past him?" I kept walking, making him run a few paces to keep up.

"If you were wrong, then we all would have been wrong sooner or later, because it makes sense," he said. "One thing I've learned here is that you can't sit there doing nothing and asking yourself, what if I was wrong? You've just got to do what you think is right."

I thought about this. He was dead serious, which should have comforted me, but it just made me more worried that I was distracting him, blinding him somehow. "But, Spencer, nobody in your team likes me," I protested. "Prentiss openly hates me. Morgan took you aside to tell you it was stupid of you to bring me. I didn't miss that I'll-talk-to-you-later look Gideon gave you. Even Hotch only said that I "wasn't nearly as problematic as he'd thought", not that I was a help in any way."

"JJ likes you," he said stubbornly.

"You said it yourself, Spencer, JJ likes everybody! Like you said, you would have figured out that the unsub was female sooner or later anyway, and even knowing the sex doesn't help much. What if we should take something from that? I'm not meant to be here. I shouldn't be here."

"Then don't come back," he said simply. I looked at him, shocked. Even though it was what I told myself I wanted, I couldn't believe he was just going to give up on me. Just like that? God, I really must be bad, I thought to myself. He caught my eye and shrugged. "Juliette, I brought you because you remind me of myself. I always knew that the BAU was where I belonged. If Hotch and Gideon hadn't liked me, I wouldn't have given up." He looked away again, down the road to the wharf. "Maybe we're not as alike as I thought."

I didn't know what to say. Here he was, the genius of the BAU, respected by his colleagues and superiors alike, pretty much my general hero, and he was telling me I was like him? At that moment, I would have given anything for that to be true. "Thank you," I said softly. Of course I'd come back. Yesterday I would have given anything to be where I had been all day. Now, I couldn't give up my dream just because I wasn't the case superstar. If I 'wasn't a problem', I might as well stay and learn all I could for the day when I could come back as a legitimate part of the team. And even when I was complaining, a part of me knew that.

"For what?" he asked, as though he didn't think he'd done anything for me.

Everything. Befriending me, bringing me, not letting me give up… it mans a lot to me." I realised it sounded weak as soon as it left my mouth. It means a lot to me. Eurgh. Understatement of the century and it still sounded lame.

He smiled. "You're welcome," he said brightly. "You're an easy person to like."

Okay. At this point, something in me, some deep, built-in alarm bell, went off. We sounded enormously sappy, like a couple in a film that was just about to kiss. And even though in the coffee shop that morning it may have seemed all right, the idea of his sculpted lips meeting mine had grown less and less appealing as my respect for him grew throughout the day. Time for some friendly banter. "You're not," I said casually.

He stopped dead in his tracks. "What?" I stopped too, and turned until I was facing him, letting him see the shakes of suppressed laughter that were making my whole body tremble. He realised I was joking, and relaxed. I let the laughter go and he hesitantly joined in.

"Well," I said reasonably between peals of mirth, "I'm just saying that some people might find your resemblance to a walking encyclopedia a bit frustrating."

"Some do," he admitted as we resumed walking towards the glimmer of orange sunset at the end of the street. "Morgan hates it. Hotch tells me to shut up all the time." I laughed again, wiping the beginnings of tears away from my eyes. Spencer put on a slightly higher voice than usual to imitate himself. "Technically, this could be possible –Reid, shut up." I laughed harder.

"Have you ever noticed that you always say the word 'technically' with the same inflection? In exactly the same way?" I put on his accent smoothly. "Technically, it could be – technically, this could be possible –" I noticed that the word 'possible' was the same, "it could be possible that…" He was the one laughing now. "You are like an encyclopedia," I told him, "one of the talking ones with pre-recorded messages, like when you want to check the balance on your phone…" I put on a disjointed, robotic voice, "you have ten dollars and twenty-one cents remaining."

We reached the stone outcrop that separated the road from the sea beyond it. "That's enough from you," he said in a mock-stern voice. I leant on the wall, which came up to about my bottom rib. He followed suit.

It was the most amazing sunset I'd ever seen. There were a few arrow-like streaks of cloud like exclamation marks, lit up orange and purple and every shade in between, colours colliding and combining to make a spectacular, passionate frieze that stirred up excitement in the pit of my stomach. "It's beautiful," Spencer breathed beside me. I couldn't reply. I was left absolutely speechless by its majesty.

"It's amazing," I said finally. It's so romantic." To people that I had known forever, it would have confirmed that I wasn't romantically interested in them when I mentioned romance around them. I realised a few seconds after I said it that Spencer wasn't one of those people.

"Are you a romantic, then?" has asked.

"Hopeless," I replied, not looking at him. "You?" I heard his hair brush against his shirt collar as he shook his head. "Why not?"

"It's hard to be a romantic in my job," he said slowly. I frowned, still unwilling to meet his eyes. "Not only do you see every day just how much hate is in the world, but… love is created by the brain's release of endorphins into the blood. It's just a chemical reaction, just like any other emotion. It isn't something tangible, love doesn't find you. You don't find love. Your brain makes it up."

"It's like they say, though, isn't it," I replied absently. "It's what you make of it."

"But that's the point," he said, "you make it. It doesn't exist outside your mind."

"Does it matter?" I argued. "If your brain thinks you're in love, doesn't that mean you are?"

"If you think you're a good singer, does that have to mean that nobody flinches every time you open your mouth?" he shot back quickly.

"It doesn't have to, but sometimes it does," I said. I looked at him then, elbows resting on the stone wall, staring blankly into the raging passion in front of him. He shrugged. "Well, you'd be the world's worst boyfriend." His mouth twitched into a hollow smile. He turned his head my way. I quickly dropped my gaze and turned back to the sea. Neither of us spoke for a while.

"You know it would never work between us, don't you?" he said finally.

"What?" I asked, surprised. Our eyes met, then. He was smiling, but sadly, as though explaining to a child why he had to go to work.

"A relationship between us would never work. You know that, right? I mean, I'm seven years older than you –"

I cut him off before it because any more awkward. "I know a couple with a twenty-year age gap," I said coolly, "so I think we could make it work if we wanted to, but I… don't."

"What do you –"

"I mean, I like you, Spencer, a lot, but not in that way."

"Oh." He sounded relieved. "Me too. I mean, when I first met you, at the library, I did, but now… platonically, I really like you." He said it as if it settled everything. I didn't know what he was talking about.

I blinked. "Okay, you have my permission to be a walking encyclopedia for a minute. Platonically?" He smiled genuinely.

"Like, as friends." Oh. I smiled back as I watched him. He put up a hand as if to self-consciously re-adjust his glasses, remembered he'd taken them off in the elevator, and scratched the bridge of his nose to try and cover it up. I was overwhelmed by a desire to hug him, but I quashed it; he probably wasn't aware that I hugged all of my friends.

Like the perfectly timed icebreaker she was in person, Charisse chose that moment to call me again, and Killer Queen broke through the slightly awkward silence between us. I laughed. "Sorry," I said, extracting the phone from my pocket again. He shook his head.

"Hey, Char."

"Hey, Juju! I just got your text! I didn't know you had a friend in the BAU!" I giggled at the offended note in her shrill voice.

"I didn't, until this morning."

"Where are you now, babe?" Even though I knew exactly where I was, I couldn't help looking around me before I answered her question.

"Down at the wharf." I gave her street names in case she was being paranoid again.

"Looking at the sunset?" she asked happily. I guessed she was in a good mood, then.

"Yeah. It's beautiful, Char." She laughed.

"I'm sure it is, cutie. So when are you coming home?" I sighed. I didn't want to go home. I was so comfortable there, watching the sun go down with Spencer, that I never wanted it to end.

"I don't know. Today's been so amazing. I feel like if I go home, there'll be nothing to keep me sure that I didn't just imagine the whole thing." Spencer mumbled something that I couldn't quite hear over Charisse telling me she felt neglected at home by herself. "Sorry, Char. Hey, hold on a sec?" I pulled the phone away from my ear, but I could still hear her voice even with the speaker pressed against my shoulder. "What was that, Spencer?"

"I said, you could come back to my place," he said steadily, standing up properly. "If you don't mind the sofa, of course." A smile crept over my face again.

"Is that okay? Are you sure?" He nodded happily. "All right then. Thanks!" He murmured a 'no problem'. I picked up the phone again. "Char, I don't think I'll be coming home tonight, honey. I've been offered the sofa."

"Juju, you've only known this person since nine o'clock this morning. Are you sure you can trust them?" I looked up at Spencer.

"Char, if you took one look at Spencer, you'd know the answer to that question. Honest, he's not that kind of guy."

"It's a guy? Oh, Juju! Is he cute? Make sure you do it safe, honey –"

"Charisse! He's just a friend! Come on, would I go anywhere near there with someone I'd known for this long?" Spencer, picking up the gist of our conversation, laughed.

"Well, honey, I didn't think you'd go to anyone's house for the night if you'd only known them for twelve hours, not with your obsession with criminals, but I suppose if he's an FBI agent, he'll keep you safe."

"Uh-huh. I'll call you tomorrow." I hung up Trust Charisse to throw my "criminal obsession" back in my face. Honestly. Sometimes she was like the mother I'd never really had. Other times she was like an awesome big sister. Sometimes, like just then, she switched from one to the other and back again alarmingly fast.

"Thank you, again," I said to Spencer, leaning my back against the wall. He chuckled softly.

"No problem. I figured that if you woke up on my sofa, you'd know you hadn't imagined the whole thing." He said 'imagined' teasingly.

"Hey, no joke," I said, poking him in his hollow stomach. "You have no idea how vivid my imagination is."

"I know exactly what you mean," he replied seriously. Then he abruptly pushed his weight off the wall. "So," he said brightly. "My car is just down there," he pointed back the way we had come. "We could pick up pizza or something on the way."

I eyed him mock-critically. "Pizza? How many times a week do you get pizza?"

"Hey," he said indignantly. "I haven't had pizza in ages."

"Uh-huh. So what do you usually get for dinner, then? Kentucky Fried?" He laughed.

"I'm actually not a bad cook, thank you very much," he said. I looked him up and down. I didn't buy it.

"Oh, I'm sure you make really good toast." He pretended to punch me amiably on the arm in outrage. Then he stopped.

"Yeah," he admitted. "My cornflakes aren't that bad, either. I'm still working on coffee. Starbucks somehow manages to do it better than I do." He led me into a parking building by the library. "This is me."

I snorted when I saw the dented old white mini. Somehow I'd imagined him having something like this, that looked like it was about to fall apart where it stood. "Nice ride, man." He laughed too, digging around in his satchel for the keys. "Does it have a crank around the front, or do we just have to push it to get it started?"

"Shut up," he retaliated, producing the keys. "I don't see you driving a Ferrari."

"All right, all right," I said, following him by getting in the passenger side, "you're one better than me. I don't have a car. On the odd occasion that I need one, I borrow Charisse's."

"How often is that?" The car started smoothly, which surprised me; I'd expected it to take at least two tries before he could kick it into life.

"Not often at all. I don't go to school anymore, so the only places I ever have to go are the shops and work, and we live within walking distance of those."

"And the library," he reminded me, grinning.

"Yeah," I agreed, "and the library."

"Where do you work?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the road.

"La Cloche? The restaurant…" he nodded. "I work in the kitchen for the dinner rush Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and I lay tables all day Sunday."

"Ah," he said, "so your mockery of my culinary expertise is somewhat justified, then."

I laughed. "Somewhat." I neglected to mention that by 'working in the kitchen' I meant taking out the garbage. It didn't seem necessary.

It was like a dream, the kind of dream that's far too perfect for you to have created in your sleep. Like a daydream. The best kind of daydream.

We drove on.


A/N: Okay, so lame ending... oh well. It had to finish somewhere!

-for you