Again - I'm really glad you are all enjoying this. Thanks again for all the lovely reviews. I appreciate them very much.
As always I don't own Criminal Minds, and anything you see that sounds familiar is because it is.
Happy reading!
Enjoy :)
Spence was watching JJ as she locked the apartment door. She turned to him and they walked hand in hand out of the apartment building for another day at the BAU. Today wasn't just any day though. It was Elle's first day.
"So, Spence" JJ asked as she opened the car door.
"Yeah JJ?" Spence responded.
"Have you solved the three body problem lately?" JJ asked as she turned and smiled at him and handed him an envelope.
"Three body problem?" Spence asked as he took the envelope from her. "I haven't solved that since college. … Did you know that the three body problem became a topical interest in the late 1800's because it was thought that improved lunar theory could be applicable to navigation and developing a method for determining geographical longitude at sea? When scholars were following Newton's work, they noticed a major part of the problem in lunar theory consisted of evaluating the effect of the Sun on the motion of the Moon around the Earth " Spence explained.
JJ leaned over and kissed him "It's a good thing I love you." She said as she sat back in her seat , smirked, and started the car.
As they got out of the car in the parking ramp, they each quickly glanced about to make sure no one was around, gave each other a quick kiss, and then went into what they had termed 'work mode' i.e. no public acknowledgement that they were anything more than co-workers and friends.
"Question for you." Elle said as she walked down the stairs from the catwalk.
"Shoot" Morgan said turning to look up at her from his desk.
"The Foot Path Killer, why did he stutter?" Elle asked walking through the bullpen and past Reid.
"Come on Elle, we've all asked him and he won't say." Morgan said leaning back in his desk chair. "He wants us to figure it out."
"Well, okay" She said sitting on the edge of her desk. "I'm up for a challenge."
"Good, because these go to you." JJ said walking across the bullpen with her arms full of a stack of files. She slapped the files down on Elle's desk. "Special Agent Jennifer Jareau, JJ if you like." She said offering her hand to shake Elle's.
Spence looked on with interest. It was like he was watching a tennis match, with a perplexed look on his face. He looked back and forth between JJ and Elle. He was analyzing this first meeting so that he would be able to replay it later.
"Elle" Elle said accepting JJ's hand and shaking.
"Greenaway. Highest number of solved cases in Seattle three years running, specialty in sex offender cases." JJ responded.
Elle glanced sideway at Reid, in a 'how does she know this and why are you looking at us like that' manner "Not bad."
"Well, I'm the unit liaison. My specialty is untangling bureaucratic knots." She said walking away from the bullpen.
As JJ walked by Spence, he turned his head just enough to watch her walk away out of the corner of his eye.
"You'll probably be talking to me a lot." She continued while walking up the stairs of the catwalk. "My door is always open, mostly because I'm never in my office, so just call me on my cell." She said making a phone gesture with her hand.
Spence turned back from watching her walk up the stairs and across the catwalk.
"Okay. We'll talk." JJ called from the catwalk as she approached Hotch. "Did you watch it?" She asked Hotch.
"Yeah. I think everybody should see it." Hotch said as he strode past JJ. He turned the corner on the catwalk, his dark suit jacket moving in the breeze created by his brisk business like strides. "BAU team can you meet me in the conference room please, I need to show you something" Hotch called out on his way to the conference room to brief them on the case.
JJ sat in her office. She was working the case from Quantico. She and Garcia would be going over the calls that came into the tip line and looking for additional information that could help the rest of the team in the field.
While she waited for calls and information to come in, she sorted through the persistent, perpetual stack of files on her desk. As she sorted through files and made notes about files and calls that came into the tip line, she thought back to she and Spence's conversation last week.
It was a relief to have finally shared with him everything that was going on. It was comforting to have his support, albeit, there was a test involved, but she supposed that was warranted, and after all, it's not like she had to worry about passing.
They had decided to make the next few weeks into a game. She would give him obscure clues that may or may not deal directly to do with the case that they would be working on prior to them receiving the case. When she gave him the clue, she would also give him a sealed envelope that would contain the details of the case as she remembered it. It was their comparison data for the test. They would discuss the results together once the case was wrapped up. He of course had to promise her that he would not let it distract his focus, or to let it make him careless.
Thinking about the conversation after Spence proposed his solution brought a smile to her face. She had told him about Elle joining the team, but really only that.
"Baby, you met an agent from the Seattle field office on this last case, didn't you?" JJ asked Spence as she leaned back against his chest.
"Yeah…how did you…oh….right.' Spence replied shyly.
"Her name was Elle Greenaway." JJ continued on "She's joining the BAU team in about a week. Gideon and Hotch are going to announce it on Wednesday. Their concerned about how we'll all feel having someone new join the team, even though it's been six months. I think they still look at the empty desks in the bullpen and see the people who used to sit there. I wish…"
"JJ. It's not your fault. You couldn't do anything to stop what happened anymore than I could have. You were right, before, you know. If some things can be changed, that's great, but you have to live one moment at a time. One day at a time. You can't live in the past and you can't live in the future. You have to live in the here and now. Whatever happens, JJ, we have to live with it. We have to accept the things that can't be changed." Spence said.
JJ turned to face Spence and shifted to straddle his lap. She studied his face for a moment. She lifted her hands to either side of his face caressing his temples with her thumbs. She tilted her face in towards his and leaned her forehead against his. "Thank you" She whispered.
They had stayed like that, seated together in the chair for almost an hour. Finally they had both been to exhausted to stay up any longer. Spence had stood up with JJ in his arms and carried her to bed. He really was much stronger than he looked. They had changed and climbed into bed. Spence held an emotionally spent JJ in his arms while she slept.
Spence's brain was much too active for sleep at first. He thought about what she had told him. What did it mean if it wasn't just a really weird dream? Something told him he was going to find out. He knew JJ wasn't crazy.
He would support her any way he could. He would help her plan out whatever changes needed to be made. They would need a plan - changing too much could be just as disastrous as not changing the things she wanted to change. They would need to have a conversation in the near future. He didn't have any details to go off of right now, but hopefully she would tell him more once this test period was over.
JJ was startled out of her thoughts by her cell phone ringing. She grabbed her cell phone off her desk and looked at the Caller ID. She smiled. It was Spence. She was thrilled to be hearing from him - it had only been this morning that the team had left on the case, but it had been a very long day.
"Jareau" She said answering the phone in a professional manner, she could after all be on speaker, or Morgan could have stolen Spence's phone. Again.
"Hi baby" Spence replied
JJ was glad to hear that greeting. It meant he was alone and they could have a few minutes to be a couple away from the case. "Hi baby, I miss you."
"I miss you too." Spence said.
"How's the case going?" JJ asked out of habit. She knew they were all frustrated right now because they couldn't lock down a profile on the arsonist.
Spence chuckled. "Don't you already know the answer to that?"
"Maybe I do, but I don't know all the details from last time, and I just want to hear how your day went."
Spence sighed "Hotch had me speak to a group of chemistry students that figured out how the arsonist fire bombed that teacher's office today." He sighed again.
"Baby, what's wrong? It's good that Hotch wants you to more involved in cases. He probably thought you would relate more to a group of chemistry students than anyone else."
"That's just it JJ, I wasn't able to relate to them. I started talking about the history of the BAU….I never actually got around to getting to talk to them about the case. Hotch jumped in while I was rambling….." Spence said in a frustrated voice.
"Oh Spence." JJ empathized with him. "It'll be ok. You just have to keep practicing talking to groups. We can practice if you like. Trust me, practice helps. Do you have any how long it took me to be comfortable in front of a camera?"
"But JJ, you're a natural. You make it look so easy, and the camera loves you." Spence said
"Baby, practicing lots and lots is why I make it look easy. You should have seen my first time in front of the camera. It was horrible. I sounded like a dork. It'll be ok, at least you don't have to get comfortable being in front of a camera."
"That's true…so how's your day going?" Spence asked.
"Hang on baby. Garcia just sent me an IM that she has something I need to hear. I'm leaving my office and heading over to Garcia's office, so if I don't get the chance to tell you because I have to hang up, I love you. Be safe." JJ said as she got up from her desk. She walk out of her office and down the hall to Penelope Garcia's domain.
"I love you too. So tell me what you can about your day?" Spence replied.
"Well baby," She said after looking around to see that no one was around as she opened the outer door to Garcia's office. "Do you have any idea how many people called me today with absolute certainty that our arsonist is a firefighter? I'm like yeah…I saw Backdraft. Ahhh, let me call you right back." JJ said hanging up her cell phone and leaning over Garcia's shoulder.
"This came into the hotline about five minutes ago" Garcia said pressing the play button on the computer.
JJ and Spence sat cuddled up on the couch. The arson case had been wrapped up the night before. They had all spent the day at the office today getting paperwork done and going through new case files.
Now it was time for Spence to open the envelope she had given him two days ago.
Spence stuck his thumb nail under the edge of the envelope flap and ripped. He pulled out the sheets of paper that were tucked inside.
JJ watched as he read - it took him less than a minute to read it the first time, after all, she had written much less than 20,000 words. She watched him read it again.
He turned to face JJ. "You realize, this makes you two for two."
"Two?" JJ said.
"I'm counting your conversation with Elle. You knew things about her background that clearly, even she wasn't expecting you to know. That's one. The fact that you have the details about the OCD and Clara Hayes' name written on this piece of paper, well that makes two." He said with a slight shrug of his shoulders.
"But Spence, don't I get any points for asking you about the three body problem?" JJ asked with a smirk on her face.
"I stand corrected, you, my love, are three for three." Spence apologized.
"And don't you forget it Dr. Reid." She said as she used his tie to pull him into a kiss.
Spence walked out of the bathroom and shut off the light, but left on the night light JJ had put in the bathroom. She knew he was afraid of the dark, or as he put it, the inherent absence of light. She never teased him about it, she just accepted it. That was one of the things he loved most about her. She loved him and accepted him for who he was. She never asked him to change or be anything that he wasn't.
With JJ, he felt the acceptance that he had never felt before in his entire life. He had been years ahead of his age group educationally, and years behind his intellectual peers socially all of his formative years. If he thought about it, he still was. JJ was helping him close the gap though. He didn't feel nearly as socially awkward since they had become a couple. It had opened up new doors for him. Doors that he never would have thought to enter had it not been for JJ being in his life like she was.
Spence leaned against the bedroom door jamb watching JJ. She was sitting up in bed putting lotion on her legs and arms. He wondered what he could possibly have done in this lifetime or the next five years to have possibly have captured her attention, let alone held it. She could have anyone she wanted, and she wanted him. He felt honored. He treasured her love, and he would do whatever it took to thank her for it. Every day. For the rest of his life, if she would let him.
"Baby, are you coming to bed or are you going to sleep standing in the doorway tonight?" JJ asked with a grin on her face as she turned to look at him.
Spence shook himself out of his thoughts and stood up straight. He meandered over to the bed, but JJ's side of the bed not his own. He climbed up on the bed and over the top of JJ. Once he was settled on his side of the bed, he turned to look at JJ. "You'd really let me sleep standing in the doorway?" He asked jokingly.
"Hmmm" JJ pondered "No, Spence, probably not. I wouldn't want to have to scrub the drool stains off the doorway and wall" She said with a giggle.
"So you would rather I drool on you?" Spence asked.
"Well, I wouldn't say drool…per say…" JJ trailed off rolling over so that she was facing Spence.
"Really…well how about this, then." Spence leaned down and kissed her.
JJ moaned as her fingers moved up to thread through the hair at the back of Spence's head, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss. Apparently, she really liked the way Spence said thank you.