Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

"'All the same,' said the Scarecrow, 'I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one.' 'I shall take the heart,' returned the Tin Woodman; 'for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world." – L. Frank Baum

o o o o

15 October, 2010

Surprised, Calliope found herself awake before Spencer for the first time and finally understood what he meant when he said he loved watching her sleep. He looked so relaxed and peaceful.

His face was calm and no furrowed wrinkles marred his forehead where they so often appeared when he worked. She smiled at how innocent and childlike he looked; his breathing steady and even; long, wispy brown curls fell away from his face. Slight stubble covered his upper lip and strong jaw. She loved seeing him before he shaved: it made her smile. Spencer always looked so scholarly and put together that seeing him looking anything less, seeing him scruffy and unkempt in any degree, provoked a smile and giggles.

Calliope closed her eyes again knowing that, as soon as he woke up, he would leave her and this blissful cocoon she had willingly shrouded herself in for the past five hours would end. She would never tell Spencer exactly how miserable she had been since Foyet bulldozed his way into their lives last May; he knew she was unhappy with the situation, but not to the full extent.

Yes, there had been the occasional spurts of happiness, but they'd always been followed by bleakness. She loved her cousins, but she wanted her life back. She wanted to be able to walk to the grocery store by herself, to teach a class without them sitting in the back of the room, to eat McDonalds for lunch and dinner without being scolded for being unhealthy, to be able to cuddle on the couch with her boyfriend without feeling awkward in front of Eli and Isaac. Most of all, she wanted Haley back.

Haley. The second secret she kept from Spencer. Calliope felt guilty about not telling him about their lunch dates and phone calls, but having him find out about her insecurities, about how much she needed to talk to someone who understood was the last thing she wanted. Her String Bean already harboured such intense overprotectiveness towards her, if he knew she needed help dealing with his job, that he caused her pain, he would never forgive himself. She didn't need to be a behavioral analyst to figure that out.

Calliope had tried talking to her other friends and family since Haley and Jack went into the Marshall service. She exchanged emails with Jillian Ackerman, her best friend since kindergarten, but their lives couldn't have been farther from each other now – actively and geographically. Jill and her husband were stationed in Uganda with the Peace Corps and Calliope last saw her seventeen months ago, three months before she began dating Spencer. Jill tried to understand, but Calliope didn't blame her when she couldn't – their problems were so drastically different now. Her cousins Ashanti and Breelyn, Eli and Isaacs' sisters, both listened and offered sympathy, but were essentially clueless. Talking to Mammy proved the exact opposite of what she needed as Mammy's only solution was to break up with 'that terrible man,' 'move on' and find someone 'suitable' – completely counterproductive. There was no 'moving on' from Spencer.

Opening her eyes again, Calliope studied him, unable to keep her smile from spreading as she looked at him. She loved him; this wonderful man lying asleep next to her filled every crevasse of her heart. He was her home, as cliché as it sounded. It didn't matter where she was – if he was next to her, she felt safe and loved and free in a way she never felt before. Mammy couldn't be more wrong. Spencer Reid was more than suitable for her; he was perfect, exactly what she needed, what she wanted.

She sighed softly and, unable to resist any longer, moved closer to Spencer, slipping back against him to lay her head on his chest. She liked the way his arms instinctively closed around her, the way his hand felt on her waist, laying laxly in a subconscious way of keeping her close. Calliope bit her lip to keep from laughing when he mumbled something unintelligible in his sleep and she relaxed against him, happily letting her mind trail back to several hours ago.

"Good morning, Sweetheart," his quite, sleepy voice made her jump slightly a half hour later and she blushed furiously at being caught thinking about exploring hands, lingering kisses, the silky way his skin felt against hers.

"Morning," she whispered, ducking her head so he couldn't see her red face.

"What time is it?" He asked, kissing her hair.

"Six thirty."

"I can't believe you woke up before me, much less at six in the morning," Spencer teased, absently running his hand over her back. "I don't think that's ever happened before."

"Yeah, well, there's a first time for everything, String Bean."

"It's been a morning of firsts," he smiled and kissed her, his hand moving from her back to support the nap of her neck as he molded his lips to hers. Calliope made a small, needy sound against his mouth and Spencer grinned, rolling her over onto her back in a rush of confidence he had with no one but her.

"Insatiable much, Dr. Reid?" she giggled, burying her non-plastered hand in his hair and kissing along his jaw.

"Only when it comes to you, my muse."

ooo ooo ooo ooo

"What's with the second crutch? I thought you'd graduated to only needing one," Morgan commented as he pressed the lobby button, effectively closing the elevator door on the two of them.

"My knee's just hurting a lot more. It must have flared up."

"How could it have flared up? You spent the entire day at the precinct yesterday and you kept the ice pack on for most of it. It's not like you were out chasing…" A huge smile spread across Morgans' face as the reason dawned on him. He didn't say anything, simply smiled like a clown and gave Reid a few hearty pats on the back.

"Shut up, Morgan."

"I didn't say anything."

"I know what you're thinking."

"I'm sure you do, Kid."

Reid scowled when Morgan ruffled his hair and he pulled his head away, smoothing his hair back down the best he could. Morgan chuckled with his goofy grin still splashed on his face as the elevator leveled in the lobby. The doors slid open and Reid hobbled out into the foyer of the hotel as quickly as he could, physically putting distance between the two of them. Walking out after the embarrassed young genius, Morgan couldn't wipe the smile off his face.

"It's about time, Pretty Boy. It's about damn time."

ooo ooo ooo ooo

Calliope slipped her feet into the brown leather boots, smoothed her tie-died sundress and stood up, looking at herself in the mirror as she quickly twisted her hair into two loose, curly braids that stopped at her waist. As she tied the second braid off with a rubber band, she played with the tip, debating if she should cut her hair. She had always had long hair, but it had never been quite this long before.

Holding her hair up, she tried to imagine what she would look like without this insane mass of hair trailing around her. She played with it for a couple of minutes, raising and lowering the hair so that the tips of the braids ended at different points, her chin, her shoulders, mid back. She held the edges higher, back at her chin, and laughed at the way the top of the braids poofed out.

"I look like Cindy Lou Who. No! Pippi Longstocking!" she laughed to the empty bathroom as she pulled the braids straight out from her head. Calliope dropped them and studied her reflection, smiling at herself before scowling, "I hate my smile. It's all crooked. Why can't I smile straight?"

Not bothered in the least by the fact she spoke to thin air, she kept contorting her smile in futile attempts to turn the lopsided grin straight. She stopped after several failed contortions and just looked at herself. A small bruise was forming on her chin where she had smacked herself with the cast. Spencer, after making sure she was all right, had laughed, saying only she could knock herself out with her own arm. Calliope half-jokingly threatened to tell the team he was beating her, but she had to agree when he reminded her they would take one look and know she was lying.

"Damn those profilers. They take away all my fun," she mumbled, rubbing the brownish mark. "Should I cut my hair? To cut or not to cut, that is the ageless question. That was what Shakespeare really wanted to ask, but didn't have the balls. At least I'm not talking about my wrists. It's a good thing no one's listening as I blatantly talk crazy to myself. They'd institutionalize me in a heartbeat."

With one last look in the mirror, Calliope walked out into the hotel room and pulled her MacBook out of her polka dot computer tote and plopped herself onto the bed, lying on her stomach with her feet in the air, her boots crossed at the ankle. She pressed the power button and propped her chin on her hands, waiting patiently as the computer hummed to life.

Logging into her e-mail, she spared a glance at the sheets that Spencer had bundled up and put in the corner while she was in the shower. She could see the edge of the small bloodstain that only reaffirmed that last night had happened, she hadn't simply imagined it. Proved that, though the change couldn't be seen in the mirror no matter how hard she searched for it, she was as different physically as she felt emotionally. She blushed thinking about it before shoving the thought in the back of her mind and refocusing on the e-mail, typing out the first line.

'What's cookin', good lookin'? Okay, so, my dearest Jill-Pill…'

ooo ooo ooo ooo

Reid chewed on his bottom lip, studying the map and kept spinning the dry erase marker with his fingers. It just didn't make sense. None of it made any sense. The Metro was the only thing they could find that all four men had in common, but, with no other parameters to narrow it down with, the list of men connected to the Metro went on for longer than he cared to look through. If they had to go through every single man on that list they would be in Houston for weeks.

This was frustrating. He disliked being unable to figure things out in general, but this was beyond just the case. All he wanted was go back to the hotel, slip back into bed with Calliope and talk, cuddle, watch a movie, anything as long as he had her in his arms. He could still feel the paralyzing terror coursing through his veins, feel it with the same intensity he felt when she had been unaccounted for, and, the longer it took them to solve this case, the longer it would be until he could be with her again. Logically, he knew she was safe, that Foyet couldn't hurt her, but that knowledge did nothing to soothe the unease he felt now that she was out of his sight again.

"So, Reid. You have anything?" Emily asked as she stopped next to him.

"I wish. This is just too conflicting. If he varied the dumpsites to throw us off, he's doing a damn good job of it."

"Dr. Reid. We have a fifth victim," McEwen said as she and J.J. walked briskly into the conference room. "Charles Hanson. Age fifty-three. Had a wife and three kids, sixteen, thirteen and twelve. Same M.O. – a single gunshot wound to the temple and several post-mortem shots to the chest and genitals."

"But it's morning. This unsub kills in the evening."

"Apparently he never came home. The wife, Patricia Hanson, reported him missing last night, but we didn't find out about it because she went to the Katy Police Department, not the Houston P.D.," J.J. told them.

"Damn. Three days. He's speeding up. Where'd he dump the body?"

"In a parking lot off of Old Katy Road and Sam Houston Tollway. It's a big combined parking lot. Hanson was found closest to a furniture mega-store, The Great Indoors."

Reid sighed and started putting up the newest victims' information on the board after taking the sheet McEwen had given him. "It's the same, guys. It looks like the kids are zoned to go to Taylor High School. They live off of Highland Knolls right next to Maude Marks Library and Memorial Junior High, which is probably where the youngest two attend."

"There's something different about this one," J.J. said, almost ominously.

ooo ooo ooo ooo

Filling out the address card on the delivery form, Calliope laughed as her friend chattered next to her, her voice echoing along the empty gallery. Eli was posed at the front door, watching the sidewalk and the pedestrians and passersby. Isaac stood at the other end of the gallery by the emergency exit, his eyes glancing at the sculptures and paintings that decorated the sparse hall. Calliope scuffed the heel of her worn out cowboy boots on the marble tile as she listened to Allison tell her about life in Houston.

"The gallery is amazing. Working here in amazing. I love it, Calliope. I love that you're here! You should have told me you were coming. I could have taken some time off and we could have hung out."

"I didn't know I was coming," Calliope answered honestly as she awkwardly wrote on the slip with her right hand instead of her left. "Hell, I don't even know when I'm leaving."

"Here, let me do that. You dictate. I'll never be able to read it."

"Thanks," Calliope sighed as she crumpled the paper in her palm, scowling bitterly at her useless wrist. "Three-oh-two Lee Drive, Fredericksburg, Virginia, zip code two-two-four-oh-one."

"What happened?" Allison asked, gesturing at the purple plaster as she filled in the form with ease.

"You know me. I'm a complete klutz."

"Oh, that I know. Remember at Carnegie Mellon during our last year of grad school at the two-thousand-seven spring festival, you tripped over the extension cord for the Farris wheel, effectively shutting the wheel down mid-circle and knocking yourself and a popcorn stand over, only to roll all the way down the bank into the duck pond?"

"I thought we swore we'd never talk about that again."

"What are friends for if not to drudge up your embarrassing secrets?"

"Good point," Calliope laughed. "Your portion of the gallery is great, Allison. Your skill has crazy improved."

"Are you saying I was terrible?" The brunette teased as she stuck the label on the sculpture Calliope had purchased.

"You know me too well," Calliope went along with the joke. "I'm only buying this because I am utterly filled with pity for your poor, talentless soul. Don't feel too badly, though. Not everyone can be me."

Allison burst out laughing as Calliope held up her iPhone and snapped a picture of the sculpture. She tapped out a quick text and sent the picture message before pocketing the phone and turning back to her friend. "So, I'm curious. Why do you want this? It's modernist/minimalist. It's totally not your taste unless you've pulled a one-eighty since I last saw you."

"It's not for me. It's going to be a Christmas gift. I know someone who would love it. But I do appreciate it. It's beautiful. You did an amazing job. All joking aside, this is better than anything you did at CMU. Your skills have grown so much. Very, very impressive, Allison."

"Actually, I was thinking about you a few weeks ago. I was working on a sculpture and I thought it might be cool if we did a few pieces together."

"I'm not a sculptor. You know that. You've seen my pitiful attempts. And by 'pitiful' I mean absolutely horrific and should never be shown to the public or ever see the light of day. I think they've been destroyed to preserve the eyes of whoever might have accidently seen them. Like Medusa and her snake hair." Calliope raised an eyebrow, confused.

"I know, that's not what I meant. I was thinking about doing a modernist meets traditional sort of thing. A modernist/minimalist sculpture with maybe a realist or impressionist scenes painted on it."

"That… that has potential. That could be really cool if we pulled it off properly."

"I'm just trying to use you to get my name in lights," Allison joked.

"For that idea, I might just let you do it."

"Hey, I've always wondered: Why don't you sign your paintings with your name? Why do you use 'Scroll and Stylus Inc" instead of Calliope Sellers?"

"I don't want the attention but I still want to paint. I want people to like my art on its own merit, not because of who painted it."

"Boy, were you born into the wrong family," Allison rolled her eyes and Calliope pulled her vibrating phone out.

"I know, right? It's ridiculous." She agreed absently as she read Spencers' text message and tapped out a response.

"Who was that?"

"Spencer Reid."

"We have a boy toy?"

ooo ooo ooo ooo

Reid stood tacking the pictures of the newest victim on the evidence board, leaning heavily on his crutches. His knee was throbbing with an intensity that had him almost willing to take a painkiller. Almost, but not quite. He hadn't taken a Tylenol 3 since Calliope had come home and in the ten days she had been gone after the shooting he had used the medication sparingly. Out of a bottle of sixty pills, he had used only seven and only when the pain became unbearable.

Shoving his hand in his pocket, he closed his fist around the one-year medallion he carried with him. Throwing the bottle of painkillers in the trash had been a mental victory as much as it had been a physical one. Reid spent a lot of time thinking about why avoiding the narcotic had been almost easy this time around. Before he would never have trusted himself alone in the same room with them, the temptation might have turned out to be too great. He couldn't take that risk. But he had the prescription for three months before he threw it out and he only took seven of the pills.

Only seven.

Out of all the things he had achieved in twenty-eight years, he was most proud of that accomplishment. It took him a long time to fully understand why resisting hadn't been the painful struggle he assumed it would be. When it finally dawned on him, he wanted to smack his head against something hard and solid. For a genius, his idiocy astounded him. Before, Reid had things to loose – his job, his friends, the little stability he had. Now, Reid had everything to loose – his job, his gun, his credentials, his friends, the happiness he finally gained, his beautiful muse. It had been so simple because he had Calliope, he had her to lean on when he needed support and he knew that, if he slipped and fell back into using dilaudid, he would loose her. She made that quite clear.

Reid shook his head, pulled himself out of his thoughts, and looked back up at the corkboard before him.

"Callie, what are you doing here?" Reid turned around when Rossi spoke and broke out into a smile when he saw Calliope, Eli and Isaac walking into the room behind Prentiss.

"I had lunch with an old friend, Allison Johnston, from grad school, she works at a modern art gallery here. She had a meeting this afternoon though."

"Have fun?" Reid asked, still smiling.

"So much so that the amount should be illegal," Calliope told him as she gave him a quick, chaste kiss.

"They almost got themselves kicked out of Chili's for causing a scene."

"Apparently laughing too loudly is bad, very, very bad," she nodded seriously, drawing out the word 'bad' for effect. Reid rolled his eyes and chuckled, the profiler in him noticing how she'd positioned her back to the evidence board, not wanting to see the gruesome pictures.

"You should be serving twenty-five to life then," Rossi told her.

"I'd so be on death row," Calliope agreed. "You guys go back to work. I'm just going to chill in the corner, if that's alright."

"Of course," Reid said quickly, so relieved at the thought of having her in his line of sight that he ignored the nagging guilt telling him his sweetheart had no business being anywhere close to the horrors he worked with daily and that fifteen months of hiding his case files from her would be undone in fifteen seconds. "You can use my chair."

"Eh, floor's cool." She shrugged and squeezed his hand before waltzing over the corner and settling herself down on the floor, her back against the wall. The brothers sat in a set of hard wooden chairs by the windows; Isaac pulled out a book and Eli covertly watched Emily work while he pretended he wasn't. Reid gazed at Calliope dotingly for a minute or so longer before turning back to the board and pinned up the last few items in his hand.

"Who's this?" McEwen asked as she and Hotch walked into the room an hour later and saw the three new additions.

"Ah, that's Dr. Reid's girlfriend Calliope Sellers and her bodyguards, her cousins Lieutenant Colonel Eli Gregg and Major Isaac Gregg. Callie, Isaac, Eli, this is Detective McEwen." Hotch made the introductions and Calliope gave a little wave reminiscent of one Reid would give, the Gregg brothers stood up like the southern gentlemen they had been raised to be.

"Cousins?" McEwen asked disbelievingly as she shook the two men's hands, looking between the three of them.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Well, make yourselves comfortable. All I ask is that you not get in the way."

Hotch frowned at the snippy, judgmental tone in Detective McEwens' voice while she spoke to Isaac and Eli, but stared at Calliope, who sat unaware of the attention she garnered as she attempted to crochet with her right hand.

ooo ooo ooo ooo

"Bah! I'm going to scream soon," Prentiss groaned as she tossed a folder back onto the table. "What is the significance of dumping the body by a furniture store in Memorial, a strip mall off of Mason Road, the Houston Public Library, an ice rink in Sugarland, and the middle of nowhere off of Katy-Hockley Road?"

"He managed to leave nothing at any of the dumpsites or at the scene of the latest murder. And he sped up. He only waited three days before killing again and left a murder scene and took the time to do some serious overkill after Hanson was already dead. Is this the beginning a devolution or a taunt?"

"We just talked to Mrs. Hanson," J.J. said as she and Morgan walked in and sat down with McEwen and the rest of their team. "She said her husband had no enemies, he was friends with everyone. So why all the pent up rage? All the post-mortem mutilation has to be personal. You don't have that much rage towards someone without a reason."

"He might not have been the reason. He might have just been in the wrong place in the wrong time and bore the brunt of the rage. Something might have just happened in the unsub's life yesterday that caused his anger. So he sped up to get the release he feels when he murders and Hanson happened to be whom he was targeting next. The unsub just took out all his rage on his victim," Reid suggested, looking to Hotch.

"If he was in a rage, that might explain why he didn't take the time to conceal or clean the murder scene," Morgan agreed. "But if he carries a murder kit, he already has the tools to make sure he doesn't leave anything at the scene. Gloves, gun, tape, the wrapping he uses to transport the body."

"Spencer?"

"Calliope, maybe you should wait outside," he said gently, turning to look at her.

"No, it-it's not that. I just have a question." She paused for a moment looking back at the board, utterly unsure of herself, before looking back at Spencers' expectant expression. "Why do you think it's a man?"

"Why is the unsub male?" Spencer reworded her question to make sure he answered what she was asking. At her nod, he proceeded. "He's targeting men that look similar and led similar lives. He's killing men that represent the life he's lost or thinks he deserves."

Calliope looked at little nauseated as she glanced back at the board.

"Sweetheart, I really think you should go outside," Reid started to push himself up, but she shook her head.

"I don't think it's a man," she said just as quietly as she had said his name.

"Ms. Sellers, honestly," McEwen sighed, glaring at her, "If you're going to interrupt with nonsense than you should leave."

"I'm sorry," Calliope blushed and lowered her eyes to her crochet again.

"Wait. Toothpick, why don't you think it's a man?" Morgan asked, resisting the urge to tell the detective to hop off her high horse and get over her little crush on Reid. He saw her cousins tense defensively at the way McEwen spoke to Calliope, but Reid was restudying the board, his forehead wrinkled in concentration, and didn't notice.

"I'm not a profiler," she mumbled, not looking up.

"Callie, you wouldn't have said anything if you didn't have a reason," Rossi said in his customary no-nonsense voice he used when he didn't want to mince words or beat around the bush.

"The dumpsites – that's what you called them, right? You said they don't make sense."

"They don't," J.J. sighed.

"I think they do."

"How so?" Hotch asked, looking at the board.

"If it's a woman, the sites do make sense. May I?" Calliope stood up with uncharacteristic timidness and gestured towards the evidence board. At Morgan's nod, she walked over and pointed at the latest dumpsite. "At the other end of the parking lot is Stars Gymnastics. Then, at the strip mall, there's a Kumon. Right there. Kumon is a learning center for kids. Katy-Hockley has a baseball field. You can see the fence-y, net-y things that make sure the balls don't fly all over. I don't know what those are called. Sugarland was an ice rink and then the library. Those are all places moms take their children for after school activities."

Calliope turned back to the agents sitting at the table and flushed again. "I'm sorry. I'm not a profiler. I'm sorry. I'll be quiet."

"Damn," Morgan sighed, picking up the pictures in front of him.

"What? Did I mess something up? I'm sorry. I didn't touch anything." Calliope still looked nauseated.

"No, Cal. You didn't mess anything up. I think you're right. How did you see that?"

"I work with kids, Derek. They talk to me all the time. Those are places my students go to. I'm one of those types of places. Moms bring their kids to the studio for painting lessons after school."

"She's killing her husband," Prentiss realized.

"Ex-husband," Rossi corrected, picking up a picture of the mutilated body of the latest victim. "You don't have this much rage for a man you're still married to."

"Are you okay, Sweetheart?" Reid studied her, concerned.

"No, I feel… dirty." Calliope said truthfully, rubbing her arms like something was crawling on her. "I-I thought like her. I want to scrub my entire body with bleach or ammonia or something."

"Come here, Sweet Girl," Reid motioned for her to come over to him. Perched on his uninjured leg, Calliope leaned against him and closed her eyes, shaking a little. Reid pursed his lips and held her tightly, wanting to take this feeling away from her. "You are a lot smarter, a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for, Sweetheart. Just do me a favor and never mix bleach and ammonia. I love you."

"García, I need you to run a new search for me. Lives in Katy, white female in her late forties, early fifties. Recently divorced and takes the Metro at the same times as our victims. Has children, probably in the junior high or high school age range. Crosscheck that with newly divorced men who fit the same description of the victims."

"Zilch, Jayje. I'm sorry."

"Take the Metro off the list for the woman, García," Reid interjected, "and add it to the ex-husband. All the other moms where stay-at-home, if we assume their families match up, she wouldn't be taking the bus, the husband would be. She probably drove her ex-husband to the Park and Ride and picked him up. That's where she got the idea; she saw them when she was dropping him off."

"Check and mate. Dr. Reid, they do not call you a genius for nothing."

ooo ooo ooo ooo

Spencer watched as she slept, carefully brushing the loose, frizzy curls that had escaped her braids back so he could see her face, see the freckles on her nose. He loved watching her sleep. There was something pure and innocent about how she looked when she was still and quiet and her breathing was even and calm. She looked so peaceful.

He kissed her forehead and looked around the jet at his friends and family. Eli and Emily played chess and flirted. Derek chatted with Isaac, about what Spencer wasn't sure. J.J. dozed. Hotch and Dave both sat like him, lost in thought. Smiling, he turned back to Calliope, sitting limply next to him, pressed snuggly to his side with her head tucked to his collarbone.

He tightened his protective hold on her and kissed her forehead, thinking back to the morning. Spencer blushed slightly and bit his lip, shifting a little before dragging his mind away from the erotic thoughts of how she felt against him, moved with him, the quiet wanton noises he provoked. He kissed her forehead again, feeling a rush of masculine pride fill him as he remembered all he had caused in her. Thinking back, he was glad he had called the lobby while she was in the shower and asked them to bring up a new set of linens. Calliope hadn't said anything, but he knew she felt grateful she didn't have to sleep on bloody sheets and that he'd saved her the embarrassment of saying anything.

Looking at her again, he frowned slightly. He knew how utterly miserable she'd been the past several months. She put on a front for him, trying to let him believe that she was happy. Her cousins were wonderful and he genuinely liked them, but he knew she wanted them to go home to Williamsburg. Spencer could feel how she tensed in his arms when they sat cuddled on the couch and one of them walked into the room. The little time they had together when he wasn't on a case tainted by how anxious she acted even while trying to appear cheerful and carefree. She was a terrible actor and an even worse liar.

He knew how much she missed Haley. As soon as Dave had commented that the two women might know each other a lot more than Calliope let on, Spencer had started noticing the signs, started putting together things he hadn't before, maybe only because he hadn't wanted to. The two would never be friends the way she and Penelope were friends or she and her friend Jill something-or-other, but they had so much in common, so much to confide in each other about.

He didn't let her know that he knew. Letting her keep her secrets was harmless; Spencer had taken so much from her in the past months, there was no reason for him to take that away from her as well. Barely an hour ago he had held her hair while she was sick over the toilet in the hotel room, unable to stop thinking about the gruesome photographs she had seen and the things she had heard them talk about in the precinct. He had taken so much from her – respecting her secrets was the least he could give her.

Looking down at her now, peaceful and asleep, he smiled. It was better for her to be sleeping, dreaming, instead of thinking about those pictures. Last night he had dreamed. Usually he didn't dream outright. He either relived memories or had nightmares, but rarely dreamt regular dreams. This one had been perfect; this morning, his mind had wanted to stay there, in the perfection of the dream. Closing his eyes, he momentarily let himself drift back to the bungalow he shared with Calliope.

Spencer walked out the back door onto the porch, the sunshine hot on his skin as he went down the steps into the grassy backyard. Calliope had set up her easel in the year and her hair shown brightly in the sun. The wind blew just enough to move the wind chimes that hung from the arches on the porch and her laughter resonated around him, through him. "Daddy!" Spencer smiled widely as a tiny body launched itself into his arms; a flare of frizzy red curls momentarily obscuring his view. Lifting the child up, he kissed the round cheek. "I missed you, Daddy." "I missed you too, Bailey. I'm home now, though."

He blinked his eyes open again and squeezed his sleeping muse just a little tighter, held her a little more securely. He wanted that. Before he met Calliope, he never allowed himself to think about having a family, because he always figured it would just never be in the cards for him, was always terrified of passing on his mothers disease. But now he couldn't help but long for it. He wanted to see a little girl with her mothers' hair and bright eyes run towards him when he came home. He wanted to tuck his daughter into bed at night, have her run to him when monsters needed scaring away from under her bed. Calliope made him want that life, made him want to share that life with her.

"Bailey," he whispered, testing the name out, barely audible to himself much less to anyone else on the jet. The woman in his arms would never be able to truly fathom how much she meant to him, how much he loved her. To him, a man who had honestly and wholeheartedly believed and accepted that he would spend his life alone, she acted as a soothing balm that continually healed his pain, replacing it with unending happiness. She was to him as water was to a man lost in the Sahara. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against the top of her head. "Bailey Reid. Spencer, Calliope and Bailey Reid. Calliope Reid. I like the sound of that."

A/N:

I do believe this is my favorite chapter so far and I hope it's yours! Thank you so much, dear readers, for doing as you do and, what else?, reading! I really hope you like it. I love exploring character emotions and development. :o)

I posted a pretty awesome one-shot (if I do say so myself) about their first date that I really love. So, if you want a laugh or to see how their love started (all together now: 'awwww') go read it! It's called Allergies and Phenylethylamine.

At the request of baobei, I shall be posting more one-shots that deeper explore the evolution of their relationship, as she so perceptively noticed and pointed out that Mystery Muse skips several key months of relationship development to keep the pace of the story. So keep your eyes out for them!

Again - thank you so much for reading! This is all for yall... and me. Because I like it. Haha! Anyways, please, I hunger to know what you think, good or bad!

Love, Thalia