Hello all! Apologies for the late update but I wanted to write chapters back to back before posting :) I hope you enjoy this chapter and I can't wait to read your reviews!

Alma hated to admit how much she missed Spencer. She tried not to think about it, but the more she focused on anything else the more her thoughts seemed to wander back to that inevitable destination. What was even more pathetic was that Alma seemed to miss the stupidest things like the way she could feel the calluses on his fingers when he held her hand, which was practically the most he touched her, or how he scrunched his eyebrows together when she made a sarcastic comment that took him a few short moments to catch. There had been many text messages and even more phone calls than that, but they hadn't been able to see one another for longer than just coffee in the weeks following their time in the park.

Spencer was always either away on important business or swamped at the office. He didn't feel bad, exactly, he imaged that if he had to name the emotion it would be a lot closer to guilt or anxiousness. He knew every time he was dragged away on a case that he had not just someone, but her waiting for him to come back.

Perhaps what was even worse for the agent than the nagging guilt and urge to see her was just how great Alma was being about all of it. Spencer was still both shocked and amazed that despite years of telling himself that he was just meant to be alone and that his job would get in the way of any potential relationship someone like Alma had just fallen, quite literally, into his life. The logical and dominant part of his brain assured him that she was used to his hectic schedule to a point, as her father held some position in the FBI, but the small nagging voice in the back of his head told him that this was not out of habit nor obligation.

He could hear her exhaustion when she stayed up late to take his calls and she had somehow managed to beat him every morning to Pina's for their ritual morning coffee when he was home. She even had his drink waiting when he had gotten back from a short but particularly difficult case. Well, a drink waiting, which Spencer had assured her was a kind gesture despite the outcome. She hadn't known exactly what he usually ordered but he seemed like an espresso kind of guy until Alma had actually watched him try to drink the black double shot she ordered him. The espresso was still worth it for Alma, who had gotten to both watch Spencer's face twist up in disgust at the bitter drink and finish it herself.

In their short amount of time together something inside Spencer had just clicked. And he didn't realize it yet, but once it clicked that little part of him would be stuck always thinking about Alma, maybe forever.

And if it was, he didn't seem to mind. Spencer figured if you were going to be stuck thinking of anyone, someone like her was sure as hell the kind of person you'd want to be stuck with.

It was two weeks after the espresso incident, as they were now calling it, that Spencer finally had a night off. It was special to Alma for an entirely different reason, as it was the first time she allowed anyone besides her father to come see her makeshift studio. It also allowed Spencer a chance to see her art up close, a concept which was enough to make Alma's stomach twist in a bundle of nerves by itself.

He wouldn't have known there was anything remotely resembling a studio space in the building address Alma sent him, but she assured him that the address was correct and that she would leave the cracking wooden door on the second floor open for him.

Spencer thought she looked beautiful on their first date, laying on the blanket in that dress with her hair all spread out around her like a halo. But there was something about seeing her here, in her element, that made her look truly angelic.

"Is that you, doctor?" Alma called, but made no attempt to turn around and remove her focus from the canvas.

"It's me, Spencer" he corrected, rolling his eyes playfully and stepping forward to put a hand on her shoulder.

"Hmm," she mumbled and tilted her head to her right to rest on top of where Spencer had placed his hand. "Good enough."

"When's the last time you took a break?" Spencer questioned, trying to ignore the way his cheeks heated up when Almas skin made contact with his hand. He wanted to surprise her by getting here early, and he was very glad he had. The profiler part of him knew Alma probably would never let him watch her paint if he had not snuck up on her.

"Oh a few hours ago."

Spencer sighed with relief.

"Or maybe days who knows really. I'm sure I have twenty missed calls from my dad, SWAT may or may not be on the way."

"I really hope you're kidding," Spencer responded sincerely. Alma never went into detail about her father's job, just as Spencer never went into detail about his cases. It had become a sort of an unspoken pact between them, but it didn't do much to squash Spencer's natural curiosity.

"Mostly," she laughed.

"Come on, let's get the starving artist something to eat."

Alma shook her head, "No I'm good," she insisted with her eyes still focused in front of her.

It was obvious to Reid that she was painting a portrait: a man and a woman with a lot of rough paint strokes of white and green in the background. Gently, Reid reached out and tilted her chin so towards him so her eyes would finally meet his. Spencer didn't have to ask, he just had to look at her pointedly enough and Alma quickly cracked under his stare.

"I've been doing the same thing for three days. I just can't get it right. And the worst part is that I can feel it, like I'm right there" Alma pointed to a spot on the canvas between the couple. "I'm sorry" she shook her head, "you finally have a night off and here I am complaining."

"You don't have to apologize, Alma. This is important to you and I understand that." Spencer removed his hand from her chin and gestured towards the painting. "Can you uhm...would you tell me about it?"

"It's…my parents. Well was my parents, their wedding day." Alma said, trying her best to keep her voice even. From her little side table she reached around and held her reference photo out to Spencer.

"Was?"

"Yeah they uhm…they've been gone a long time now."

She said gone Spencer realized, but he knew by the way she was holding herself that gone really meant dead.

"I'm so sorry, Alma."

"I'll just be…I just need a few more minutes with this," she said, "and then we can go do something else, I promise."

It was, of course, Spencer's job to read people, but he rarely if ever had to read Alma. She usually wore her emotions on her sleeve, but Spencer could tell she missed her parents much more than she was willing to let on. It was not lost on him either how quickly she tried to deflect their conversation. But her lack of words was not important to him, it was how she looked that got to Spencer.

The look in her eyes was fleeting but he realized quickly that he did not ever want to see it return, no matter how short it lasted.

Pursing his lips Spencer stood up and straightened his back. "I'll be right back, okay?"

"Spencer?" She questioned, sadness straining her voice. She had gotten up for the first time in hours to look directly at him as he prepared to walk out. Facing her head on Spencer noticed paint streaked across various parts of her arms and some even dried in her hair. It was hard not to notice the bags and deep purple bruises under her eyes and the way her frame looked too small in her oversized and stained t-shirt. He swore he even noticed something dark red and dried under her nose, but couldn't determine if it was blood or paint.

"Right back," he confirmed and placed a kiss on her forehead, "thirty minutes tops I promise." And with that, Reid was gone.

Alma hadn't actually excepted him to return. In the approximately thirty minutes that the agent was gone, she had managed to work herself up in a state of complete anxiety. She knew it would be hard to finally tackle the wedding portrait of her parents, but she had severely underestimated all the emotions it would bring up for her, let alone her speaking about it to Spencer.

When she heard the door open she felt frozen in her spot on the floor, unsure of whether to go greet him or wait for him to come to her as she did before. Alma hadn't bothered to change out of her painting clothes, let alone leave the spot she had previously occupied. She couldn't see him from her angle, but she heard him shuffling around on the other side of the divided wall.

"Spencer?" Alma called, slowly stepping towards the front of her small studio area.

"Yeah uh, just one sec stay over there"

"Spence, what are you doing?"

He didn't respond right away, but after a few minutes he called for her to come over.

It was still her mess of a studio, Alma doubted there would be much to ever change that, but it wasn't lost on her what he had done.

Spencer was standing there with a red and white checkered box on the small wooden table next to him that had previously held brushes and dirty cups of paint water. The area of the room surrounding them had small votive candles sprinkled around, making the room smell faintly of vanilla.

Tentatively, Spencer shrugged his blazer off and draped it over Alma's shoulders. She had been too lost in her painting all day to remember that she left her windows open, not even noticing she had been shivering until she felt the warmth of his jacket.

Shaking her head, Alma made a poor attempt to hand the soft fabric back to the man in front of her. "I'll get paint on it," she insisted.

"I don't care," he assured her. Alma was still somewhat frozen in a state of shock and staring up at Spencer but responded by gripping the plaid fabric like a blanket tightly against her shoulders.

"I hope this is okay. I didn't know what you liked exactly so I just got-"

"What is that?" She asked quietly, gesturing to a pile of white petals in brown wrapping on the table that she hadn't noticed before.

"Tulips," Spencer said nervously. Alma noticed his hand rubbing the back of his neck nervously, and it reminded her much of his mannerisms on the first day they met.

Alma knew that the doctor was nervous but for what reason, she couldn't quite decipher. She took a step closer to him, now so close that Alma had to crane her neck to make eye contact due to their height difference.

"Tulips?"

"You said you didn't like roses"

"And you remembered" she noted, getting on her toes to make herself a little taller so she could wrap her arms up around his neck. Her eyes glanced from his eyes to his lips and back up again.

"Of course," Spencer said, trailing a hand up and down her lower back in a comforting motion. "I would remember everything about you Alma," Spencer assured her, tucking a piece of stray hair behind her ear, "even without the eidetic memory."

It was probably for the best that Spencer's brain couldn't catch up with her actions. Before he knew it, Alma had stood up higher on her toes and pulled him closer so she could, finally, press her lips against his. It only took a brief moment for him to catch up, and when he did he melted into her touch and kissed her back fiercely.

Alma almost wanted to laugh at his response. He had been dancing around her for weeks, giving her no more than small touches and innocent pecks on her cheeks but never actually kissing her. Alma was glad that he slowly seemed to be getting more confident around her, but she would be lying to herself if she said she wasn't waiting for the doctor to take some initiative. She, after their night at the park, had stubbornly decided that it was up to Spencer to make the next move but had lost all resolve when she saw him standing there: the light from the candles flickering on his skin and his scent from the jacket invading her senses.

And somewhere inside Alma, something clicked.