"She wanted something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second." -Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
Hermione and Spencer kept walking, and as it always has been and always will be, eventually they came to a fork in the road.
In one direction, the pathway continued on in its endless languid circle around the park. But in the other direction, a smaller path branched off and moseyed its way impishly over to a modest little playground.
Spencer had walked around this park dozens of times before (93 to be exact, soon to be 94) and so of course he knew about the playground. But since he was a grown man with many other troubling adult thoughts taking up space in his mind, he had noted the existence of the playground exactly once and then filed it away in his brain where all the other miscellaneous and mostly useless information lived, waiting for their time to shine - probably in a case.
Thankfully, he hadn't needed to remember this playground in any case which would undoubtedly involved children which was always awful, and since he didn't particularly need to know about it right now and his brain was happily focusing completely on Hermione, it continued being miscellaneous and useless information to him.
But at the fork in the road Hermione stopped short, forcing Spencer to stop along with her or risk having his arm yanked out of its socket. Morgan always teased Spencer for not being very athletic, but the ease with which this petite woman could manhandle him had Spencer flipping through his mental phonebook for gyms in his area. He followed Hermione's gaze and found her intensely scrutinizing the playground swing set nestled beneath a Dogwood tree that bloomed with aesthetically pleasing pink and white blossoms, as if she were on the precipice of a life-changing decision.
He opened his mouth to ask her what she was thinking about when abruptly her face changed, lighting up like a Christmas tree. She shot him a positively devilish grin before unceremoniously yanking him down the path towards the playground. "Hermione!" He yelped involuntarily. He stumbled and Hermione, obviously deciding that he was only holding her back, dropped his hand and took off at a buoyant sprint. He blinked at her surprising speed and before he knew it, she was sitting on one of the swings which creaked benevolently from use rather than her weight. She beamed at him and waved. "Come on, Spencer!" She called, laughing.
He shook his head in amusement but her enthusiasm was infectious. He ambled over to her, quickening his pace at her impatient bouncing. He awkwardly folded his lanky body into the child's swing next to hers and smirked at her. "Care to share with the class why our quest has taken this detour, Frodo?"
"Frodo never detoured from his quest, Spencer, as you well know." She corrected him primly. "Besides, I think I'm rather more like Gandalf, personally."
Spencer's eyebrows lifted. "The wizard?"
Hermione's lips twitched and her eyes sparkled with some secret source of mirth. "Something like that, yes." Then she twisted the chains of her swing so she could properly face him "And as for our 'detour', it is nothing more than sheer childish impulsivity," She informed him, "and no small measure of nostalgia. I grew up living right across the street from a lovely little park, and I could swing for hours on end. It was my favorite thing to do, besides reading of course."
"Of course." He agreed with a grin.
She wrinkled her nose at him and untwisted to gaze wistfully at the rest of the playground. "I had a rather normal childhood, I'd like to think, aside from my unusually academic interests… but my schooling years were a good deal less innocent. I was living the kind of fairy tale most children only dream of, but it quickly became more of a nightmare… I don't remember the last time I was on a playground, or had a snowball fight… I don't remember ever being a child." She whispered. Her eyes were haunted in the way Spencer saw in the mirror.
He was concerned, and confused. If she was talking about her secretive government career, he would understand. But the ghosts living in her eyes right now weren't the remains of a lost childhood… this was only the look someone got when they carried the weight of someone else's fate.
"Hermione…"
Her eyes drifted over to him and she sucked in a breath at whatever expression was on his face. "Don't ask me," She said. It wasn't a plea, not quite, but it was no less tortuous a tone. "Don't ask me, because I won't tell you."
Spencer shoved aside the multitude of questions that had immediately crowded his Broca's Aphasia and simply asked, "Why?"
She seemed a little disappointed by his question, but understanding. Spencer hated the fact that he might have let her down somehow by asking that, but he also didn't feel like he had done anything wrong.
"I won't tell you… at least not yet," She emphasized, "Because I don't want you to save me."
(It was an uncanny ability of women, to turn their words into sighs.)
Spencer was a doctor and a scientist and a government employee. He surrounded himself with facts and statistics to try to make sense of the senseless tragedies he dealt with every day. On his days off work, he drowned himself in academic pursuits that had nothing to do with criminology or psychology. His teammates had consistently made jokes about him being a robot, more to do with his eidetic memory than anything else, but they wouldn't be far off emotionally. He had been raised by a mentally absent mother and now he studied the minds of serial killers and rapists. Nothing in his entire life had allowed for safe and healthy emotional development.
To put it bluntly, he was a psychologist who didn't know what to do with his own feelings.
Hermione made him feel a lot of feelings, and so far they had been almost entirely positive. She had burst into his life like fire but had stayed like daylight. Spencer was beginning to be fully aware of the depth and permanence of his feelings about and for her… at least the good ones.
Right now, he wasn't having a lot of good feelings. He could clearly identify worry, frustration, confusion and… helplessness?
Spencer had felt helpless before. He was no stranger to that particularly annoying feeling. But it was somewhat new to feel helpless because he wanted to help someone, but they wouldn't let him.
So Spencer decided it was time to deal in facts. He gazed seriously at Hermione and mentally took stock of everything he knew to be true about her. After a few long minutes, he nodded. "Okay."
She blinked at him, and tentative hope bloomed in her eyes. "Okay?"
He naturally reached out to hold her hand again. He intertwined their fingers together securely before explaining, "I know better than anyone that you can't save someone from their past. Besides… you're one of the strongest women I've ever known. I'm pretty sure it's you that does the saving most of the time." He smiled at the spark of pride she couldn't hide, and continued, "Of course I want you to tell me, and I wish you were ready to tell me now… but there are things I'm not ready to tell you either," (He could almost feel the smooth plastic of the pill bottle in his hand, heavier than a gun), "and... I trust you."
There wasn't much to say after that, it turned out.
Hermione looked very serious. "There are things I haven't told you, Spencer, but I promise I have never lied to you…. and I never will." She vowed.
"Then I will try not to ask questions you can't or won't answer." He promised in return, squeezing her hand harder.
Hermione smiled at him gratefully before saying dryly, "I don't imagine that many girlfriends are pleased to hear their boyfriend won't try to get to know them better." She rolled her eyes. "What a solid foundation for a relationship."
Spencer surprised them both by laughing out loud. She waited for him to finish with a bemused look on her face, and through his chuckles and snorts he choked out, "Boyfriend?"
Her face went white, then red, then settled on a very bright shade of pink. "Oh blast. I've gone and done it again, haven't I?" She complained. "I keep forcing you to move faster than you want… I said we had a first date before we ever did, I told you I liked you first, I kissed you first, and now I called you my bloody boyfriend!" She exclaimed.
Spencer was still laughing at the sheer surrealness of the situation, but her face suddenly fell. "I'm so sorry, Spencer… I don't want to push you into something you're not ready for… I don't want this if you don't want this and - mmph!"
(Spencer was beginning to like the practice of using kissing to get a point across.)
He pulled away before he could get too distracted and put his hands on her shoulders, grounding her to this moment and the words he said, which started out lighthearted. "Hello, my name is Spencer Reid, the most socially awkward and romantically clueless genius in the world. Have we met?"
Her lips twitched and she pressed them together firmly, clearly trying not to smile.
He slid his hands down her arms to grasp her hands again. "Hermione, if you hadn't done those things, it might have taken me literally years - well, at least a few really long months - to ask you out, let alone kiss you."
"That's what I'm saying -"
Spencer rolled his eyes. "You know, kissing you is awesome and it's proving to be an effective method to get to you shut up, but I don't want to get in the habit of trivializing something so amazing. So if you could just let me finish, then I can kiss you the way I want to… for a very very long time."
Her eyes were very wide and her cheeks were very pink, but now she was also very quiet.
Spencer grinned, a little proudly but also a little sheepishly. "And, um, for the record, I wouldn't have interrupted you because I value your feelings and thoughts above almost everything else, but I think you were about to try to save me and that's kind of a double standard, Miss Granger. So I decided to be the strong woman for once and take initiative." He ended, only joking a little bit. He also thought Prentiss would be proud of his little speech.
Hermione was laughing. "I think you meant that to be a feminist statement, so I'll take it that way, because it started out so lovely." She smiled mischievously. "And I'd like to hurry this along so we can get to the 'kissing for a very very long time' part."
He swallowed. "Er - yeah - um, where was I?" He coughed and she giggled, clearly enjoying his being flustered. "Oh, right." He grew serious again, "Hermione, if you ever think I don't want this, that I don't want you, then I'm doing something very wrong and you should break up with me immediately because you deserve someone who always wants you and never makes you doubt that fact. Because that's what it is... a fact." He said softly but fervently. "It's a fact that I want you. I want this."
The breathless expression on her face stole his breath in return.
"And, um," he continued quietly, "Yeah. That's what you deserve. Even if it's not with me. And… because I'm socially awkward and romantically clueless, it might take me a few tries to get it right, but I promise I will be that for you. I will be what you deserve, for as long as you want me in return."
This time she kissed him, and they kissed for a very very long time.
"You know," She said casually after they stopped kissing and were capable of coherent speech again, "I can't break up with you immediately if you're not my boyfriend."
"I'm not?" He quirked an eyebrow.
She arched one in return. "Well I certainly don't remember you asking me to be your girlfriend..."
Spencer grinned and joked, "Damn, I knew I forgot to do something."
She giggled, then added, "...and all this kissing is rather forward for someone who's not my boyfriend." She teased him, "I think I need a bit of... clarification."
She was clearly just giving him a hard time, but Spencer had warmed to the idea and decided that he was a man of his word. He would be what she deserved, and she deserved 'a bit of clarification'.
He glanced around and spotted something which gave him an idea. He stood up quickly, the force of his movement sending the swing wobbling into the backs of his knees and nearly knocking him over. "Hermione, close your eyes, and don't open them until I tell you too."
She looked confused and nothing short of suspicious, and opened her mouth obviously to question him, but he said, "Trust me." Her face softened and she nodded slowly. She closed her eyes, covering them with her hands for good measure.
Spencer waited until he was sure she wasn't peeking and he executed his spontaneous plan as quickly and discreetly as possible, then went to stand behind her and leaned down to say softly in her ear, "Okay, you can open your eyes now."
She opened her eyes much more slowly than he thought someone of her incredible curiosity and impatience would, and when she had fully absorbed her surroundings she frowned. "Why did you make me close my eyes? Everything looks the same." She said, and a tiny bit of disappointment seeped into her voice.
"Hmm." Spencer said, feigning confusion. "That's weird." He shrugged. "Oh well." He said with a dramatic sigh. "I guess there's only one thing left to do… you are sitting in a swing after all."
"Spencer, what are you -" Her words fell away with a gasp as he gave her a push that sent her swinging through the air. She began to laugh in delight, despite her confusion, and it only took a few more firm pushes for the movement to tug on his shoelaces, which he had tied to the chain of her swing and connected to a branch of the dogwood tree above the swing set, which shook the tree branch and Hermione found herself swinging in a shower of falling flowers. "Spencer!" She exclaimed in wonder. "How did you…"
Spencer grinned at his shoelaces. "Magic," He joked, remembering their first date, "and physics." Then, with a bit of sleight of hand he tossed something over her head into her lap as he pushed her.
With a nice display of reflexes Hermione caught the falling bookmark tied to some dogwood blossoms. She saw a familiar message in blue ink that said 'My IQ is 188', then flipped it over to see a new message written under the printed definition:
Eunoia (n.) beautiful thinking; a well mind.
-Hermione Granger (n.) beauty beyond definition in mind, body, and soul.
-Spencer Reid (n.) a socially awkward and romantically clueless genius, who wants more than anything for Hermione to be his girlfriend, and to be the boyfriend she deserves.
She smiled as slowly as the swing that was coming to a stop, and looked up to where Spencer now stood before her. He flicked his wrist, and presented her with one single flower, just like he did on their first date. "Will you be my girlfriend?" He asked out loud.
She reached out to him, but instead of taking the flower, she laced their fingers together and used the leverage to pull herself up and pull him down at the same time so that their faces were so close there was only space for one word.
Before she kissed him, she whispered, "Yes."
"I never felt magic as crazy as this
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree
But now you're here."
-Nick Drake, Northern Sky (paraphrased)
Author's Note: A gentle interlude to make up for my absence. I've almost got the next chapter finished.