Authors Note: This story takes place in the Criminal Minds universe with the occasional crossover into the Bones universe. As such, I only own my own original characters and everything else belongs to the writers and networks, blah, blah, blah.

Hope you enjoy.

P.S.: I am dyslexic. Any grammatical error is caused by such dyslexia, and after so many years of failing grammar, I could give less of a shit about how you feel about it or what I did wrong. If you want to correct my facts or translations, I welcome it. If something I wrote doesn't make sense, I welcome your opinion. Spelling and grammar errors? Not so much. If it bothers you, find something else to read.

Chapter 2: November 2005

"Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us."

― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

Spencer pulled away from the team after walking into the bullpen at the BAU offices in Quantico, having just gotten back from the hostage situation on the train in El Paso. They still had about an hour of time to burn before they could go home, and Spencer had every intention to power through some paper work. Well he had, until he'd received a 911 text from Harley just as the elevator doors closed on him and the team to take them up to the BAUs floor. Harley only ever texted 911s for one reason, and Spencer suddenly hoped she'd changed MOs for this one.

She hadn't.

"Oh, god, Pen," Harley gasped out as soon as she picked up. The phone had barely rung once when she'd picked up, after Spencer called her, having removed himself to the break room of the BAU. That meant she'd completely stopped whatever she had been doing to wait for his call. Harley was in hysterics, sobbing, and borderline hyperventilating. He could hear her breathing over the phone, and could almost envision the tears in her eye. Spencer winced. Harley was mid panic attack and in need of an anchor to ground her. "I don't know if we did something bad or good or what, but it feels absolutely awful, and we just played right into his stupid little game."

"Harley," Spencer sighed. "I need you to calm down and explain it to me a little. I don't understand what's going on, but I'm sure whatever you did wasn't the wrong thing to do."

"Howard Epps was supposed to die today and I just helped prevent that from happening," she cried, her breathing shallow and rapid. "If we had just been twenty minutes later, he'd be dead and where he belongs. But no, we had to go digging, and we played right into his stupid little plan. And I just feel awful about it, Pen."

"I don't understand," Spencer told her.

"You probably will tomorrow when you're asked to profile him," Harley snipped. "Wright wasn't Epps only victim. We found that out when we went looking into the case and found out that the victim was killed elsewhere so we just had to go and track that down, and now Epps gets his stupid stay of execution, so we can look into the two other bodies we found with the murder weapon. We played right into his plan, Pen. That monster should be dead right now, and because of us, he's going to continue to live."

"Harley—"

"He killed two other girls, that we know of, so now we get to identify two other girls, and two other families get to be told their daughter are never coming home," Harley explained, her sobs only seaming to intensify. "I hate him, Pen. I don't even believe in the death penalty but he makes me wish we'd have just let him die. And he's making me wish there's a hell just so he can go there! I'm supposed to believe that God can forgive anyone, but I really hope Epps gets smitted."

Spencer closed his eyes, rubbing one hand on his temple. There was only one way to try and calm her down right now that would work now. He could wait out the storm and let her calm down on her own, which could take a while, or he could try and drive to her and calm her down that way. Although by the time he got to her, she'd probably have calmed down, and his showing up would only be a setback. Which left only one other option. "Harley, I need you to stop talking and just listen to me as I talk."

And then from memory, Spencer began to quote, page for page and line for line, The Picture of Dorian Gray, listening to her as she stopped crying and her breathing calmed down. Distraction worked wonders, and Spencer found that if he talked calmly enough for a long enough time he could calm her down. He could try to reason with her, but that was easier done in person when he could hold her. Spencer continued to read the book to her by memory, even as he returned to his desk and got questioning glances from his team mates. He continued for the next half hour, filling out paper work as he continued telling the story to Harley over the phone. He even smacked Morgan's hand away when he tried to sneak his files into Spencer's pile.

"How long has it been since you slept?" Spencer asked when he knew Harley was relatively okay again.

"Over 48 hours. We were on a limited time schedule. Epps was on death row. Now he's not."

Spencer rolled his eyes. She just had to go back to the stresser. "And when did you eat last?"

"Spencer…"

"Dr. Isley."

"Can you come pick me up," Harley sighed after a pause. On top of having a panic disorder and dyslexia, Harley had hypoglycemia, which meant she has low blood glucose levels and had to be very conscious of the frequency and nutrition in her meals. She often skipped meals for one reason or another (mostly because she'd get lost in work and not realize how much time had passed. She wasn't a good estimator when it comes to time frame), and Spencer could guess she'd probably skipped several at this point. Which means she's probably suffering from a headache, shakiness in her hands, nausea and possibly blurring vision. All of this could lead to unconsciousness, but he could guess that she'd probably grabbed a stick of cheese or a protein bar at this point and was laying down until her symptoms subsided. But it was probably a good idea that she not drive right now. The fact she'd likely been pushing through her symptoms for a couple hours was concerning, but then, he didn't know if anyone she'd worked with had bothered to stop for lunch.

"Yeah, I'll be there as soon as I can." Spencer looked at his watch. He had fifteen minutes left, but he'd finished most of his paper work, and if he explained the importance behind it to Hotch, he might just be able to leave work now. "See you soon, dolcezza." (honey/sweetheart/sweetie)

"Grazij. T'amu." (Thank you. I love you.)

_._._._._

Spencer had showed up at the Jeffersonian in his old, beat up, blue car and parked in the garage. It was more than an hour after he'd left work, but he'd called to have food delivered to Harley before he'd left so she was probably okay on the blood sugar front. On the not having slept in more than two days, it was still not a good idea for her to drive. He walked to the Medical-Legal lab and found her leaning up against the steps of the platform. She had a large stuffed bear in her grasp that if it wasn't stuffed she'd have likely squeezed the life out of by now.

Her head was leaned against the railing and she looked up at him with a small smile when he stepped closer. Her hair was covered by a teal beanie, her shirt was rumpled instead of cleanly pressed, and he could tell that her nail polish was chipped. Her make-up was down to a line of eyeliner around her eyes and her mascara, and her usual heels had been replaced by a pair of Keds she'd probably kept stashed in her purse. Said purse was slumped next to her feet.

"You ready to go?"

Harley nodded, standing up, grabbing her purse, and tucking herself under his arm as they began walking out of the lab. Spencer squeezed her arm, drawing her closer to his side. Any closer and they'd probably become three legged Siamese twins. He took her purse from her, letting her just carry the teddy bear she'd probably gotten from the trunk of her car. Harley didn't speak as they walked past her dark blue 2003 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra, and she didn't comment when Spencer pulled the passenger side door of his car open for her. She just settled in with her with her teddy bear in her lap, and pulled her seat-belt across the both of them. Spencer found it comical that she got on better with animals, stuffed animals, corpse, and kids in ways she really couldn't with adults. The opposite of him. Which isn't to say she doesn't get along with adults, most love her, but she couldn't empathize with them and she really didn't like talking to anyone between the ages of 18 and 80. Unless they were related to her. She wasn't an adult person (like a people person, but strictly just adults).

Spencer shut the door to his Volvo Amazon P130 122S circa 1965/1966 and crossed over to his side of the car. It had been a commonly used police vehicle in the UK at one point, and his mother had driven it for the majority of his childhood. The outside of it wasn't much, but under the hood it was as well maintained as Harley's cousin Giovanni (a diesel and precision car mechanic, which in Harley's words was "just a more professional way of saying he never out grown his childhood toy collection of hot wheels and Tonka Trucks") could keep it, seeing as Spencer often drove with Gio's favorite cousin in his car. That didn't really stop Gio from rolling his eyes at the color every time he looked at it.

"You want to go get ice cream?" Spencer asked, turning to look at Harley as he turned the key over in the ignition. Harley looked over at him, and gave him a small smile.

"Yeah, let's do that," Harley nodded. Spencer backed out of the parking spot and started driving out of the parking garage. "Please don't get us killed before we get ice cream. I can live with it if we die in this car after ice cream. Well, not really, but still. I couldn't live with it if we died before getting the promised ice cdeam."

Spencer laughed. He knew he wasn't the best driver on four wheels, although he was a better than decent driver on two. Part of this was a led foot, and part of this was due to the person who'd taught him to drive. And Harley took great pleasure in reinforcing this knowledge. Spencer usually reminded her that she didn't drive like a good driver either (more street-racer meets some good old Italian road rage than slow granny), but her mood seemed to have improved, so he wasn't going to piss her off by making a remark about her own driving skills.

Spencer drove them to Dolcezza, an ice cream shop that made gelato in Georgetown. Harley commented that it wasn't Italian, but he figured after all the time that she'd spent in Italy and in an Italian family, she was sort of spoiled when it came to gelato. Not that he'd tell her that. She knew where to plant her elbow in his ribs to cause the most amount of pain that a five foot nothing, not even a hundred pound woman could manage. Which was considerably better than what most of the general population could manage. Harley had had to learn to survive with predominantly male cousins that liked to steal her food, and the elbow jabs where likely a byproduct of that that had been perfected by studying anthropology.

The walked in, got some gelato, and took a seat at one of the tables. Harley had left the teddy bear in the car, comfortably seated in her spot.

"So, what happened?" Spencer asked, scooping a spoonful and taking a bit.

"His stupid lawyer came, asking Dr. Brennan to look into his case, and of course she did. And by the end of it, we found out the victim had been with her boss right before her murder in a parking lot at the place she was found, that she'd been killed somewhere else, and we'd even had the poor girl exhumed. Then Brennan and Booth went to the place we assumed she'd been killed to find the murder weapon and ended up with two more dead girls between the ages of 18 and 26. Making Epps not only the murder of a young girl, but the serial killer of several," Harley explained, swirling her spoon around in her gelato. Spencer hated that because Harley always seemed to talk more with her hands than her words, and swirling her spoon around wasn't the same as the exaggerated movements he'd grown used to and, quite frankly, adored. It just wasn't normal Harley behavior, and he immediately hated it. "I hate lawyers. So, what happened in El Paso?"

"Elle got caught on a train with several other passengers that a paranoid schizophrenic held hostage with Elle's gun," Spencer shrugged. "Not that interesting."

Harley gave him a look, knowing he was holding back. Spencer sighed in exasperation. Of course she could read him that well.

"I boarded the train to 'remove' a microchip from the unsub without a gun or a vest," Spencer added with a mild shrug.

Harley laughed, leaning back in her chair. "Of course you did."—then leaning forward and pointing both hands at him in gun shapes and proceeding to pretend to take shots at him—"Next time you do that, I'll kill you myself."

Even though he knew she wasn't kidding, Spencer still smiled at her as he took his next bite, happy to have the normal Harley back.

"So for New Year's I say we have some fun in Vegas," Spencer smirked. That was the plan anyway, going to see his mother over New Year's. They were spending Christmas with her family in Jersey and possibly Boston, like they had for the last three years. Well the Jersey part of that. They'd only gotten up to Boston in one of the three years. Spencer loved it. The Italian side of her family was a riot on Christmas Eve (as well as the rest of the year, but Christmas was the only time they all came together).

"Like what? See some shows, get a couple thousand to bring home from the casinos, and get carded at a few bars?" Harley asked, with a raised eyebrow.

"Go go-carting, ride some rides. Maybe go to a shooting range," Spencer grinned. "Not the gondolas though."

Harley laughed a full body laugh, where her head rolled back, and her body shock. She obviously was thinking of the same thing he was. Their one and only trip to Venice together when she'd taken him as her date to a cousin's wedding. Spencer hadn't liked gondolas since. "You poor baby."

Spencer wouldn't have been offended but she used that really patronizing tone she usually reserved for her cousins after she'd injured one of them. She'd never used it with him before, and Spencer found that he really didn't like it when she used it with him now. He glared, which only intensified her laughter. After a while he just smiled, liking the fact that she was back to normal after earlier.

When they left thirty minutes later, Spencer drove to Harley's apartment which was closer than his. Spencer lived in a second floor one bedroom apartment that was small, old, and sparsely furnished outside of the multiple bookshelves. The bedroom was used more as an office/library, and the couch Gideon had talked him into buying (probably in the hopes of him inviting company over) worked as a pretty good substitute for a bed. And the elevator only worked sporadically. He had a small black cat named Schrodinger, who only really came out of hiding for food and when it wanted to annoy the crap out of whoever was in the apartment. Or if Harley came to the apartment because that damn cat enjoyed watching her.

In contrast, Harley lived in a large corner loft in a nice building not that far away from DC. Harley lived a few floors up, with one bedroom, lots of open space, an open loft, and had lots of large windows. She had exposed brick walls, and any wall that wasn't brick was painted a soft cream. She owned a mini-golden doodle, named BC for Black Canary, which was the runt of its litter and only weighed about 15 lbs. Its hair was wavy, and light brown, and it didn't shed. And it preferred to sleep on Harley rather than anywhere else in the apartment. The dog loved Harley to bits, but to be fair, it loved anyone who was willing to give it a few scratches and a treat. Most of her furniture was constructed by her cousin Antonio (a master carpenter among other things) and his wife, Carmen (an artist who often used wood as one of her big mediums). While Spencer's apartment had the feeling of an old library, Harley's was more bohemian in style with lots of colors, light, and warmth. Harley had a way of making people feel at home when they came in.

Spencer walked with Harley into her apartment, and got greeted at the door with a couple yips from BC. She wasn't a noisy dog, by any means. But she growled at things she doesn't like, bark at people she hates, yip in excitement, and howl like she's trying to sing along to music. She's also basically a real life teddy bear, except for the being a dog part of things. Harley didn't bother turning on the lights, instead walking down the twelve foot long hallway, rounding the corner to walk along the wall until she got to the large French doors to her bedroom. She pushed open the doors with Spencer and BC following behind her and striped down to her underwear, picking up an over-sized shirt from the foot of the bed to put on over her panties. Spencer turned the light on as Harley waltzed into her bathroom. Two walls where brick, the wall to Spencer's left with the door to the bathroom and closet was cream, and the door into the bedroom was almost entirely made of glass. The bed in the middle of the room faced out into the apartment. It was a low platform, queen-sized bed with a head board made of open books. The comforter spread across bed was multi-colored with a Tibetan mandala in the center. There were lots of pillows on the bed, and a trunk stuffed full with more pillows and blankets at the foot of the bed. BC's bed was situated on top of that trunk and she had a few scattered toys on the bottom.

While the rest of her apartment was nearly spotless, Harley's bedroom was much more relaxed. Most of her discarded cloths ended up in the hamper, and they'd all end up in the hamper before Harley left her house again. Pillows would end up scattering the floor when she went to bed but would be piled back on in the morning. And all of BC's stuff had free range to scatter all over her room.

Spencer went to the dresser over by the windows that he kept some of his things in for situations like tonight. They each spent a lot of time in one another's apartment when they were both in town at the same time while still maintaining their own spaces. They had no desire to move in together this young in life, and this way Harley could live somewhere closer to her work and Spencer closer to his.

Spencer pulled off his cloths and put on a pair of pajama bottom. He joined Harley in the bathroom, going pee as she cleaned of her make up, and then went to the bed and laid down. A few minutes later, Harley joined him, depositing BC on the doggy bed. The dog tried wedging her way between them, which was hard considering Harley was basically laying across his chest, and Harley used her foot to push the dog back towards the foot of the bed. It didn't matter. Like a baby, BC would wedge her way between them in the night and hog the bed. It was an asshole move, but Spencer's pretty sure the dog doesn't care at all. Spencer stared up at the glow in the dark stars she'd patterned across her ceiling in constellations as Harley stared out the large windows at the building across from her. She stretched a hand across his abdomen, splaying her fingers as he rubbed a hand along her back.

"Do you ever see us getting married?" she whispered, her breath running along his chest.

"I never questioned the inevitability of it," Spencer shrugged. "I don't see myself spending the rest of my life with anyone else. No one else who matches my intelligence and understands the job like you do."

Harley snorted, flicking his stomach softly.

"You know me better than anyone else. You're okay with how often I'm out of town, and someone else would probably require that we have more sex. And we have fun together. You laugh at my jokes, and you understand my sarcasm in ways no one else does. Plus I really don't want to learn to live without you," Spencer smiled, straining his neck to kiss the back of her head. "You're kind of a fantastic girlfriend."

Harley smirked against his chest, rolling her head a little to kiss his exposed skin. "Say it."

"What's the magic word?" Spencer teased.

"Please," Harley whispered.

"No, I'm sorry the magic word was Abracadabra," Spencer laughed, earning another less gentle flick to the abdomen. "Sometimes you're the most insanely difficult person to deal with, and on top of that, you're pretty imperfect. Which makes me love you more than I ever thought possible."

Harley smiled, looking up and kissing him on the lips. "I like the fact you manage to make me laugh and smile even when I'm trying to be cranky, and the way you put up with me in my worst moods. I love you more than I'd ever thought I'd be capable of loving another human being. Which is pretty impressive, considering I never really envisioned myself being in love."

Spencer grinned before moving to sit up and pushing the comforter down so that they could sleep under it instead of on top of it. Harley followed him under.

Harley didn't put sheets under her down comforter so it was only the comforter and the fitted sheet on the bed.

In the morning, Spencer would drive his car back to his building and take the subway to work, and Harley would get a friend to give her a ride to the Jeffersonian. They'd go their separate ways, potentially for the rest of the day, potentially for a week. But they were okay with that. That was how their relationship functioned. How it had always functioned. And it wasn't changing any time soon, they both could tell you that.

What they had wasn't normal or perfect or anything other than odd, but it worked. And either way, they like their relationship the way it was

And as long as it continued to work for them, that was all that mattered.

"When you're in love, you're capable of learning everything and knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love is the key to understanding of all the mysteries."

― Paulo Coelho, Brida

Authors Note: Thank you so much for reading. I'd really appreciate any feedback you can offer. Wither you liked my story or not. If I should continue. Please review. And I hope you all have a nice day/night.