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 4: March 2006

"Absence is to love as wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small and kindles the great."

– Roger de Bussy-Rabutin

After Spencer returned from LA in the wake of Lila Archer and her craziness, he entered his apartment to see he wasn't alone. He'd given Harley a key to his apartment a while ago, when she'd given him a key to hers, and while they did use the keys, he'd never returned from a case to find her in his house waiting for him, without warning. He really didn't know how to feel about this new development. Using the distance between the BAU office in Quantico and the Jeffersonian Institute, his apartment was somewhere around one third of the way between the BAU and the Jeffersonian and Harley's was the reverse. It was closer to her work than his. And she did have to go to the Jeffersonian tomorrow. Although last he'd heard she and Dr. Brennan had been in some desert.

His apartment wasn't all that big, with one bedroom that was mostly used as an office and library. What you could see of the walls was painted an avocado green with white crown molding and floor boards. Hard wood ran through the apartment, except in the bathroom, where there was linoleum tiles. Unlike Harley's apartment which was open, warm, and filled with light, his apartment was dark, almost cramped, and bordered on being just plain cold some days. And he does blame his land lord for that last one. There was a single couch, facing the window, and an arm chair in the corner. In the center of the room he had a desk that was used as more of a kitchen table than anything else. Much like the rest of the apartment, the kitchen was dark and small with a tiny island with room enough for two chairs, basic appliances, the best single serve coffee maker Spencer could find, and a cat food bowl.

His small black cat, Schrodinger, was laying on top of the refrigerator watching Harley cook in the kitchen of his tiny one bedroom apartment. BC, Harley's mini golden doodle ran at him as he opened the door to his apartment. BC isn't a barker, more of a growl and whine about things dog. She gave a few excited yappy noises as she ran towards him, though, her tail was wagging almost as fast as a fan. The significands of her being here wasn't lost on him. If she was here than Harley planned to spend the night. Which meant whatever reason that had brought her here tonight couldn't be too horrible. Right?

Spencer picked BC up, trying to dissuade her for licking his face too much, and walked into the kitchen to see what Harley was up to. She was wearing a pair of yoga pants and a loose tank top with a black beanie covering her hair which was now the a little longer than a bob. She had on her trusted purple reading-glasses, and she was reading this book she'd been reading for ages. It was in German by a man who'd translated Edgar Allen Poe's works from English to German. It was basically the author's tale of the hardship of translating. It was extremely long, and Harley had probably read it several times by now, but he found her reading it often. Considering her own eidetic memory and 2100 words-a-minute reading time, he didn't know why she kept going back to it, but she did. Then again, Harley had a thing for rereading books, especially if she could find them in different languages. She came from an Italian/Irish family with large extended families on the East Coast, and had grown up speaking Italian as well as English. Over the years, she'd added a few other languages to her repertoire, and could likely read more languages than she could speak.

"Chicken Curry Pizza is in the oven with bread knots. Mozzarella cheese sticks are in the microwave," Harley told him when he got close enough, accepting the chaste kiss he gave her in greeting. "Do we need to talk about anything that happened in LA?"

"No," Spencer frowned. "Do you think we do?"

"No plans to leave me for some hot blonde actress?" Harley asked, teasing him as she batted her eye lashes at him and smirked.

"Nope," Spencer smiled, seeing that she was felt like teasing him as opposed to actually being concerned, sitting down next to her after depositing BC on the ground. He found a manuscript on the island in front of him and pulled it towards him to look at the cover page. Seven Ways to End a Marriage, by H S Isles. He smirked, seeing that she'd finished the draft of her book. He'd been hearing her talk about it for the past few months, her next horror story. Harley enjoyed writing horror novels and thrilling detective novels with unresolved endings, which tells you that the manuscript in front of him isn't to a self-help guide or a comedy. No, this one's about a black widow, and one man's search to track her down before she could kill again. She'd already published three other books, one at 18, one at 20, and one at 22. Writing books had paid off her minimal student loans, and had helped pay for her apartment. Most of it, though, either went to a savings account or to animal and children's charities. And it helped pay for their recreational activities.

Harley smiled, closing the book and turning to him. She kissed him on the check in thanks. She swung her legs over, setting them across his lap. "Good. Did you stop at In N' Out? Or get a real burrito?"

Spencer's smile grew wider. Any burrito made in the USA made outside of California (or outside of one of those wrong side of town tiny little Spanish restaurant where someone's grandmother was likely cooking in the back of) did not count as a real burrito in Harley's book. Burritos outside of California where practically ruined in her mind. And In N' Out made the best burgers, at least as far as Harley was concerned. And Spencer figured that belief was mostly fueled by the large absence of In N' Out in her life.

"Yeah. I grew up in Las Vegas. I went to school in Pasadena. I can't simply visit a city with In N' Out without going and getting a Double Double. That's not how the world works, Harley," Spencer joked. He figured that was the problem with Southern Californians. And he'd sort of become one in his years at CalTech. He had after all started there at 12. You got used to everything being so close. Amusement parks. The beach. All the best places to eat. A lack of rain and snow. Mountains with snow. Mexico. It didn't equip you to live anywhere else in the world. The first winter in Virginia was a steep learning curve. And after a while you got mildly homesick. Or majorly home sick, in Harley's case every time winter came around. Or anytime Spencer ended up in the San Diego/Los Angeles area without her. "Are you planning to move in or something?"

He had to ask. There had to be another reason that Harley was here.

"No…" Harley frowned. Then, seeming to get why he asked she shook her head. "No, the pipes burst in the basement of my building and screwed a bunch of stuff up, so I'm staying here until that gets resolved. No, moving in together is something far, far down the road. If that's what you want. But not for years."

"Years?" Spencer asked amused.

"You live closer to your work, in your nice little library, studio. Small, just enough room for one person. I live in my little bohemian oasis loft, closer to my work with just enough room for me and whatever family member is visiting. You have your books, I have mine and I'm sure some of the titles overlap. Just enough to bring up a dispute of whose we keep, if we were to move in together. Petty feuds," Harley smiled, leaning closer to him. "We'd need a bigger place, preferably a house so we wouldn't have to move again if we decided we wanted it to be more than just us. Preferably somewhere in the middle with some nice school district options, again, so we wouldn't have to move if we decided to have more than just us. And then, even if we don't have kids, we'll be in a nice neighborhood with a back yard big enough so that I can get I dog I don't trip over. Right now, though, you don't want the people you work with to know about me, which, by all means, is fine by me, and moving doesn't do well for that. So instead I have a little space at your apartment, and you have some space at mine, and everyone can go to a home that isn't only half-full when the other is gone."

Spencer shook his head as the timer on the oven went off, and Harley moved to take out the pizza. The amount of thought she'd put into this really shouldn't surprise him but it did. And what she said was sound and logical. It might not be as cost effective as living together, but it made it so that neither of them had to file extra paperwork for now. And avoiding extra paperwork is nice.

"Besides, the majority of my extended family is Catholic. With ties to some sort of mob. Us moving in together before marriage wouldn't bode well for your life expectancy… I'd like to have you around for a while, genius," Harley reminded him as she set the pizza and bread knots down on a cooling rack and grabbed two plates before coming to sit back down beside him. "And can you imagine, us having kids right now? People would stare at us in the grocery store thinking we're some teen pregnancy horror story they warn their kids about. Shesh, we still get carded at bars and clubs. Can you imagine us with a kid in public? People would think we were babysitting or something."

Harley thought things out leaps and bounds ahead of most people, but of everyone he knew, he couldn't imagine living without her. While he hadn't told his team about her because he knew they would tell him he was too young for a relationship as serious as the one he and Harley shared (and Morgan would tease him mercilessly), and marriage was still farther off on the horizon, Spencer really couldn't imagine life without her. Marriage and cohabitation was years down the road, but Spencer already knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with the woman at his side right now.

Spencer and Harley collected the dinner portions they wanted and retreated over to the desk/dinner table to eat. They sat down, Harley grabbed his hands to say grace, and they began eating. BC sat down at they're feet looking up at them in hope that they'd share their superior human food, and Schrodinger darted off, likely to hide until he could scare them in the dark.

"So who was the stalker?" Harley asked in between bites of pizza.

"One of Lila's friends," Spencer shrugged. "How was your case in the desert?"

"Oh, you mean out in the desert, miles past where Jesus lost his sandals? That desert? As it turns out, Angela will no longer be vacationing three weeks out of the year there. Her three weeks out of the year boyfriend is dead. He was only her boyfriend for three weeks of the year, over the past five years, totaling up to only fifteen weeks. Can you imagine? I almost wanted to find one of those, but then I remembered your way better that. And you're also not an artist. But we did find the missing girl, which was the only reason they took we with them as an expert in environments, and environmental factors. It wasn't as fun as when I got to go with Booth and Dr. Brennan to LA right after New Year's, though. They hadn't realized that there were coyotes in LA at the time, which is just hilarious. Where did they think all our missing cats go?"

Spencer laughed. It's well known in Southern California, that even the densest populated cities have coyotes. Any cat or small enough dog that goes missing at nigh likely wound up being a nice meal for a coyote or two. They weren't afraid to hop low fences either.

"Oh, and I should mention that I might be going with Dr. Brennan down to New Orleans to help identify remains that floated out of their graves during the hurricane last August. Dr. Brennan wants me to try and sketch as many death-masks as I can to help in the identification process. So this might be a good time to see if I can draw the faces with the decomposed flesh still attached," Harley explained. Spencer looked at her, and then down at his food, debating if it was worth it. He hadn't eaten a home cooked meal in a while, so he ultimately decided it'd be worth it. "Zack is pissed that I'm going and she's leaving him at the lab. But ultimately I have two PhD's already and he doesn't so Dr. Goodman is doing this to try and remind Zack to finish his doctoral theses."

"What about your own theses?" Spencer asked, wanting to redirect the topic of conversation.

"Goodman is helping me apply to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command Forensic Science Academy for the last few credits I need, and because identifying remains from World War I and II is kind of my entire thesis. And it will help both the forensic anthropology and the bioarcheology degrees," Harley explained, although she didn't have to. She'd only been talking about applying for the last year. Living in an Irish/Italian family, she'd lost family in every war since World War I. And some of their bodies still hadn't been recovered or identified yet. That was part of her drive to be an anthropologist. Well, there were other reasons too, but that was part of the sum total. "If I get in, I'd be gone for somewhere around four months in the fall."

It didn't hit Spencer like a ton of bricks, or a sledge hammer to the skull. It didn't shoot through him like the desire to breath while downing, nor did it make him want to grab her ankle and anchor her to him. Hearing Harley say she might be gone for around four months, hurt about as much as being pocked with a straw. He didn't like the fact she'd be away from him for months rather than a few days, but it never really hurt him to hear it. It was just something he had to deal with. He was used to her leaving for months. At least this time, it is still within the US (alright, the middle of the Pacific Ocean might not be within the whole of the continent, but it is within the Union).

"I'm so pissed at you!" Spencer told her with a smile. Harley is an adrenaline junky, and any time she can, she goes out and does something incredibly dangerous, and incredibly awesome. And she often roped Spencer into doing them with her. He hadn't liked that fact at first, but like a fungus, doing death defying stunts seemed to have grown on him. He didn't have the same need to go out and find the next high like Harley, but he had to admit, he never came back from a trip regretting it. From surfing to kayaking, sky diving to cave diving, and bungee jumping to zip-lining, every experience was equally nerve racking and exhilarating. And the idea of all the things she'd find to do on Oahu make him incredibly envious. "I'll have to ask Hotch for some time off to visit you."

"How about at the end of my time at JPAC, I'll clear a week of vacation with Goodman, and the two of us can explore the islands?" Harley asked, nudging him with her foot. She was smirking with a raised eyebrow, with a very suggestive look. He understood what she had in mind. Surfing, hiking, cliff diving, rock climbing, and shark diving. There was plenty of things to do, and it almost made Spencer uncomfortable with anxiety at the idea. He'd do it, don't get him wrong, but he still wasn't as comfortable with the idea of doing all these things as Harley was. No matter how many times he did these activities, the statistics where still in his head, something Harley really avoided looking into.

"Sounds fun," Spencer told her with a smile. He'd save the screaming for when he was actually in Hawaii. He had to. He quickly masked his impending frown by biting into a bread knot.

"So, any plans for next week?" Harley asked, before taking a large bite of her pizza.

"I think Morgan is going to try to get me to go clubbing with him soon, but I keep thinking back to that time you went clubbing with the girls you work with and you all got a contact high," Spencer frowned.

"Oh, yeah," Harley laughed. "Our meth mummy. Yeah, we got covered in meth, high as a result, and then went to work. Not our best idea. Did I ever tell you that the only reason we found that guy was because Dr. Brennan pissed off a bunch of African Americans by telling them the music they were playing at the club was distinctly tribal? It was just… so bad."

Spencer laughed. He had heard, but apparently her contact high made her forget that he'd been called by Agent Booth to come take her home, seeing as she'd gotten the largest amount of meth in the showering powder the group had gotten. He'd come by the lab to find her asleep at her desk, and by the time she woke up, she'd had a nasty case of the munchies, and Spencer had been too entertained to deny her some doughnuts. Harley is entertaining when high.

"I want to take you out on a date before you leave," Spencer decided. Harley grinned, playing with his foot under the table.

"Yeah?" Harley asked suggestively.

"Yeah. Not anywhere we have to have a reservation for in case the team gets called out on a case, but maybe a nicer restaurant that we usually go to," Spencer nodded. They usually went to casual places, where there wasn't any dressing up required, and they usually just sat at or near the bar because they could get seats faster. Going to a place were where the dress code was a little more dressed up would be an interesting change of pace.

"Sounds like fun," Harley smiled, taking a sip of her Sherlly Temple.

Later that night, as the two sat in his bed (a modular full sized bed that folded up and could be used as a desk) with Spencer reading Harley's manuscript, as Harley changed her cloths as she sat on the side of the bed.

Seven Ways to End a Marriage was about a detective trying to solve a black widow case in which the widow all but disappears in the wake of her husbands' deaths. At the start of the book, the widow had killed six husbands and the detective was in the middle of getting married himself. By the end, it turned out that the bride the detective was marrying was the widow and he ended up dead soon after the wedding when he got close to finding her. The detective's partner ended up catching her before she could disappear again, but it turned out that the widow wasn't the one killing her husbands. It was her father. It was a really thrilling read.

When Spencer put the manuscript down, Harley had climbed into bed and was looking at him.

"Was it good?"

Spencer shrugged. "There's a few places I could highlight where you could improve upon it." Harley wacked him with her pillow, and he laughed. "But it was a really incredible read."

"You know, we haven't done it in a while," Harley suggested. Spencer chuckled. But it was true that they hadn't had sex in the last month. It wasn't a horrible idea. Spencer smiled, before rolling over to tackle her before Harley could pull her shirt off. She laughed as he tackled her.

They had a wild night ahead of them.

"I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together."

― Lisa Kleypas, Blue-Eyed Devil

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.

And in other news, I am so sorry for taking this long to publish a new chapter but with my return to college looming over the horizon, I'm probably not going to be able to do more than one update a week. I apologize in advance if I ever end up posting less than that, or fewer chapters at longer intervals, but that's a consequence of trying to do x-amount of things in only however much free time I'll have. I hope you can understand, but in the mean time, more reviews encourages me to post more chapters at a reasonably speedy rate.

A big THANK YOU to all of you who have already reviewed and/or Favorited/Followed this story! I love love love the encouragement and I wish all of you the best as summer draws to a close and you all return to whatever you do outside of these three magical months.