Authors Note: Sorry for not writing in so long, but I got a nasty cold/flu, and now I'm swamped with the back to school prep that comes with going to college 10 hours away from home. Classes start up again Monday for me, but I've been trying to get this chapter done for all of you before then. I hope you enjoy, and I thank all of you for your patents. For those who followed, favorited, or even started reading this story during the time between the last chapter and now, thank you so much for taking the time to look at my story. For those of you who reviewed, reading what you had to say was totally a motivation to get this chapter out before getting back into the swing of school life.

For any of you already back at college, or on the way to being back at college, and away from family and home, just know that you are so not alone in that right now. And for those of you who may even be sending children or siblings back right now, it's only been hours since my mom left and I totally miss her already. I hate it when people ask me if I'm glad to be going back. The answer is always no. No one enjoys going back to school. You enjoy it when you're in the middle of it, but the going back part really sucks, and adults always look at me like "Why the hell aren't you happy to be going back?" No matter what is going on at home or how much I want to get away from my dad, going back to school is never any less shitty. If anything, it's gotten shittier, because that whole thing of packing everything back up and making sure I have everything I need before I'm back to school, and then unpacking everything, making sure every arrangement is made and in place, and then having to say good bye to loved ones for however long until I see them again always seems to leave me on the edge of a panic attack or an episode of depression, and either way, I kind of just want to cry at the end of it all. Kind of makes me miss the simplicity of just buying school supplies, and walking home from school every day. So for all of you out there at college, my heart goes out to you.

By the way, do any of you attend my college? Pacific Union College? And if not, do any of you mind telling me what college you go to? It's like this weird fascination of mine.

Any who, on to the usual disclaimer: 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. And please review at the end. I love hearing what you all think of Spencer and Harley. And if you have any suggestions or ideas for this story, I may not use them, but I'd like to hear them, because I'm kind of stuck on trying to figure out how the rest of the team finds out about them. All together or one at a time? I have some ideas floating around, but nothing really concrete, and I'd really appreciate any suggestions you send my way. Message me, or leave your idea in the review section, I'll be looking at both.

Thank you all for your reviews and support, now on with the chapter…

Chapter 9: Spetember 2007

"Friendship isn't about whom you have known the longest…it's about who came, and never left your side."

-Anonymous

When Gideon left the team fallowing the case on the college campus, he couldn't have realized what the upheaval Spencer was already in the middle of. At the beginning of the summer, his friend Tony had almost been killed by a car bomb during an undercover op. and instead just ended up getting his heart broken and latter, accused of murder. On top of that, his friend Danny from Vegas had been recalled to from being an inactive reservist in the Marines to being deployed with only 24 hour notice, and Harley, newly unemployed from the Jeffersonian after getting her two new PhDs and not wanting to work at NCIS without Tony, had been out in Vegas to help the Montecito's surveillance and security team collect themselves in the wake of his absence and a few other changes going on in the hotel, such as the new owner to the casino. She'd only just gotten back and had yet to accept any of the offers she had in terms of employment. And his mother was in the middle of changing her meds. And with all of the time Harley had been gone for, they hadn't made much progress on the whole moving-in-together-in-a-year idea they'd come up with in February (meaning they'd really just hit a standstill). Heck, they hadn't even bought a house yet because they hadn't agreed on any houses they'd looked at before Harley had gone to Vegas for three months, and Spencer had become too busy with work to try and look at houses without her. Life hadn't been all sunshine and daisies in the last few months, and Gideon leaving was just the cheery on top. Plus there was Chief Straus's witch hunt to remove Hotch from the FBI (of course he knows about that. You can't hide things like that from someone who remembers everything they see. He's like Sherlock Holmes or Dumbledore. You just can't hide things like that from him).

Being the one to go out to Gideon's cabin and finding his resignation letter, badge, gun, and the letter he'd left Spencer, wasn't even the worst part of his week at this point. Some jerk had grabbed Harley's ass right in front of him the other night when they were celebrating Harley's return home at a bar. Spencer had gone to punch him but Harley's knee beat him to it. Still, Spencer had punch the guy for good measure. And they'd gotten kicked out for the night as their friends had laughed and cheered. And Gideon's departure put an abrupt stop to the plan he'd had to go away for the weekend with Harley and actually act like people their age with her brother and a few friends.

Spencer retreated to Harley's apartment and walked in the unlocked doors without knocking. It was late at night, and Spencer figured that maybe Harley was already asleep. Instead he found her sitting at her kitchen island with a glass of wine, a large pillow fort set up in her living room area. She must have watched the kids from down the hall earlier. The color coded, two year old identical twins and their five year old brother were frequent visitors, and Spencer could always tell when they'd been by because there was always a pillow fort left up in their wake from imaginary adventures Harley took them on. She should really think about writing children's books one of these days.

"Hey," Harley turned to grin at him when she noticed him walking in. That grin swiftly dropped when she got a look at his face. "What happened?"

"Gideon left the BAU," Spencer explained, walking over to her and sitting in one of the unoccupied bar stools. He turned so that he could look at the pillow fort as he stole her glass of wine and took a large gulp. The pillow fort was empty, as the kids had probably been picked up and carried away by their parents an hour or so ago. Harley had been in the middle of crocheting… something. She'd been forced to learn to knit and crochet at a young age by her Irish aunts who felt her mother wasn't raising her to be a proper little girl. Of course this is from women who compete to be the best cook and have the cleanest windows on the block, so of course they had different ideas on raising girls than her possibly CIA agent mother.

Harley watched him eye the pillow fort. "Didn't have many of those growing up, did you?"

Spencer turned to look at her, confused as to how she knew.

"Pen, you didn't have many friends growing up. And, remember, I've met your mom. I can bet that pillow forts aren't the only thing you missed out on growing up," Harley sighed, leaving her crochet project on the island, and leaning into his shoulder. "You know what you need? One night where we forget we're adults, and pretend like we aren't geniuses. You need one night where you can experience all the stuff you missed out on. Coloring books, pillow forts, Disney movies, kids' books, and Legos."

"I had Legos growing up," Spencer announced, slightly offended.

"Did you ever create something with those Legos besides what the instructions told you to make?" Harley asked, skeptically. When he didn't respond, she smirked. And then she frowned a little. Okay, so this one time it really didn't feel all that great to be right. "See. You need this. Gideon was your mentor, and your dad was your father, and they both left in the night. They're jerks. So think of tonight as going back in time to childhood, and correcting all the things you missed out on when you were a kid. Maybe its fifteen years too late, but it's this or I'm going to have to borrow the three tiny monsters, and sick them on you."

Spencer laughed at the empty threat. She wouldn't get her cousins triplets, because she'd be subjected to their terror as well. "Where are you going to get all of these things?"

Spencer closed his eyes immediately after saying it. It was a stupid question. Of course Harley had all of this. Her inner child was had never been squashed down, and had over thrown the adult part of her as the major controller of her behavior. If it reminded her of her childhood or made her feel like a child, she probably had it. Plus, with the amount of cousins she had under 12, it wasn't like she was the only one who used them.

"You want to withdraw that question?" Harley asked, and he could feel her shaking with laughter against him.

"Please."

"Alright them. Let me go grab somethings, and we'll met back under the pillow fort when we're both in our PJs. I figure there's enough pillows and blankets down there that we can sleep there tonight," Harley nodded to herself, hoping down from her seat and climbing the stair to the loft. "And maybe we can rebuild so the opening faces the TV."

The TV was pressed up against the wall dividing her bedroom from the living area, with a large sectional in the corner of the room with large windows above it. A large rug sat in the middle of the floor, and the coffee table looked to be missing from the room. The love-seat on the other hand seemed to make up one wall of the fort with a few chairs that were missing from the small dining table.

A thought occurred to Spencer. "Hey, where are the dogs?"

"Oh, Slade's sleeping in the bedroom, the kids really wore him out, and I'm pretty sure BC's still hiding in the closet. I think she has PTSD from her stay at Antonio's. Poor little thing," Harley told him, already half way up the stairs.

It was going to be an interesting night. That's for sure. Spencer didn't doubt it for a second.

_._._._._

"I don't want to hear about the things you see as being wrong with the movie. So it doesn't follow the original story or myth. So what. You don't tell kids that in the real story the step-sisters cut off their toes and heels and got their eyes pecked out by birds, or that the princess was raped by the king, or that there wasn't really a happy ever after," Harley laughed as the credits rolled on the third consecutive Disney movie they'd watched. "It's just a dumbed down, child friendly, unrealistic standard of beauty movie. Just… shut up. You can rant about it all you want in the morning. For now, act like a kid, and think of it as a spin off, or something."

"I'm just saying," Spencer grinned as he looked at Harley in the adult sized footsie pajamas he had no idea she'd owned, with a bit of marshmallow in the corner of her mouth from the s'mores they'd made using her oven and a bag of marshmallows that appeared from the depths of her candy stash earlier, "that—"

"SHH!" She giggled, putting one of her marshmallow covered fingers to his lips. "In the morning. That was the deal. Now do you want to watch the Jungle Book or Lion King next?"

They'd already watched Dumbo, Sleeping Beauty, and Hercules. And Spencer was pretty sure the sun would be rising in a few hours. They'd constructed a Lego kingdom, filled an entire Mad-Libs book, and colored more than a few pages in one of the coloring books she'd produced. They'd even moved the pillow fort up to the loft because it was easier than carrying everything else down. Plus, Spencer figured Harley just really wanted to spend the night in her hammock considering she'd barely left it since they'd stopped playing with the Legos.

"I don't know," Spencer smirked, rolling onto his back and looking around. Two things caught his eye, and they just so happened to be sitting right next to each other on the bookshelf between a couple of fist addition books from the 17 to 1800s, and some books with the collected works of authors from that same era. In an empty space between books was two skulls with a large leather bound binder underneath them. "Why don't you tell me about the skulls on the bookshelf? The real ones."

He had to make that clarification, because there were a few wax ones as well as a few skulls that could have been found in the Halloween supply store, and a sugar skull or two.

Harley turned to look over her shoulder, and a somber look fell over her face. "Benedetto and Dante. Uncle Bennie and his one love."

Spencer nodded, pushing some things out of the way to make room for Harley to lay down next to him on the floor as she climbed out of her hammock. Uncle Bennie was her great uncle, her grandmother's brother. He was a scholar of 18th to 19th century literature, and the man who introduced Harley to her love of reading. Mostly, he's the cause of her love affair with the writings of Robert Browning and Lord Byron, although to be fair, Harley tended to love works from most authors from the United Kingdom. He'd died when Harley was 15, about a year after Spencer and Harley had sent their first pen pal correspondents to each other. Spencer had almost flown out for his funeral. Almost.

He hadn't realized, though, that Uncle Bennie had been gay. It wasn't one of the things Harley talked about. And she'd never mentioned Dante before, except in reference to someone she'd known as a child who'd lived across the street from her grandparents. That specific Dante though, had been married, to a woman, and Spencer had a felling he was also likely a hit man from the mob from the way Harley talked about him. To be fair, she'd didn't talk about the whole mob involved family thing a lot either. To be really fair, Spencer figured there were a lot of things about her family that she didn't often bring up.

"Dante and Uncle Bennie met in the forties, fighting the war. Dante was from one of the New York crime families and, well, Uncle Bennie had just come over with the rest of the family in the early twenties from Sicily. Uncle Bennie went on to study British Literature and Dante married a woman named Kathrine until they met again in the latter part of the fifties when Uncle Bennie moved to New York to teach at Manhattan College. Kathrine, I guess, knew about the affair considering it went on until Dante got shot in the seventies. He wanted his remains to be cremated, or, more accurately, all except his skull which he wanted given to Uncle Bennie. Katharine got the rest of him. She and Uncle Bennie where good friends until Uncle Bennie died, they even lived together for a time after Kathrine's second husband died. I still talk to her on occasion. She's hilarious. When Uncle Bennie died, he wanted his skull to join Dante's, and gave them both to me in the will. The rest of him was cremated, and his ashes mixed with Dante's and tossed over this cliff in Italy that they went to together.

"Dante's skull was the first skull I ever saw, and it started my fascination with creating faces out of skulls. Kind of pushed me in the direction of anthropology. I mean, it was one of the things that pushed me in that direction, not the only thing, considering I didn't start studying it until I was 19," Harley explained, not taking her eyes off of the skulls. "Of course everyone else in my family would like for me to bury them or something. Kathrine still laughs about it, and jokes that maybe she'd will me hers when she passes. But, listening to Uncle Bennie talk about him and Dante was kind of my favorite story to hear growing up. And Uncle Bennie made sure everyone knew I was his favorite growing up. He'd never call me Harley, though. He'd always call me his cucciola." (puppy/cub)

Spencer looked at the skulls with a new understanding. They weren't just a weird decoration, they were members of her family, and a reminder of childhood. The inspiration for two of the things she loves: reading and anthropology.

"The binder under them holds all of these letters they wrote back and forth to each other, some poems that Dante wrote about them, Uncle Bennie's memoirs, and some stuff like that. I've thought about having them published a couple times, but my nonna would have a stroke if I published it using their actual names. And I just, I don't know what I'd title it, and it's just kind of complicated. And personal. My uncle never told me if he wanted it published or what, so it's kind of just sat there since I moved here. Every once in a while I'll pull it down to read it, but… Most of the time it's just a pretty display stand," Harley explained. "You can read it, you know. I think Uncle Bennie would have gotten a kick out of that, considering the type of things you usually read."

Spencer looked at the leather bound binder for a moment longer. He could read it another time.

Tonight, he had a Disney movie to watch.

Tomorrow, he could read the book. For tonight, he'd made a deal with Harley, and he didn't intend to go back on that deal.

"How about if we watch Toy Story? One of your cousins mentioned it at Christmas, and I still haven't seen it," Spencer told her, bringing the smile back to Harley's face.

"Sounds good, Pen. That sounds really good right now. Maybe another night, I'll introduce you to DC comics, and you can see where I got my name from."

"...I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other."

― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

Author's Note for all of you who didn't read all the way though the one at the top: I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. And please review. I love hearing what you all think of Spencer and Harley. And if you have any suggestions or ideas for this story, I may not use them, but I'd like to hear them, because I'm kind of stuck on trying to figure out how the rest of the team finds out about them. All together or one at a time? I have some ideas floating around, but nothing really concrete, and I'd really appreciate any suggestions you send my way. Message me, or leave your idea in the review section, I'll be looking at both.

I need at least five reviews before I update next. I want to take a moment to thank you for reading! And thank all of you who have and continue to reveiw.