Authors Note: I just wanted to thank some people before I begin this chapter. Thank you DebbieOz for asking how I'm doing. I got over the flu in about a week, although it circulated members of my household, and my mom just can't seem to shake the damn cough. And thank you to Guest, who I'd love to be able to thank by name, but since I can't, you really helped me figure out how to have Harley meet the team. SO on to that long awaited chapter of how Harley meets Spencer's work family. *Spoiler*

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, 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.

P.S.: When I talk about Trenton, New Jersey, my only frame of reference is Janet Evanovich's book series set there. I've never been there. The closest I've been was Newark Airport on the way to NYC. It just happens to be a very Italian filled location in the books, and I loved the way it was set in the books that I had to use it. So if you've lived there, or been there, I'm sorry if anything I write about it offends you. On the other hand, Janet Evanovich's book series which starts with "One for the Money" is a phenomenally hilarious story and I strongly recommend it to anyone looking for a new something to read.

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

Chapter 10: October-November 2007

"I feel bare. I didn't realize I wore my secrets as armor until they were gone and now everyone sees me as I really am."

― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

David Rossi joined the team a few days before Halloween after ten years in retirement. Tony would latter laugh about it when Spencer told him, finding it hilarious that four months, or ten years, there were just some men who couldn't stay in retirement. This of course would reference the fact the a year before Tony's boss, LJ Gibbs, had retired for a four month sabbatical in Mexico following an explosion that left him with fifteen years' worth of amnesia, before returning to NCIS. David Rossi had spent ten years away, written books, gone on book tours, and amassed fame, but in the end, the two marines had a lot in common when Spencer and Tony talked about it a week later at an… interesting belated Halloween party that Harley and her goth, forensic scientist friend Abby had dragged them to.

His introduction to David Rossi was a little over kill in the geek department, but that's still how it came out. If Spencer had to guess, Harley's new position as a temporary forensic scientist with NCIS was shoving him right back into his shell of awkwardness with the lack of contact the two had had over the last month or so since Tony had been exposed during his undercover assignment, had his car blown up, and broken up with his girlfriend. Which wasn't to say he didn't see her, but at this point he saw more of Tony at the weekend pick-up basketball game than he did of Harley who was trying to dig her way out of a large pile of evidence from multiple teams and a few cold cases she'd been asked to look into with a Forensic Anthropologist view point.

"SSA David Rossi this is SSA Emily Prentis," Hotch introduced.

"Sir," Emily grinned, shaking the man's hand.

"SSA Derek Morgna," Hotch told him, continuing down the line.

"It's an honor, Agent Rossi," Morgan told him before going to shake his hand.

"Please, just Dave," Rossi grinned at the other man.

"And Dr. Spencer Reid," Hotch finished.

"Sir, i—if—if I could talk to you later a—about your work with the Scarsdale Skinner. Psycho-Linguistics is an incredibly dynamic field, and the fact that your profile of his reading habbits ultimately lead to his capture is something I find so incredibly—"

"Reid. Reid. Slow down," Hotch told him. "He'll be here for a while. Catch up with him later."

"Sorry."

"No problem, Doctor," Rossi told him.

"Maybe you can talk on the jet," Hotch suggested. He and Spencer had been spending more time together outside of work because Hayley and Harley had gotten along so well. Harley and Spencer had even gone and babysat baby Jack a few times. And Spencer and Hotch had been conned into a couple of double dates by their significant others, or they had until recently that is. They'd really gotten to know each other better and Hotch had had to admit that Spencer was almost an entirely different person outside of the office. Hotch and Spencer had a much better relationship now than they'd had before the sniper doctor case a few years back, and even before Hankel. Hotch could also really flow with the punches when it came to the difference in him inside and outside of work. But meeting David Rossi… well he hadn't meant to come off as textbook Brainiac as he had. But meeting your idol isn't something that happens every day.

"Ah, yeah, that'd be great."

"The jet?" Rossi asked.

"We have a jet now," Hotch filled him in.

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, comes in pretty handy. Come on, JJ's waiting."

_._._._._

The next day in Carrollton, Texas, he got paired with Agent Rossi to go to sight of the body dump. And he was even more nervous than the day before. He really wanted to prove himself to Agent Rossi, and he was feeling something akin to what Harley must feel when she's on the verge of a panic attack. That bubbling sense of fear and dread and panic that makes your chest tight and make everything you say come out far faster than you intended it to come out. He just—He wanted to impress the other agent the way he'd impressed Gideon. Not to replace his mentor, but to establish himself in Agent Rossi's eyes as a useful member of the team in the field. And he only really managed to screw it up the more time went on in Spencer's mind. And worst of all, if they didn't finish this case soon, he wouldn't get to dress up as the Clyde to Harley's Bonnie and go to the party they'd been looking forward to for the last two weeks.

"We went over this area pretty thoroughly, there's no evidence left," Detective Yarbough told them as they walked to the crime scene.

"I just want to stand where she was," Agent Rossi explained as he walked behind the detective, with Spencer trailing after. "Dr. Reid, do we still keep all the old files in the fourth floor store room?"

"I—I think some of them are up there. You know most of them are on computer now."

"Right."

"Have you had a chance to go through your data since you've been back?" Spencer asked.

"Not yet."

"Ah, you'll be amazed. The original team, well, I mean you, interviewed something like 45 serial killers, right?"

"Something like."

"Today, we've interviewed with a thousand offenders. Serial killers, child abductors, sex offenders. I'll—I'll go through it some time with you if you'd like, answer any questions you might—"

"Sounds good," Rossi told him in that not exactly agreeing way. The way people talk when they just want you to shut up, and Spencer felt like face palming as he realized this.

"Michelle's body was found right here," Detective Yarbough told them as they came to a stop above the stream. "I really thought it was a prank."

"You can't really blame yourself for that," Spencer told him, trying to console the other man.

"She made herself dinner."

"Excuse me?" Spencer asked the detective. Agent Rossi continued to move, looking around at the water.

"She had time to make herself dinner. Means she was home for a while before he… There was time to help her."

"Water," Rossi started a little bit later, almost seeming to be talking to himself. "Obliterates a body. Destroys evidence. But you weren't in the water that long, were you Michelle?"

"She had rocks tied to her, to weigh her down," the Detective told them.

"But she floated to the surface before there was any other damage," Spencer tried to explain.

"Just what was done to her already." It came out bitter and Spencer knew he'd failed in explaining.

"The salient point was that it was the first thing the unsub wasn't good at."

"Clean River dumped most of the bodies in the water," Rossi told them. "But they weren't weighted down."

"Well, yeah. We know now that's because he didn't care if they were found. He had no connection to them." And off goes the light bulb.

_._._._._

"We got anything?" Hotch asked latter when they were back at the precinct.

"Ah, Agent Rossi pointed out that since the victims where weighted down, he didn't want them found," Spencer told Hotch as Hotch looked at Rossi as he wrote in his little note pad. "Which suggests some sort of connection between them"

"Detective, how long was Michelle missing?"

"She was found on the fourth day."

"SO she wasn't in the water long and he held her for three," Hotch surmised as his phone began to ring. He pulled it out and put it on speaker phone. The rest of the group moved in closer, with Rossi moving the least amount. "Garcia."

"I've been running all of Enid White's credit cards," Garcia told them.

"And?" Hotch asked.

"She made a purchase at nine AM this morning at a sporting goods store in Dallas."

"This morning?"

"What did she buy?" Spencer asked, asking the better question.

"A shot gun."

"Thanks," Hotch told her before hanging up as Rossi began writing quickly into his note pad.

"She can buy a gun that easily?" Hotch asked as the news reported in the background. Well…

"This is Texas," Detective Yarbough told him, voicing Spencer's opinion.

"There's no license or waiting periods for most rifles or shot guns," Rossi filled in. Ah, so he's a hunter, Spencer surmised, unless Rossi was like him and just happened to know the gun laws for all fifty states. Which he doubted.

"Is there video surveillance for gun sales in sporting goods stores?"

"There's supposed to be."

"JJ call the store. Find out if it was Enid or the unsub using her credit cards," Hotch ordered.

"Right away," JJ told him before moving to leave the room.

"Detective Yarbough," a cop in uniform called out as he walked up to the group, passing JJ on his way. "There's an urgent call from a woman on 1."

The detective moved, turning in his chair to face his phone before pressing the button. "Detective Yarbough."

"My name is Enid White," the woman spoke over the phone.

"Where are you Enid?"

"The news report said that the police didn't believe that other woman when she saw the fliers."

"That was a mistake, Enid."

"I have a gun," she told them. "I don't think I can stay away very much longer."

"Enid, this is Agent Hotchner with the FBI. We believe you, and we can't to help you. Can you tell us where you are?"

"El Royal Motel. In Dallas. It's room 6. I saw the fliers. Hurry, please. He's going to kill me."

"Don't move Enid, we're on our way."

_._._._._

On the plane back to Qunatico, after Rossi antagonized, enraged and then shot their unsub, Spencer sent a text to Harley apologizing for missing the party, or at least the first part of it. Then, back at the office, Spencer watched Rossi follow Hotch up to his office before taking his leave and going to meet Harley and some friends for the last half of night to go clubbing in costume.

Up in Hotch's office, though, Rossi had some questions.

"You said out there that the team shares everything."

"That's right."

"There is no I."

"Uh-huh."

"Seams a… big thing to withhold. Separating from your wife. Your child."

Well… Spencer knew, so Rossi was only partially wrong about that.

"What are you talking about?"

"You used to call Hayley ten times a day. We've been together 48 hours. Haven't seen you call her once. Haven't mentioned her. And you're not going home now."

"What's your point?"

"I guess… you're just not used to sharing."

"My private life is not the same as a case."

"I'm just saying. Sharing is a learned skill," Rossi told him, looking around the office. "You know, when this all started, there were only a few of us. We'd go out on the road alone. We didn't group think."

"We don't group think," Hotch told him. Especially since most of us still can't keep up with Reid most of the time. "We think as individuals and we share the thoughts with the rest of the team, not write them in a little note book and keep them to ourselves. Dave… All this. The people we've helped. The ones we've put away. It's because of you and the guys who started this unit who believed what nobody else did. That there was a way of understanding these crimes and getting ahead of them."

"And?"

"I don't see that you have anything to prove," Hotch told him. "You don't have to come back."

"I know that," Dave responded.

"So why?"

"Maybe I have unfinished business," then thinking for a bit. "You know who does call someone ten times a day? Dr. Reid. Who's he calling? Because the rest of the team doesn't even seem to realize he's doing it."

Rossi left it at that as he walked out of the room, and to his new office. And Hotch smiled, watching him leave. Of course it'd be the person who'd only been with the team for 48 hours that realized Reid had a special someone. Not the ones who blew it off as another eccentricity of Reid's, who'd known him for years, and gotten used to the behavior.

_._._._._

When Rossi spotted Spencer at an old Italian restaurant in DC that he used to go to before he retired, with a group of people and a woman under his arm, he decided to watch the youngest agent rather than go up to him and his group. He figured he'd watch Spencer in a somewhat natural habitat and try and see if there was a difference. There was.

The woman Spencer's arm around had long brown hair, and she had a face that reminded him of his first ex-wife Carolyn. It was soft and warm, and she'd through her head back with laughter every once in a while. She was tucked into Spencer's side, whispering in his ear every once in a while. There was almost no room between the two, and they barely moved away from each other's side, even when reaching to get something from further down the table.

The group he was with was an odd assortment of people: a Goth who seemed more exuberant than any of the tables other occupants; a man who was a couple pounds overweight and reminded him of a mix of Reid and Garcia; a man in a very expensive suit who talked in Italian to the wait staff and movie quotes to the table; a man who he recognized as being a marine; an older gentlemen who wore a bow tie and seemed even older compared to the rest of the group; a thin gangly man who didn't seem to fit in but was welcomed with in the group and didn't seem to care; and a woman who seemed like a fearsome amazon warrior with a Star of David hanging from her neck.

The group of nine seemed comfortable around each other and joked and mocking insults that lacked a certain sting were tossed around the table freely. Spencer still went on a long, rambling tangents, but most of them left the group laughing, and anytime they didn't, the woman under his arm would kiss him hard to make him shut up. Rossi almost wished they could have her at work to shut him down like that every once in awhile.

When the owner came out, a short, slip of a woman by the name of Flora, came out, he thought she was going to head to him. Instead the woman went to Spencer's table, embracing Spencer, the woman under his arm, and the man in the expensive suits. The man gave up his seat so she could sit in it, and instead took the seat the woman who was now sitting on Spencer's lap had vacated. Flora sat with them for the rest of their meal, kissing the three goodbye as they left before walking back Dave's way. Flora had chatted with them, and joined the laughter. She knew them, obviously well, so they were here pretty often.

When she spotted Dave, she moved to sit in the vacant seat across from him, and smiled at him.

"It's been a long time since I've seen your face in these parts," Flora grinned. "Now do you want to tell me why you were staring at Tony's table all night long?"

That was the thing about Flora: the woman had an eagle eye and an aversion to small talk. You couldn't get anything past her, and she wouldn't let you try.

"That was Dr. Spencer Reid. I work with him."

"You know Lorena's girl then," Flora grinned. At Dave's confusion her grin dropped. "You don't know Lorena's girl? I thought the two were inseparable. One never comes without the other."

"Who's Lorena?"

"Lorena is a Jersey girl married to Lucio Benivieni, the head of one of Jersey's crime families. He and his family live in Trenton. The woman sweet Spencer was with is his granddaughter, Dr. Harleen Isley. She used to work at some museum, but now she works with Tonio and his friends at NCIS. A position that sweet girl is over qualified for," Flora shrugged. Flora had grown up in New Jersey herself, so Dave wasn't surprised she knew this, or the Lorena woman she was talking about. But to know that someone else seemed to know more about the young genius than the team he'd just joined was shocking to say the least.

"Who were the people they were with?" Dave asked. Flora rolled her eyes at him, before swatting at his hand.

"You should know better than that David. If you want to know, I suggest you ask the man yourself. He's a very nice gentleman you know. Writes to his mother every day. I wish my sons did that for me every once in a while, but alas, my sons are all a bunch of stronzos." (Piece of shits. If anyone wants to correct me, or offer a better Italian insult, go right ahead, I welcome it.) "Spencer's a good boy. He'll answer if you just ask. It seems to me, no one has asked."

With that, Flora walked off to go and yell at some poor bastards in the kitchen, and Dave was left to wonder at the mystery of the team's token genius.

_._._._._

When, after a case involving mass cannibalism that had Spencer contemplating the idea of becoming a vegetarian, and Garcia got shot outside of her apartment, Spencer had never been so happy to see Harley in a hospital before. He hadn't called her, so he didn't know why she was here, but he was happy to see her none the less. Tony and Abby were beside her as she rushed to him, with Tony looking worse for wear and coughing heavily in an unhealthy way.

Harley was dressed in a pair of black skinny jeans with the knees ripped out, a white tank top, an oversized blue flannel and a pair of dark heeled boots. Her hair was loose, trailing behind her as she rushed to him, and her expression worried. She had two necklaces hanging from her neck—no make that three. The St. Christopher's medallion that she wore so often Spencer always forgot was there was tucked down in the bridge of her bra, under her heart, her favorite Italian cameo pendent hung over her heart, and the thin white gold necklace with her birth stone hanging from it that her grandfather had given her at 18 sat close to her neck.

"Pen!" She exclaimed rushing into his arms. He picked her up, turning a little with her in his arms from the impact, and buried his head in her hair as he held her with one arm around her back, and one hand grasping the back of her head. When he set her down, he was immediately hugged by Abby in one of the Goth's ferociously tight hugs with Tony's hand falling on his shoulder.

"What are you doing here?" Spencer asked, when Abby let him go, and Harley hugged him around the waist. He held onto her as he looked at the three.

"Checking out AMA," Tony shrugged, before coughing some more.

"The idiot jumped into the Potomac with his plague lungs and his compromised immune system," Harley whispered against his chest. "I had to make him go to the hospital. He's got the flu. He's lucky he doesn't have pneumonia. We were going to take him back to his apartment and have a sleep over or something to make sure he's okay."

"I dove in after Gibbs' car went in and saved him and this twenty one year old friend of Kelly's. They'd be dead right now if I hadn't jumped in with my plague lungs," Tony explained. "I'm a little more tired and stressed than usual, so excuse me for being immunocompromised. How's your technical analyst? Toby called to tell us, so we came here instead of going home. Luckily we were already at the right hospital."

In the meantime, Harley had pulled out her cell phone and started calling someone. If Spencer had to guess—"Hi, Pastor Dean."

Of course. Pastor Dean is on old friend of her mother's who'd introduced her to Adventism in the wake of her brother Paulo's cancer diagnosis more than thirty five years ago. He's the reason the Isley's are Adventist. The reason Spencer's all but baptized in the church. He listened as Harley explained what was going on before putting the phone on speaker phone so the small group could pray with him. Pastor Dean was the type of man who you could call at any hour and who would still be willing to come should you need him. He was old enough to be his grandfather, but he had one of those personalities that crossed generations and made everyone want to know him better, despite any age difference.

"Guys," Spencer said, turning to Hotch and Rossi, Emily and JJ. Garcia had been in surgery for an hour, and Morgan's phone kept going to voice mail. They were the only five members of team in the waiting room. "This is my… my girl, Harley, and our friend's Special Agent Tony DiNozzo and Abby Sciuto. Harley's got a friend of her family on the phone. Pastor Thomas Dean. He's going to pray with us. Do you guys want to join?"

They nodded, walking closer, with a skeptical look in their eyes.

"Tony, Abby, this is my team. SSA Aaron Hotchner, SSA David Rossi, SSA Emily Prentiss, and Jenifer Jareau, our media liaison," Spencer introduced them.

"It's good to see you again, Aaron. I'm so sorry it's under such terrible circumstances," Harley told him, grabbing his hand. "Now, we all hold hands, that's how you pray."

They looked at her, but soon enough they were all holding hands as Pastor Dean lead them in prayer from California.

When the prayer was over, and Spencer and Harley had talked with Pastor Dean a little more, the group sat down in the chairs in the waiting room.

"So what do the police think happened?" Harley asked.

"Robbery gone wrong," Hotch told them. Harley, Tony, and Abby shared a look.

"And the victim just so happens to be a technical analyst from the FBI?" Tony asked, skeptical. He didn't believe in coincidences, much like the rest of the people he worked with at NCIS, which now includes Harley. No, not coincidences. Bad luck, though, he believed in that. But this didn't seem like bad luck. "I know some guys down at metro. Want me to make some calls? I know some guys who still owe me a favor or two."

Hotch nodded, and Tony walked off down the hall to make the calls with Abby following after him to make sure he didn't try and go home on his own afterwards.

JJ was the first one to ask. "How long have you two been together?"

There wasn't an easy answer for that. They'd been together since they were 18, but they'd only been exclusive since 21, and they'd been corresponding since 14, and that counted on some level, didn't it? Harley spoke up. "8 years. But we've been together exclusively for five."

So maybe it was a simple answer.

"Why didn't any of us know?" Emily asked. "Or, well, every one outside of Hotch it seems."

"Hotch didn't know until last year when Harley and I ran into him and Hayley at a restaurant and ended up in an impromptu double date. And I didn't tell anyone at the beginning because I was 21 when I joined the BAU, and no one took me seriously, let alone if I told them I had a serious girlfriend. And how do you announce it after that? Hey guys, I have a girlfriend. We've been together for years. I'm not the only one hiding a relationship. Ask JJ."

Okay, so he threw JJ under the bus, but he couldn't have been the only one to notice the change in her behavior since the case in New Orleans last year. Right?

They had to have known.

"JJ?" Emily asked, looking at the other agent.

Apparently not.

"Harley, what do you do for a living?" JJ asked, diverting the line of conversation away from herself.

"I'm currently a forensic scientist over at NCIS. At least until a forensic anthropologist position opens up somewhere locally, although Georgetown wants to get me to go over there and teach," Harley shrugged. "Not exactly what I want to be doing, so I'm happy at NCIS in the meantime. I'd rather solve cases than teach them."

"Your pastor, what denomination is he?" Rossi asked.

"Seventh Day Adventist," Harley told him with a grim smile.

"But I noticed you wear a St. Christopher's medallion."

"I do. The rest of my family on either side is catholic so it puts my grandmothers at ease. I was doing a lot of work out of the country or out in the Pacific for a while. And I think Spencer's actually got one stashed in his 'go bag'," Harley explained. She left out the fact that they often traveled to do some pretty insane activities, but that was probably best left for another time. "I was raised on the West Coast, so there was a lot of surfing and outdoors activities, so my Nonna started insisting I wear one when I was around five."

It was also around the time that her adoption was finalized, but that was another thing for another time.

"I called Nonna, and told her what had happened," Harley told Spencer a few moments of silence later. "So by now the whole Berg knows to pray for Miss Garcia."

The Berg was reference to the suburban area of Trenton. Spencer nodded, pulling her closer to him. "Thanks."

Spencer didn't put a lot of faith into religion before meeting Harley, and he hadn't for a while after. No logical person (in Spencer's mind, at least) trusts a book written 3000 years ago in a different language that's been translated many times from many languages as being word for word testament to fact. But… after a while he'd seen and heard enough testimonials about faith that he kind of had to concede that maybe there was something behind it after all. He wasn't fully believing yet, and probably never would be, which was why he still hadn't been baptized. But faith was a strong part of Harley's upbringing, and he wouldn't take that from her.

Besides, praying didn't hurt anyone. Or, well…

That was a tangent for another day.

Harley sat with him through most of Garcia's surgery, though Tony and Abby had already left hours ago, but she got called away by a case that had just opened up over at NCIS only minutes before Morgan arrived saying he'd turned his phone off while he was in church. Spencer and Harley communicated over texts over the next day as Morgan and Garcia found out about their relationship from Emily and JJ who couldn't seem to stop talking about it even as they tried to figure out who shot Penelope Garcia and why.

By the time they found out who Garcia's shooter was and that he was in the BAU, Spencer was on the verge of calling Harley. In the end, it didn't matter. Just as he was about to call Harley, he watched her step out onto the BAU's floor from the elevator with Tony, Gibbs, and Agent Fornell from the Hover building. His breath caught in his throat as Jason Clark Battle realized the people where in the bullpen where onto him, as Harley and the men she was with walked closer to the doors to the BAU. JJ, who they had already called to warn, met up with the group who pulled their guns as she seemed to explain the situation to them.

When Garcia's shooter went down with a bullet to the center of his skull, shot by Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a former marine sniper and current Senior Agent for NCIS's best major crimes response team (MCRT), Spencer let out the breath of air he'd been holding in as he joined Morgan, Prentiss, and Garcia in getting to the BAU from the technical analysis's apartment. He was jittery and nervous the whole ride over, and it wasn't until he walked into the BAU's bullpen and spotted Harley sitting with Agent Adam Fuchs, trying to talk him out of his panic from having a gun pointed to his head. Tony spots Spencer first and intercepts him before Spencer can make his way to Harley.

"She's fine, Doc."

"Why where you here?"

"The case Balboa's team is working on has some times to an old BAU case Harley remembered reading over your shoulder. Fornell was pissed when she called him on it, but agreed to escort us here to pick up the original case file. We were leaving when Harley pressed the button for this floor because she needed something out of your desk," Tony explained putting a hand on Spencer's shoulder. "She was never in any danger. Gibbs wouldn't have allowed that."

Spencer nodded, before brushing Tony off. He walked over to his desk, knowing that in all likelihood, Harley hadn't come close to being near his desk yet. He grabbed the thing he figured she was likely going to come get (a protein bar he had stashed in one of the drawers) and walked over to Harley.

"Here," Spencer told her as he got closer, holding out the protein bar. "When's the last time you ate?"

When Harley cringed, he didn't need to ask further. It'd been a while, was left unsaid.

"Give me thirty minutes, and I'll take you out to diner before dropping you off at the Navy Yard." Spencer didn't offer to take her home, knowing that after a shooting, she could never really sleep and would prefer to work herself into exhaustion. He'd probably grab a few files for himself and work from her office for a while anyway.

"Thanks," Harley told him, offering him a smile before taking a bite of her protein bar, and going back to trying to sooth Agent Fuchs' shakiness.

Spencer walked back over to his team, getting an impressed look from Morgan and a grin from Garcia.

"That's your girlfriend?" Morgan asked.

"She's pretty," Garcia told him.

"She's beautiful," Spencer corrected. He looked over at Gibbs and Fornell who both nodded at him before walking out of the bullpen to either go home or back to their own buildings. He'd bet on the latter. "I'm going to stay for about a half an hour before I take Harley back to the Navy Yard so she can get back to running the forensics on the case she's working."

Hotch nodded. "Harley okay?"

"She doesn't really like being anywhere near a shooting. She worked over at NCIS's forensic lab previously under Director Marrow before she became Dr. Brennan's assistant over at the Jeffersonian. And apparently him and her mom go way back, so they made a bet on wither or not she could pass FLETC without any of the passes and exemptions that I got. And she passed. But Harley didn't and doesn't want to be a field agent, so she isn't. But she could be. She just doesn't want to get shot at any more than she already has been," Spencer told the other agents. "Shootings just remind her of one of the agent's NCIS lost, Kate Todd. She got shot by a sniper who later went on to shoot at a forensic lab Harley was in with Tony and Abby. So she's just a little shy about being in a situation she can actively get shot at. She should be fine, she's just not likely to go to sleep tonight, so I'm going to bring some files over to work on from her office until she's ready to go home."

"Take as many files as you need. Just be sure to return them to work tomorrow," Hotch instructed him, to which Spencer nodded. "Do you know if Tony has a game planned for this weekend?"

"Yeah, his frat brother's do one every weekend," Spencer nodded. "But Tony's sick so I don't think he'll be playing this weekend. Do you want me to ask if you can fill in for him?"

Hotch nodded, before walking away to go deal with Straus, who had just entered the bullpen as they took Deputy Jason Clark Battle's body out on a stretcher.

"What pick-up game is this?" Morgan asked curiously.

"It's just a basketball game," Spencer shrugged. "Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, one of the men that was just here, is from over at NCIS, he used to play D1 basketball over at Ohio State. And he and his frat brothers and some other friends from NCIS and Metro PD play every weekend. I usually ref, although Tony's trying to convince me to assistant coach a team that a couple of the guy sons play for."

He left out that he also could be found playing basketball with them on occasion. But he figured there would have been more questions about it if he had.

"Tony's the guy that was with Harley at the hospital when she came over, right? The one who was sick?" Prentiss asked. Spencer nodded.

"He got pneumonic plague a couple of years ago, so he's supposed to avoid things like jumping into the Potomac to try and rescue two people from a sinking car, but apparently he doesn't," Spencer informed her. Emily and JJ laughed. Morgan grinned, and Garcia looked at him skeptically.

"Pneumonic plague?" she asked as Harley wandered over and slipped under Spencer's arm to wrap her arms around his waist.

"Don't open letters with a SWAK on it. You never know what could be inside," Harley informed her. "I'm Harley by the way. I hope you recover quickly."

"Thank you!" Garcia grinning. "I'm Penelope Garcia."

"Derek Morgan," Morgan told her, introducing himself with a hand shake. Harley smiled meekly at him, before looking up at Spencer.

"Ready to get out of here?"

"Just let me grab some files, and then we can go," Spencer told her, bending his neck down to kiss her forehead. She grinned at him, walking with him, without releasing her hold on him, to go and collect the files before they left.

"Nice to meet you all," Harley tossed over her shoulder at the team, as she and Spencer walked away from the bullpen. "I hope I get to see all of you again soon. Alright, Pen. Let's blow this popsicle stand."

"We children of schizophrenics are the great secret keepers, the ones who don't want you to think that anything is wrong."

― Mira Bartok, The Memory Palace

Please Review! And for the person who reviewed to my last chapter asking if Harley might get kidnapped because of Spencer's job, I don't think I'd do that, if only because I want to stick to the teams cases from the show, and the only unsub who really targeted their families only ever went after Hotch. But, I could see Harley getting kidnapped due to her own job, which is something I've been tossing around in my head for a bit. I don't know if I'm going to work that into the story, but it's a possible thing. Although I already have something else worked out in my head that goes back to Harley's childhood, before she was adopted by the Isley's.

Thank you all, for the kind words you've already written. Now, please write more!