"Tell me something, pretty boy," Derek said, slipping into the seat opposite Reid. It had been... It had been something, one of those cases that clung to your skin like a bad smell, lingering in your clothes and your hair and your soul until it felt like you'd never be free of it. If it was bad for him, he couldn't imagine how bad it must be for the kid, who couldn't ever forget.

So, distraction time. Anything was better than that pig farm, especially making the kid think about his girl.

"Marianne?" Reid guessed, and even if he was bright red around the ears, he was smiling, which was a good start.

"Who's Marianne?" JJ asked, settling down next to Reid with a cup of coffee in her hands. "Have you got a girlfriend, Spence?"

Reid lifted his book up to hide his face, but Derek could still see his smile, and the blush in his ears.

"On and off since we were sixteen," he said. "Her dad hates me. Her mom and her stepfather are great."

"How could her dad hate you?" JJ asked, forgetting that she was surprised about Reid having a girlfriend because the idea of Reid, the least threatening man in any room, being hated by a girl's father. The idea of Reid getting a girl in trouble was... Well, it was Reid. "You're a great guy!"

"The Professor has control issues. He didn't like her having friends outside of his colleagues' kids, and I was... Not that."

Reid dropped his book, looking at them both all too knowingly.

"Marianne and I met she came to CalTech," he explained. "Her father was my thesis advisor for my PhD in Mathematics, we met through him. She and I were sixteen."

It wasn't like Reid to not give lots and lots of unnecessary detail, which meant there was something he did not want to talk about. Derek wondered if his goddess could be convinced to do a thing - he'd ask her as soon as they got back to Quantico.

"You know how you thought that our boy wonder's unusual quietude was, you know, unusual?"

Derek tilted his head, smiling just enough to let her know she was on the verge of rambling. Okay. Moving on.

"Marianne Rebekah Baumgart-Goodwin, born December eighteenth, nineteen-eighty-one, to Doctor Judith Liesel Baumgart and Doctor Alasdair Marcus Goodwin. Parents divorced when she was seven, dad moved out west to take up a post as a professor of Mathematics at CalTech, mom stayed in Boston because she had been offered a post at Harvard, lecturing in Hebrew Studies, where she met her second husband, Doctor Benjamin Rosenthal, who taught at Harvard Law."

"Charmed life," Derek said, and Penelope was inclined to agree - from everything she'd found on Reid's girl, she'd lived happily with her mother and stepfather until she was sixteen, but that was for later. "What else?"

"Miss Marianne grew up with Mom, which caused a lot of court battling with Dad - he wanted full custody so that he could push her academically, because, and trust me on this, girl is like, Reid-level smart. Her mother held her back, though, something to do with wanting to give her a chance at a normal childhood and adolescence, but by the time she was sixteen, there wasn't anything else she could learn at high school, so she followed Dad out west and started a degree in Mathematics - from what I can tell, it was mostly because there'd be no weird guardianship finagling if she went to Harvard or Caltech, since she was a minor?"

"Makes sense," Derek agreed. "Reid mentioned once or twice about being babysat on campus. If Miss Marianne's dad was in the same building as her all the time, who'd say she wasn't safe?"

"Uh, her mom, for one," Penelope said, bringing up the reason for the divorce. "Professor Goodwin had a mean temper, and took it out on his then-wife. Seems Doctor Baumgart was worried he'd take it out on their daughter, so she managed to convince CPS to stage regular home visits to check on Marianne's welfare."

"Wow. That's intense."

"You know, none of you ever ran a background check on Will when he and JJ started dating."

Spencer looked tired, his tie tugged loose and his fingers drumming on the strap of his satchel. Penelope felt more than a little guilty.

"We just worry is all," she said, standing up and-

"You could ask," he pointed out. "Marianne's in Seattle for work, but I know she'd like to go out and get to know you better."

Of course, the next day, the whole world went to hell, and Marianne figured that it would be rude to go out with Spencer's friends without Spencer, so they put it off for a while.