He still can't believe he did it. He bought a woman coffee. Not just any woman either, an intelligent F.B.I agent who knows her literature and physics and pop culture references. And not only that, but he got her phone number, all of his own accord. Well, his accord and Morgan's and Garcia's.
The problem is, he really doesn't know what to do next. Is there a set amount of time in which you should call back? Hopefully it's greater than four days because that's how long it's been since he's seen Rowena, let alone called her. And what sort of date should her ask her on? Is it even called a date yet? Coffee, isn't that the first step? Ugh, he hates the idea of coffee shop dates. The bitter liquid, though practically an elixir of life to any law enforcement agent, leaves one's breath foul and not at all appropriate for as close as he'd like to be to Rowena. The idea of even being close enough to her for that to be an issue makes his head spin. Spencer's long fingers play with the navy and white embossed card, rolling it between them as he thinks, brow scrunched.
"Kid, what are you doing?" Morgan always serves well to break him out of his reverie.
"What?" He almost loses control of the card but not quite.
"Have you called her yet?"
"No." He mutters, letting the card fall to the desk.
"Well why the hell not?"
"Because I don't know what to say, Morgan!" The older agent props himself up against Spencer's cubicle, trying and failing not to smirk.
"And here I thought you knew everything." Spencer groans softly and looks out the windows to where the coffee cart sits, reminding him of his cowardice. She's not in line today, oddly. "Hey, kid?"
"What?" He asks quietly, picking up the card again and bending it in his anxiety.
"This is the last time I'll say something, but it's now or never. Make a move or I can guarantee you, someone else will."
"What do I say, Morgan? What can I say to someone like her? She's gorgeous, smart, and I've only ever said, like, five words to her and I'm going on and on like a lovesick teenager!" Spencer resists the urge to bang his head on his desk but Morgan laughs.
"Tell her the truth, then. Trust me. Women are kind of a fan of that."
"Excuse me, do you know where I can find SSA Rowena Meyers?" Spencer asks the first agent he encounters on the White Collar Crime floor. The man nods and points to the office upstairs with "Rowena Meyers" gilded on the door while regarding Spencer as though he's mildly developmentally challenged. "Oh, thanks."
The White Collar floor is humming with activity and the agents look as intensely focused as any other in the building. Spencer stands outside of her door, murmuring excuses to himself. "What am I doing? I should just walk away, she's probably busy…"
"If you're talking about me, at the moment, I'm not." He turns so quick that the two coffees he's holding nearly spill all over him and Rowena notes it with a quirk of her lips, trying to resist a smile and failing. Her brown eyes are bright and crinkled into a merry smile of their own behind her glasses lenses. "Sir Reid, how are you?" He swallows hard when faced with her again. She's gotten a hair cut since Spencer saw her last but he doesn't mind, the mid-length bob somehow taming her hair into something that frames her round face wonderfully.
"Um, fine, and you?" Spencer stammers out, more courage flaring to life when it dawns on him that he's been deemed a knight again by this woman.
"I've been well." Rowena looks down to the two slightly shaking cups of coffee in his hands and then back at him, eyebrows raised.
"Would you like to step into my office?" She asks and Spencer manages a nod. Rowena opens the door and holds it open for him, shutting it softly and then sitting across from him, legs folded. She studies him just as closely as he has her, resisting the urge to smile at his choice of brown plaid today.
"You have a lovely office." He says as he looks around, noting the warm golden tones and burgundy accents, Japanese calligraphy, plenty of flowers. His profiling instincts urge him to find out what it means but it occurs to him that perhaps he ought find out the old-fashioned way.
"Thank you. Uh, bad day?" Rowena ventures with a bemused smile and Spencer tilts his head, confused. "Two large coffees at once usually means bad day."
"Oh! No, I got this one for you!" Her eyes widen behind her glasses and he start to backpedal. "If you want it, of course, if you don't that's fine, I'd understand…"
"Why didn't you call me, Spencer?" Rowena interrupts softly and its then that he realizes perhaps she is as uncertain of his interest in her as he is that its mutual.
"I didn't know what to say." He answers honestly and she takes the coffee from his now numb hand, her fingers brushing his and Spencer's sure it's deliberate this time. She takes a sip, studying him, and Spencer shifts in his seat.
"Two shots of peppermint. Good memory." Rowena says with a smile and Spencer grins back.
"Eidetic, actually."
"I had no idea those were real."
"Very. They're uncommon, though. I also have an I.Q. of 187 and can read over 20,000 words per minute." If anyone else said it, it would be bragging but Rowena can tell it's not meant that way.
"Why join the F.B.I.? With a resume like that, you could make millions rather than the peanuts they pay us here."
"I wanted to fight for something." It's an overly simplified answer but an honest one and she recognizes that. She stands, donning her suit jacket and Spencer stands too.
"Care for a walk? I can take a lunch break." Spencer smiles with more confidence than he can remember having while talking to a woman and it's returned. This time, he holds the door as they walk out.
"If you'll pardon my forwardness-"
"I have thus far." Spencer pauses and swallows nervously before he realizes that Rowena is sending him a mischievous look over the rim of her coffee cup.
"That was a joke." He states, relieved when Rowena smiles and tips her head in affirmation.
"It was indeed. I'm sorry, go on."
"No, no, it's fine. Um, if you'll pardon me, you seem rather intelligent as well. Why are you here?" Rowena slides into a cafeteria booth across from Spencer, running a hand through her dark waves and looks aside briefly. "I'm sorry, that was too personal."
"No, it's okay." She looks back at him and this is the first time he's seen hardness in her normally warm brown eyes. "I graduated from high school in middle of nowhere Michigan, went to college in California and got my bachelor's in Criminology and Accounting before I joined the Detroit police department." Her hands work over themselves and Spencer can watch the shadows cross her face. "I worked Vice for four years before I couldn't take anymore and went to the Academy. White Collar is a breeze after Vice. I crunch numbers, do the odd interrogation or two and occasionally bust in a door but I'm not terrified on the way in of what I'll see." The young BAU agent now understands the hard edge to her soft appearance. Her movements are lithe and constantly aware of her surroundings, peripheral vision always scanning. Back straight, shoulders back, constant strides; he should've known Rowena knows her way around something besides a computer. Still, something as harsh as Vice in a city like Detroit would give anyone sharp edges.
"That must have been hard."
"I did my best and I've made my peace with it. Now I'm doing the best I can another way." She smiles brightly after that comment, taking another long draught of coffee, and sighs. "Sorry, that's kind of heavy for lunch."
"No, no, it's okay. I like to listen to you talk." Spencer means it, and Rowena is a bit taken aback how genuine he is. No wonder JJ spoke in such glowing terms of Spencer.
"Why?" She asks quietly, surprised at her own attack of timidity but those eyes like good whiskey are not exactly shy in their examination or approval of her at the moment.
"I spend my days looking into the depths of human depravity and turning over the rocks to find out what's hiding underneath. I see terrible things, inhumane things done to human beings and they're usually women, and some nights I can't sleep and some days I can't eat…" Spencer realizes how far his rambling has gone when he recognizes the look on her face to be somewhere between empathy and compassion. His hands slip under the table to work over themselves but he smiles nonetheless, his next thought making him do so as he tries to phrase it properly. "I find listening to you, seeing you," her fierce blush makes his smile wider "to be incredibly soothing, actually." Rowena has no idea where this ability to not only compliment but do it wonderfully, authentically, is coming from, having seen only hints of it in their previous encounters. "Sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?" She chuckles, that is a little more like her previous impressions of him.
"No, not at all. I'm just surprised."
"By what?" He asks blankly.
"JJ told me your gift and curse is the ability to understand people so completely and speak frankly about what you see. It's fascinating in person. You should've called me sooner." It's meant to be a joke but he looks down, working his hands over themselves in his lap and feels suddenly ashamed to ever think he could pursue this woman but Rowena goes on. "I like this better than a phone call though." His head snaps up and she grins. "You're not too bad to look at either, you know." Spencer finds it in himself to grin right back.
Spencer blows through the lower levels of the BAU office and straight up to JJ's, not even knocking but opening the door, shutting it and starting to pace after he does.
"Um, hello, Spencer. Please, come in and tell me what's obviously bothering you." Her tone is amused rather than genuinely irritated and she puts down her pen for what is obviously going to be a long haul. Spencer stops and looks at her, as his fingers play an invisible piano, his favorite nervous tic.
"I-I just marched up to her office and we had lunch in the cafeteria and we talked and it was great!" She laughs, he's as out of breath as if he ran a marathon.
"Good for you, Spence, but what does this have to do with me?"
"I want to ask her out." The blonde agent smiles warmly at her sometime childish friend as he sits at her desk, his expression similar to the one he wears when his mind wanders as he processes any case-related piece of information. He still knows next to nothing about women unless they like to kill people, but at least he has the good sense to be so captivated by this particular woman.
"Once again, good for you, but what does this have to do with me?"
"What kind of food does she like, where would she want to go, what should I wear, what…" JJ holds up a hand and he obligingly stops with the rambling.
"I will not profile her for you, Spence. Get to know her, and I don't mean scan her and profile her yourself. Do your best to learn from what she says to you, nonverbal body language, but don't start trying to infer what kind of relationship she had with her father from what color shoes she's wearing. Does that make sense?" JJ explains and he nods thoughtfully.
"Get to know her through just conversation?" Spencer asks and she laughs.
"Yes. Now go ask her out before you put it off for another four days." He gapes and she rolls her eyes. "Even if Rowena and I weren't friends, you seriously think Morgan and I don't talk? Get out of here, Spence." She shoos him off gently and he complies, opening the door to leave. "But her favorite food is Korean." Spencer nods, grateful, shutting the door and then releasing a groan. Korean means chopsticks.