Chapter twenty-seven
Bellflower House
3625 Yuma St. NW
Washington DC

Spencer

The next day the entire BAU just gave it up and took a day off. With the work they did and the amount of overtime they pulled no one ever complained if they all took a family day every now and again.

Spencer met up with Susanna and Garcia, and they went to the DVM for Susanna's ID and then to see the trustee in charge of the donation/reward fund. After that they met up with Morgan and his truck to do some dorm room shopping. Several hours and much lifting of heavy, flat boxes up the stairs left Morgan covering her windows with UV blocking film so she could enjoy all the light without fear, Spencer putting together a desk, worktable, office chair, and nightstand, Garcia helping with the labeling, for everything had to be labeled, and Susanna putting it all away. "I don't think I've ever had to deal with so much stuff in my life." She said as she came in with a laundry basket

"It's actually not that much." Garcia told her. "I had, like, three times this much stuff in my dorm room and it wasn't this big. Hey, no cane. Is that okay?"

"It is when they keep the pathways clear. There were too many kids at home to risk it."

"This place sounds good for you already." Morgan remarked. "There you go, UV block on all the windows. You can sunbathe all you want, however you want."

A red stain instantly came over Susanna's cheeks. "Oh well I never…it…I just."

"Ignore him sweetie, he's teasing you." Garcia told her.

Susanna started going through the pile of bedding. "What is this?" She asked.

That was his gift for her. "You'll see. Here, I'll help you make the bed. He put the last caster on the chair and got up to help.

"Check it out, I made you a poster. I kinda suspected you were going to go Steamy-girly in here and I was right." Garcia unrolled the large sheet with a warm, unusual design and some elegant script and started hanging it on the wall opposite the door.

Susanna came over to look in-between sheets, cocking her head to almost see out of the corner of her eye. "I like the colors." She said. "Is that writing? What does it say?"

"Some of my best friends are FBI agents."

Everyone laughed at that. "What, are you warning people off?" Morgan asked.

"Maybe."

"Susanna, why do you keep turning your head to see?" Spencer had noticed that earlier.

"Because that's where I can see colors. Sort of off to the side. It's all grey in the center."

"Interesting." But when Morgan and Garcia looked at him he gave the smallest shake of his head. They might not be able to repair all of her vision after all. What she was describing sounded like a scotoma, an area where the nerve had been destroyed from too much exposure to solar radiation. If that was the case he might have to take Morgan up on his offer of showing him how to pound on a heavy bag. For want of a pair of sunglasses…. "We should find some sunglasses for you tomorrow." Keep things from getting any worse.

"All right. What's that pattern supposed to be?" Susanna asked.

"It's a William Morris kind of thing." Garcia replied. "Given everything you were looking at yesterday, the hats and that coat and that jewelry and what you picked out today I kinda thought you'd like something a little Steamy."

"Steamy? You keep saying that."

"Yeah, Steampunk. It's like a Victorian Sci-fi kind of aesthetic. Think Jules Verne, Sherlock Holmes, HG Wells…"

"I love Wells!" Susanna exclaimed. "He's one of my favorite authors!"

"Well, when we're done this room is going to look like something out of Wells, if Wells ever wrote about girl's dorm rooms."

"How come I've never heard of this before?" Spencer asked. People really made stuff like that?

Garcia stopped and looked at him, "Never?"

"Um, no."

"So your apartment, wardrobe, bag, gun, pocket watch…that's all just…"

"Um, me, I guess." Wait, Maeve had said something about him being very steamy once. He hadn't gotten the reference…

"And those girls at the Sci-fi convention, the year that we went."

Those…oh, those girls. They'd been wearing kind of Victorian dresses, long skirts and very feminine, crossed with something Sci-fi. With corsets. He'd paid very close attention to the corsets. "Are you saying I'm part of a subculture?"

"More like there's a whole subculture out there that would find you very cool. They tend to be very literate, very in to art, science and engineering…"

"I think she found your people, Reid." Morgan said from where he was putting some shelves together.

"Sounds like it's a lot more fun than my last subculture," Susanna commented as she shook a pillow into a case.

Spencer had a sudden flash of her in one of those corsets, and took a moment to focus on hospital corners. Just friends. Just friends. Just friends.

"Yea, that's all it is. It's just fun." Garcia looked around, "Computer desk?"

"Computer?" Morgan replied.

"Coming eventually. I can get one for, you know, nothing, but a QWERTY keyboard with a Braille display? Six thousand." They all shuddered. If Susanna was going to make it through college without having to work she was going to have to budget her accounts carefully. That was four months of living expenses right there. "But, I found a charity that offers them for free, good news. Bad news is that they have a waiting list, for the next few years you're going to have use the ones downstairs."

"Given that I've never used one before that's fine." Susanna told her.

"But when the time comes you'll have a desk." She shook out the curtains they had found, lace to dapple the light.

The bed was done. "Okay, lay down." Spencer told her. Susanna slipped off her shoes and stretched out, the bed poofing up around her. "It's a memory foam pad with a wool tick over top. I had them on my dorm beds back in college." After all, he slept on lumpy dorm beds for eight years, he needed to do something. And now he'd know she was comfortable and snug at night.

"I may never leave this bed." She replied. "This is heavenly."

"So what are we doing once we get all this set up?" Morgan asked.

"Dinner. May I?" Spencer voted. He had her bed together, now he snagged Garcia's tablet and with her nod of permission looked up this whole Steampunk thing.

"Where to?" Morgan asked. "What's around here?"

He did have a subculture. Maybe Maeve was right, he wasn't as strange as he thought. He filed that under 'to consider later'. "Chinese, pizza, burgers…."

"I've never tried any of those." Susanna admitted.

"Chinese then." Morgan said. "Any objections?" There were none.

Just then Spencer's phone rang. "JJ"

"Hey Spence," JJ sounded…nervous somehow. Wary. "I need your help."

"Sure, what's up?'

"My Mother is in town and she wants to meet Susanna. We're having a get-together tomorrow afternoon; Will swears the weather is going to be good enough to grill. Do you think she'd want to come by?"

"What about Garcia and Morgan?"

"Sure." She sounded more confident about that. "I was going to call them next."

Spencer tipped his phone down. "Will and JJ are having a…thing at their place tomorrow. Will is going to grill, Susanna, Henry's grandmother wants to meet you."

There were assents all around. "Can we bring anything?" Garcia asked.

"Don't know yet." JJ replied. "I'll call in a bit and let her know."

That message relayed Spencer got up and stepped into the hallway. "JJ, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just…I want to pretend it never happened. I want to forget all of it. And I know that's not healthy for anyone, especially for Henry. The therapist said that the best way to help him deal is to accept that it happened and make it clear that the bad parts were bad and that he's safe now but not to make it a huge deal, and he said that seeing Susanna interacting with familiar people would help put it into perspective and help him accept it but I just…I want it to go away. For me. And I can't do that. For him. So bring her by tomorrow, please. And I will…cope."

Inwardly Spencer sighed. Susanna had been so excited and so ready for this move, she'd mentally rehearsed it a thousand times or more; had checked out on her family years before. But it was still so big, such a change, for all of them. "All right. I'll bring her by."

"Thank you."