We had been meeting for three weeks, two, sometimes three times a week. It truly was just about his lectures at first, the real turning point came though when he asked me about my thesis, I bounced in on an extra Friday night during his official office hours and I was dressed nicer than usual, make-up done, tight purple sweater, and short gray skirt. "On your way for your bi-weekly date with your professor" Ellen had teased me on my way out the door. I felt good, I was in a good mood, and I arrived at Spencer's office hours only to be met with the information that he had papers to grade for a different class.

"It should only take me 45 minutes!" He insisted, "There are about 200 students in this one." I couldn't help but playfully roll my eyes at the absurdity of his sentence were it to come from anyone else.

"That's fine! Do you mind if I just sit on your couch and do some work for my thesis?" I asked, though I had already started to make myself comfortable. Pulling out my laptop and typing away at some of my notes while he graded papers at his desk. After about 30 minutes of mutual silence Spencer suddenly appeared next to me on the couch holding a cup of hot tea. "Thank you!" I said pleasantly surprised, as I took it from him.

"Don't stop!" He said, encouragingly, "I was enjoying watching so engaged with a subject you actually have passion for and not just mild interest." he said with a partial laugh. "What's it about, anyway? You haven't formally declared the subject of your thesis to the school so it wasn't in your file when I checked."

"Um, well that's because I still feel like it's in beta, sort of." I told him, "But ideally I want to write about film adaptations of certain fairy tales, through a feminist psychoanalytic lens, and how film language engages with the sado-masochistic nature of women's sexual awakening, as was also historically intrinsic to most fairy tales." I explained.

"Oh, I see why you wanted to juice that up with some psych classes," Spencer said nodding, hanging onto every word I said. He kept asking follow up questions, wanting to know about my research so far, what film texts I was using, promising to read and watch anything he hadn't before. Before I knew it our whole two hours had passed, and it was getting dark outside.

"How are you getting home?" Spencer asked, "I realize I've never asked before, but we've never left after dark before." He explained slightly awkwardly.

"I usually take the bus," I assured him.

"You know the likelihood of being the victim of a violent crime increases by 55% after 9:00pm?" Spencer rattled off to me, "by which I mean I'm going to have to insist on driving you home." He finally offered, gesturing towards the staff parking lot. "Not that you have to, obviously, if you aren't comfortable" he interjected sensing my hesitation. Oh dear sweet Professor Reid, my hesitation to get into your car could not be further away from 'discomfort'. "But of course if you don't let me drive you I'll have to insist on paying for a cab."

"Well," I breathed out with a small smirk, "I can't allow you to do that." As we began heading towards his car together. He even opened the door for me, a true gentleman. After I gave him my address he immediately started driving in the correct direction without any sort of GPS. "How do you know how to get to my apartment?" I asked.

"Oh I have every map and road in this city memorized, I could name five separate routes to your house from here." He shared matter of factly.

"Right," I laughed, "Look I'm sorry we didn't end up talking about your lecture at all today, I feel like i wasted your time." I told him.

"That's not what you need to apologize to me for," he assured me. "I like spending time with you," he began as I started blushing, "and learning about things, like you do!" he interjected, "your thesis is really interesting and if you ever want a second set of eyes on it, even next semester when you're not in my class anymore! I'm happy to be your extra eyes."

"I appreciate that." I smiled. "So what do I owe you an apology for?" I asked, skeptically.

"Oh look at you. Shaping up to be quite the profiler," he quipped.

"No that's not profiling, that's picking up on a very direct language que." I said with a mild eye roll, which seemed to have irritated him slightly as I watched his knuckles get whiter on the steering wheel. "But go on, tell me. That wasn't an answer to my question, after all." That earned me another small smile.

"You already know what you owe me an apology for, the painfully fake one from that first day in my office doesn't count." he explained with a smirk.

"Ha! You'll have to force that one out of me I fear." I told him, an even less subtle smirk crossing my own face as I imagined all the ways he could hypothetically achieve that. "Can I ask you something?"

"You can ask." he answered.

"Why did you quit the FBI?" It had been burning me for weeks, the way he talks about former cases had so much passion, I couldn't make sense of why he stopped.

"I didn't quit, really." He started, "I started teaching more when the bureau required me to take 30 days off for every 100 I spent in the field, some sort of trauma mitigation method. And eventually it just made more sense to take a longer sabbatical. I still consult with my team sometimes, when they need me. And ideally I'll go back full time, eventually. But for now I'm content with some regular hours and some downtime." I could tell this was a cliff notes, trauma expunged version of events, but considering he had let my personal slips go before I elected to not press further.

"Well I'm happy you were teaching while I was here" I responded. "I like spending time with you too, Spencer." I said as we pulled up the front of my apartment building. "Just, by the way."

"I was thinking," Spencer said to me after putting the car in park, "We should exchange numbers, if we're gonna keep meeting this frequently. Just in case one of us has to cancel or anything." he seemed ever so slightly nervous asking. "Officially it's not really appropriate, but-"

"No! No, I think you're right, that's a good idea." I interrupted him, not wanting him to ramble himself out of asking for my phone number, even if it was "professionally". We swapped phones, I was amused to see his seemed to be barely younger than me, but I suppose it just added to his general vibe. "Well I guess I'll see you on Tuesday." I said, lingering in my seat. We stared at each other for longer than was probably normal before his phone buzzed loudly snapping us both out of our haze.

"I gotta take this," he said looking down at his ancient device.

"Right," I said, opening the car door, "well text me when you're home, please. You know your chances of being a victim of violent crime increase 55% after 9:00pm." I quipped as I stepped out.

"Ah, that's bullshit, who told you that?" He said with a smile before he drove away.