We were getting better. Better at communicating, better at intimacy, and definitely better at living amongst each other without creating conflict. That was our main issue in the first place, and we overcame it. Over a long time of finding out what didn't end well. Spencer kept reminding me that Thomas Edison didn't fail a thousand times, but instead found a thousand ways that wouldn't work.

The both of us slipped into a rhythm. We'd wake up at the same time, make coffee, eat breakfast, walk Clooney if time allowed, go to work. We'd sit at our desks and work there until a case turned up. Our night routine was mostly physical hygiene, but before we went to bed we'd tell each other five things that we noticed during the day. Over time, we got good at it; profiling the world around us without using it as a weapon. Spencer would tell me that he read a new book about something he never knew before and that it helped him notice more about the personalities of the flowers in the garden box across the way from our bedroom window. Mine would usually be a detailed account about him. Like... I'd say, "Today, I noticed that you always stir your coffee twenty-five times to the right, no matter how much sugar you put into your mug."

Spencer even went to therapy after a particularly bad case, a profession he'd railed on in the past for his own personal opinion. The case was in Vegas, which already rattled him to the core. But the unsub was a thirteen-year-old girl, a sister who had been poisoning the younger children in the neighborhood in order to get them to stay home from school. We didn't know it at the time, but her stressor was that some children at her younger brother's school were bullying him, but he wouldn't tell anyone who it was. Of course, the sister's mother had been bipolar, and the father had left early in their lives, so her first idea was a worrying one; to sicken every kid that could possibly be hurting her brother.

We caught her. Correction; Reid caught her. He had seen her babysitting flyers up and noticed (as he told me that night) how her writing was reminiscent of the writings of Manson in his nightly journals. Such things couldn't just be coincidental. We raided the house and caught her attempting to poison her own brother's food after she'd gotten everyone else and ran out of victims. Reid had talked to the girl, rather brilliantly as he always did, and I picked up the little brother and took him outside. Hotch threw a party in the BAU round table room and I'd never seen Spencer's face so red.

We were in that stage of happiness, between getting comfortable and getting ready for the rest of our lives. And I'll admit, it was daunting to think about that. We were closer to the future than we were the past. I was excited, though, and Spencer was completely oblivious to it all. Which made the whole thing sweeter.

I made it special, I promise. I took him to a library and let him browse for several hours, dozing on the stiff couch near the computer station as he read beside me, his head resting on my shoulder and his legs tangled with mine. From there, we stopped into some museums in the downtown area. I grabbed one of the handheld walkie-talkie things, but I quickly realized that Spencer could tell me everything I needed to know about everything in the building down to the cracked tile in the corner of the main room. And he did.

I called the team to meet us on the roof of the BAU building at five, the place I met him for the first time, and they were all eager to join in on the little ceremony. I didn't bother with a box. Garcia offered to cater the event, and I was glad to let her do that. Anything to make her even more excited was fine by me. I made sure that everyone was in their places before I brought him by the hand up through the stairwell. He just followed me with his bag of books in one hand and his other in mine, babbling about how the Renaissance may or may not have happened due to its varying time periods and theories. When I opened the hatch to the roof and he saw the group, he just smiled. I thought he was onto us, but then he ran over to show everyone his books and I knew he was just excited to see everyone in an atmosphere that didn't overwhelm him.

"Pretty boy," I said quietly. He turned, his finger in the middle of the page, and looked at me with smiling eyes. "Why don't you put that book down and come over here?"

His smile faded ever so slightly. He closed the book and held it to his chest before hesitantly padding over to me. I just smiled and took his hand while stuffing my other hand in my front pocket. I knew he'd never let a new book go.

"Flip to page 239," I mumbled. He glanced up at me before hurriedly skimming through the pages. He quickly stopped, looking up at me as he saw the paper I'd hidden inside.

"I've been holding onto this all day," Spencer said quietly, "How did you..."

"Magic," I shrugged my shoulders and gestured to the book. "Read it."

He did. It only took him a few seconds, but he kept his head down for a long time. His shoulder moved up and down and I realized he was crying. I took him into my arms and gave a panicked look to the team, but they all just smiled. Of course, they expected this.

"Yeah," he mumbled into my chest, his arms wrapped around my chest. "Yeah, I wanna marry you."

The End.