A.N. Found this sitting all by its lonesome on my computer. Thought it might like some company. Very short shot. Maybe more like it to come.

Cook's Books

"Henry!"

The little blonde looked up at his godfather.

"What?"

From the tone of his voice, and the twinkle in his eye, Reid could tell that Henry knew, very well, 'what'.

"You can't lick your finger and stick it in the sugar! We're rolling the sugar cookies in that. You'll get germs all over it."

JJ laughed as she deposited another spoonful of squash into Michael's mouth.

"Spence, I hate to break it to you, but this place is pretty much germ central."

"Ugh! Please don't tell me that!"

He'd been fastidious in making Henry wash his hands before they'd started the baking project, and washed his own equally well.

She shrugged an apology at him. "Sorry. Goes with the territory. Kids, germs. Two kids…."

"Exponentially more germs. Well, we're going to bake them anyway. I guess that will pretty much kill most of the microbes."

Doing his best to rationalize, mostly for his own benefit.

JJ spooned another helping into Michael as she watched her son and his godfather rolling dough balls in the less-than-pristine sugar.

"You know, I'm surprised you like to bake," she said. "Especially cookies."

Reid squinted his lack of understanding at her. "Why 'especially cookies'?"

"Because of the every-ten-minute thing. You like to bury yourself in a project. I can't imagine you enjoy interrupting it every ten minutes."

"Ah," he said, as he rolled another cookie between his palms, "there, you would be wrong. Didn't I ever tell you that my mom used to bake?"

"She did?"

"When I was little. Maybe three or four. She wasn't that sick yet, and she used to cook. And…well, I didn't have that many friends who liked the things I liked, so I used to help her. It was all chemistry, after all."

JJ chuckled. "Were you going for a PhD in cooking?"

"Ha. No. But…well, I'd learned to read before I was three, and I couldn't get enough of it. But, as you pointed out, baking cookies was a little disruptive…"

"So you gave up on baking cookies?"

"Uh-uh. I learned to read faster. Eventually, I could get through a whole child's book between batches, and then a whole chapter, and then several, and then…."

Her eyes widened. "Are you saying that baking cookies taught you to read at 20,000 words per minute?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

JJ looked from Reid, to Henry, to Michael, and back to Henry again.

"Hey, Buddy. After you put those cookies in the oven, why don't you read your brother a story?"