Title: Oh, Tie Me Up Tightly By Your Side
Author: ChocoTaco
Pairing: Reid/JJ
Rating: PG-13
Warning: WiP
A/N: So. I wrote this in response to a challenge over in a JJ/Reid lj community (write a fic about JJ and Reid going undercover together), and I have yet to decide how many chapters there will be. But fear not, there shall be a fair bit!
The whole thing operates under the idea that The Big Game/Revelations never happened and that Reid already has a big bad crush on JJ (even though he totally does, it's never really explicitly stated.).
I know some of this probably seems out of character on Reid's part, but I really think there's more to that whole dynamic than we get to see. Enough to be the foundation of some deeper emotions, perhaps.
And yes, I know the whole concept of this fic is incredibly far-fetched and would never ever work on the show.
(I don't really think they would use BAU members as bait, but for some reason I feel like pointing out the implausibility makes it somewhat better. although, they can still work on the case from home, still communicate with the team and whatnot. but still.)
But that's not the point of this.
I think if we can all just conveniently forget how unlikely the situation is, the rest should be fairly realistic and chock full of tasty JJ/Reid goodness!
Summary: Oscar Wilde once said, 'The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.'

***

"Oh, tie me up tightly by your side
So I may go with you where ever you reside"
Rosie Thomas -- Kite Song

"Well I'd like to think I'm the mess you'd wear with pride.
Like some empty dress on the bed you've laid out for tonight.
Maybe I'll tell you sometime."
Band of Horses -- I Go To The Barn Because I Like The

Dr. Spencer Reid's fingers tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles fading to white and his fingernails pressing tiny crescent moons into the dark leather. He trained his eyes straight ahead, trying to focus on the steady rush of the pavement under his tires or the guttural exhale of the engine or the splintering crack in the corner of his windshield, anything but the dread that situated all of its warm, thick weight upon his chest.

Or rather, his passenger seat.

The woman herself, one Miss Jennifer Jareau, was sitting there unassumingly with her legs crossed gracefully and one hand twisting and untwisting a haphazard knot in her hair, half intelligent poise and half wide-open energy. She was small and carefully cambered and not at all intimidating, save for the fact that she was supposed to be his wife.

It had been three days, three days of awkwardly edging around each other's desks and quietly jingling who are you, really? small talk in the break room, since they had been informed of their mission. The images illuminated his mind like a slideshow of sepia photographs: the way the stiff, closely arranged chairs of Hotch's office had dug into the backs of his knees; the way her forearm had slipped over onto his armrest and the pointed heel of her shoe had brushed against the hem of his slacks; the way her hands had curled around the case file in her lap as her mouth took the loose form of the word "married."

It had been Gideon's idea. For several months, they had been investigating the case of a serial killer who seemed to be targeting newlywed couples in rural Pennsylvania towns and finding nothing countless bad leads and dead ends. The murderer's recent claiming of a forth couple had spurred the team into a renewed sense of action, but the evidence (other than the bodies) had been virtually nonexistent and once again they were running in circles. So, while the investigation continued, JJ and Reid had been assigned the task of temporarily moving to Pennsylvania and posing as newlyweds in an attempt to lure the killer into their intricately secured home.

Or at least that was what Reid was able to make of it. Judging by the distant ringing in his ears, his train of thought had derailed, rolled over, and exploded in a giant fireball of doom somewhere between the words "JJ" and "wife." That had been when it had dimly registered that he would be moving in with JJ. Gorgeous, lively, unattainable JJ. The one who flirted harmlessly (or so she thought) with him every day but never really knew him. The one who had sent him reeling end-over-end into everything he had always been afraid to feel, had never really had a chance to feel before.

Holy Mother of God.

He had packed up boxes in his drab, empty apartment, pretending to shove all of his anxiety and breathlessness in with his old socks and sweaters and sealing them shut with thick, wide strips of tape and untils and maybes that masqueraded as determined finality and resolution. When he had cleaned out his car and loaded the boxes into the back, he carefully left more than half of the space for her and hoped that maybe she would notice.

Then again, it wouldn't be the first time she had overlooked all the places he was saving for her.

And now, here he sat, his toes twitching on the gas pedal as he drove the two of them to imaginary wedded bliss, and never in a million years did he imagine it would be this way. He had imagined the tarmac by the steps of the plane and her hair blowing in the wind like a scene from Casablanca; the elevator of the BAU and his fingers snapping the emergency stop button; the side of a patrol car and both of them grasping at the door for support. But never, not once, not ever, anything like this.

Sure, it was a lovely concept in theory – living with the woman you want more than anything. But his mind, so keen when it came to statistics and patterns and theorems and clean, straight edges, had a horrible tendency to sputter and stall when it came to pretty girls; much less when he was thrust into this tantalizing world of hypothetical questions and live-action metaphors, where the very thing he desired most was the one thing he wasn't actually meant to have.

He was trapped as a man pretending not to love the woman he must pretend to love.

The irony was a bit too much even for him.

***

JJ toyed with the blue silk ribbon around the waist of her plain white sundress, twirling it around her restless fingers and wondering exactly how she should be feeling about this particular situation.

Here she sat, with a man she barely knew outside of poring over case files and bantering over lukewarm coffee, a man with which her most intimate moment was probably when he spilled his drink on her pants at that Red Skins game. He was odd, gangly and awkward and unspeakably nerdy, with sweater vests and old sneakers and a tendency to never shut up – nothing at all like any man she had ever been interested in.

And yet, for some reason she couldn't quite figure out, she found him incredibly intriguing.

She couldn't for all the world explain exactly what had happened. She couldn't quite recall when his identity in her mind had shifted from just Genius Dr. Spencer Reid to Spence, the man whose smile had a strange, inexplicable propensity to bring back to mind what her sister Nicole had said of their pathetic tree seventeen Christmases ago (Jenny, babe, there's beauty in asymmetry.).

It was stupid, she told herself. Just a trick of propinquity, nothing more. After all, it was Reid. Just Reid. Just the only man whose enthusiasm could match hers; just the only man who could turn plaid pants and fingers drumming thoughtfully against his coat lapels and an inability to use chopsticks into things she absolutely delighted in.

"We're here," came the voice of the man himself from the driver's seat, startling her. She had almost forgotten he was there; he was being uncharacteristically quiet today.

The gravel crunched beneath the tires as Reid pulled into the driveway of a modest, rustic cottage that the government had somehow obtained still furnished and granted to the BAU for this particular mission. It was actually quite charming, surrounding by nothing but grass and trees and ponds until the nearest neighbor, which had to be at least a mile away.

Hesitating slightly, Reid slipped a small envelope out of his pocket, carefully opened it, and tilted it so that two gold rings slid out and into the palm of his hand. (Oh God.) They were fake, of course, cubic zirconium and gold plate all the way, but they were still wedding bands, and that was just extraordinarily weird. He looked up at her and grinned that crooked grin, and she returned the gesture, conflicted feelings be damned. She could respect the fact that he was genuinely endearing, no matter what that meant.

"We'd better make this convincing," he said, opting to hand her the ring rather than slide it on her finger.

"Yes, dear," she nodded, her smile all buoyancy and innuendo. Deciding to contemplate exactly what "convincing" entailed later, she slipped the band onto her ring finger. "Let's go."

Before JJ even had time to reach for the door handle, Reid was out of his seat, around the car, and opening the door for her like a gentleman, a husband. She smiled her thanks, putting her sandal clad feet on the ground, straightening up, and failing to notice the miniscule, strangled noise from his throat when she ran one hand down the curve of her side to smooth the creases in her dress.

"Shall we?"

Together they tramped up path to the house, its dirt tightly packed by years of being trodden on, and up the steps to the quaint covered porch, complete with a blue wooden swing and a small white wickerwork table. She walked closer to him than she normally would have, given the circumstances, and watched him unlock the door with a feeling eerily like coming home from a date and leaving for one at the same time.

"Home sweet home," he said, not without a slight sardonic tinge. He turned the knob and pushed the door open to reveal a quaint living room and kitchen with a large mahogany table and overstuffed sofas that were reminiscent of happy families and warm winters.

"Well?" she said expectantly, raising her eyebrows at him and bobbing her head a bit. He stared blankly at her for a moment, her nose wrinkled up in a smile, before it finally clicked.

"You… you seriously want me to carry you?" he said, the words stumbling on his teeth. She nodded, leaning closer to him, and he almost took a step back.

"A husband always carries his new wife over the threshold if their first house," she said plainly, looping his arm around his and feeling it tense slightly through the fabric of his sleeves. She leaned closer still and murmured in a low voice, "Hey, you're the one who said it had to look good."

And so, with a bit of teamwork, he managed to hoist her up in his arms and carry her over the threshold, JJ kicking her feet with something akin to glee and pretending that she didn't think she felt his hands shaking

They stood there for a moment, his face a poorly concealed picture of blushing admiration and her body cradled like a child in his arms, just staring at each other, before she threw her head back and laughed. Laughed because he had actually just carried her through the door. Laughed because this was just so surreal and absurd and outlandishly ridiculous, and he joined in too, the brass of his laugh mingling with the windy vibration of hers, harmonizing, filling every corner and crack and crevice, floating up around the wooden beams to the lofty ceiling. And suddenly, the tension dissipates.

For a moment, Reid thought that maybe things wouldn't be so bad after all.

He had absolutely no idea what he was getting himself into.

"Everything's going fine," Reid said into his cell phone, unpacking one of his many boxes in the living room. There was only one bed in the cabin, and so they had agreed to take turns sleeping on the sofa while the other had the bed. "We've just started unpacking, and we can probably have everything set up for JJ to work from here before the end of the night."

"Good," replied Hotchner's steady voice from the other end of the line. "I've made arrangements with that company for you to pose as a temp there, so you can go in starting Monday."

"Excelle—"

He stopped mid-sentence, a laugh cutting the word off as he watched JJ, heavily laden with bags and boxes, attempting to maneuver the bedroom door open with her knees, elbows, and hips.

"Hang on, Hotch," he said, rushing over to open the door for her. "JJ, you're going to lose an eye."

"Thanks, mom," she mocked, panting slightly from the exertion of energy. She staggered through the doorway and dumped her things unceremoniously on the bed.

"Sorry," he said, once more speaking into the phone. "JJ overestimates her own strength."

"Shut up!" she shouted from the next room.

"Reid," Hotch said patiently, clearly hearing JJ's giggling over the line. "Just a warning: it might not be a great idea to bring anything personal into this."

"Right," Reid agreed after a moment of hesitation, drawing out the first consonant as if he didn't know what Hotch was getting on about. "Of course not."

He watched her silently from the door of the bedroom, her knees drawn up to kneel on the large window seat on the other side of the room, her bare feet dangling off the edge. He could see a fraction of her face, sugarspun skin aglow with the affection of the afternoon sun, the slopes and curves of her features enhanced by the light spilling through the glass. Her small form was draped in that billowy white fabric and bathed in the radiance, making her look immaculate and pure and holy. She apparently sensed his presence, for she addressed him without his saying a word.

"The view is spectacular!" she told him, fluttering one hand across the warm expanse of the pane. The sunlight caught upon the ring on her finger, and it winked slyly at Reid as if it knew just what he was thinking. He gave a soft, almost undetectable chuckle, and she cast her eyes back towards him, letting her chin touch her shoulder and smiling.

"This is going to be interesting."

***

"I'm starving!" JJ complained, kicking her feet up and letting herself crash face-up on the couch. That morning she had been too strangely nervous and restless to eat anything before she left, but now that it was nearly sunset and they had settled into a companionable coexistence, she was suddenly aware of the unsettling emptiness in her stomach region. (Or at least she thought that was hunger…)

"I'm sorry," Reid said offhandedly, adjusting the laptop on the desk so that it was exactly the same distance from each side rather than letting himself think about the way her dress had flurried around her thighs when she threw herself upon the sofa.

"Do we have any food?" she asked him as she flipped herself onto her stomach so she could look at him.

"Um… I have a box of Tic-Tacs, and… well, there are plenty of squirrels outside," he told her, sticking out his chin as if he was challenging her (Hello, Spencer Reid who's not completely terrified of girls, when did you get here?), and she winked back at him, resting her chin on her hands and looking just about as enchanting as could be; and just like that, he was stumbling backwards into the desk as if she was pushing him up against it, thrown off-kilter by the twinkle in her eye and the stunning gleam of her smile (Slightly less horrified Spencer Reid, where do you think you're running off to so fast?).

"Well, that can be fixed," she said, springing to her feet and readjusting her dress. "Help me find my shoes, we're going shopping. Like a real family."

He laughed and shook his head, very aware of the way the words "a real family" echoed back and forth in his head, reverberating, plaintively hopeful.

Things were a bit less cheery back at the BAU.

"Let's go over this one more time," Morgan said tiredly, switching on the projector and sliding the remote onto the round table. Hotch seized it and took aim at the projector.

"Okay, so. This is what we know," Hotch said, flipping through the slides of crime scene photos with little zeal. They had gone through these cases countless times, thrown the ball back and forth on so many occasions that now they just seemed to be going through the motions, still with no success. "Four couples, dead. Dylan and Ginger Holden, Patrick and Geena Elliot, Roy and Marna Jones, Kevin and Christa Jackson. All newlyweds, all living rural areas of Pennsylvania."

"The MO is this same in each case, and very specific," Gideon put in. "Wife is stripped and shot once, husband bludgeoned to death."

"That doesn't make sense," Morgan began, certain that this wasn't the first time he had said that about this case. "A shooting is usually more impersonal: the killer doesn't want to get his hands dirty. A beating, on the other hand, is personal: the killer releasing frustration or acting on a grudge."

"Also, the autopsy shows that the wife was killed first in each case," Gideon added, "which is uncommon. This kind of murderer usually takes out the man, the biggest threat, first."

"Maybe the wife was just in the way?" Prentiss offered, wrapping her hands thoughtfully around her coffee mug. "The killer just shot her so he could beat the husband to death without interference?"

"Unlikely," Gideon concluded. "The wife is stripped down to nearly nothing; the killer must wanted something with her."

"Sexual predator?" Hotch suggested.

"Can't be," Morgan answered as he perused a file. "She would have been completely nude, and the rape kit turned up nothing. This guy just wants to strip her of her dignity."

"The killer stalks each couple for as much as a month, making calls periodically," Gideon added. "A friend of Marna Jones says that Marna mentioned something to her about getting threatening phone calls, but Marna was a substitute teacher and assumed it was some student pulling a prank."

"Right," Hotch agreed. "So we got Garcia to check the phone records of Joneses and the victims before them, and she found calls on each from a blocked number, in some cases starting as early as the day they hooked up their phone when they moved."

"So, the killer has a source to find out who exactly is moving into these houses and when," Prentiss put in. "Real estate agency?"

"Checked," Hotch replied. "The first two happened to be from the same real estate agency, but Garcia did a thorough background check of every agent in the area offices. Again, no leads."

"Another dead end," Prentiss concluded with a sigh and a twist of her lips, slouching back into her chair.

"What is this?"

JJ pulled her eyes off of the cover of the trashy tabloid on the rack in front of her and swung them around to Reid, who had paused in the process of loading the groceries onto the checkout conveyor belt. She quirked up an eyebrow at him, and he plucked something up from the bottom of the cart.

"Low-fat?" he demanded, waving a box of reduced-calorie popcorn through the air and ignoring the look he was getting from the cashier. "What on earth possessed you to even consider purchasing low-fat food?"

"Hey!" she retorted, pretending to be offended and edging around the cart to poke him in his ribs. "Unlike you, my body happens to cling to every last gram of fat I put in it."

"JJ, have you looked in a mirror recently? I don't think that's an issue." Reid asked, and she certainly did not miss the compliment lurking about in there. "I mean… look!"

"Spence, what is your – ?"

"Sugar-free ice cream!" he exclaimed with a note of pure horror broken by the laugh when she attempted to snatch it out of his hands, only to have him deftly maneuver up over his head and far out of her reach. "This – this is a disgrace to food everywhere, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Ice cream is a treat for happy occasions… and I assure you, nothing says happy like three-thousand calories."

"Yeah, and four liposuctions later I might have some semblance to my former self."

"Sugar-free ice cream!"

"You know what?" she said, giving up trying to jump for the tub of ice cream. "Next time we go shopping, you can pick all the food."

"Thank you."

"And then you'll be stuck with a wife the size of a bus," she finished, crossing her arms over her chest and drawing one corner of her lips sideways into a smirk. "That is, until I go into cardiac arrest at age thirty-five. And I won't leave you anything in my will."

"That seems a bit extreme, J," he chuckled. Surprisingly enough, with the exception of the butterflies that seemed to be having some sort of exceedingly and uproariously violent cagematch in his stomach and the feeling that blood had stopped circulating to, well, everywhere, this felt rathernatural. Familiar. Right.

"Excuse me," came the timid voice of the small elderly saleswoman at the cash register, "but there are more people in line."

"Oh!" Reid gasped, turning to look at the mob of people glaring holes into their flesh. "I'm so sorry."

"You see, Spencer here," JJ said with a low, patient voice and a sad shake of her head, grasping his elbow with one hand and patting his bicep fondly with the other, "he's just so much trouble. Honestly. I can't take him anywhere." She felt the muscle contract under her palm as he turned to retort, but she cut him off with a stern, admonishing look. "What if I took you somewhere nice? What if I took you to Bennigan's, huh? Then how would you act?"

"I'd – I'd probably just eat my leprechaun cookie and feel better about myself…" he sighed feebly. She snorted and delivered a punch to place on his arm where her hand had just been.

"You see what I mean? He's a bad seed, I tell you. A bad seed," JJ earnestly told the clerk, who was now looking thoroughly frightened and confused.

She never did let go of his elbow, and they marched of the store arm-in-arm with a hoot and a bounce and a well, this is progress.

***

JJ wished she could say this was the first time she'd woken up in a bed that wasn't hers and thought to herself what the hell have I done?

It had been a night of fitful, dreamless slumber huddled under a thin quilt in that strange four-poster bed. Now, rolling her weary body over onto the other side of the mattress, she stretched her arms out and skimmed her palms over the cool, empty space before her, letting her lashes slowly guide her lids upwards until her cloudy vision finally managed to distinguish her own hair fanned across her face and the tousle of blankets around her head. One by one, things that had grown distant in the night dropped back into her barely conscious mind: Hotch's jaw held steady as her had given them their assignment, her hand twitching on her thigh as she had restrained it from settling over Reid's on the gearshift, his voice ringing through the silence long after he had told her good night the previous evening.

It had been he who had woken her up this morning, she gradually worked out. The sound of metal against metal and the smell of maple syrup had somehow penetrated her walls, her door, her bedspread, the crooks of her elbows covering her ears, coaxing her back into awareness, however reluctantly. The bedding thrown up in a twist over her was sufficient enough to muffle the noises, but now that her eyes were open, she could feel the early morning sun burning the pattern of the flimsy patchwork into her retinas.

It couldn't have been later than seven o'clock. Damn you, Spencer Reid.

With a throaty groan crushing against the back of her tongue like it used to before she quit smoking and a scream of protest from the muscles in her back, she disentangled her legs from the sheets and unfolded her body from the bed. A new pair of panties and the loose, worn fabric of an old T-shirt were all that interrupted the equilibrium between the air and her skin, and even standing like that in the privacy of the bedroom she felt suddenly indecent listening to Reid moving around the kitchen.

Clothes. Clothes good. Need clothes.

The aged floorboards squeaked beneath her haphazard footsteps as she tried to maneuver her half-awake self blindly to the closet and fish her bathrobe out with something remotely akin to haste. When she had finally pulled it on and fastened it around her waist, she padded gingerly out of the room, across the den, and into the kitchen.

Squinting through still-adjusting pupils, she could see that the shades were mercifully drawn over the set of large windows spanning the wall, batter was bubbling in a pan on the stove, and he was leaning against the adjoining counter. His back was to her, his plain white undershirt stretched taut between sharp, svelte shoulder blades, a spatula in one hand and his chin in the other, his elbows resting thoughtfully on the countertop as he perused the manila folder thick with documents on the granite beneath. If she had been more awake, or perhaps less, she might have registered how very much like a real husband he was, with his plaid pajama pants loosely draping his long, thin legs like lengths of blankets framing a child's homemade living room tent or dangling over the edges of a laundry basket cradled in the work-strong arms of a mother. But she was only awake enough to wish that she wasn't, so she voiced to only thing on her mind.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked him blearily, the words tumbling around apathetic lips that mustered up just enough energy to refuse to define the consonants.

"Aren't we a little ray of sunshine," he said dryly, turning to take in her mussed hair and arms folded over her chest as if bracing herself against a cold wind. "I'm going over the case files again."

"…And how many times have you gone over them?"

"Not enough, apparently."

Her response was a sort of non-committal grunt, and she wobbled over to the barstool drawn up to the counter and sat down, closing her eyes and letting her head teeter at the end of her neck.

"It's strange…" he said slowly, deftly spinning the spatula around with his fingers. "These MO's… they just don't add up. He goes through the trouble of stripping the woman, but then just shoots her. He exerts the energy and time to beat the man, but kills him second."

"Nmph," was the noise that dislodged itself from JJ's tonsils.

"There are two distinct signatures. Two implied motives," Reid continued, carefully removing the pancake from the pan and sliding it onto a plate. "It almost seems like two entirely separate killers."

"Mmrg," she replied.

"But each motive seems personal," he expounded, pushing the plate across the smooth surface so that it rested in front of her, "so what are the odds that the same two killers would have a personal problem with two individuals who happen to married to each other… four times?"

This time there was no response, and he continued flipping through the papers in silence.

"You know, evidence shows that the killer may have stalked and spied on his victims as early as the moment they moved in," he said offhandedly. Her eyes snapped open at that, flickering warily from him to the shaded windows and back to him again. He quickly backpedaled. "Not to freak you out or anything."

"Oh, yeah," she muttered. "Sadistic homicidal freak watching me shower. Nothing to worry about."

And with that, she let her head drop to the counter.

"You're going to get syrup in your hair," he told her, unable to wrestle his small smile of fondness into submission. She mumbled something nondescript and monosyllabic in answer, making absolutely no effort to avert this potential crisis. He rounded the counter and gently swept her hair away from its position dangerously near the pool of maple syrup on her plate and back behind her neck. And then something curious happened.

Perhaps it was just because she was still only half-coherent and he was just so close and so much like home, but for a moment she found herself instinctively turning and inclining her face into his hand, pressing her cheek against his palm. He stilled, her hair still laced around his fingertips, her lips breathing their strange warmth beneath his wrist, before withdrawing his hand abruptly as if it had been burned.

"So," Morgan said, leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe of Garcia's little computer room, one corner of his mouth tucked slyly between his back teeth. "What do you think?"

"What do I think about what, sweetcheeks?" she asked (even though she already had an idea as to what the question was), swiveling around in her chair to smirk at him.

"About JJ and Reid shackin' up together," he clarified. "Kinda weird, huh?"

"Oh, it's definitely gonna be interesting. Reid's got it bad for her," Garcia replied without hesitation. Morgan raised his eyebrows.

"You think?"

"Are you kidding?" she laughed. "Have you seen the way he looks at her?"

"How's that?"

"Like she's the only thing in the room, like he's never seen a pretty girl before in his life," she explained emphatically. "Come on, I thought you were smarter than that, Mr. Fancypants Behavioral Analyst! Reid looks at JJ like she farts fuckin' butterflies."

"I guess I just never noticed," he shrugged with a chuckle. "I can't imagine them together."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure," she said, her voice thick and slow with indulgence, reclining in her chair and taking a swig from her water bottle. "I've seen her eyeing him too."

"JJ? No way."

"Hey, lots of attractive girls like to live vicariously through nerd-crushes," Garcia said. "And it's very possible that she could act on it, given the right… circumstances."

Morgan just laughed, shaking his head.

"No?" she said with the air of someone either trying to explain basic math to a very adamantly ignorant first-grader or about to execute a con. "Well then, what do you think will happen?"

"My best bet?" he said. "All Reid's in store for is a few cold showers."

A wide, conniving smile dawned on Garcia's face.

"I do believe you said bet, sir."

"I grew up here, you know," JJ said leisurely, following Reid out the front door and onto the porch, a camera tethered to her wrist. Things hadn't really been that awkward after the little incident that morning, mostly because both of them preferred to pretend it had never happened, that perhaps they had just imagined it. After all, it had been very early, right?

He made his way over to the swing, looking at her with interest and holding a thick book between his elbow and his side.

"In Pennsylvania," she continued. "It's even more gorgeous than I remembered."

He smiled and gave a hum of assent, watching her sit down on the opposite side of the swing, the old chains creaking and the denim stretching across her thighs as she pulled her knees up to her chest, watching her nimble fingers fiddle with the focus. He saw in her happiness, a footloose and windswept life, a life perpetually tousled by the jaunty affection of ever-changing tempo, all brazen laughter and rolled-up hems and hands thrown up to the sun. These were things he had never known.

She returned his smile, drinking in the whole scene: the hills and valleys rolling off into the great green and blue distance, the sky opening infinitely above them, and Reid, Reid with his quirked up chin and curious, blamelessly wondering eyes. Closing her eyes, she let it all soak through every stitch of clothing, every inch of skin, and drew in a long stream of breath.

"I love this."

One more tiny step forward. Things were slowly falling into place.

***