"Your sister is something," Rachel taps her fingers on the steering wheel.

I'm grateful she's tolerating Caro, and even happier she's still willing to carpool while I'm staying at Spencer's. I could take the subway, back to switching routes every week just to feel the high of travelling. It's warmer too, now that it's March, and I hate the way Rachel drives. I suppose the routine is comforting.

"What did she do now?" I ask.

"She's started moving things in the fridge," Rachel laughs. "Estelle is barely holding it together."

Last I spoke to Estelle, she was fine with Caro moving in for two weeks, so long as it was only until Bastien was in a better shape. It was that or we would send both Caro and Bastien back to Texas (neither Stéphane nor I were able to get time off on such a short notice) and we unanimously agreed that Bastien and Cletus should not live together. Still, I expected resistance from Estelle, but it seems even she doesn't dare go to war with Caro.

Rachel turns up the radio and I sing along. She giggles, blasting pop music that surely the other commuters on this crowded street won't appreciate. I don't care though. There are too many things to worry about that I can't even consider the opinions of strangers. We finally pull into work and bid each other farewell. Without her, the anxieties of the rest of the month come into focus.

My bi-annual presentation is pressing on my shoulders and I have to deliver it before Shenandoah this weekend. At least today the office is quiet. Between two nearly back-to-back cases and Easter, I haven't spent more than one night with Spencer despite essentially moving into his place. I miss him, but the crowded bullpen always distracts me.

I get an email from JJ which spurs me to work through lunch. Everyone is coming back this afternoon. They'll likely have so much paperwork that JJ will hold off on accepting cases for at least the next week. I text Rachel to let her know she won't need to drive me home.

By the end of lunch, I've eaten my wrap at my desk and I desperately need to pee, but I'm nowhere near ready to take a break. My fingers thunder on the keyboard while I type, and I only stop when I hear the team come in the office. Before anyone can disrupt me, I excuse myself to run to the bathroom.

When I come back, Morgan smiles at me.

"Long time, Bouchard," he pushes my chair out for me. "How's the brother doing?"

"Still concussed," I glance at Reid and catch his eye. My heart skips. "He's not cleared to drive, but he can do basically everything else now. My sister's been up to help with him still, but she's leaving after our vacation."

"Hotch would give you time off, if you needed it," Prentiss offers, looking across our desks at me.

I take a seat and begin to re-login to the server, "I've got the presentation soon. And he's fine. He really just needs him to drive to physiotherapy, and he's being reduced to once a week next week anyway."

With that, I begin to type. Thankfully, no one else asks me questions or interrupts me. I'm nowhere near ready and soon I'm going to need to start rehearsing. My place is too crowded, and I can't bore Spencer with it, or even worse embarrass myself. He's finally back.

We need to talk about how I lied to get out of his home, and how he never told me that my brother threatened him.

The day progresses and I begin to outline the new research, sectioning it off by serial offence. I alphabetize the list, from abductions to abuse to arson, and it goes on and on and on. I need to cut down on time. As I'm refining, the team is packing it in for the day. I put in the eye drops which Spencer bought for me. The world has been stinging, light sharp on the outer corners of my eyes.

It's seven and I'm starting when Spencer taps my eyes. I just need to stop.

"I need two more hours," I tell him. "Please."

From behind, her reaches around me. I feel him pressed up against my back, even through my desk chair. I hold my breath. Spencer rests his hand on mine, over top of my computer mouse, and he gently squeezes.

"Come on," he insists. "I know you are wearing your glasses and using your eye drops, but this isn't healthy. You should take a break."

My head nods, small and careful. I force myself to log out and then let him guide me out to his car. We go back to his, eat Chinese takeout, and by the time I feel wound down, I'm too tired to argue, if that is what this will become.

Spencer and I fall into that pattern on Tuesday and then Wednesday as well. His soft hand on mine, his grip firmer each night. Take out and sleeping too quickly and barely more than a hundred words exchanged between the two of us on all three days. I deliver the presentation Friday morning, and I'm not one to procrastinate. So, I wake early and leave a note telling Spencer I'm going for a jog. Instead, I go shopping and overpack my work bag, which hopefully he won't notice.

Thursday afternoon, I just rehearse and rehearse the presentation. I'm nowhere near ready, but thirty minutes after everyone else leaves, I log out. Spencer notices me stand. His brow furrows and he sits up properly in his desk.

"I need records," I tell him. "I'll just be ten minutes."

Of course, I'm gone thirty minutes.

When he finally comes in to check on me in the records room, Spencer finds me sitting on a blanket on the ground. There is sparkling juice, a hastily put together charcuterie board, and even fake candles lining the shelves and floor. Their electric lights flicker out of sync.

Spencer smiles at me, wide and brighter than the candles.

"I wanted to thank you," I say.

When he smiles I do too. God, how deeply and profoundly I care for him. He finally feels close enough, even with my lies casting shade on us. He is warm enough that I can see him. I could find him in complete darkness, from hundreds of kilometers away, just by following the radiance of his warmth. I don't know how anyone meets him and doesn't fall in love with him.

Myself included. I think.

We sit and eat, and I finally get to hear him talk about his trip to see his mother. Not hear, that's not the right word. I get to listen, to understand, and I wish I could have come. I update him on Bastien, promising he is doing well as I say even if I haven't seen him at all this third week.

"I do wish you could come to Shenandoah," I tell him. "I'm ready for it to be a disaster, actually."

We've been borrowing Stéphane's car for the last three weeks and I'm sure he'll be more than happy to have it back. I know I'll be happy to sleep in my own bed again, with Rachel and Estelle. It hasn't really felt like living with Spencer. He's never home, and I'm often sleeping in the crevice of his bed where he sleeps, imagining him beside me.

Or maybe that's exactly what it's like living with a member of the BAU. Maybe this is what I should expect for the rest of my life, if this is the life I would choose for myself.

I think I'm in love with him. I think I'm terribly awfully in love with him. Even though his apartment doesn't have a balcony, even though he travels for work too much, even though he drives me crazy sometimes.

"You know, we should actually go on vacation together," he says. "Maybe... maybe we could start with just telling Morgan."

My heart stops. My twitches just slightly from left to right. Spencer leans back, his long legs stretched between us and the weight on the palms of his hands.

"Spen, I'm not ready."

"When?" he swallows.

I don't think I've ever heard him speak so few words. I wait for him to elaborate, even though I'm not going to insult his intelligence by pretending the ending of his sentence was anything less then clear. When?

"I don't know."

"Cole..." Spencer stands up. His hands run through his hair. I cross my legs beneath me and just stare up at him. He doesn't scowl. It's so hard to be angry with him, and I am an acolyte of wrath.

"I can't predict when I'm going to be ready," I think back to those sheets I did for therapy. "I can't predict the future. All I know is that I'm not ready now."

"And I am," he huffs. "I've been ready. I've been nothing but... but yours Cole. I'm yours and nothing else anymore."

I don't move to stand. I sit with that.

"I'm yours," I whisper the words.

He shakes his head, "I want to believe that, but I don't. You're destroying me. You're really, really good at it. I can't even convince – look, you're mine. You are mine. I don't even believe it when I say it."

He crosses his arms over his chest. I blink, looking down. I can feel tears in my eyes.

"I love you," he says. I don't wipe away the tear that flows down my cheeks. "And once again, I don't think you reciprocate-"

"I do!" I snap my head up. "Wait, what do you mean? Do you think... what do you think? That you don't matter to me."

"You're embarrassed of me," he says.

I snort, a sound that's more snot and tears than laughter, "Spen, be serious."

"I am," he stares down at me. "You rejected me, over and over. You may have forgotten last year. It's been almost a year since you first rejected me, the morning after the wedding, in Caro's hotel room. You don't need a memory like mine to remember that. You just... you clearly don't love me."

"I do," I say. I force my lips to move. "I love you."

"You can say that, but that doesn't mean you mean it," his voice almost is almost a rasp. "I'm a profiler. I know that how you behave matters differently. Every time I talk about our relationship, you freeze up. You literally left in the middle of the night when I suggested moving in togeth-"

"I know I lied," I said. "But it wasn't about living with you. It's not because I feel embarrassed of you."

He doesn't look at me. I'm not a profiler, he's right, but he's got this one wrong. He remembers every time I rejected him, more clearly than I do, but I would never want him away.

"Then what is it?" he asks.

I don't trust you.

It's the truth. I don't trust him. I don't trust anyone to have my best interests in heart.

I can't be fixed. I'm broken forever and maybe Spencer will always be too good for me. Maybe it's time to accept that.

"I don't trust you," I say and it hurts, but I have to be honest. "And you don't trust me. You never told me Bastien threatened you. If I had to guess, you think I'd pick him over you. Don't you?"

He swallows. That is an answer enough.

"Go home," I tell him. "I'll clean up and finish work."

"Cole-"

"Go!" I order.

He blinks at me. A single tear falls from his eye, and then he walks out of the records room.

~~~~~

Messy, messy, messy. Oh Cole, what have you gotten yourself into? Welp, for now she's going to have to cope with this.