A/N: This is me procrastinating. I'm working on the smut that I promised, but the awkward ball of sexy is hard to write. So I'm playing around until I finish it.

Neither of them wanted to say anything to the team. They didn't know how to phrase it, for starters, and telling the team would put them all at risk. Reid and Prentiss had no desire to be the reason that Strauss broke up the team, and god knew she'd use any scrap of an excuse, much less than an actual one, like they provided. It was Rossi's fault, really, he had been the reason for the creation of that particular rule, but it was far too late to do anything about it.

Garcia suspected something, of course, her claims to being the goddess of infinite knowledge really weren't too far off, but Reid was a genius, and Prentiss was pretty close, and their combined efforts managed to lay under Garcia's radar.

Working with profilers made it even more difficult, despite the outstanding rule not to profile each other. They lived and worked within such close proximity to each other that it really couldn't be helped. So saying that Reid and Prentiss couldn't be together at work was the understatement of the century. It wasn't easy, either, being that their work consumed such a vast amount of their life.

So what it boiled down to, was that Reid and Prentiss couldn't be outwardly together, they had a combined IQ of over three hundred, of course, so they figured out a way to fix it. It had taken them weeks to figure it out, hashing out the details in their free time which seemed to be getting scarce. But the end result, the end result made everything worth it.

"Do you need help with your reports?" He hovered over her desk, slouched comfortably into a pale green cardigan, coffee cup in hand. His glasses were perched precariously on the bridge of his nose, and his messy hair was tucked behind his ears.

She looked up from the file she was scribbling in, for a girl her handwriting was rather illegible. "If you don't mind," she sighed loudly, arching her back over the chair earning a few pops of spinal relief. "I'd like to get home at a decent hour for once," she admitted, pulling a few files from the stack and handing them to Reid. "Thanks," she nodded to the files.

"Anytime," he curled the files against his chest, sipping his coffee, looking more like a professor than anything else. His eyes grazed over everything, her, the files, the desk, he was taking everything in, committing it to memory, where it wouldn't be lost, because with them, everything was significant and he'd go back over everything later.

"Go for it, Mr. Roboto," she teased lightly, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. It seemed like a lighthearted jest at first glance, but Reid's gaze darted to the floor, and his face flushed slightly, and he couldn't help but let that goofy smile mar his face.

They shared a knowing look between them and Reid retreated to his desk to work on the files. He finished them in a matter of minutes and glanced over at her again. Their eyes met and he couldn't help but speak up, "Prentiss, you're never going to finish your reports at that rate."

She resorted to immaturity, and stuck a tongue out at Reid.

That too had meaning, all of it did. Sure the exchanges seemed innocent enough, but there in lay the entire basis of their communications, they had to seem innocent. Nobody was to know that they were sharing sentiments. Nobody on the team knew that offering to help her was only one of twenty six ways they had come up with to say 'I love you' and that her response was a way to say, 'I know, I love you too.' And mentioning that she wanted to be home at a decent hour was one of many ways to let him know exactly what she had planned for when they were finally alone. And Mr. Roboto, was a rather R rated nickname that never failed to make him blush.

"I love you," Emily grinned, her face flushed brightly as they lay tangled in his brown cotton sheets. Her cheek was pressed against his bare chest as her fingers lightly dusted down his side, earning a small shiver from the lanky man.

"I know that, Emmy," Spencer smiled, a hand tangled in her long black hair. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "You told me earlier you know," he teased lightly, though he couldn't help but blush slightly. It had been months since they had first shared the words, but he wasn't used to it, the affection.

"Yeah, but saying the actual word is so much better," Emily replied simply, her eyes fluttering closed, eyelashes brushing against his skin. "It's been too long since we've had a night alone, I hate our job sometimes," she murmured.

He shifted slightly, getting comfortable because he could tell by the heavy tone in her voice, that she was on the brink of falling asleep. "You're the one who refuses to sneak into my hotel room when we travel," Spencer teased, a hand ghosting up and down her side. "I mean its not like they'd be that suspicious, Elle and I used to go over cases in hotel rooms. Nobody thought anything of it."

Emily lifted her head off his chest, turning to look him in the eye, a suspicious frown on her face. "When you say 'cases' you mean what exactly?" She asked, a single eyebrow raised inquisitively.

"I mean case files, Emmy, nothing more. If you hadn't noticed earlier I'm not exactly a ball of experience," Spencer responded with a soft chuckle. The idea of someone being jealous over him, much less Emily Prentiss was just a little mind blowing.

Seemingly satisfied, she returned her head to his chest with a yawn. He really was a much better pillow than anything else, and she didn't sleep well with out him, despite all the lonely hotel nights, and it didn't take long for her to drift into sleep.

In the morning, they shared coffee, and both changed into their work clothes. And then they left, left behind his comfortable cottage where she could be Emily and he could be Spencer and they could use their words the way they wanted to. She took her car, he took his. They staggered their arrivals, Reid was nothing if not thorough and he wasn't going to give anyone the slightest reason to suspect anything.

And so they carried on. They didn't have any other choice, after all. Reid and Prentiss could never be together. But that didn't matter, not really. Emily had Spencer, and Spencer had Emily, and Reid and Prentiss had their words that meant something to them, something different from what it meant to everybody else.