Part One

The past is never dead. It is not even past

- William Faulkner

Chapter 01

Books Used & Rare
Georgetown
Washington DC

It was here, he thought, they had sworn it was here. Somewhere in this musty, dusty pile of a bookshop was a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy, the 1921 edition, the one with the Franz von Bayros drawings. It was supposed to be one of the most perfect marriages of classic literature and erotic art ever produced, delicately decadent. And as it had been banned and burned in most of Europe in its day, it was an exceedingly rare book.

And to think that Morgan was worried about him.

The problem was that this book shop, while known for handling books of extreme rarity, was not known for its helpful staff. It was in the upper room somewhere, the sullen clear told him, but he didn't know where and was clearly not getting up to help him look. And so Dr. Spencer Reid made his way up the narrow, twisting stairs to find his own prize.

It was there, on a high shelf. He spotted it from across the room, watched it with all the focus of a wolf taking down its prey. Nothing else caught his attention, nothing. Not until his hand closed around the binding. And at that exact moment, another hand did too.

"Oh!"

The hand in question was smaller, more delicate than his. He traced it down to an arm, a pink sweater, a mass of golden curls, and finally a pair of green eyes looking at him. "Well, this is a bit of a pickle, isn't it?" She said as she smiled at him.

"It appears that way." He pulled the book down from the shelf, thinking she would let go. Except of course, she didn't. "Um, are you just looking? Because I was actually going to buy this one."

"So was I."

"Oh." Spencer stood there a moment, hanging on to the book in question, while his mind melted into slag. "You know it's in Italian, right?"

"Sì, ma io legga l'italiano. La poesia è così tanto più squisita nell'originale, no?" She smiled as she clearly won the point.

The sound of her voice in that rich language made him feel a little weak. Now it was his turn to blush. "Right. I'm learning Italian. You know it's the von Bayros edition?"

"I suppose I ought to be embarrassed about that." She had the faintest trace of an accent. He realized, one he could not place, European perhaps, but he wanted to keep hearing it.

"That's all right, I'm embarrassed enough for two." Okay, think Spencer, what would Morgan do? What would Morgan do? "I'll tell you what, I'll give up the book if you let me buy you coffee."

"Oh." She let go of the book then, leaving him surprisingly disappointed, bit her lip and turned pink over the cheekbones. "I don't know about that."

"I'm not some crazy serial killer, I can promise you that."

"Really? How?"

"Join me for coffee and I'll tell you."

"Oh, I shouldn't do this." She sighed, thought a moment, clearly making up her mind. Then she took the book from his now unresisting grasp. "There's a little place just down the street a bit that ought to still be open."

Spencer smiled, rather nervously. Now that he'd dropped himself into it, he wasn't exactly certain what to do next. "Cool. Oh, I'm Spencer." A gentleman wasn't supposed to offer his hand to a lady, or was that rule still valid…

Either way, it didn't seem to bother her. She turned slightly pink again. "Claire."

BAU Headquarters
Quantico, VA

Emily Prentiss looked over as her colleague gave off a yawn big enough to swallow the entire stack of papers in front of him. "Late night last night?"

"Yeah. I didn't get home until midnight." Spencer replied. A first and last time for everything, right?

"Wait, let me guess, Star Trek movie marathon?" Emily heard Derek Morgan chuckling as he went to the coffee pot behind her. "Memorizing the entire Library of Congress?"

"Har. Har." He didn't even justify this with looking up. After what happened with Doyle last year just hearing Morgan and Emily joking together again was good, even if he had to be the butt of the joke. Even if the spot they were needling was remarkably raw.

"Look, man, just tell us there was a girl involved." Morgan said.

"There was a girl involved." For a long moment the break room was quiet enough to hear the steam settling in the coffee pot. "What?"

"Oh, you don't get to just let that go." Morgan settled into one of the chairs. "Spill it."

"Spill what? Her name is Claire, we met at the used book shop, I took her out for coffee. That's it, no big deal."

"He's not even looking at us." Emily turned to Morgan and shook her head.

"Yeah, this is huge." Morgan concurred. "Wait, you said last night you wanted to get to the book place before they closed at six."

"So?" Spencer finally looked up.

"So, you had coffee with her for six hours and this isn't a big deal?" Emily had to point out.

"Look, she's very attractive, extremely well read, and really easy to talk to. But she didn't give me her last name or her phone number so I must not have made that good an impression." He slumped back in his chair and stuck his nose back into the report. He didn't want to spend any more time thinking about Claire, or her voice, or her laughter. Not at all.

"Good morning my darlings." Penelope Garcia breezed in for her morning cup. "What are we discussing?"

"Spencer met a girl last night." Emily sat back in her chair and looked over her shoulder at their resident goddess. "They spent six hours having coffee but now he doesn't think it went well."

"Ohhhh, sweetie." Garcia went around to rub his shoulder, an effort he shrugged off. "Why not?"

"Because she didn't give him her last name or number. All we know is that she's Claire from Georgetown." Emily informed her, while Spencer concentrated on his file.

"Claire from Georgetown?" Garcia thought about that a moment. "What did she look like?" When Spencer didn't answer she tapped the back of the file he was holding. "What did she look like?"

"Curly blond hair, green eyes." Spencer muttered. They tease because they care, he thought, but just once I wish they would leave it alone.

"Was she wearing a pink sweater with a lace pattern knitted into the top?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Claire Barlowe. She owns Needles and Pins, this little shop over on Wisconsin. I go there every Wednesday night for Stitch 'n' Bitch."

Leave it to Garcia to know everything. "I'm sure I'll be fodder for your next gathering."

"No, sweetie, I have her number. You can call her"

"She didn't give it to me Garcia. If she wanted me to call she would have."

"Not necessarily. She never talks about guys; I get the feeling she's been working out of a bad relationship. She might just be nervous about trying the waters again." Garcia nibbled on her stir stick, and looked him over like she was considering something.

"That makes two of us." Spencer had yet to look up at all.

"Well, there's one way to find out." Garcia met Emily's eyes, and as one they stood and headed for the tech room. Spencer still didn't look up. Morgan just started chuckling.

As they walked to the tech room they crossed paths with JJ. "What's going on?"

Emily nodded for her to walk with them. "Reid met a girl last night. Six hours over coffee." JJ's eyes widened in appreciation. "He doesn't think it went well enough to call her to go out again, but you know how he can be. Turns out Garcia knows her, so we're going to get the other half of the post-mortem."

"Count me in." JJ followed along.

Once comfortably settled in her chair, with Emily and JJ perched on tables behind her, Garcia punched the number for the shop into her speaker phone. When a soft voice answered "Needles and Pins" she decided to take the mystical route. "Hey, sweetie, it's Penelope. I had the best dream about you last night. It was so good I just had to call you."

"Hey, Penelope." A touch of an accent, JJ and Emily noticed, and a little sad. "I got your order in, you know. So, what did you dream about?"

"Oh, cool. I'll pick it up Wednesday. I dreamed that your life was changing, for the wonderfully better. And them just now my instincts told me that I had to call you. Now come on, tell your Goddess what is going on."

Sigh. "I met this guy last night."

"Guy. See, better. Now spill."

"Spill about what?"

"Well, is he cute?"

"I think he is. You're probably going to tell me he's horribly geeky, but I think he's drop dead handsome." JJ and Emily smiled and nodded in silent approval. "And he's wickedly smart, he has three PhD's and a handful of other degrees, and I think he'd read, like, everything." She sounded a little dreamy, then, like she'd been utterly taken by his mind. "And he's funny, god, I swear we never stopped laughing. We talked for hours last night. He knows magic tricks, pulled a quarter out of my ear." She sounded like she was distracting herself with something. "I thought it was cute."

"So, are you going to see him again?"

"Oh, Penny, I don't know. It's too soon. I didn't give him my number."

"I think you should, you two would be fabulous together."

"How do you..Penelope Garcia!"

"What?"

"He told me he worked for the FBI! You know him, don't you!"

"All right, I confess. Yes, I've known him for years. No, he did not put me up to this call. It sounds like you had a great time; he had a great time, why not let him call you? And do not give me the 'it's too soon' nonsense. I've known you for two years now, that's long enough to get over any jerk. Now give me one good reason why I shouldn't march out there and tell him to ask you out again."

"Penelope…"

"No, do not give me that tone. One good reason why he shouldn't take you out on Saturday. One."

"No. Not Saturday." Her tone had gone from wistful to serious. "I have the Noro trunk sale on Saturday, it's going to be a zoo."

"Perfect, I'll have him bring you lunch."

"Penelope…."

"Ah! Do not argue with your Goddess!"

"All right."

The three of them marched back down to the bullpen. Garcia stopped at Spencer's desk and handed him a business card. "Here. Send her flowers today, and bring her lunch on Saturday."

"What? Garcia…"

"Do this and do not argue." She looked quite firm on this point.

Spencer looked from her to Emily, and then to JJ, both of whom were nodding in concert, and then to Morgan, almost begging for help.

"Do it, man." Was all Morgan had to

offer. "If they're all in agreement we'll never have peace unless you do.

Spencer sighed and pulled up a website to send flowers.

.

Translation:

"Yes, but I read Italian. Poetry is so much more exquisite in the original."

This is and is not the same story I published semi-privately on LiveJournal a few years ago. Back then I wrote two versions of this, one prior to the Ian Doyle story arc which was never published, and one after that story arc, which did see the light of day. This is my attempt to reconcile the two.

Set sometime in Season 7, and cannon through 07x01 "It Takes A Village". Since I've already introduced the romantic lead, I cast Emilie de Ravin as Claire Barlowe