Chapter Text
He ignores Rose for a full month after they have dinner with Maeve’s parents, but she doesn’t seek him out, and he wonders how she just knows when he needs to be alone.
He’s walking back from a rather late night at work when he sees her. She’s wiping down the the last few booths, heading towards a string of lights that she’s already begun hanging up around the shop when he walks in.
Much like the day of his first case back, she jumps at the sound, almost falling off the bar counter but managing to catch herself.
“Spencer!” She gasps, braced against the counter she’d just been standing on, “Stop doing that!”
He’s almost certain that the second she regains her bearings, she’ll be asking him why he thought it was okay to disappear for a month. However, just as always, she doesn’t question him. She only looks at him and follows up by sending him a smile and a bemused shake of the head.
“I thought the cafe was supposed to be closed?” He wonders aloud.
“It closed a half hour ago, darling, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done.”
“You should lock the door when you close.” He stares at her for a long moment, and then adds, “I disappeared again.”
“You did.” She states, but there’s no malice in her tone, “but you went through a lot and I’m sure that it all came back when you saw Maeve’s parents.”
Spencer nods, furrowing his brows as he remembers what he had wanted to say.
“I have two questions,” He says, and she comes out from behind the bar, looking at him expectantly. “I was wondering if you’d like to dance with me?”
Her eyes brows furrow, mouth opening to respond before he can explain himself, “Darling, you’re sweet, but I don’t want to be a rebound.”
“You’re not,” he soothes, continuing on with a sigh as she raises a brow. “You’re not. Please?”
She sighs, picking her phone up and off of the table, “Only if I can choose the song.”
She glances up, smiling when she catches him smiling victoriously at her. She slips out of her apron, folding it and placing it on the counter before walking over to him as the music fills her shop.
It’s a prelude, one that he recognises and it doesn’t take him long to realise it’s one of the Nocturne in E minor pieces— more likely than not its no. 72.
“You like Chopin?” Spencer asks, finding himself almost unaffected when she slips her arms over his shoulders, interlocking her fingers behind his neck.
“Yeah,” she murmurs back, “my best friend in high school was in the orchestra, she used to send me her practice pieces and I kind of grew an unexplained fondness for them.”
Spencer never seems to go a day without being pleasantly surprised by Rose. He opens his mouth to ask why she was at Georgetown, but she cuts him off with a teasing tut.
“It’s my turn to remind you that you had a second question,” she sighs softly, “but I need to ask you something first.”
He blinks at her, licking his lips before murmuring, “Yeah?”
“Why did you want to dance with me? This feels like a rebound, Spencer,” she breathes, and there’s such an uncharacteristic bit of sadness behind her eyes that it sends him through a loop.
“You know that dream? The one with me dancing with Maeve?” She nods, urging him to continue as they continue to to sway together, “the night after we were with Maeve’s parents, it started to change. Just little bits at a time. The first time you were sitting at a different table, just smiling encouragingly— but then it changed even more. You got closer, and then one night Maeve turned around and instead of asking me to dance with her, she introduced me to you and then told me to dance with you.”
Rose is just staring at him, and they’ve stopped swaying but they’re still pressed against one another.
“Last night, we did— and I just— I realised I couldn’t wait to touch the person that I liked again. See, I have this odd trend that follows me everywhere— whenever I like someone, there’s a stalker before I can go out with them,” he sighs, biting his bottom lip.
Rose seems to unfreeze, and for the first time she’s wordless. Spencer shakes his head, starting to pull away, but she moves her hands to his torso, murmuring out loud as he returns his gaze to her, “Hey. I’m not going anywhere, don’t disappear on me again.”
He nods, slowly settling his hands back on her waist as she returns her hands to his shoulders.
“When did you realise?” She asks softly.
“I... I told you, when I had that dream—“
“No,” She says, and there’s a nervousness that lurks in her tone, “When did you realise I liked you?”
Her eyes are boring into his hazel ones, and pupils blown up and eyes twinkling with an innocence he hadn’t noticed before.
“Oh,” He says dumbly, “Um, a few months ago— but I didn’t realise what it meant until a couple nights ago. You called me turtle-dove, but the thing that tipped me off was that you told me about the first thing I ever said to you— about the PH of soil and coffee beans? No ones ever remembers the first thing I’ve said to them. Especially not when it’s a nervous ramble of facts. Penelope had a hay day when I told her about it.”
“Hey Spencer?” She asks, and he looks at her. “What was your other question.”
“Do you.... would you like to go out with me?” He queries softly, smiling when she nods.
“Yeah, I’d love to.”
Before he can begin to register what’s happening, he’s leaning in and her soft lips are on his, palms on either side of his face. When they pull apart, they just stare at one another neither fully processing what’s happened.
He’s about to launch himself onto a tangent about pathogens, but she decides to speak before he can, “Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”
Spencer categorises the poem immediately, and before he can stop himself he finds himself pondering out loud, “you know Sylvia Plath?”
She starts giggling, and Spencer becomes lost. “Spencer, I have a PHD in English and in Latin, this bakery is more of a hobby.”
“Oh,” he breathes, the puzzle pieces clicking at once, “That’s why you were at Georgetown.”
She nods, “Yeah.”
“You never told me that,” He murmurs softly, biting his bottom lip.
“There’s a lot I haven’t told you.”
Spencer glances at the coffee machine in the corner, and then he offers up, “We’re all alone in a closed coffee shop.”
“Well,” She says, straightening his tie, “I would say this is a perfect time and place for a first date.”
It’s for this reason that the team finds Penelope screeching like a bobcat on Monday, hugging Spencer and rambling about how precious it all is.
And it’s the seventh time, that Spencer thinks, maybe God isn’t so cruel after all.