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Penelope never told Luke she gave the squeaky cat figurine a name. Vermont, of course. It was the first thing he ever gave her other than an unholy, infuriating flutter in her stomach.
It was the first tangible thing he ever gave her.
It became a habit. A weird one, in a way; no one needed a memento from the location of a horrific crime. She ignored the implication that he thought about her while the team was out in the field. Hundreds of miles away. Thousands, even.
He gave them to her in secret, and she kept them mostly hidden in a drawer or buried behind other, flashier trinkets. Lest he think she liked them too much or someone else wondered how she accumulated new paperweights and fuzzy pen toppers so quickly.
He gave them to her when no one else was around. In a fleeting moment of quiet. Sometimes, he did it as an afterthought. As if he forgot about the ceramic panda wearing sunglasses that was taking up room in his pants pocket. Oh, Garcia. I got something for you.
After Michigan, Luke left a sampler box of Mackinac Island fudge on the seat of her office chair. Penelope savored each bite and would have died of embarrassment if she knew he’d heard the way she moaned around a square of chocolate cherry deliciousness.
She expected it to stop when he met Lisa. But he would still bring something . A postcard of a Myrtle Beach Sunset. A candle from San Francisco that smelled like home. Like jasmine and honey.
It only stopped after their awkward first and last date, though Penelope liked to blame the pandemic. It wasn’t until then that she understood why Luke had bestowed so many souvenirs on her. Not until she wasn’t doing the job anymore.
He did it because she liked beautiful things. Adorable animals. Breathtaking vistas. He did it because the job was ugly, and at the end of a case the least he could do for her was punctuate it with a unique trinket or tasty treat.
The team didn’t travel much in her first year back at the BAU. The first time Luke went out of state for a case that didn’t involve Sicarius, he came home from Asheville with a bumble bee brooch. He gave it to her in the middle of the office, by his desk. “Hold out your hand, Garcia.”
Penelope accumulated a new wave of colorful bits and baubles throughout the hunt for Gold Star and in the aftermath of Voit’s beating. A unicorn stapler and set of donut erasers. Coffee mugs and crystals.
After Luke found out she was keeping a comatose Voit company, he stopped at a gas station on the way back from Ocean City to buy pepper spray disguised as a bejeweled perfume atomizer. “For your purse,” he told her, dangling it from its convenient clip.
They couldn’t go a year without a bomb to defuse, a hostage situation, or some other kind of peril that put her through a whirlwind of worry. And on a rainy night, Penelope paced the sixth floor, waiting for news on the status of her beloved teammates after such a circumstance. She happened to be on the way to her office when the elevator doors opened and Luke lurched out, calling her name.
She barely vocalized a relieved greeting when he took her by the hand and pulled her in the direction of the high-tech room.
“Where is everyone else?” she asked.
Luke pointedly shut the door, sealing them inside. He was breathless. Beads of water glittered on his forehead. “They’re on the way. I had to get here to…”
Her eyes searched his. Waiting.
He removed something from his pocket. A lollipop.
“You ran ahead of everyone else to give me a lollipop?” Penelope asked. “I mean, it’s a fancy looking lolli. With the spiral and this ribbon and-”
“No,” he admitted with a huff of laughter. He took the candy back from her and set it on the desk. “No, I ran ahead of everyone else because…”
She stumbled back from the surprise of him reaching out, framing her face with his hands, and then she clutched two fistfuls of his shirt to steady herself.
“We were trapped. And all I could think about was what if I never see her again.”
“Me?”
Luke grinned. “Yes. You.” His tongue swept quickly across his bottom lip. “I couldn’t imagine dying before I got to kiss you. I know we went out once and I agreed with you that it was awkward, but it wasn’t. Not for me.” She moved her hands to grasp his wrists, and he stiffened, fearing she was going to pry him away. Instead, he felt her pressing down, holding him there. Her thumbs stroked where his pulse hammered. “I had this whole thing I was going to say. About how I had to get back here and kiss you so that the next time we’re facing death at least I can die knowing that I kissed you.”
Every time he used a variation of the word kiss , her heart squeezed inside her chest and her stomach swooped and she leaned closer. “Then what are you waiting for?” she asked.
He ducked his head down, brushing his lips across hers once, twice, before his tongue licked into her mouth, kissing her deeply. His arms enveloped her, leaving no space between their bodies. Not an ounce of hesitation. No room for even the possibility of regret.
The souvenirs he gave Penelope changed after that. They were often more personal. Intimate. A handmade bar of soap and aromatic bath oil. A silk robe. But still plenty of pencils with inspirational words engraved in the wood and enamel pins for her collection.
Her favorite was the key to his apartment on a keychain in the shape of the Empire State Building.
The jet passed through the clouds, rumbling the floor under Luke’s feet. He looked up at Tara, seated across from him, and said, “You know, I’ve been bringing little gifts home to Penelope for years. I never really had to worry that she wasn’t going to like something because it was always a cute, quirky thingamabob. But this? I can’t screw this up.”
“Let me see it again,” Tara said, giddy.
Luke uncurled his fist to show her the ring on his palm.
“It’s perfect. She’s going to love it.”
On the ground, Luke had to let Penelope think he hadn’t bothered with a gift. And JJ had to hold Penelope back at the office while the rest of them went on to O’Keefe’s.
“Come on, let’s go,” Penelope groused. “What if they run out of tequila?”
JJ laughed and checked her phone. She had a text from Luke that was merely a thumbs up emoji. She set her files down. “Okay, this can wait for Monday.”
“Exactly,” Penelope agreed, hooking her arm around JJ’s, walking close to her all the way to the bar. Until they got to the door and JJ insisted on holding it open for her friend.
“It seems too quiet in here,” Penelope said from the threshold. She walked further, turning into the main room, and gasped at the sight before her.
Luke was down on one knee in the middle of the floor, surrounded by their friend-family and the soft glow of candlelight. Her favorite flowers scattered all around. It was beautiful, even as she saw it through the blur of happy tears.
“Penelope Grace Garcia,” he began, his voice catching, “will you marry me?”
She thought about all the days and years that had come before that moment in time. All of the bickering and yearning and effortless love. The gifts were sweet mementos, yes, but he’d given her so much that couldn’t be displayed on her desk or kept in a box under the bed.
There was only one answer she could give him.
“Yes!”
A broad smile turned up the corners of Luke’s mouth, and he stood to his full height as she hurried closer.
“This,” she said, later, slow dancing with her cheek resting over the steady beat of his heart, “is my new favorite thing you’ve ever given me.”
“I guess I can stop then, huh? Can’t top this.”
She lifted her head abruptly, leveling him with a stern gaze. “I didn’t say that.”
He smirked. “I’m kidding, future Mrs. Alvez.”
Her heart raced. There was so much joy swelling in her chest that she could hardly breathe through the lovely weight of it. “Really, though, this is all I need,” she told him, resting one hand over his heart and using the other to gesture at their friends surrounding them. “But a girl can never have too many fuzzy pens and mermaid paperweights.”