You turn around to look into the bullpen. It looks perfectly business as normal. Reid catches your eye from his desk and gives you a small wave. You nod to the side, signaling for him to come out into the hall with you. There's no real privacy in an FBI building, every corner is full of people rushing to get work done. You grab his arm and pull him into the elevator with you- the closest thing to alone you can get if you don't have an office. You punch the button for the basement.

"Are we going somewhere?" he asks.

You turn to face him and put each of your hands on his shoulders, making him face you too.

"I had blood work done this morning. They just called me. I'm pregnant."

You watch as he starts to smile. You don't get to see the finished product because he rushes down and hugs you. He wraps his arms tightly around you and pulls you up off your feet. By the time the elevator reaches the lobby, he sets you down gently.

"Sorry, didn't mean to crush you guys." he says. Plural. Because there's more than just two people to talk to in the elevator.

"We're fine." you laugh.

"We're having a baby!" he whispers in awe with that giant grin on his face.

You're a bit teary eyed as you repeat back "We're having a baby."

He leans down to kiss you on the cheek as the elevator doors slide open. One of the archivists glares at you both while he steps on with you. You couldn't care less about his thoughts on PDA, you hold Reid's hand the entire way back up.

"You'll come see me after work, right?"

"Yeah." he gives your hand a little squeeze as you both step off the elevator and try to act normal as you walk into the bullpen.

Sure enough, he's on your doorstep at 6:30 sharp. He bothered knocking, which you figured you were past, but when you open the door it's clear why. He's got flowers in one arm and groceries in the other.

"What're you doing?" you give him a confused smile.

"Making you dinner!" he sounds so enthusiastic for such a normal activity. It wasn't a normal day, but Spencer was always like this to some degree.

Before meeting him, you'd guess that a man with his intelligence would be bored with the world. You'd even interrogated unsubs who claimed that as a motive. They thought they were so clever that the only challenge for them would be dominating other human beings. Reid was the opposite of that. The gentle genius. Everything he learned seemed to make him love the world more. You remember feeling something like that during your college chemistry class. As hard as the material got, all you had to do was look at the floor beneath your feet or feel the textbook pages on your fingers to know that no matter how impossible the material sounded, it was true. Nothing was ever just a "thing", but just a collection of trillions of atoms interacting. It was an interesting way to look at the world for a semester, but after a while, staring at your ceiling and thinking about how it's physically impossible to know where the electrons in the plaster are starts to hurt your brain.

You think he must see the world like that all the time, only he doesn't just see through a lens of a chemistry class for a while, he sees everything he's ever learned about anything. Maybe everything becomes more beautiful when you know how impossible it is. How can anything be mundane when you know that all the light around you is both a wave and a particle? How can you be bored with the world when you can tell the age of every tree around you and know what changes in the world it has seen?

You find a vase for the flowers and settle down at your counter. He pushes a wine bottle towards you. You look at the label: sparkling grape juice.

"We're celebrating together, right?" he grins at you, handing you two wine glasses. You pour and offer to help him cook and he tells you not to worry, but if he needs help at some point he'll ask.

It's strangely intimate to watch him cook in your kitchen. It's the first time he's actually made a full meal here, but his memory means he never has to ask where anything is. You feel exposed, as if the contents of your spice drawer reveal you in some way.

In a stranger's home it might. The two of you are both profilers. In theory, you could walk into anybody's kitchen and get a pretty good idea of their lifestyle and possibly heritage. But Reid already knew those things. You don't keep your kitchen any more organized than the rest of your home. There's nothing new here. Perhaps it's just seeing another person open your cabinets that feels so exposing. You've known him for years, but now he knows you inside and out. And he will never forget any of it.

Or maybe it's just the fact that he's cooking for you unannounced. It's easy to forget the importance of food when you spend so much time on the road where everything is about convenience. Food is so common that you sometimes forget the emotion involved. The idea of eating something you don't like is unnerving because it means you will be hungry. You trust him to pick out something you'd like and to prepare it so you won't get sick. Basic survival dictates that letting somebody else cook for you is an expression of love and trust. There's a silent message in making a meal: "You need this to live, so I made it with my own hands".

The feeling of trust blooms in your heart. By the time you eat, discuss baby names until Reid falls asleep on your couch, and finally lie down in your bed, you know that today would go down as one of the happiest days of your life.

a/n:

hope you enjoyed! there's quite a bit more introspection in this one than normal but I'm a chemistry major that likes to cook lol and I've had one of those days where the world feels scary and remembering that the little things are really the big things is helpful to me, and then i started thinking about how Reid always thinks the little things are big and that's what makes him so lovable. also mgg is hot.

(fun fact: my sister is pregnant and told me that they decided on the name and the nickname: my nephew is going to be a JJ!)