Chapter Text
Ever since I was little, I've had this fixation on fate, obsessed with things that could easily be waved away as coincidence. It's not that I don't believe in coincidence, because sometimes things are. That's what I've learned the hard way. Sometimes, the boy you like having the same taste in movies or favorite color doesn't mean you're meant to be.
It's odd because I'm not even religious. I just think there has to be a reason things happen sometimes. A reason why my alarm didn't go off in the morning, even though I'm certain that I set it. It only caused me to wake up ten minutes later, a negligible amount, really, but being thrown off schedule somehow snowballed into leaving the house 30 minutes beyond routine. For most, I imagine 30 minutes would be enough for real lateness, but my routine is built the way I like it-- with lots of wiggle room.
Heading straight to work, as I really should've, would still leave me with some spare minutes to burn. Yet, I'm not walking through the city streets in that direction. There is one aspect of my morning that I find non-negotiable. As much as it's spiraled into a stereotype, a joke, I cannot live without a cup of coffee. Which is stupid, because I'm risking being late for a cup of black coffee.
One thing I hadn't expected, even though everything is a little off kilter, is the fact that the coffeeshop I frequent is a lot busier at 7:30 than at 7. This annoys me, because I don't have much time to spare, yet I'm trapped in a line behind upside-down lattes and extra foam when I know that my drink can be ready in less time than it takes them to order.
God, I know I sound insufferable by now. But I should be allowed, because I'm running late, and the only thing that's going to get me through the day is making me even later.
I only work a few days out of the week, at some shitty gardening magazine that I couldn't force myself to give a shit about. The dream was always to be a freelance photographer, to do what I love and make money, somehow. I guess I am doing that, taking pictures, cashing paychecks. I just didn't realize it would be pictures of fucking plants. I would kill to get a job at literally any other magazine at this point, but it's like I've found a niche that no one else does, and the few times I've been scoped out for other opportunities, it was more plants.
There's no reason for me to need to be on time, if we're being realistic. It's the principle of the matter, though-- and if I ever find a better opening, I don't want to lose it because Gardening Inc. only has bad things to say about me.
By the time I've reached the front of the line, I've begun to accept my lateness. The workers know me, and there's a cup of joe waiting by the register, and my mere $2.16 total is already flashing across the machine. I pull 3 ones out of my pocket and tell them to keep the change, even though I don't need to, because I do this every time.
When I turn to leave, there's a clumsy rush in every action I take, a laziness that only comes when you're willing to sacrifice everything in order to gain speed and efficiency. Maybe that's why I trip over my untied shoelaces, which by the way, would've been tied if my alarm had gone off, but I was more focused on getting out of the door (that same laziness permeating into my morning routine from the moment I woke up). I can feel myself falling in slow motion, and my first instinct is to hold my coffee a little higher, as if I were trying to protect something of real value.
I think it would've worked too, that I would've tumbled onto the floor with a loud smack and felt the concrete against my face, but my coffee would've been victoriously above my head, only a few drops of the hot liquid jumping from the lid. I only think it would work, but I have zero proof, because before I could hit the floor, some guy in line behind me just had to reach out and grab my arm.
It keeps me from falling, but it causes the coffee to slip from my hands and hit the ground instead. It explodes, or if I'm being less dramatic, splashes, and my socks are now stained brown, like when you would try to tea stain paper for a stupid school project.
When I look up at the man, I now see has a bit more strength than you would expect from such a scrawny guy. He's got this brown hair, light brown, a little like coffee with a dash of milk, maybe. He's wearing a sweater vest, which I'm realizing has a splattering of coffee across it from the initial trip of my shoe laces.
"Are you alright?" He asks, and there's a small stitch in between his brows, like he's actually concerned.
"No." I say, point-blank, staring at the mess on the floor, an employee rushing over with a bucket and mop.
His espresso brown eyes only look confused, if not a little more concerned. There are more questions somewhere behind his stare at me, and I can see how they buffer on his lips, but he doesn't speak aloud before I do.
"My coffee is gone."
His brows straighten out, and I think that he could be handsome if he were to find a better way to style that long hair than just pushing it back out of his face, or if he didn't dress like he was coming straight from a librarian's convention.
"I could buy you another," He offers, scrambling to reach into his pockets, as if it's his responsibility. The annoyed part of me (the one who's been ticked off ever since I came to the conlcusion that I was the dumbass who forgot to set my alarm), wants to tell him that it very much is his fault, because if he had just let me fall, I would be sore and embarrased, but I would have a coffee still.
I sigh, checking my watch, only to discover I have roughly ten minutes before I need to be at the office, and about a fifteen-minute walk ahead of me.
"If only," I sigh, leaving behind a mess of coffee and a poor underpaid worker cleaning it up.
I rush out the door and to the office. The whole while, all I can think about is how I'm going to need to find a new place to go to, because my 84-cent tip was not enough to justify the amount of clean up.
My talent for speed walking surprises me when I arrive just on time, cutting those pesky five minutes out of my walk.
Cecilia is waiting for me by the front desk, sipping a coffee (that I know is unbearably burnt and bitter) out of a mug that looks perfectly unused, despite its daily use.
"You're on time today, Mia," She notes, checking her watch, one of those vintage-looking ones, the really small ones that girls used to go crazy for in the 90s.
I fight not to roll my eyes at her, because she's my boss, not a friend, no matter how much she tries to joke around as if we're buds.
"I'm always on time."
"No, Mia, you are always early," She corrects, leading me back into her office, away from the open layout of desks and full-time employees. "Unbearably so."
The door closes behind us, and we're alone in her office, which looks like a tornado has run through it. She takes off her blazer jacket, draping it against the back of her chair, but it slides off once she turns away from it, and it falls onto a pile of crumpled papers.
"Coffee?" She offers, absent-mindedly, as she pours herself some more.
I only made the mistake of saying yes once.
"No, I'm alright."
But, oh, how close I was to repeating history.
As much as I need my caffeine hit (I would say, 'like a drug,' but caffeine is a drug, so nothing's funny about it), nothing is worse than the garbage she runs through coffee liners. Whatever it is she's brewing is suspiciously coffee scented and coffee colored, but it is NOT coffee. Not to me, anyway.
"Jonathan is out today-- more unpaid leave-- so we'll have to work without him for now."
"Again?" It's like the third time in the last month he's been out while I'm here, even though he's essential to the team.
"He said something about his mother being sick again," She sighs, tapping her manicured nails against the table, "Cancer."
"Oh," I try not to appear so standoffish, but I'm still standing awkwardly around the door.
"Oh, gosh, what am I thinking?" She says, laughing nervously as she runs a thoughtless hand through her hair, tangling the curls that must've taken a solid chunk of time to perfect this morning. "Let me show you what we have planned for next month's release."
Given that it's only the first day of THIS month, what she has to show is only the roughest of drafts. Nothing is put together yet, but there are sketches and drafts of paragraphs.
"We want to continue our monthly flower focus, but we're struggling to find one that survives in December," She stares at the blank pages before her, the working title of 'monthly flower pick' still scrawled out in big sloppy letters, "Or at least one we didn't already use in the last few years."
"But that's a Jonathan question."
"Exactly," She exasperates, throwing the file onto the desk. There's a mountain of files beneath it.
"So what do you need from me at this moment?" I ask it softly, while picking up the discarded file, like I'm just trying to help her out. What I really want is to get a task so I can get the hell out of here.
"Would you mind staying here...?" She asks, quietly, "Just for today-- help with the research?"
Again, she asks like she's my friend, a buddy, a pal, but she's my boss. I don't really have the choice to say 'NO I ACTUALLY HATE PLANTS AND IF I HAVE TO STAY HERE ANY LONGER I'M GOING TO EXPLODE' so I nod, and smile like we are friends and give a quick, "Yeah, of course."
I leave her office, closing the door behind me, and sit at the desk that is officially mine, but is not mine at all. If possible, I try not to stay at the office, which is pretty easy when my job is taking pictures of things that are outside the office. Maybe I was being dramatic when I said I hate plants. I don't actually. At least, before I got this job, I would say I had an appreciation for the green things in nature (outside of, say, slugs and toads), but I think I know too much now.
There were probably about twenty minutes where I tried to follow the task at hand. I kept searching for any flowers that survive in winter, but if they hadn't been used in a prior December, they were used in a prior November or January. It felt pretty pointless, especially because once Jonathan comes back, he'll be able to answer it like it's so easy. He'll say it like it's obvious: "Oh, you guys didn't think of snowdrops?" and we'll all sigh and start to put together the spread, and I'll go out to take pictures of any snowdrops to use. My favorite is when we can't even find the plants I'm supposed to be taking pictures of, so they have to buy stock images instead. The only reason that I'm here is because they would rather just send me out to run their errands. My rate is cheaper than buying a hundred single stock images for commercial use.
It's nearing dangerously close to our lunch break when I hear the sound of the front door opening, the painful screech of the hinges that need a little oil. It's not often we get anyone coming in, which is just shocking, right? Who wouldn't want to go out of their way to talk to the people behind the gardening magazine that you see at the lobby of your dentist's office? Who doesn't want to buy one from our stands at the front, because buying them at the grocery store is too easy? All of that's to say that I don't even look up at the person, because it's not my problem. Except it's everyone's problem, because Jen took her lunch early, leaving the front desk empty, and Cecilia has not emerged from her office yet.
After way too long, whoever walked in clears their voice and asks hesitantly, "Um. Excuse me?"
The man standing awkwardly at the front entrance is none other than the guy from the coffee shop. It's him with an added accessory-- a pair of painfully academic glasses, the kind where the frame cuts out at the bottom of the lens. They match his whole 'librarian from the 50s who just stumbled out of a time machine' look. He's still got the ghost of a stain on his sweater vest, like he tried to dab it out, but it persists in a few spots.
"You," I stand from my desk, excited to have a break from sitting at my computer scrolling through images of winter flowers pretending to care, "You're the reason I didn't have my coffee this morning."
"What?" He looks offended, falsely accused, "You're the one who tripped--" He coughs a little, clearing his throat again, and reaches into his pocket, pulling out what appears to be a wallet or something.
Is he seriously going to pay me back for my coffee?
"Look, you don't have to--"
"I'm here with the FBI."
His wallet unfolds to be a badge, an FBI badge.
"I need to ask you some questions about one of your coworkers, Jonathan Dirk."
I manage to read the name on the badge in the few seconds he has it out in front of him: Spencer Reid.
"Jonathan?" I look around to see that all of my coworkers have their heads down in their computers, clearly not interested in talking to the FBI, "What do you need to know about him? He isn't here right now, his mom's sick."
Agent Reid (is that what I should call him?) looks very different now than when he was at the coffee shop, despite nothing changing in his appearance aside from some glasses, like the guy at the cafe was Spencer. This, however, is definitely Agent Reid. He's very serious, and his eyes hide what I can only imagine are a lot of gears turning in his head.
"He said today that his mom was sick?" He prods, brows furrowed in thought.
"Yeah, said something about cancer? According to my boss, that is." He doesn't say anything for another second, "Why are you asking about Jonathan?"
Out of everyone here, I think he's the only person I wouldn't expect the FBI to come questioning me about. He's all smiles and daffodils and helpful hints and taking over the work I don't really want to do. Everyone else here is desperate enough for money that they would steal candy from a baby if they thought they could sell the candy for a solid buck.
"Jonathan Dirk is our prime suspect in a homicide case involving the murders of 4 people." He says it so matter-of-factly, like he is certain that Jonathan is a murderer, "How much knowledge of plants is required to be employed here?"
"Required? None." I chuckle, although it's more because I don't know what else to do, "But Jonathan is the expert around here. He knows everything."
"Everything about gardening?" His forefinger and thumb tap against each other quickly, like he's thinking, "Or everything about plants in general?"
"Both," I struggle to understand how this guy could be up for murder. "He grew up on a farm, and he was always tending their greenhouse. He went on to major in like plantology or whatever, he dedicated his whole life to it."
"He said that he had a degree?" I nod, and he pulls out his phone, and it only takes one button press for him to be connected to another line, "Garcia, can you see if Dirk ever had any degrees, something like Botony or Plant pathology?"
A moment of silence passes.
"So he attended NYU but never got a degree... that's why we didn't flag it earlier..." He chews on his bottom lip for a moment, "I think I know where this guy might be located. Can you run a search for any large greenhouses in New York? The one we're looking for is on a farm, and it should have a large variety of plants, and it would take a lot of upkeep."
"No," I interrupt, and it's like Agent Reid forgot I was still standing in front of him, because he jumps a little, "He didn't grow up in New York, he grew up in North Carolina."
"Garcia, scratch that, search in North Carolina. Look for any farms under his father's name, look for any purchases that may flag the greenhouse." He bites at his bottom lip again, and this Garcia person must not have any good news, because he looks stumped.
I try to think back to anything that Jonathan might've told me about the farm, the greenhouse, but to be honest, I never really listened. He was always going on about some plant or another; it just got easy to tune out his voice.
"It's not his dad's farm," I suddenly remember him saying that, how his father died when he was young, "It was his uncle's. He learned everything from him, the greenhouse was his..." The name is on the tip of my tongue, and I force myself to remember one of the rants Jon would give before quoting, "Uncle Stu!"
"Thank you," Agent Reid says before turning away a little, "Garcia, check under the name Stu or Stuart, the farm belonged to his uncle."
This time, when things go silent, I assume it's for the better. He says thanks to whoever is on the phone, and turns to me again.
"Thank you."
It's all he says, turning towards the door to leave. He must have places to be, important places, but I still stop him.
"Agent!" I don't dare to use the name he never gave to me, and he looks back at me anyway, waiting, "Did he really do it?"
He looks down, pursing his lips. He doesn't look happy to say what he does.
"Yeah. I think he did."
With that, he's gone, and all that's left is the squeak of the hinges as the door slowly closes itself.