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Luke tried not to overhear the conversation, but for as much as they liked to tease each other about being 'hard to read' sometimes, his co-workers seemed to have no concept of having a private conversation. He blamed it on the open plan area of where they worked, the only private offices of course being Emily's, Rossi's and Penelope's. Everyone else shared a communal space with about two feet of space between their designated areas. They could mouth words to themselves and be overheard.
"So yeah, quite frankly Tough Guy is my favorite of the series..." Penelope said, sounding quite embarrassed about it, which is what caught Luke's attention in the first place.
"That makes so much sense, though." JJ said, cutting her off.
"What do you mean?" Penelope asked, in a tone of voice which sounded like she was trying to work out if she should be insulted or not.
"You have a type." JJ said.
"I do not! What do you mean? What's my type?" Oh Penelope. Never give a profiler permission to profile you. Luke shook his head and tried to focus on the pad of paper in front of him, planning out a grocery list (which he hated to do because he was out of town so often that when he got back for any sort of significant amount of time he had to throw away things that had gone bad and all he could see was dollar signs being thrown in the trash), but their conversation still broke through his concentration more than he wanted.
"The strong, protective, devoted type." JJ said. "You want your own Ryan Price."
"Yeah, well, that's never going to happen." Penelope muttered, pausing to take a sip of whatever tea had caught her fancy out of a mug that he'd gotten her for Christmas that was large and rustic, stripes of red, black, dark blue, light blue and white going from the top with a deep green and brown handle that was in an...interesting shape. He'd actually gotten her a set of them, in different patterns and colors and he always preened when she broke one out to use. "I mean, where am I going to get a sweet, handsome, protective, charming...admittedly I don't need the anxiety part...hot, jock ex-hockey player who is a great hype man for me?"
"You'll find him. You just need to look." JJ said.
"Yeah, well, I've looked and all I've found are...basically the guys that drive around the Zambonis." Penelope snorted.
"That's a very important job, Garcia, don't go dissing the man that drives the Zamboni." Luke quipped, a shit eating smirk on his face just to rile Penelope up.
"Oh screw you, newbie." Penelope scoffed. "I could drive the Zamboni. It's not that impressive."
"Not with all the speeding tickets you have, you couldn't." Luke said. "I'm shocked you still have a license actually."
"How do you know I have speeding tickets?!" Penelope yelped.
Luke smirked again. "You just told me."
"God I freakin' hate profilers!" Penelope exclaimed, heading back toward her office. He absolutely didn't watch her ass as she walked away, wearing a white polkadot dress that made him pause and add Wonder Bread to his list.
"You know if you keep eyeing her up like that, I'm going to be forced to report you to HR for sexual harassment." JJ quipped.
"I have no idea what you mean." Luke said, not giving her the satisfaction of looking up from what he was doing.
"Sure you don't, Alvez. Sure you don't." JJ snickered.
---
Luke honestly forgot all about it. It wasn't until he dragged out boxes of old picture albums to find a certain picture for his mother that he came across ones he hadn't been looking for. Namely from his old junior hockey days playing for the Bronx Thunder. He played left wing, number 23, the jersey a boring ass mix of the worst shades of blue and grey with a large lion on the front (the theory that the lion's roar was 'as loud as thunder', Luke never understood that).
He remembered JJ and Penelope's conversation about the hockey smut book they'd been talking about (that Luke was only vaguely aware of because of how popular the tv adaptation of it was at that moment) and the perfect thing came to his mind. He quickly found the other photos his mom wanted and took them to ship them off with UPS before he went to a local Walgreens. He paid to get several copies of a few photos from his hockey days (trying to ignore that he was giving Penelope Garcia of all people ammunition considering young Luke was not the Casanova he considered himself to be those days; he hadn't grown into any of his proportions, he wore his hair in a Lost Boys style he thought was still so cool, he had a terrible case of acne on his chin and, worst of all...he was short. He hadn't hit a significant growth spurt until high school and he looked like a fucking midget.
But he forged on.
Once he had the copies, he went to a Target and bought frames for them. Then he went home and meticulously fit them into the frames and then cackled to himself at what he was going to do.
---
The next day Luke got to work early, set everything up and sat down at his desk...and waited.
It took what felt like forever considering Penelope was the social butterfly she was and when she didn't have to stay glued to her computer, she preferred to sit perched on the edge of someone's desk, her beverage of choice clutched between her hands, chatting away about this and that.
Finally, though, she made her way to her office and Luke held in a grin.
Then he heard her let out a very loud shriek.
JJ got up and headed that way and Luke casually followed, knowing what they were going to find.
Penelope ignored JJ when he got there and held up one of the frames, glaring at him. "Do you think this is funny?"
"I don't know what you mean, Garcia." Luke said as innocently as possible, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
"These pictures didn't walk themselves into my office and place themselves around my space." Penelope pointed out.
"Woah, is that you, Alvez?" JJ asked, grabbing the picture from Penelope's hands. "Aww, baby Luke!"
Luke felt his cheeks warm up but he forged on. "I just thought with your vested interest in hockey, you'd appreciate a part of my past."
"I have no interest in real hockey. I have an interest in fake hockey." Penelope stressed the words.
"Oh...my bad." Luke said, grinning widely at her.
"You're gonna think my bad when I wipe you from existence from the internet." Penelope threatened lightly.
Luke just kept grinning.
---
The next phase of his plan, whatever endgame he had in mind he wasn't sure yet, came weeks later. He found out that the Ottawa Senators were selling Heated Rivalry jerseys and he jumped at the chance to purchase two of them. He got Tara (who was his ride or die no matter how much their relationship consisted of them razzing the hell out of each other) to get Penelope's size and he got her one (#24, Shane Hollander, which was mostly black, with red stripes for accents, a white 24 on back and a white Hollander above it) and he bought one in his size (#81, Ilya Rozanov, which was mostly red with black trim, a black 81 on the back and a few gold stripes for accents with a black Rozanov above the 81 that was trimmed in gold).
Then he waited.
Finally the time came when they were going to all go out as a team and celebrate Derek Morgan's son's 10th birthday party at the park. Luke dressed in a pair of jeans he'd been told by more than one ex made his ass look "spectacular", his new jersey and a pair of sneakers. He leashed Roxy (who was great with children) and made his way there.
He let Roxy off leash as soon as he walked up to the group and was immediately accosted by one Penelope Garcia, who looked her usual mix of adorable and sexy and made Luke want to drool. She wore a light pink dress with butterflies on it that hid absolutely none of her legs and showed off a goddamn generous amount of cleavage, paired with a black shrug, stockings with honest to God garters he was going to think about for the rest of his life, pink Mary Janes that were not supposed to be as sexy as they were, and her usual mix of crazy, loud jewelry that didn't match what she was wearing at all but somehow she made work.
"Are you trying to drive me crazy?" She hissed, obviously trying not to alert anyone's attention.
"Sometimes I think my mere presence drives you crazy, Garcia." Luke said, looking at her coolly.
"It does." Penelope said. "But what the hell are you wearing? And why Rozanov?"
"Bilingual." Luke said simply, not answering the first question since he thought it was obvious.
"Only if you're Russian." Penelope snorted, which was a lame response and he knew she knew it. "Besides, Shane's bilingual, too. He speaks French."
Luke did not know that.
"Yeah, well, technically I speak four." Luke said.
"Please, no one uses Latin anymore and they haven't since Supernatural went off the air." Penelope scoffed. "What's your fourth?"
Luke fingerspelled his name.
"Ugh!" Penelope groaned. She whacked him on the arm and walked off. He laughed to himself and went and said a cursory hello to Morgan, who he didn't actually know that well and then told the birthday boy happy birthday, also telling him that yes Roxy was very friendly and would love to play. He was a good kid and Luke tried not to think about the fact that he was almost as tall as Luke himself was as he walked off.
Tara came up to him a little while later, grinning widely. "You know Penelope's been at this long enough she could probably kill you and get away with it."
Luke laughed. "If she hasn't by this point, I don't think she ever will." He said confidently.
"You should feel lucky about that." Tara said. "What's this all about?"
"I just think it's funny to rile her up." Luke said honestly.
"Uh huh." Tara said. "And you don't think it's because you're jealous that she has a big fat crush on a fictional hockey player?"
"No." Luke scoffed. "I have a crush on Wonder Woman, it means nothing."
"Uh huh." Tara gave him an unnerving look and walked off.
---
Luke wound up taking Penelope home. She'd driven to the party with Derek and his family to help them set up, but she asked him to take her home after. She'd admitted to him once, after a good few drinks in her, that she had to emotionally distance herself from Derek. She'd had feelings for him for years and sat idly by while he friendzoned her and continuously trotted women out in front of her and she finally admitted to herself that if Derek thought of her as his friend (which was obvious considering he'd married and had a kid) then Penelope had to finally put her feelings behind her and friendzone him right back.
As they drove, Penelope humming along to some song on the radio that it'd hurt Luke a little too much to think about it being on an 'oldies' station, Roxy in the back with her head out of the window enjoying the air in the warmth of the night, something occurred to him.
"I got you something." He said.
She looked over at him, startled. "You did?"
"Yeah, back seat." He said.
Penelope turned and pawed around a bit before she let out a squeak that had him grinning widely.
"You got me a Shane Hollander jersey?!" She exclaimed and if he wasn't expecting it, she would've deafened him.
"I did." Luke said.
"Do you know how expensive these things are? I do, I looked them up when they were announced." Penelope said.
"I should, I mean I paid for them." Luke pointed out calmly.
"Why?" Penelope asked.
"Because I like doing nice things for my people." Luke said.
"I don't see you gifting Tara tickets to...whatever jazz artist she's into right now." Penelope said.
"Because she'd tease me about it and say 'they're so 2023' or some other bullshit." Luke laughed.
"Luke..." Penelope said quietly.
Luke tried not to wince at her calling him his actual name.
"So all it took for you to call me my name is buy you a jersey?" He joked instead. He pulled up to her building and turned to look at her. She stared at him, like she was seeing something in him for the first time.
Smiling, Penelope leaned over and kissed the side of his mouth. It tingled in a way he couldn't remember other kisses ever doing before and he had to fight the urge not to drag her into a kiss that'd ruin other women for him.
She opened her door and paused. "You know if you plan on taking me out, just know I like unique first dates. Ones where we can actually talk and I'm not worried about being judged for my eating habits."
He laughed loudly at that, unable to help himself. "I'd never judge you for your eating habits, Penelope." He said quietly. "But...noted. I'll think of something good."
"I look forward to it." Penelope held the jersey to her like it was something precious as she got out and Luke watched her as she disappeared into her building before he drove off.
When he got home and changed for bed, he got a text just as he was getting into bed, letting Roxy get settled at the end of the bed (yes, as disciplined as he was with her most of the time he did in fact let her sleep at the end of the bed with him). He'd been just about to put his phone on the dock to charge it, so it didn't take much to swipe it and put in his code, pulling up his texts.
It was from Penelope.
A full length mirror picture of her wearing the jersey.
And nothing else.
"Fuck!" He exclaimed, causing Roxy to give him a 'what the fuck, dude' look. He stared back at her wide eyed. "What the fuck did I do?" He asked, knowing he wouldn't be getting an answer. He also knew that picture was going to fuel fantasies for a very long time.
He texted her a goodnight and rolled his eyes when she sent back two rows of laughing emojis, putting his phone down to charge before he used the remote to turn his lights off. He turned over onto his side and a smile came unbidden to his face as he fell asleep thinking about all the things he wanted to do with Penelope.
And now he had the chance.