Warmth bubbles up in his chest and a smile forms on his lips as he steps into the ever-familiar cafe, the smells hitting him as he steps out of the cold and into the warm atmosphere. He hears her tinkling laughter as he makes his way over to the table, eyes closing to better enjoy the sound as he slips into the comfortable booth. The distant sound of her chattering on about her work as a geneticist fills his ears, her words only halting when she orders a nonfat latte, an order he’s had memorized for quite awhile.

The smell of coffee and sounds of patrons talking around him elicit so many memories of the time they’ve spent together, talking and laughing. By now, he’s memorized the way her eyes crinkled and her skin wrinkled at the edges of her mouth when she smiled, and how her smile and laughter lit up not only her whole face, but the entire room around them – or maybe that’s just the way he sees it. Logically, he knows it’s impossible for her smiles to light up the whole room, but the other half of his brain says otherwise. He’d rather ignore the logical side – being a genius had its downsides.

The cool wood of the table reminds him of the way her hand felt in his, and the way her hand felt on his lips every time he kissed it. She always made fun of him for that – always asked if he was supposed to be her ‘prince charming’. Unfortunately, he’d always ruined the moment when he rambled on about the gruesome origins of such fairy tales. She never minded, though – in fact, sometimes, she told him things he didn’t know. Imagine that.

When he brings the coffee he ordered to his lips and takes a sip, he’s reminded of the way her lips always tasted of coffee. They both were caffeine addicts, and it showed. He’s sure his lips also always tasted of coffee, among other things. The two were always drinking coffee – so often that they both knew precisely how much sugar and/or creamer the other needed in order to enjoy the taste – his was always just a little too sweet, and hers was always just a little bitter.

A short laugh bubbles up in his throat as he’s reminded of the times they’d spend most of the day playing chess. It had always been in his favorite game – he’d played it whenever he needed a distraction, either from boredom or the stressful demands of his life or a particularly gruesome case at the BAU. Being the genius that he was, he never lost – well, minus those times that he let her win. Neither of them ever acknowledged those times, but they both knew they existed – she wasn’t stupid, but she never complained. It was their favorite thing to do together, no matter who won and who lost.

He takes in a deep breath, smile on his face as he remembers why he loves this cafe. Whenever he wanted to – no, needed to – remember the good times they had together, he’d go here. The smells and sounds – and sometimes, the sights – of this small place always took him back to happier times. Always took him back to short kisses in the mornings before he rushed to work, all the times she’d made him late because it just wasn’t fair that she was the most beautiful girl in the world and his work always had to take him away from her. Back to the nights when it got so cold that they held each other (among other things) in order to keep warm. Or the nights when they didn’t talk at all – just sat in the same room, reading or writing or really anything, enjoying each others company without having to talk. And of course, he’d never forget the long amounts of time they’d just sit there and talk (2,412 hours exactly – his eidetic memory would never let him forget that) until the sun went down, and continued talking even after. Most of all, the cafe always reminded him of how much he loved her, and in the moments that he really needed to come here, to remind him of a happier time, that was all he really needed.

And it’s the only place that resurrects memories that don’t include the puddle of blood that bloomed behind her head as he realized he was too late to save her.