CLANDESTINE : Spencer Reid

20

The end of February quickly becomes the first week of March but time feels still. Estelle did have a good time on her trip, and she thanks me by making extra food at meals for me more often than not. I'm thankful because after a week of paperwork post Mardi Gras, I am done. Reid only gets worse and worse.

Then, we somehow get to the middle of March and Reid and I still aren't communicating. No one has mentioned it to me yet, but surely they must have noticed. We aren't back to our usual pattern of constant bickering, but we are still not speaking. Other people are giving Reid the cold shoulder too. It isn't just me at the very least. He and Morgan are only just starting to talk again. Still, I get no comments on my code, no questions about my lunch while I'm at the coffee maker. Nothing.

Estelle is even busier with the semester wrapping up, and fire season starts in two months so Stéphane is busier than usual. Caro has called to ask me twice about bridesmaid dresses, which she is thinking blue or pink, and she's leaning toward pink which I know will look terrible on me and I get interviewed by the military twice for Bastien's job and it's looking like this is going to be an ongoing thing even though my FBI clearance should speak for itself. I'm going insane, and maybe that explains it.

At least, I'm hoping it explains why I follow Reid into the storage closet where they keep a few physical files, since he much prefers physical over digital. It probably doesn't explain why I stand in front of the doorway, knowing he is behind the door but not stepping inside. Not guilty by reason of insanity, your honour.

Finally, I open the door. Reid stands over a box on one of the shelves at the end of a corridor a bit down. He twists his head over to look at me, and just like how time feels still, so does this moment. I watch as his jaw twists shut, surely his teeth clenched tightly in his mouth, and his normally awfully hucnched posture seems to stiffen, lengthen.

"I don't want to play the avoiding game forever," I say as the door swings shut behind me.

It's not a lie. I was starting to like feeling only unsafe in the workplace when I was in the room with a suspect who has a weapon. Unlike the trenches we were in before, we've reached a Cold War, and I'm ready to move on from our mutually assured destruction.

"I'm not avoiding you," Reid says. Honestly, I don't think he's lying either. Sure, I don't think I have the best read on anyone, but he is always so painfully brutally honest that a lie would feel even more strange than all of his behaviour over the past month and a half.

"Well, you certainly aren't being a team player this week."

He furrows his brow, "I'm returning the favour."

He cocks his head to the side and I find myself matching the gesture. I read the FBI handbook twice during training, and since starting here, I peruse it every so often. No page could explain to me how to read him. It's a gift he has, another aspect of our existence as coworkers that is unbalanced. He is smarter, more knowledgeable, and more likable than me. He also is every bit more confusing.

"Okay, fine," I step in closer, just so I'm blocking the hallway for his exit, and I sit down. I cross my legs too, for good measure.

It's not as musty in here as I had thought it would be, but surely my pants are going to have white dust all over the rear when we leave. If we leave. Nobody wants physical files anyway. At least this shows I'm committed. I'm pulling an Estelle, and he can cope. They seem to like each other enough anyway that the gesture might work.

There is a bit of a smile on his face, "you're being uncharacteristically forward."

"Really? Because you are being uncharacteristically reserved and bitter," I shrug. "We can't have two assholes roaming the office. You're stealing my job. And my literal job, since you can understand code nearly as well as I can."