GOLDEN || S. REID

𝟷𝟷: 𝚀𝚞𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚘, 𝚅𝙰

Eliza's said it once before and she'll say it again: healing sucked.

Her still-healing bullet wound was already an issue, causing her ungodly amounts of pain first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It wasn't her fault that she moved around in her sleep at night, her past trauma doing amazing at forcing her to sit up in fear in the middle of the night at times.

But now, with this horrid black eye that now adorned her once blemish-free and lightly-tanned skin, healing was absolutely terrible. The ice pack that Spencer had helped her with the previous night had helped loads. The swelling had gone down considerably though it still looked like she'd mashed a bunch of paints against her eye. The swirl of red and purple truly looked more like a Van Gogh than anything else.

Adeline really did a number on her. Eliza would have wondered what she'd done to make the girl hate her so much but she figured that just her existence alone was enough to irritate the living shit out of even the most level-headed individual. It was both a gift and a curse.

"Shit, what happened to you?"

Eliza tried not to glare at Seaver as she practically inhaled her morning coffee, relaxing at the way the pure sugar flowed directly into her system. If she could get her coffee intravenously, she would, but she couldn't. She'd just have to stick to adding obscene amounts of sugar to her cups until she could.

"My brother's crazy fiancee is what happened," Eliza muttered, not willing to divulge anything past that. Out of all the topics of conversation, Adeline was her least favorite. Talking about literal dog shit would be better than anything involving her.

Thankfully, Seaver chose not to press forward on the topic, leaving her be. Eliza took another sip of coffee, sending a condescending smile in the blonde's direction. She really wasn't in a good mood that morning.

The rest of the BAU filed in shortly after, effectively ending the glare-off between the two. Instead, Eliza found herself immediately drawn to Spencer's thin frame as he entered the room and took up residence in the seat directly to her left. He wasn't wearing purple today, which was unfortunate, but he was wearing the next best thing. Paired with a regular pair of black slacks, he had on a light blue button up with a tie that had little moons made to look like polka dots embroidered onto the silk. In other words, he looked cute.

Suddenly, Eliza found it hard to breathe as memories from the night before resurfaced. How he'd taken care of her so gently and the could-have-been kiss that she wanted more than she cared to admit. She thumbed the wedding ring on her left finger, a painful reminder that she was technically a married woman and would be for the next five to six months. How unfortunate.

After hellos and pleasantries were exchanged between the adults in the room, Andi asked Eliza to start off the meeting with any new information she might have. She forced herself to look away from Spencer, taking a deep breath before presenting what information she'd discovered the previous night.

"I did some digging on some of Thomas's old friends, not business partners, but some of his college friends he'd kept in touch with and as it turns out, two of them had a hand in something called 'Project Undermine,' which seems a little suspicious to me."

"And what is 'Project Undermine'?"

Eliza shrugged. "Beats me. I've been trying to get ahold of Tommy's old friends but they keep dodging my calls."

"Garcia--" Agent Hotchner started, but was cut off by the colorfully dressed technical analyst.

"On it," she said, fingers already flying across the keyboard. "What were the two friends' names?"