IT WAS JUST ANOTHER day in the office. Dallis spent the better part of her morning going over paperwork until her head started to pound with a headache. Glancing around the office cautiously, she found no one from her team. Hotch and Reid were interviewing an inmate scheduled for execution the following week, JJ was in her office and everyone else was yet to show their faces. Deciding it was time to take a break, she grabbed something out of her drawer and slid her chair across the aisle towards Reid's desk. Placing it right where he would see it, she grabbed a post-it note and used one of his pens to write on it.
You've read the first book, you're reading the rest. Give it up, Boy Genius.
For a week, she and Reid had been in a stand-off over whether or not he should read the last two books in the Fifty Shades series. Reid, for once, was willing to ignore the fact he hadn't read all the books for the sake of never having to 'expose his eyes to that kind of literature' again. Dallis was stubborn and knew deep down he liked it, and she liked giving him shit, so she'd been placing the book everywhere he looked since their disagreement began. He'd cave, she knew he would, but this time she'd gone the extra mile and taken his well-worn copy of War and Peace hostage. His bookmark was towards the end. Dallis knew not finishing this book in particular would pain him.
Someone cleared their throat behind her.
Dallis, still hovering around Reid's desk with a stack of sticky notes in her hand, grinned over her shoulder at Emily. "Good morning."
"It is," Emily said. "What are you doing?"
"Giving Reid a gift."
Emily scoffed, immediately recognising the name on the cover. "Generous."
"That's me," Dallis winked.
"You know, this will start a war," Emily gestured to War and Peace on Dallis' lap. "That's Reid's equivalent of a baby. He loves his reading."
"Oh, yeah?" Dallis hummed. "Well, so do I."
"Okay," Emily popped her shoulders, taking a seat in front of her computer. "It's your funeral."
Eventually, Dallis returned to her desk where she locked War and Peace in her drawer. She even went the extra mile of adding the key onto the necklace she wore, as if that would stop Reid from searching to the ends of the Earth for it when he got back. Resigning herself back to her files, it wasn't long before Emily broke the silence.
"Hey, where's Rossi?" She was staring upstairs at his office door. It was open for once and he wasn't inside. Dallis hadn't noticed.
