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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: HOMESICK ( aka 04x05: catching out )
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"HAPPY BIRTHDAY," EMILY'S VOICE was much too loud considering the occasion. Before Dallis could raise a finger to her lips to shush her, she found her face buried in Emily's hair as the other woman all but tackled her in a hug. When she pulled back, she was grinning from ear to ear. "Should we sing the birthday song? Where's Morgan when I need him?"
"Don't," Dallis groaned, already blushing from the attention. "Or I'll go murderous unsub on your ass."
From the second she walked through the door that morning, she hadn't had a moment's peace. To Dallis, it was just another day, even if the calendar on her desk that she'd stubbornly faced away from her read September 23rd, aka the day Hope Larsson gave birth alone in a hospital parking lot to her first child.
"Oh, come on," Emily perched herself on the edge of her desk. "You've spent, what? Six birthdays with the team now, and you still don't like celebrating?"
Dallis popped her shoulders in a shrug. "At what point does it become just another day, Em?"
"Uh, never for me," she scoffed. "But if you're sure, I can always return your gift..." She trailed into silence when Dallis visibly hesitated, glancing down at the large gold bag that Emily started waving in her face. "Oooh, now that changed your mind, didn't it?"
Dallis sighed but her smile was genuine when Emily handed her the present. "I really didn't expect anything."
"I know you didn't," Emily smacked her lips on Dallis' cheek in a dramatic kiss. "But it's from me and the other girls, too, so you can't complain about us spoiling you."
Just as Dallis went to start taking out the tissue paper that was stuffed in the bag, they heard a frantic voice shout from halfway across the room, "Oh, wait for us!"
Reid and Morgan joined what Dallis hoped wouldn't be a growing crowd around her desk. Reid had a bedazzled purple box tucked underneath one arm while Morgan carried a cup of tea and a card.
"Happy birthday, Dallis," Reid's coy grin contrasted Morgan's smirk as he placed the tea in front of her then handed her the card, "How old are you now, Cohen? Forty?"
"Excuse me?" Dallis gasped, using the card to smack Morgan on the arm. "Thirty-six, thank you very much. But I don't feel a day over twenty-one."
Morgan looked her up and down with knitted brows. "You definitely look it."
"What is wrong with you?" She gritted her teeth as he laughed and declared he was only 'messing with her.' "Yeah, you better be."
"You're full of threats today," Emily commented. She snatched Morgan's card from Dallis' hands and forced her own present into them instead. "What? I was here first."
