SECRET LOVE, hotchniss

16

2X18

Reid was still being short with Emily. She had been trying to lighten the mood with him, make small talk or little jokes here and there, but he continued to either glare at her silently, or shut her down immediately.

She still had no clue why he was suddenly so repulsed by her presence, she had spent hours analysing every interaction they had had over the past few months and her mind was coming up empty.

So she had started coming up with alternative theories.

1. She had offended him, completely by accident of course, but she had upset him all the same. This was the least likely theory she had come up with. They all wound each other up sometimes, it came with the territory of living in each others pockets. But she could not think of a single situation in which anything she could have said may have been misconstrued in such a serious way that would result in this kind of reaction.

2. He simply did not like her. But his behaviour over the past few months had conveyed anything but that. They had been getting along great, she had noted how excited Spencer was every morning to see her, his eyes lighting up at the sight of her entering the bullpen, or finding her at her desk. He was always eager to share new journal articles or talk about new candies he had been researching that he wanted her review on. She had considered them friends.  So no... This theory didn't make sense either.

That left her with theory number 3.

3. She was the newest. The person he had spent the least amount of time with. The person he held the smallest relationship with.

She was the person that he could take his anger out on, because her opinion of him held the smallest impact on his psyche, his ego.

He needed his friends, his family, to think highly of him, to love and support him, and if he began publicly berating them the risk of losing that was too high to even consider.
So instead he directed his oscillating moods at Emily, because pushing her away, losing her, would cause him the least amount of pain in the long run.

She was the one person he could push away, without endangering the relationships he held with his family. They were all so close after many years working together, they were a hive mind of sorts, so if he targeted one of them, he targeted them all.

She wasn't apart of the family. Not yet. So once again she found herself being the 'easy choice' in Reid's mind.

She couldn't help but note the similarities in her thinking from a few weeks ago, when Spencer was being tortured by Henkel and she had been silently pleading for him to say her name, to offer her up for slaughter above those he held dearest.

It was clear to her now that he had chosen her.

He had chosen her to take the blow from the grenade he was unable to throw at the rest of the team. And if that was the case, so be it. For his sake, she would rather it be her than them. She could take it.

But when he refused to answer her calls in the middle of a case, that's when her sympathy for his situation had began to run dry.

She could take his attitude towards her.  Hell... she would take it with pleasure if that's what he needed to feel better. But ignoring work calls in the middle of a case was simply irresponsible, especially considering the unsub they were looking for was hunting isolated men wandering around in the dark. He must have known she would worry, but when he never bothered to return any of her missed calls, she figured her worry didn't bother him.