тнe rυѕѕιan doll || spencer reid

FIVE

It had only been about three or four weeks before Giselle felt herself warming up to the team. Sure, she wasn't ready to form a meaningful connection with any of them yet... but she would engage in causal conversation and she would pitch in her thoughts about the cases during group meetings. There were several times that she was invited to go out and get drinks after a case that had ended successfully, but she continued to decline. She didn't want anyone else to get concerned about her if she let on a little more about herself than she would have intended after two or three drinks.

Concern did no good. All it did was cause more worry, and that was wasted time.

But other than that, things seemed to be normal. Well... normal as things could be if you were working for the FBI to track down serial killers.

In fact... things had seemed too normal. The cases were too straightforward and they hadn't seen a "difficult" case in the short time that Giselle had been working there. Reid would assure her that a difficult case would come along at some point, but Giselle noticed that the rest of the team was feeling this slump as well.

Speaking of Reid... Giselle had found herself listening to him vent many more times on the jet over the coming weeks, listening as he went on and on about anything that you could ever imagine. From cars, to the science of volcanoes, to the psychology of cats and dogs, to the endless number of books that he seemed to read in just one week. You name it, Reid could talk about it for hours.

Staying away from him didn't get easier. In fact, it had gotten significantly more difficult for Giselle to keep her distance from Reid. This was not only unusual for her, but it was a little terrifying to her as well. She had never really had a friend- let alone a friend that she wanted to spend every second of the day with. She even wanted to talk to him... to let him into her world. But how could she? If she told him everything that she had been through, would he even stay? Would he try to understand the ugly truth that haunted Giselle every second of the day?

That was something she couldn't predict until she knew more about Spencer. But was she willing to let herself get that close to him?

Not even she knew the answer to that question.

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It was now September 27th and the weather had gotten significantly colder in Virginia. At least now Giselle could wear a cardigan without getting confused glances from her coworkers.

Their cases had been slow, but Giselle didn't mind too much. It allowed her to get a feel for the job and to get a handle on it before things got crazy. She had even developed a little bit of a schedule. Giselle would arrive to Quantico every morning at 7 AM sharp, always being the first one in the office. She would gather her case files and look through them while sipping on her first mug of coffee for the day, waiting for everyone else to arrive. As Giselle would go through her work for the coming day, the other employees would come into the bullpen one by one. It seemed as if they all had their own schedules as well. Hotch was always first in the office after Giselle, JJ usually behind him. Reid would always come in at 7:30 sharp. He would grab his coffee with an ungodly amount of sugar and sit in his desk, which was directly across from Giselle's. Occasionally, they would collaborate on paperwork- their combined brain power being enough to battle the entire team. Emily would occasionally show up to work with Morgan, always having a cup of coffee in hand. But without fail, Garcia and Rossi were always either right on time or late to work. Its almost as if being late was part of their schedules.

"Paris."

"Wait... you've never been to Paris?"

Reid and Giselle had gotten slightly distracted after they had been collaborating on a case together one morning before Hotch called them in. They went from talking about the murder of a 19 year old male in Cincinnati, to states they had visited, then to countries and cities that they wanted to visit.