"Thanks for doing this," Emily said as she all but threw herself into the seat next to Spencer.

That had to be the longest wedding ceremony she had ever attended. And she grew up Catholic. Oh, to be fair to Olivia, it had been beautiful and touching and romantic (or what Oliva thought of as romantic). It just wasn't Emily's cup of tea. Admittedly, very few things were.

"No problem. It was a nice wedding."

Emily squinted at him. He couldn't possibly mean that. He didn't know anyone here, it was long, the candles made your nose itch and there was heart shaped confetti everywhere (she was pretty sure some had somehow ended up in her underwear). Not exactly anyone's definition of fun. Especially Spencer Reid's, she would have thought. Then again, her friend was incredibly odd and found the weirdest of things interesting.

"It was," he insisted.

Yeah, she still wasn't believing that. Seeing that he wasn't going to persuade her otherwise, Spencer just shook his head.

"At least Olivia isn't Bridezilla," she acquiesced.

That would have been awful to deal with. Spencer frowned in confusion at the term but decided that it probably wasn't worth asking about. Instead, he just looked around him, taking everything in.

He looked over her shoulder and tapped her on the arm. "I think that's your cue."

Emily looked over to where he was pointing and swore quietly.

"I told her I wasn't doing that."

That just got a chuckle from her so-called friend. She glared at him. Unfortunately, it appeared to be ineffective if his now wider stretching grin was anything to go by.

"It's tradition," Spencer teased.

Emily gave him a dark look. If she heard that word one more time today she was seriously going to scream. Loudly.

"Fuck tradition," she said quite seriously.

"Come on, Emily," Olivia shouted over.

It sounded and looked like someone had already managed to get alcohol into her. Nevertheless, Emily couldn't exactly ignore the entreaty. Could she?

"No, Emily," Spencer told her lowly, speaking straight into her ear.

His breath was hot against her skin and she fought off a shiver. He gave her a push.

"Go on, it will only take seconds."

"If they squeal about this, I'm not going to be held responsible for my actions," she informed him quite seriously.

The whole tradition was ridiculous and cheesy and there really was no need for the nonsensical squealing that always seemed to accompany it. She could do without that, thank you very much. She liked her eardrums unruptured. Was that a word? Unruptured? She was making that a word.

"I'm pretty sure they squeal about everything."

Unfortunately, that was true. Seriously, how was Olivia friend's with them? Well, maybe the better question was, why was Olivia friends with her? She certainly stood out in this babbling, hysterical crowd.

"Hurry up, Emily!"

Grumbling about bossy friends, Emily stood up and smoothed down the skirt of her dress. Emily reluctantly made her way over, a look of someone heading towards the gallows on her face.


"I fucking told her," Emily grumbled loudly, red-faced and more than a little annoyed.

Well-used to his friend's theatrics, Spencer just rolled his eyes.

Deciding to bite the bait, Spencer asked, "Told her what?"

The response he received was definitely not what he had been expecting. Technically, it wasn't a response at all. Not a verbal one anyway.

In one fluid motion, with an accuracy that Spencer was quite frankly envious of, Emily flung a bunch of flowers past him and onto the table.

Correction, the bunch of flowers of the day. The bride's bouquet. They fanned out across the table, some of then falling off it. Spencer looked between them and Emily in confusion. Call him stupid (and no one ever did) but he wasn't exactly connecting the dots here. It was fairly obvious that Emily was the one to catch the bouquet but that was down to chance and whoever was the grabbiest (not that Emily would be particularly grabby about this if her earlier comments were anything to go by) but that didn't explain what Emily just said. Why would she be complaining about an earlier conversation?

"Did Olivia guess that you were the one who was going to catch it?" he hazarded a guess.

He supposed it was quite the stereotype of the only unmarried bridesmaid being the one to catch the bouquet but, then again, Emily was the tallest one out of all of them. Of course she had a better chance of catching it. It was simple probability.

Emily made a scoffing noise and gave the bouquet a particularly venomous glare that it almost certainly didn't deserve

"No. She threatened to aim the damn things at me."

Now Spencer was confused. "Why?"

"Because apparently I need to get married."

"But no one needs to get married."

Bless him, he was so adorably obtuse sometimes.

"Spencer, do you know the meaning behind all the wedding traditions?"

"Yes."

He looked insulted that she even asked that question. She snorted. Of course she did.

She poked the stupid bunch of flowers and gave them another glare.

"Well, what is the point of the bouquet toss?"

"To see who will get married next," Spencer replied promptly. "Because the bouquet is what the bride holds -"

Emily held her hand up to stop him from going any further.

"And what just happened to me?"

He blinked at her. "You caught the bouquet."

"Exactly."

He looked confused. She raised at eyebrow. A blush suddenly came to his face as he was suddenly very interested at looking at anything except for the bouquet.

"Oh."

"It's a load of nonsense, of course," she brushed of carelessly. "It's just another stupid, meaningless tradition. One of dozens in a wedding."

With that complaint out of the way, Emily pushed the flowers off the table so they were unceremoniously shoved into a chair.

"I'm going to get a drink," she announced, standing up. "You want one? There's probably only cocktails, knowing Olivia."

Not that that mattered. She just needed some alcohol.

"Just some water," Spencer replied absentmindedly.

"Ok."

She went to sort out their drinks, not noticing Spencer reach over to trail his fingers through the flowers with a thoughtful look on his face.