Chapter 1
It was another rainy Thursday morning in D.C. and another morning Emily woke up feeling bile rise in her throat. As she raced to her master bathroom she began to retrace everything she had eaten in the last week and tried to think who had been sick recently, if it isn't food poison then she must have come in contact with someone with a really bad stomach bug. Emily prided herself on her usual stomach of steel and wondered what was causing her so much grief. She had been late three times in the last week and was quickly running out of excuses and the team wasn't believing any of them anyway. For the last three days Reid had developed a staring problem, but every time Emily whipped her head to say something he looked away or directly spoke to someone else on the team.
After thirty minutes of dry heaving Emily brushed her teeth to rid her mouth of the disgusting taste. She grabbed her bottle of water instead of coffee and started her hour commute to work with just enough time to be on time today. As she made her way to her car she realized she left her umbrella by her desk yesterday. She proceeded to her car becoming soaked from the rain drizzling down. Emily started to blast her heat in a pointless attempt to not come down with a cold.
Emily pulled into the parking lot and noticed her hair was still soaking wet and she was paler than usual, no doubt Reid would have something to look at today. She grabbed her go bag and arrived upstairs just in time for JJ to let the team know they had a case.
All eyes were on Emily during the briefing and it was extremely irritating to be the main view in the conference room. The team should be focused on nine year old Timmy Walker from Cincinnati who had been missing from Kenwood Mall for 6 hours just two weeks after seven year old Mathew Cantrell who had ended up dead after 20 hours of searching the Florence Mall. Emily knew she didn't look her best but that didn't mean she wanted to be looked at more than usual. After the briefing Hotch announced wheels up in thirty minutes giving Emily enough time to make some ginger tea and tea biscuits to settle her stomach before the flight.
The small amount of food and tea seemed to settle her weakened stomach until the plane reached a bit of turbulence. Though the flight was only a few hours Emily couldn't take it anymore and made a B-line to the jets bathroom. She tried to gather herself quickly to not raise suspicion but her stomach had other ideas. When she finally composed herself enough to walk out she was fully prepared to blame a phone call from her mother, but as she exited the bathroom Hotch was standing outside the door in the café area.
"Emily talk to me. Are you okay?" Hotch said with concern in his deep brown eyes.
"Oh I'm-" Emily started before being cut off.
"Please just stop. You are not fine you've been a shade of green for two weeks and haven't said more than three words to me since JJ's wedding over a month ago unless it was about a case, you're avoiding me." Hotch looked deeply hurt, Emily didn't even realize she had cut him off so abruptly.
"Hotch I'm…I'm sorry I didn't mean to avoid you really, I just haven't been feeling well. Can we talk about this later though I think we're going to touchdown soon?" Emily seemed genuine and was finally truthful about being ill which seemed to satisfy Hotch at least until they could sit down and talk about what happened at JJ's wedding.