I'm not late the next day, but everyone else is already here. They are swimming in work, piles of folders stacked on Reid's desk that I can see from the entryway to the bullpen. His files dangerously teeter over my desk, but they don't touch it. He glances up when he sees me. His nose turns.

Fuck. I'm so screwed. I won't let myself fall in love with him. It is absolutely unacceptable.

Reid looks away.

"Bouchard!" Morgan calls. My head snaps to him. "Aren't congratulations in order?"

My heart sinks into my knees. What exactly did Reid tell them? What exactly does Reid think happened?

"I don't..."

Morgan looks away from me, turning his head to JJ, who is leaning over Prentiss' computer, "you didn't tell her?"

JJ looks up at me. She presses her lips together, a smile in her eyes and nothing on her lips. I feel like I can breathe again.

"When would I have?" she glances at Morgan before back at me. Her shoulders rise and fall, the muscles in her neck so tight, "I'm pregnant."

I smile wide and do the routine of congratulating her. The father is that detective from New Orleans, which does give me a bit of whiplash, but she seems happy. It is something worth congratulating, and it at least hushes the buzzing in my brain. Reid didn't say anything. He didn't say anything because there isn't anything to say, and he knows it. I know it too. Nothing happened. I'm smiling for JJ and not looking at Reid. Nothing happened.

We sit down and get to work. The day flies by, since the team is so busy with all the documentation that accompanies bombings. We work and work, and then the next day they are gone, flown off somewhere again. It's another case, and more days gone, but after the weekend they are back and working again.

Work right now is slow for me, unlike how it moves for them. I want to book a trip somewhere. I spend my lunch break at my desk, browsing travel websites. I book the vacation time with Hotch for the week of June 20th, to go to Inverness. Estelle is more excited than I have ever seen her. She calls people on the phone every few nights to rant about it. I can hear her whispering through the walls.

But I'm looking at connecting flights from Scotland anywhere else in the world. I haven't booked it yet. At lunch, I try to eat a sandwich, but the bread just feels like a slimy ball in my mouth. It's shameful, trying to do this. I wouldn't tell Estelle until we are in the airport flying back. I can't tell Stéphane what I feel. I promised I would do better. I promised.

Sitting across from Reid, I am missing out on a good thing. He has a talk at Georgetown and I don't attend. I could not bare to step in a room just to listen to his voice. He is clearly annoyed; the team notice it too. When I enter the coffee room, Prentiss and JJ stop whispering. Maybe he did tell them. Maybe they think he's using again. Maybe he is. God, I can't do this anymore.

I end up booking a flight for this weekend.

I'm usually good at gifts. Maybe I'm not in the right headspace, but it feels like everything I do is an insult. It's the beginning of June now, a warm month, yet cold air fills the space between Reid and me. We aren't rude, but quiet. We're normal. We are the way I always wanted us to be. So, I make him coffee. I make him coffee on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, and I try to pour enough sugar for him. The smoky and nutty smell becomes sweet. For Spencer. It is left undrunk at the end of the day. He doesn't even dump it out. It just becomes colder and colder on his desk. On Thursday night, I work late and so I'm the only one left in the office. I touch the liquid inside his mug, and I swear the arctic wouldn't be as cold.

Then Friday, I get on a flight. It is not the twentieth but the eleventh, and I get on the flight with only a bag packed to last two days. It's a short flight but a long drive but I still don't have a car. When I land, I pull out my phone and call her.

It rings twice before she picks up.

"Hello?" Caro asks through the line.

My hands are shaking. She probably only just got back from her honeymoon. They went to France for a week, the south coast, and I wanted to call her to talk about that before I came. It's so beautiful, and I'm sure she had a wonderful time. She emailed my brothers and me pictures, we said it was lovely in our replies, but I haven't heard her voice yet.

"One last time," I say, in French, into the phone. "Can it be about that night one last time?"

The line is quiet for just a second too long. I am standing at the edge of the airport, a cab in front of me, and a question I've already let go of too.

"Colette," she whispers back. "You're scaring me."

A French response. I breathe in and out.

"I'm scaring me too," I whisper. "But I'm okay. I'm at the airport, in New Hampshire. Can we go for a drive? To Québec?"

"Cletus is grabbing my keys. Should I call Stéphane?"

"No."

"Too bad. I'm calling Stéphane. I'm calling Bastien too."

She hangs up and texts me her estimated arrival time. It's faster than I expected. She's probably two hours from here, but she'll be here in one. I choose not to question it. In the interim, I get a call from Stéphane, who has told me he's coming up, and asks me when it got this bad. It isn't bad. They don't understand, because I won't tell them.

My fault. My fault. All of it my fault. I shouldn't have hid it from them. I shouldn't have gone with Him that night. I shouldn't have made all of us change our last names and flee a place my siblings finally liked. It's always about me. This time, it's not going to be.

It's not even about That Night. Not entirely. It's going to be about the four of us that next morning.

A car honks at me. The driver's side window rolls down and Bastien peaks out the window. I look at him, narrowing my eyes, but I grab my bag and get in the passenger seat. Caro isn't here. No wonder it was only an hour.

"I don't need an army escort," I roll my eyes sitting beside him.

He rolls his eyes, "not talking in French now, are you?"

I don't answer. He turns up the radio and we drive. The pair of us go and go. Bastien blasts music on the radio. After an hour, I'm done sulking and I sing along beside him. He rolls down the windows. It roars and whips and I feel like choking on my hair as it curls around me. Red and warm, like fire. All of them are blondes, warm-toned skin. Not me.

We don't roll up to her house. After an hour, he pulls into a parking lot. I knew vaguely that he rented a place here, since he's usually staying in military accommodations in DC. He said he chose because it was closer to the airport and rent is cheaper here. As far as I'm aware, he only gets out a few times a month. Seems like a waste, but Bastien was never sensible. There's not much of a nightlife. It's nine in the evening. The place we pull up to looks shut down. The closed sign is on.

He looks over at me, "buddy owes me. Come on."

"You're not serious," I shake my head.

He rolls his eyes, "we've never shot together. You're damn right I'm serious."

When I don't answer he leans over me across the car. He shoves me back, like a rough-housing child, and I slap him back just the same as he opens my door for me. Then, he recoils and hurries out of the car himself. I don't bother protesting, unless I want him to physically drag me out of the car. Then we walk up to the front door of the shooting range and Bastien raps his knuckles on the metal.

A woman answers. She blushes when she sees him, and I think Bastien calling her a buddy was a gross oversimplification of their relationship. Regardless, she lets us in and we do our thing.

He goes for the first round, shooting. He's a great shot, certainly a better one than I am. When Bastien is done, he turns to me.

"I only got to shot with Dad once," Bastien looks at me, a curt smile on his face. "He would've taken me more if he hadn't gotten sick, I think."

"He would've said you were good," I tell him.

Bastien fires out another round, bullet after bullet smashing through the target. It's funny, to think about my brother like this. I mean, he was always a troublemaker, but I guess Sebbie was never this precise. As a kid, he couldn't be contained. I expected him to grow up to be a partier, maybe even an evil overlord since he was a smart kid too. I couldn't imagine him building bombs though, just throwing them. Fine detail work seemed out of his area of expertise. It still blows my mind that he's an army man. Now I can see it, how calculated each shot is lined up.

"He said I had to be better," Seb doesn't look at me while he reloads. "Dad, I mean. He said Stéphane was too weak to protect you and Caro. It had to be my job. Stéphane was a sissy and I couldn't be."

He fires the gun again. I try not to look at him.

"Maman thought he was a sissy too," I answer when Bastien's done his round. "Did he ever show you the voicemails she left?"

Bastien doesn't answer. The gun is smoking in his head. Even with the earmuffs, it's echo rings.

"Maman thought you and Caro should be raised by a woman, instead of a femmelette," I remember the words exchanged. The insults.

"Wonder what Dad would say if he knew I was the fairy," Bastien says. "Maman still doesn't know, by the way."

He shoots the gun again. Again.

It's always about that night. It really and truly always is.

When he goes to reload the gun, I put a hand on his shoulder. I shake my head. He puts the gun down. We didn't come here for me.

It's just like the office. Maybe I'm not late, but I didn't realize everybody else would already be here.

~~~~~

God, watch me try not to be emotional. Like, Bastien has a little special place in my heart. So much of the story has focused on Caro and Stéphane, and now we get to see Bastien too. Urgh.