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Bandaids were made for beige people. Emily was white, but she was not beige. Most people were not beige. Someone really ought to make some more diverse skin tones, huh?
“Excuse me, ma’am, but could I help you find something?” Emily was pulled out of her thoughts by a freckle-faced teenage employee. He was kicking around a bright yellow wash-bucket on wheels across the linoleum floor. His nametag read “Jared.”
“No, I’m fine, thank you.” She offered him a smile because he looked tired. “Just looking.” A 60-count box was clutched in her right hand, but she hadn’t decided whether she should just bite the bullet and get the 100-count instead. It didn’t take her long to get through the last one.
“You’re bleeding,” he pointed out with little intonation as he grabbed the handle of the mop stagnating in the wash water. “If you're going to buy a certain box anyway, you might as well use one now. My coworker at the register has a phobia of blood.”
Emily glanced behind her at the curly-haired woman behind the counter. She had huge cat-eye glasses and was staring off into space. “Unfortunate place of work for her, then.”
He snorted. “You're telling me. This guy came in yesterday to buy gauze, well, the stuff already on his arm was old and it started bleeding through. She nearly fainted.”
Emily huffed with laughter and shook her head. Jared kept moving down the aisle and Emily took the opportunity to hastily apply a band-aid from the 100-count box to her offending index finger.
“Have a good night,” she told the cashier after she was handed her receipt. She stuffed the box in the pocket of her coat and pulled the fur-lined hood up around her face as she entered the crisp winter night.
In the other pocket her phone buzzed with a text message, and she fumbled to retrieve it. It was from Spencer, asking if she was still awake. She pressed the call button on his contact instead of replying.
“Hey!” He sounded genuinely surprised. “It’s late.” A car honked in the distance as Emily strolled down the sidewalk, making her way to the subway station. “Are you outside right now?”
“I just had to pick some things up at the drugstore before it closed.” She checked her hand– the bandaid was still fastened securely, but the cotton bed had already saturated through. “And don’t sound so surprised; you’re the one who texted me. What’s up?”
She almost didn’t even need to ask. It was clear why the both of them couldn’t fall asleep. The cases involving children were always hard on the team, but especially so when they couldn’t save one in time.
“I don’t know, I guess I just needed to hear someone else’s voice.”
Besides your own, reverberating around inside of your head and driving you to madness with “what ifs?” “Yeah, I know what you mean. Do you want me to come over?”
Spencer hesitated. “You don’t have to do that. It’s already so late.”
She shrugged, even though he couldn’t see her. “I wasn’t going to get much sleep anyway.”
“My place is a bit messy.”
“I can guarantee you that mine looks even worse.”
She heard his soft laughter from the other end, and she smirked in turn. “Okay, okay. I'll keep the door unlocked for you. Do you want me to put the kettle on?”
“Please.” She'd regretted not bringing along some gloves- the bare hand holding her phone ached against the biting wind. “Okay, I'll see you soon.”
Most of her was relieved that she wouldn’t be going back to her dark apartment alone. Though she normally craved privacy after returning from a long case out of state, the idea of sitting with Spencer and having tea sounded much better than lying awake on her back in bed.
Emily gently rapped her knuckles on the door of Spencer’s apartment before letting herself in. Spencer’s head popped up over the back of the couch.
“Hey! Seriously, sorry about the messiness.”
The only “messes” she could see were some books strewn about, some unwashed dishes in the sink, and some papers on the kitchen table. “Spencer, you’re going to make me never want to invite you over to my place if you think this is ‘messy.’” She kicked off her boots at the doormat and hung up her coat on the wrought-iron rack already sporting some of Spencer’s spiffy jackets.
“What’d you get at the drugstore?”
“Hmm?” She turned her head toward him.
“You said you came from the drugstore, but you’re not carrying a bag.”
“Oh.” There was no point in lying to him and saying she just got a soda. He could always see right through her. “Just got a box of bandaids.”
He said nothing, but his eyes were on her fingers as she took a seat in the armchair next to him. She self-consciously curled her hands into fists and pressed them against her legs.
“Didn’t you say you put the kettle on?” she asked lightly. He bounced up from his seat and rushed over to the kitchen. Emily could hear the sound of two ceramic mugs being set down on the laminate counter.
“What’s your poison? I have a wide variety of loose-leaf, so don’t be afraid to get specific.”
“Rooibos?” she challenged him.
“Nice choice. Did you know rooibos tea is made from a species of legume in the Fynbos region of South Africa? It’s often called ‘redbush tea’ or just ‘bush tea.’ Not a lot is known about its usage in history, but it’s theorized that the indigenous people to the region, the San and Khoikhoi, contributed to its cultivation. The plants rely on fire for reproduction, similar to coniferous trees.”
Emily listened intently. “It’s a legume? Like a bean?”
“Yes. The plant produces a fruit, but it’s the needle-like leaves that are used in production of the tea. The tea gets its red color when the leaves undergo oxidation.” He hummed while he opened the package of loose tea and measured out portions into two capsular infusers. Emily observed the way his body language loosened while he recited these facts.
“That’s very interesting.”
He squinted at her. “Really? You don’t have to humor me.”
Emily opened her mouth, slightly aghast. “Is it so hard to believe that I would be interested in listening to what you have to say? I like learning new facts.”
His shrug was self-conscious. “I have a hard time telling.” He poured the boiling water from his electric kettle. “It’s usually advantageous to err on the side of caution and restrain myself from going on ‘useless tangents.’” He set a timer on his watch for the tea to steep and leaned his back against the counter, facing Emily with his arms crossed loosely over his chest.
She took a deep breath. “I understand you’ve probably been made to feel that way around other people, but you can always speak your mind with me, Spence. You’re my friend, okay?”
He shrugged again. “Okay.” Again his eyes drifted to Emily’s hands. “You've been biting again.”
He didn't say it in a judgemental way, just a mere statement of the obvious given the state of ragged, bitten-to-the-quick nails and her cuticles, but she still felt defensive.
“It's just a bad habit. Plenty of people bit their fingernails or rip off their hangnails when they're bored or stressed.”
He didn't say it but she knew what he was thinking in turn, or what he would think if he knew the extent of it. Most people didn't spend entire meetings sitting with their hands curled in their lap, a napkin from the coffee bar twisted around their fingers to staunch the blood flow. Most people didn't have open wounds at the end of every digit. Most people didn't spend a half hour at their desk every day zoning out, shredding their nails and pulling off every tiny flap of dead skin they could close their teeth around. She always made sure nobody was looking before every time she brought her fingers up to her mouth because she knew it was gross. She had a bottle of hand sanitizer on her desk that she used liberally and fuck did it sting in those open wounds, but she wouldn't let her nervous habit affect anybody else.
“It just looks like it hurts,” he said softly.
Emily looked down at the backs of her hands, trying to see them from a point of view that wasn't her own. They’d stayed in Montana for four days, and she spent every one of them working over the calluses that had built up out of old layers of scar tissue around her fingernails. The bases and sides were red and swollen and scabbed. Calor, dolor, rubor. The problem with starting again was that it initiated a vicious cycle. Healing tissue was so enticing to pick at. Sometimes, once she formed a wound, it wouldn't heal until weeks later.
“It's fine. I'm fine. I've just been a little stressed. We all have.”
“Are we ever not?” He pulled the infusers out of the mugs when they were done steeping and walked back over to the couch. “I mean, I just think it's important to find healthy coping mechanisms to turn to. I had to learn that lesson the hard way.”
Emily sighed. If he was talking about what happened to him after Tobias Hankel, surely the two experiences were incomparable. But she wasn't about to dismiss him.
“I appreciate your concern, Spencer, really.” She took a sip of her steaming tea.
“But?” he prompted.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek before deciding to give it to him straight. “I've been like this since I was a kid. My mom always thought it was disgusting. I remember she would paint this bitter polish over the skin there to try and deter me from biting. It tasted disgusting but it still didn't stop me. Nothing could. It's not just something I do when I'm stressed, although that's certainly a trigger. When I was a kid, I would do it when I was just bored.”
He nodded, eyebrows furrowed in thought. “You use it as a way to stimulate yourself?”
Emily made a face. “Well, don't make it sound weird.”
“No, I'm not! I mean as in self-stimulatory behavior.”
Her nod was uncertain, so he tried again.
“For example, autistic people seek out certain sensations in order to feel regulated internally. This behavior serves many functions. It can offset a strong emotion, like happiness or frustration, but it also can provide necessary input they feel understimulated. It relieves a certain kind of pressure.”
“So… you're saying I'm autistic?”
“Not exactly, no, though it wouldn't-” He shook his head, stopping himself. “Um, nevermind. Everyone does this to some extent, not just autistic people. Sensation-seeking is a common self-soothing method, like taking a hot shower or listening to music. What I'm trying to say is, maybe you need to try a replacement behavior to get the same kind of satisfaction you need without hurting yourself. You could use a fidget tool to keep your hands busy.”
Emily was starting to wish she had just gone home from the drugstore instead of calling Spencer. She looked into her lap. “Okay. I'll think about it.”
He exhaled shortly through his nose in doubt but didn't say anything else, just sipped at his hot tea.
“You don't really fidget or anything at work,” she said, breaking through the silence.
He arched an eyebrow. “Hmm?”
She pulled her knees up to her chest and clutched her mug in her lap. “Well, what you said got me thinking. I've seen autistic people flap their hands or use a toy meant for fidgeting, probably to serve the regulatory function you mentioned. But you never do any of that, at least not at work.”
Spencer ran a hand through his wavy hair, and his eyes tracked somewhere in the distance as he thought about how to respond.
“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. “If you don’t feel comfortable talking about it…”
He shrugged. “It’s different for me. I still do ‘stim,’ but I do it in less obvious ways. It’s how I maintain the respect of my colleagues, or anybody really.” He tapped the side of his mug, making a tinging sound against the ceramic. “Maybe I was more ‘stereotypical’ as a kid. I can’t remember.” His face scrunched up. Emily thought he looked almost pained.
Her voice quieted. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to suppress yourself like that just to please everybody else.”
Spencer responded by getting out of his chair. Emily watched him open a hall closet and reach for a white plastic bin, which he then brought over and set on top of the coffee table. It was about the size of a shoebox. When he pulled off the white lid, he revealed a collection of colorful toys- fidget toys. But that wasn't all that was in there. Emily spotted a blue candle, unburned, as well as a battered iPod with white earbuds wrapped around it.
“Garcia got me most of these as little Christmas or birthday presents. I think she hoped I would use them at work instead of chewing on my pencil or jogging my leg.” He selected a dark blue fidget cube and clicked a few of the buttons on one side, and swept his other hand toward the open bin to invite Emily to take her pick.
She selected a segmented, multicolored plastic loop. It warped easily in her hand, each macaroni-shaped segment turning individually. She manipulated it into several different shapes, twisting it around her fingers. The movement of it in her hand, the way it yielded under her fingertips, scratched a certain itch in the back of her brain.
“That's called a Tangle. I never really liked them. If you like it, you can have it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “This is all part of your ploy, isn't it?”
His eyes widened. “I'm sure I don't know what you mean.”
“Look, I really do appreciate it, but I’m not that different from you, Spencer. I can't say I'd have the social confidence to bring one of these to work with me, even if it did help to reduce my biting.”
He looked a bit crestfallen then, like he hadn't considered that Emily might feel the same way as him.
“But,” she conceded, with the beginnings of a grin, “I'll bring one if you bring your own.”
Spencer crossed his arms over his chest. “And I'm the one with a ploy?”
Emily double-looped the Tangle around her index finger. “We can both have an agenda. Consider it… cooperative game theory.”
He hummed in thought. “I don't think that's accurate. What would be the punishment for mutual defection?”
“Status quo, it seems.” She showed him the back of her fingers for good measure.
He harrumphed. “Fine. One fidget toy each, and we set them on our desks so they're both in plain sight.”
“Deal.” They nodded at each other in place of a handshake. And so the game was on.
---
That Monday morning, when Derek Morgan walked into the bullpen of the BAU, there was something slightly different about two of his coworkers. Spencer was rocking slightly back and forth in his chair while focusing on his computer screen, and he was playing with a doughy purple stress ball between his fingers. Emily was weaving a multicolored circle around her fingers with her nondominant hand while she filled out a piece of paper. Neither seemed to notice his presence, even when he loudly set his bag down on the desk.
“Is there a memo I didn’t get?” he finally asked. “Is Garcia redistributing her desk toy collection?”
Emily turned to look at him with a placid expression. “Why? Did you want one of your own?”
He scoffed a little at the thought as he unpacked his bag. “Nah, I’m good. I’m not really the type. Didn’t think you were, either.”
Her shoulders stiffened slightly, but her expression didn’t change. “I’ve found they’re a nice way to keep my hands distracted.”
He sat down to log into his computer, but kept his body angled toward her. “Distracted from what?”
When she didn’t respond right away, he looked back at her. He could see from the movement of her mouth that she was chewing on the inside of her lower lip. And her hands were twitching in her lap. She gripped the fidget toy tighter.
“Ah, I have a bad habit of biting at my nails.” She said it lightly, but it didn’t need to take a profiler to tell she was uncomfortable. “Trying to stop, that’s all.” She wiggled her fingers, which were almost all adorned with bandaids.
“Hate to ruin your perfect manicures, huh?” he joked. He was just trying to lighten the mood, but her face immediately wrinkled like she’d smelled something bad. Before he could ask what was wrong, Hotch called them into the meeting room.
Spencer hung back and murmured something to Emily that he couldn’t hear. Those two had gotten close in a way that he didn’t entirely understand. If there weren’t so many rumors going around about Emily’s sexuality outside of the team, he’d think that she was interested in Spencer. She was always watching him, and was the first to ask a question in response to whatever rant he went on. He was glad the kid had someone like that around, because he couldn’t always keep up with it all.
Emily had left the toy on her desk, and in the meeting room while Hotchner talked he noticed her thumb going to her mouth. He never usually paid attention, and she quickly pulled her hand back into her lap when she met his gaze. After a period of trying to focus he glanced back and she was sitting ramrod straight, hands in her lap and not making eye contact.
After the meeting was over, Derek gently caught her by the arm before she could leave the room. His eyes were distracted by a flash of red on her hand.
“Are you bleeding?” He attempted to hold her hand up to look at it, but she pulled it back and curled it into a fist, around the thumb he’d seen her biting at before.
“Leave it, Morgan.” Her voice was frigid, and she shouldered past him, beelining towards the bathrooms. When he saw her next at her desk, there was a fresh bandaid around the same thumb. Had she always done that, and he just didn’t notice? Was it really that bad that she was hurting herself? He’d always seen her as having a good, steady head on her shoulders. You needed to, to do this job, but nobody was perfect.
“Hey Prentiss, what I said this morning was insensitive. I’m sorry.” Emily was putting on her coat to leave when Derek approached her again, but spoke in a low voice and kept his hands stuffed in his pockets.
“And kind of sexist,” she huffed as she fumbled with the zipper. But when she looked up, she didn’t seem angry. Just tired. “You’re okay, Morgan. I’m just sick of all of it. I really do want to stop.”
He gestured at her desk. “So that’s why you got the fidget toy?”
Her lower jaw worked back and forth before she spoke. “I know it looks silly.”
“It doesn’t matter what it looks like,” he said, a little too emphatically. Emily raised both eyebrows, and he felt his cheeks flush. “I mean, if it helps you not to hurt yourself. And Spencer and Penelope with whatever their own deal is. Then…” He slapped his hand against his thigh. “Fuck what anybody thinks.”
She laughed a little and headed towards the elevator, looking back for Derek to follow. “Thanks, Derek. You came around pretty fast.”
He gave a half-shrug. “I wasn’t looking before. I didn’t see how it impacted you.”
She grimaced and looked down. “I didn’t want you to. It’s embarrassing.”
He knocked shoulders with her. “Hey. Everyone has their stuff, y’know?”
She nodded and took a deep breath. The elevator doors slid open to the ground level, and they both stepped out. When they reached the point outside where they would split directions, Emily hesitated. “Thanks, Derek.” Her breath fogged in the cold air, and she squinted against the streetlight his back was to.
He nodded. “Of course. And hey, if you ever need a distraction, I’m always here for you. You know that, right?”
Her smile was small, but it was the first one he’d seen on her face all day. He would take that win. “I know. And the same goes for you, okay?”
”Okay. Have a good night, Prentiss.”
”Good night, Morgan.” She gave a wave with her gloved hand and then turned her back. He smiled to himself and continued down his own path.