Disclaimer: I own none of the CM characters. Please don't sue! I'm not profiting in any way from this.
JJ glanced over her shoulder at the tall brunette who was talking to their boss. They were going out later with Garcia. Just the usual trip to the bar after work. Always fun. Always full of pitchers of beer, and of course, JJ kicking ass in darts. She laughed, remembering the time when she'd beat five guys in a row with Prentiss and Garcia acting as her own personal cheerleading squad. She loved the relationship she had with those girls, though she couldn't completely trust either. She couldn't completely trust anyone. In her line of work she doubted that anyone was able to trust completely, seeing as they witnessed daily the worst that humanity had to offer. Prentiss and Garcia were as close to best friends as she'd had since her days on varsity soccer in high school.
"Earth to JJ!"
JJ blinked to see Emily waving her hand back and forth in front of her face.
"Where were you right now? You looked a million miles away."
"Sorry. I was just thinking."
"About…?" Emily prompted.
"How many guys I'm gonna make cry tonight when I beat them at darts." JJ grinned at her friend.
Emily laughed. "Yeah well you keep showing them up you're gonna stop having people to play you."
"You could always learn to play!"
Emily rolled her eyes. "Once again, I'm better at aiming a pistol than a dart! It's a whole different skill set."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you keep saying. How much longer 'til we're done with work for the day?"
"Not too long." Emily glanced at her watch. "Another hour or so."
JJ groaned and looked back at the files in front of her. She was at Morgan's desk just to get out of her office and be around some other people; to not be lonely while surrounded with gruesome images. It didn't really help though. Every case that came across her desk displayed yet another way that people could be cruel to each other, in more ways than JJ had thought imaginable when she'd first joined the bureau. It was sad that a basic murder now seemed….commonplace, mundane….even safe, by comparison to some of the crimes she had to read about in her files. It was sad, she mused, that she could think the terms "basic murder" in unison.
"Hey, um, JJ?" Emily said right by her ear. "Are you actually reading that file or did you leave planet Earth again."
JJ glanced at Emily who was now leaning over her with one arm on either side of her, hands pushing against the desk.
"Earth? Where's that?" she quipped. She let out a long sigh. "I don't think I can do any more paperwork today. There's only so much blood and gore a girl can take in a day."
"I dunno about that. When we did that slasher flick marathon after the case in Idaho, you seemed to have way more stamina for it than the rest of us."
"Yeah but those are silly in their gruesomeness. Somehow corn syrup lacks the authenticity when you've seen a room actually splattered with human blood." Flashes blew through JJ's head that she fought away. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Emily struggling with similar demons. She saw the other agent blink the images away. There was a kind of inner strength in Emily that she really admired. Emily never really talked about her childhood, or her problems, and she always managed to come up with some sarcastic comment that'd send JJ and Garcia into fits of laughter. JJ wasn't sure how she managed it.
"Hey I'm gonna go talk to Hotch. I just remembered something I forgot to ask him. See you at the bar in an hour?" Emily asked.
"Sure thing." JJ said as she watched her friend walk away. She wondered briefly what it was that Emily wanted to talk to Hotch about and made a mental note to ask later. She knew it was being nosy, but who knew, maybe she'd get some tidbit of juicy office gossip before Garcia did for a change. She turned back to the papers she'd laid out on Morgan's desk and decided she'd better tidy them up and head back to her office. God only knew how she was gonna kill the next hour without opening more files. Maybe three coffee breaks would do the trick. Plus she could probably divide the files into two or three trips back and forth from her office.
