So I've got this meandering storyline that seems to be working off of itself. Please be assured in future I will post any "additions" to this story here in chapter form.

If you haven't read "A Day Without Coffee," read that first. Otherwise you might get lost.

Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is not mine. And I love going shopping!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Emily made her way up the stairs. If I'm gonna go shopping, I need some backup and support, she thought. After all, it's Friday night—what better time to go?

She stopped at a familiar door and knocked three times.

"Enter, oh fortunate one," came a cheerful voice. "What brings you to my humble domain?"

"Hey Garcia, I was wondering if you'd be up for a shopping trip tonight."

The technical analyst's eyes lit up to match her neon-pink blouse.

"Shopping? As in people going in search of things at bargain-basement prices and generally getting lost for hours in…whatever? That kind of shopping?"

"Yeah," Prentiss agreed. "I kinda promised someone I'd buy some new clothes for him…and coffee, too…"

"For someone? Now I'm intrigued," Garcia said, pulling Emily into a free chair. "Okay. Spill."

Emily could barely contain her giggles. What is it about Garcia that can put a smile on anyone's face? she thought.

"Well, Reid found out that his apartment building burned down this afternoon…"

A shocked look crossed Garcia's face. She turned at once toward her "babies" to find out more, but Emily stopped her.

"It's all right. Fire department hasn't determined the cause yet, but no one was home when it happened. Reid lost all his stuff, however."

Again, a shocked look graced Garcia's face, this time complete with jaw dropping on the floor. "Oh my God," she said finally.

"Yeah, so Morgan's taking him home with him and when I offered to help out and he gave me his credit card and told me to buy him some new clothes. And since I figured you can't go shopping alone…"

Garcia began powering down her equipment. "It's quitting time anyway," she said. "Eight o'clock means time to get out of here when we're not on a case," she said. "Wanna make this trip a threesome?" she said, tipping her head towards a certain media liaison's office.

Why not? Emily thought. JJ could certainly use a break too. "Sure," she said, heading out in the direction of JJ's office.

It was well after eleven o'clock when the three women had finally finished their shopping mission. Emily's SUV was so full of packages, parcels and bags that there was barely room to fit the people responsible for picking all of the items up in the first place.

"Wow. Who knew shopping could be so therapeutic?" JJ proclaimed after squeezing herself into the backseat. "It's like the last dozen or so cases just vanished…"

"Oh yeah," Emily concurred. "It's especially great when you're spending someone else's hard-earned money…"

There was a chorus of voices that concurred with that assessment.

It was a short drive over to Morgan's. After Garcia produced her "spare" key to Morgan's door, it took about eight trips to finally unload the SUV of its contents. The ladies were aided by a very excited and curious Clooney, who kept wriggling around and trying to inspect each bag's contents, hoping there was a treat for him.

"Sorry, buddy," Garcia said sadly. "No treats this trip." She did stop to rub the back of the pooch's ears, though, which she knew he loved.

"You know, I think Reid was only planning on us buying a few things for him, just to get by," Emily mused.

"You sayin' we overdid it?" JJ countered, setting down a large cardboard box that had the word Sauder printed in large letters on the side.

"Of course not," came Garcia's cheerful voice. "We just…anticipated."

"Exactly," JJ said.

When Morgan and Reid walked through the back door, the ladies watched as both men's jaws tunneled down to China. Their eyes looked like they'd just walked into a gruesomely fantastical crime scene and hadn't been able to process everything yet.

"What'd you do—buy all of D.C. proper?" Morgan said. "It looks like a warehouse in here!"

"Emily…I asked for a few clothes…" Reid began, not quite knowing what to make of all the things he was seeing.

"Clothes? Handsome, clothes we got," said Garcia, tossing the young agent no less than ten bags filled with soft items.

Reid cautiously looked into one of the bags. I'm hope Garcia realized that I don't look good in neon and polka dots, he thought.

To his surprise, most of the clothes were fairly normal. There were only two sweater vests---"cardigans are back in, I'm afraid," Emily said---a wide assortment of dress shirts and pants, sweaters and even a few regular cotton shirts and some jeans. The only thing that seemed to be "Garcia-inspired" was the dozen or so ties he pulled from on bag. One of them was black with neon-colored polka dots on it.

Well, maybe neon and polka dots aren't bad as long as they stay on the tie, the young agent thought.

"Thanks," he said finally.

"Don't mention it," Emily said warmly as JJ kept pawing through the other parcels. "What are you looking for?"

Among the boxes of what looked like curtains, bed linens, toasters, shelving units, flatware, dishes and little gift cards that littered Morgan's living room was the prize JJ was looking for. "Aha!" she cried, pulling out a stainless steel coffeemaker and the largest container of coffee Reid had ever seen.

"Now we'll just hook this up to make sure it works, and then we can get some coffee in here and have you try on all your stuff," she said, moving towards the kitchen.

Reid liked the idea of coffee—especially after the day he'd had. Then he managed to pick up on the rest of JJ's sentence.

"Wh—what do you mean, "try on all your stuff?" he said, a definite squeak to his voice.