"Do you think she eats?"

"Do you think she goes to the bathroom?"

"Maybe she's not human. Maybe she's some sort of robot."

Emily huffed as she stared at her computer. The gang of highly intelligent, heroic, crime-fighting members of the BAU were crowded around her desk once more gossiping about their new authority figure for close to twenty minutes, and she was at the end of her wits.

Sure, this might have been the quietest day they'd had in a long time, and yes, maybe they were all just hyper-focusing on this woman as a way to procrastinate the piles of paperwork they'd accumulated over the last few weeks, but did it really have to over her desk?

"Guys." They all paused and turned toward Emily. "Either go in there and ask her if she's a robot herself, or take this somewhere else."

JJ stood up from her position leaning on the edge of Emily's desk. "Someone's a little touchy…"

"Yes. Well you would be too if your personal evaluation was coming up in less than five minutes," Emily grumbled as she held up the piece of paper that had been distributed on her desk while she was away at lunch. In fact, they'd all come back to these papers that notified them of their first (out of how many they had no idea) personal evaluation by Sam Worchester.

During this evaluation they would meet with her for up to an hour to discuss day-to-day procedure, protocol, the works. At the bottom of the slip, was a disclaimer that the meetings were not meant to be a test and that they shouldn't be nervous. Of course, Emily only took that to mean that this meeting was definitely a test and that they should most definitely be nervous.

So she'd spent the last three hours reviewing protocol and procedural advice. She had even spent a bit of time researching Sam Worchester's backrground because if this meeting was anything like their first, she would need ammo.

"Well my evaluation isn't for another hour," Derek said. "Just around the time that the good restaurants start to open up. Think she'll be ready to get a bite to eat then?" He smirked at Emily in an effort to make her smile, but the woman was too busy being stuck in a whirlwind of despair.

"Hey," he said as he poked her arm. She finally glanced up, "You're a great agent. You've got nothing to worry about. So what if she likes to mess with you? You're fun to mess with. Doesn't mean anything."

Emily forced a weak smile. "Thanks Derek."

"And, according to the amount of work she's been doing in the past six hours, in comparison to the time she's eaten, or frankly, done anything else for that matter, she's got to be weak or at least fatigued," Reid added.

"It's not like I'm exactly trying to outrun her in a sprint, Reid. But thanks…for that."

"You're welcome."

Turning back to her computer, Emily tried to focus on the task at hand, but her mind kept wandering back to the office and the woman sat inside of it.

Reid was right though, the woman had been working at a near constant rate since she'd come in. Ever since Hotch had showed her the office, she hadn't come out, or even lifted her head for more than a second or two.

"Emily Prentiss." The voice rang out through the air and everyone's head turned accordingly. Emily look up to see Sam standing in the doorway of the office. In her hands she held a thin stack of papers, her glasses sit on top of her head.

For a split second, Emily wondered what she would think of this woman if she hadn't confronted her the way she had. She wondered what she'd think if she met her out in the field as someone's family member, or a witness.

She knew she'd immediately be struck by how sharp she was, in every sense of the word. Sharp in beauty, in the way she was dressed, her physicality. But it didn't just stop there, her body language was the same way as her appearence: controlled, precise. The way she spoke garnered attention, demanded it even, and yet convinced you at the same time it was beneficial for everyone to just give in. She alluring, addicting, and completely unbearable.

Emily resigned herself to the truth. Sam Worchester was exactly the type of person that she'd be attracted to. No doubt about it.

But that's as far as Emily allowed herself to muse with the what-ifs and the maybes. Because the fact was, this woman was not a witness or a family member; this woman was her boss for the time being. And if there was one thing she knew, it was that bosses were not allowed to be considered attractive. Ever.

"Emily Prentiss," Sam repeated louder. "Are you staging a rebellion against the evaluations, or are you ready to begin?" Emily snapped out of her own head and leaped up from her desk, cursing herself for daydreaming.

"No. I'm coming."

Gathering some papers in her hands (what they were she had no idea), she walked briskly toward Sam's office. Once through the entrance, Sam closed the door behind them and pulled down a shade to cover the small window.

Once sitting, they stared across the desk at one another without a word. At first it seemed to be a match between strength of will and curiosity, but after a couple seconds Emily began to wonder if she had missed a question Sam had asked. But yet again, she didn't want to mess this up more than she already had, so she resigned herself to just sit tight and wait. Wait forever if that's what it took.

Sam on the other hand hadn't planned to start the meeting out with a staring contest. In fact, she had intended to conduct the meeting professionally, opens, and hopefully without the venomous edge that she had met Emily with. That chance had come and gone.

So, they just stared at one another.

"Was there something you wanted to ask me?" Emily blurted out.

Sam chewed on the inside of her lip cursing the insults she felt bubbling up within her. "I wasn't aware you were in charge of this investigation, Emily Prentiss."

Emily raised her eyebrows, "Investigation? I thought this was an evaluation."

"It is what I say it is."

Emily clamped her mouth shut tight, the jaw muscles flexing on the profile of her face. The only word she managed to get out was a furious, "okay."

"How many hours a week would you say you spend working?" Sam asked as she looked down at the questionnaire sheet sitting in front of her. It was funny, she had created the list herself and yet the last thing she cared about in this moment was how many hours Emily Prentiss spent in the BAU headquarters.

"Depends on the case load."

Sam rolled her eyes and took a deep breath, "On an average week."

Emily tried to figure out what an average week would be considered when her job was looking at the most disturbed people in the country. "If we travel somewhere, then I would say upwards of 80 to 90 hours."

Sam jotted down the number in a pad that sat in front of her, "And what do you spend most of your time on during this hours?"

"Well, travel can vary depending on how far away that case is, but mostly we spend time out in the field interviewing witnesses, looking at the crime scenes, examining evidence. The rest of the time is spent with the group and local police sharing ideas and compiling a profile."

Sam continued to take notes even after Emily was done speaking. She looked up after some time and wrinkled her eyebrows at the pad. "And how much time do you spend reading magazines?"

Emily felt her body rush with adrenaline. "I'm not exactly sure what you have against indulging in a guilty pleasure for the first ten minutes that I walk in the door, but I can assure you that it does not interfere with my work."

Sam's gaze flickered over Emily, her pursed lips, her clenched jaw, the eyes that burnt into her as if she were the devil itself. "I see," she responded before writing something else down in the pad.

Her pen scanned down a list of unknown question that Emily could see had been typed out on the page. The pen stopped halfway down. "Do you usually have a problem with authority?" Sam asked.

Emily felt her cheeks warming now. She clenched her fists on top of her thighs, willing all of her frustration to reside in them and not in her tone of voice. "No."

"So it's just me then?" Sam answered, challenging her. Always challenging her.

"I don't have anything against you." Gritted teeth made it hard to make Emily's words seem believable.

"Then would you like to tell me why you're gripping my desk as if you're ready to tear it a chunk of it off?"

Emily looked down at her hands. Somehow they had migrated from her thighs to the desk, and were now white-knuckling the edge in a death grip. She immediatelyd dropped them to her sides.

Embarrassed by her blatant act of rage, she leaned back into the chair. "I'm sorry." A deep huff worked its way out from her chest. "I'm not usually this…" she trailed off as she glanced around the room.

"You're not what?"

Emily refocused her eyes on the woman in front of her, noticing now that she had a trail of freckles that sat on the bridge of her nose, a few of those freckles having fallen off and littering her cheeks. "transparent."

And this time when Sam looked into Emily's eyes, she saw that her fight was gone. It was temporary, they both knew that, but it was gone nonetheless.

Surprisingly, this discovery resulted in immense relief. She had been awake for more than forty-two hours at this point between working and traveling and moving and all of the sudden, in this moment, during her evaluation with Emily, it was crashing down on her. Hard.

On top of that, she'd developed a migraine in the past hour that just wouldn't go away.

With a sigh, Sam placed her pen next to the pad and rubbed her temples. Allowing her eyes to close for the briefest of moments, she wished away the throbbing behind her eyes that had no doubt accumulated from the immense stress she put on herself.

Emily watched her in confusion as the blonde rested for a brief period of time. She knew she could have taken the moment of supposed weakness to attack but she couldn't find it within herself to do so. She was just as exhausted as the other woman seemed.

So they took the moment for what it was, a standstill.

It was in this comfortable silence that Emily found her eyes drifting to the room around her. There were a few boxes with pictures intended for the walls, some decorations, a stack of books, a light.

Emily wondered how often the woman changed offices and if she had anything personal to add to the room. She wondered if Sam knew the photographers that had taken the photographs and the painters that had painted the pictures. She wondered what side of Sam, Hotch had known way back in the day, and what had happened to her since then.

She wondered a lot of things before glancing back across the desk, and when she finally did, she noticed something unusual. Sam was asleep.

Sitting in the chair, head hanging between her hands, the woman's eyes were closed, her lips parted as the softest hum of a snore traveled through them.

Emily found herself smiling.

Smiling because 'what the hell', because 'who was this woman', because 'Sam Worchester was snoring. Softly, but she was' and mostly of all because Emily knew she was the one in control now.

She could embarrass, undermine, de-throne, destroy the blonde with the perfect move in this moment. And yet, she didn't.

Why?

Because she was Emily Prentiss: profiler extraordinaire, permanently emotionally unavailable, lonely, generous, strong, decent Emily Prentiss.

That was all it came down to. Decency.

She was a decent human being who fought only with a worthy opponent. And in her book, someone tired enough to fall asleep near mid-conversation with their head hanging in their hands was not exactly considered worthy.

So she could have left the room. Left without a word, and let the woman deal with her own actions when Derek came in for his evaluation, but she didn't.

Why was that?

Well, that had less to do with her decency and more to do with the fact that Sam Worchester was attractive and infuriating and intriguing and made Emily want to smash her head straight into a wall.

So naturally she protected her.

With the office door open just enough for her head to peek out, she glanced into the main room for Derek.

"Derek," the man looked up from his computer, "your evaluation is moved to tomorrow."

Derek nodded hesitantly and then shot her a sympathetic look. She nodded as if to say, 'I know. What a drag, right?' before shutting the door again.

Glancing back at the still sleeping woman, she looked around the office for something to do while she waited, but instead decided to sit in her own chair and lean back and maybe close her eyes for just…one…secon….

"Don't worry. I'll always find you," the voice hissed just before Sam jerked awake, shattering the nightmare. Her eyes snapped open and she found herself blinking to adjust to the light. When she could see almost properly, her gaze landed on Emily, who was staring at her in concern from across the desk.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm…" Sam looked around the room. It was darker, and there was no light coming in from the window outside. "I'm alright. Wher- Wait why do you ask?" Her mind worked to clear the fogginess still present in her brain.

"You were kind of, well," Emily looked hesitant to continue, but Sam stared and waited, "you were crying in your sleep."

"I, what?" Sam asked as she touched the screen of her phone. 7:21 p.m. "I fell asleep?" She rustled through the papers on her desk as if there would be an answer within them.

"Yeah," Emily said as she watched the frantic woman flounder. "I'm going to go…"

"What? No. Your evaluations not over." Sam kept blinking rapidly, hoping her contacts would focus. Her mouth was dry. She was starving. Somehow something rock-shaped was stuck in her shoe. She was a mess.

"You're kidding." Emily's mouth resigned to a flat line.

"I don't kid," she said as she reached around on top of her head for her glasses. Except they weren't there, they were in Emily outstretched hand. Sam snatched them from her.

"You do kid," Emily countered.

Sam raised an eyebrow and Emily responded by pulling a Cosmo magazine from behind her back.

"Found this in one of your boxes. Guess I'm not the only one, huh?"

Sam's face traveled through a myriad of expressions before settling on fury. "You went through my stuff?"

Emily sighed and dropped the magazine on the desk. "It was on the top and you were asleep for four hours. What was I supposed to do?"

Sam's lips trembled with anger, her eyes working to level Emily. With an outstretched finger, she pointed to the door. "Get. Out."

Emily pushed up from her chair and rolled her eyes. This whole power trip thing was getting old fast.

Sam watched her walk toward the door closely. Just before she left, Emily turned over her shoulder, "I told Derek his evaluation was rescheduled til 9 am. Tomorrow. JJ was pushed to 11 am. Oh, and Hotch dropped off edits on a preliminary report before he left. I told him headquarters head called and you would get back to him in the morning."

And then she left.

Sam sat in her office feeling like the jack-ass she knew she was, leftover scratchiness itched in her throat from her nap. On the right hand side of her desk was the report Emily had been talking about. She'd even go as far to write down the new evaluation times on a piece of paper.

From experience, Sam knew that it took at least one full minute for guilt to settle deeply in her stomach. Shame usually came next at an average time of two minutes and thirty two seconds and last but not least came the stinging sense of self-disappointment that always arrived hand in hand with her quick-temper.

In this case though, Sam felt the whole batch in one unbearable sinking, burning, stinging feeling. And within 14 seconds of Emily leaving, she was up and out of her chair. She whipped open the door, ready to make a mad dash out of the building, but the brunette was still in the main room, packing up her belongings for the night.

She looked up when Sam rushed out, freezing all motion.

"I-" Sam rubbed the back of her neck. She didn't know how to explain herself. "I apologize."

Emily pressed her lips together and looked down as she continued to pack her bag. "It's fine."

"No," Sam took another step forward, "I shouldn't have snapped at you after I woke up. I'm not exactly, a morning person. Or…in this case, a night person."

Emily's lips smiled fluttered at their own accord, but her eyes remained cast down. "I understand."

Sam chewed on her lip. It wasn't good enough. "And thank you. For keeping the nap a secret."

Emily didn't exactly answer. Only nodded.

"You did, keep it a secret, right?" Sam prodded desperately. She felt like a fish out of water. She felt weak. She felt embarrassed.

That got the brunette agent to finally look up. With a deep breath, she finally spoke, "Yes. I kept it a secret. Your reputation is safe."

Finally finished packing, Emily heaved her bag on her shoulder and began making her toward the exit. Sam called out behind her one last time and even though Emily just wanted to go home and lie in a bed and not think about the woman that she was feeling increasingly ambivalent about, she stopped in her tracks.

"I'm not used to feeling so transparent either," the woman had said, in a tone that Emily had never dreamed could come from her mouth. So Emily did her a courtesy and helped remove the self-created circle of rope off this woman's neck.

She turned around until she saw the blue of those eyes and said, "Goodnight Sam."

To which Sam responded, "Goodnight Emily."

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