AN: There was a huge storm here where I live this evening and it inspired this; also because I've had a similar prank happen to my thanks to my 'lovely' best friends.
"Are you serious?" Emily asked Aaron disbelievingly as the team stared at him. They'd all been busting their asses off on a long, tiring case and had been hoping to get home. The only problem was that whilst they had been stuck up in the bullpen all day, the heavens decided to open and unleash the biggest snow storm in recent years.
"What do you want me to do about it? As long as the roads are blocked, we're stuck here." Aaron replied and Morgan swore loudly.
"I'll have to call Will, tell him I won't be home." JJ said as she pulled out her phone and walked off to call Will.
"So what do we do then?" Emily asked the team at large. "Since we're stuck here, we may as well do something."
"I've an idea," Garcia suggested, smiling at them. "We'll just need some supplies first."
Half an hour later, after raiding the break room, cafeteria and both Aaron and Dave's offices for certain alcoholic drinks that technically weren't supposed to be there; the team decided to hole up in the conference room to wait out the storm. As they snacked on 'acquired' junk food and shared out the drinks, the conversation quickly turned into sharing some of their favourite stories either from their youth, college days or early days in the FBI.
"Remember the time we managed to scare Morgan by putting spiders in his hotel bed?" Reid asked the group at large, Emily and JJ laughed and Morgan shook his head.
"I wasn't scared." Morgan insisted.
"You so were." JJ argued. "My room was next to yours and you screamed like a little girl."
"That was just to convince you." Morgan countered.
"Of course it was." Emily said, jokingly patting his shoulder in a show of mock-sympathy.
"What about the time you and Cooper trashed Strauss' office for a prank?" Rossi asked Aaron as the team looked at their leader in shock.
"That was a long time ago," Aaron replied. "She still holds that over us."
"Didn't know you were a rebel," Emily said grinning at Aaron. "So why did you guys trash it?"
"I can't remember, we were just younger, bored and thought it'd be funny. Besides we didn't trash it, we just turned everything upside down. It took ages to do it right." Aaron recalled. He wasn't kidding, Strauss' old office wasn't as big as the one she had now, but it still took time and effort to turn the furniture upside-down and arrange everything in the right place.
"Sounds like fun," Emily commented. "Bet you couldn't do it now."
"Is that a challenge?" Aaron replied, the alcohol and overall relaxed mood he was feeling, being with the team and his girlfriend, just taking it easy and having a laugh for once was making him overlook the rules and implications of possibly pranking Strauss.
"I'm up for it." Derek laughed. "Her face on Monday would be worth it."
"Same," JJ added and Garcia nodded.
"We have to do this." Garcia insisted.
"I'm not sure," Reid said awkwardly but Rossi shook his head.
"Call it a team-building exercise." Rossi said as they got up and hurried out of the conference room. Luck was in their favour as the cleaner gad forgotten to lock Strauss' office door and the team quickly got to work. They overturned her desk and stacked the phone, files and computer back onto the now-revealed bottom of the desk, carefully balancing them so they remained upside-down. Emily and Aaron managed to heave the filing cabinet over whilst the large wooden cabinet itself was too big for them to move, the team settled for turning the drawers, folders and pictures on them around instead.
When it was done, the team took some photos of their handiwork before they returned back to the conference room. For the rest of the night, they sat up talking about anything and everything, snacking, having a few drinks and simply being a group of friends. They weren't chasing down serial killers or being heroes or even co-workers. That night, they were friends, a family and for a long time, it was one of the best nights-in, they'd had for a long time.
That was until on Monday when a furious Strauss stormed into the bullpen, tore the team a new one in front of everyone and slapped down the note that Emily had had scribbled when they had finished pulling their prank the other night.
Redecorating done courtesy of the BAU-Redecoration Team
"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Emily dismissed with a shrug of her shoulders as the others laughed.
