Thank you again for the great response to my last chapter! Sorry it took long to post this one, I couldn't find it and almost had a heart attack thinking I would have to re- write it, but all is good now :)

Hey guess what? Huh? What's that? Oh yeah... You should leave a review!

I do not own Criminal Minds

"Can you get together after school?" JJ asked Emily as she looked at how far they were already behind on their project on the first day of working.

"Yeah, I can. Where do you want to work on it? School?" Emily asked.

"My mom said you could come over to my house. I walk home every day, I only like a few blocks away."

"Okay." Emily agreed.

XXX

After school that day JJ found Emily and they walked to her house. Immediately they went up to her bedroom and dropped their backpacks on the ground. Emily pulled out her notebook and opened to a blank page.

JJ started to say something, but Emily was so lost in her beautiful blue eyes, that she didn't hear any of it. She couldn't believe that she was with JJ, that she had wanted to be partners. Quickly Emily shook her head and refocused. She couldn't be thinking like this. She would only get her heartbroken. Like she wasn't enough of an outcast, the next thing she needed to do was get caught staring at JJ.

"What do you think?" JJ asked.

"Oh, uh sure," Emily said, trying to pretend she had been paying attention.

JJ shook her head and laughed as her long blond hair swayed from side to side. "I just asked you if I should buy a penguin for my mom for her birthday."

Emily's face turned pink with embarrassment. "Sorry, I guess I wasn't really paying attention."

JJ smiled at her. Emily looked so cute when she was embarrassed. The way her cheeks turned to the color of roses, despite the fact that she tried to hide it. She couldn't believe that she had never noticed how beautiful and nice Emily was. She had always just followed the crowd. She listened to them when they said Emily was a freak, and she never took the time to see for herself, and now she wished she would have earlier. She wished she could keep the feeling Emily gave her forever.

"What do we want to focus on in our speech and project on?" Emily asked.

"I was just about to ask you that. Domestic abuse has such a wide range of topics. We could focus on either spousal abuse, or child abuse. There's also physical, mental, and sexual."

"We should talk about the effects of the abuse," Emily said quietly. "Like how it affects families, and the people abused."

"Okay," JJ said as she turned her computer on. She had gotten it last year after she begged her parents. She hated having to go down into the kitchen every time she had to look something up.

She started to look up the affects of abuse when a knock came on her door.

"Come in," She called, keeping her eyes glued on the computer screen.

"Hi JJ, how was school?" Her dad walked into the room. JJ swirled around in her chair so she was facing him.

"It was good. This is Emily," She introduced her. "She's my friends that I told you about." JJ gave Emily a small smile.

"It's nice to meet you Emily." Mr. Jareau put his hand out and Emily hesitantly took it. "We just ordered pizza for dinner, Emily you are welcome to stay if it's okay with your parents."

"I don't want to intrude," Emily said, truly praying that someone would disagree. She didn't want to spend another dinner with her father.

"You're not intruding," JJ said. "Emily will eat with us." She looked up to her dad.

"Sound great. I'll tell your mom to set one more place for dinner." He said and took a step closer to JJ.

Emily could feel herself tense up. Without even noticing it she balled her fists by her side. But then she realized all that Mr. Jareau was doing was hugging his daughter. She started picking at her nails. Not everyone's family is like your, she reminded herself as he left JJ's bedroom.

"Your parents won't care, will they?" JJ looked over to where Emily was standing and noticed that she looked uncomfortable. "Are you okay?"

Emily quickly nodded."I'm fine. And no, they won't care. My mom's not even home, some disaster in some country." She explained.

JJ turned back to the computer and looked at the WebPages that turned up. She read pages on physical abuse.

"We could have a big part of our topic on how to identify abuse. It says here that a lot of people that are victims of abuse don't always realize what is going on is different then what does in a functional relationship. Also we could help the kids in our class so they can identify abuse in people around them." JJ suggested.

"Sometimes it's not that easy. Some people are really good at hiding it."

"Why do they hide it?"

"Fear. Or they think they deserve it. There are a lot of reasons." Emily said sadly.

"But why? Could we somehow get people to understand it's not their fault, and that there are people that can protect them?" JJ asked confused.

"Like I said, it's not always that easy. Sometimes they think it's just better to let it continue then to try to stop it, because they don't know what would happen then." Emily explained bitterly.

JJ mulled over what Emily had said, and then slowly turned. "How do you know all that Em?" She whispered.

Emily froze. She had said too much. "I- uh… I read it somewhere last night."

JJ looked unconvinced, and kept her eyes on Emily who fidgeted uncomfortably under her gaze.

"Can we just keep working?" Emily asked desperately.

The two of them continued to look up information on domestic abuse and started to put together the outline for their project, but every so often JJ would turn and look at Emily. Occasionally her dark eyes would cloud with anger, and other time's they would become moist, but most of the time they were just too damn hard to read. All JJ wanted to do was to take her hand, she wanted to hug her. She longed to be with her more, but she knew that Emily would never want to be more than just friends. But that didn't change the way she felt about her, and that didn't make it any less hard to hold her feelings in.

XXX

That night Emily lay in her bed awake long after her father had left. The only thing that could get her mind off of what had just happened was picturing JJ. Her beautiful tan skin and long blonde hair. The way her blue eyes lit up when she smiled, and her amazing smell of brown sugar. But most of all she loved the way she made her feel. JJ made her feel like she wasn't completely worthless. Finally there was someone who cared, and Emily loved her for that.

I hope you enjoyed my story and it would be great to hear what you thought!