Observations

As we sat through the meeting I found myself observing these odd teams that I had been assigned to work with. They had been pleasant enough when we were talking but instinct told me that my aversion to them hadn't gone unnoticed. My curiosity made me wonder what their reactions would be. Oddly enough, I noticed that none of them seemed to be too deeply affected.

For a little while there were hints of a storm in Jack's eyes. He didn't appreciate anyone treating Sue different because she couldn't hear and, being her partner and handler, he seemed to have a protective streak. Although Sue didn't seem to like my reaction either, she only had a flash of hurt before focusing on Jack. Her calm seemed to rub off on him because after a while his shoulders relaxed and he glanced at Sue. Returning his look, she also calmed down and I realized that she was more concerned with his angry reaction than my opinion.

Turning to the Eppes brothers, I wondered how they would react. Like any big brother would, Don seemed to be keeping a close eye on Charlie. Every once in a while he would glance at his brother and Charlie would give him a reassuring look in return (if he noticed Don anyway). Charlie continuously seemed to be enthralled in the speech that the leader of this group was giving. As for reacting to me, he seemed to treat me like another critic whose opinion wasn't worth being bothered about.

Finally, I decided to see how the local team was reacting to my criticism. Peter seemed to be mostly focused on the case, but he was also giving Neal sideways glances from time to time. I don't know if he was making sure he was behaving or still trying to figure out what he had done, but he didn't seem too worried. Neal occasionally smirked in my direction which reinforced the theory that he had in fact done something, even though I still didn't know what. His reaction was the one that bothered me. Not only was he not deterred by my negative reaction, he seemed to have decided to play pranks on me. A decision that I can assure you was not appreciated.

Eventually the agent next to me asked if I happened to have a paperclip. When I responded to the negative, Neal told me to check my jacket. Looking down I discovered what he had done. There was a paperclip on the front of my jacket with a message that said "I could have stolen your wallet." Glaring at him, I found Peter somewhere between glaring at him and rolling his eyes. The man had just threatened to steal my wallet and his handler simply told him not to mess with me while doing nothing disciplinarily? They were my least favorite team to begin with but their behavior wasn't helping my opinion, rather they were confirming it.

To my relief Peter pulled Neal aside after the meeting, but he only seemed to verbally reprimand Neal.

I was assigned the end corner of a conference room for the duration of my stay. Although my niche was rather small due to the door taking up a portion, it was adequate. Since I move a lot, I have learned to work with the basics so I had my coffee, folders, and a few standard supplies neatly arranged around my space.

As for my fellow occupants of the conference room, their arrangements stood in stark contrast.

Charlie was assigned nearly half of the conference room and it didn't take long to understand why. He filled the entire wall space with a line of marker boards, had papers strewn acrossed half of the table in piles, and the only clear space was where he and his brother sat with their computers. When they weren't conferencing together, Charlie tended to have headphones in while he either wrote all over the boards or stared at his computer screen. Don was more professional as he simply chewed on a pen while he thought.

The remaining portion of the room in between us was further split into halves.

Jack and Sue sat on one side with Levi sleeping on the floor beneath the table. Their folders were fairly neatly stacked in front towards the center, they had coffees close to reach, supplies between them, and their laptops in front of them. The duo worked smoothly as they progressed through their folders and her inability to hear didn't hinder them. When Jack needed to speak with Sue he simply touched her arm and waited for her to respond.

Mirroring them on the other side, Peter and Neal had the same general arrangement with a few differences. Neal had his hat sitting beside him and kept fiddling with things like a pen or rubber band ball. Peter redirected him with something new to do when he began to get annoying.

We were all working the same case with different angles of attack. Mine was traditional police work… I didn't know what theirs were.

As the days passed by the others in the room began to form friendships.

Neal was the first one to begin building friendships as he continuously reached out to everyone in the room (even me in a distantly polite way). He was kind to Sue as he made sure to face her when speaking, used sporadic sign language, and tried to ensure the environment was easy for reading lips. It turned out that he has a skill in the area so he used it almost like a secret language with her. At first this seemed to make Jack a combination of curious and nervous, but Peter translated enough of what was being said to relieve any concerns. While Sue was feeling welcomed by Neal's efforts and Peter's kindness, Jack was pleased with their efforts to make her comfortable.

Once they had formed a friendship, they drew the other team in with talk of sports. Since Peter and Don both played baseball they quickly picked up on their similar interest while Jack was able to contribute with an understanding of the sport. Charlie and Sue even managed to join into the conversation by talking statistics or about the history of the signals used in the game.

(It turns out that the signals umpires use were first created for the benefit of a deaf player. Interesting, I never knew that deaf people had caused so many things commonly known today).

From there the group formed a stronger cohesion in the office and began to hang out in the evening when we were dismissed for the night.

Neal made sure to show everyone to the best hangouts in the city to sample some of the city culture. He also made recommendations as to which places to get food and which hotel to go to for affordable accommodations while being on budget.

Peter backed up his recommendations saying that "He knows all of the best places."

It didn't take long until I was the odd man out. No one seriously invited me along for anything or did anything more than offer assistance. This was my own fault really. They all knew that I didn't approve of them so they left me to my own thing while being polite.

I was frustrated by being forced into working with them and angry that they were making me question my grandfather's teachings (mostly that was just Sue) so I began to let some of my temper loose. Of course I didn't show my displeasure to the agents, but their partners got the brunt of it.

Caffrey was the main person whom I went after. We ended up on an elevator ride together as we were headed for lunch. I was going to get my own while he was on a run for the rest of the group. Before we parted ways in the lobby I made sure to throw a snide comment his way about how he shouldn't even be allowed to fetch the food for the FBI as he was nothing more than a criminal. To my utter amazement he laughed softly while smirking at me… he laughed at my opinion of him! That made my anger smolder. How dare he laugh at me and the way my grandfather taught me to perceive the world! His reaction was something that I would have to deal with later as he disappeared into the crowd before I could come up with anything else to say.

Later we were working on the case and I was presenting my finds. Since I wanted to prove that Sue shouldn't be working in the FBI, I purposely didn't even try to remain in her view. She would have had to ask me to repeat myself, as she undoubtedly missed a great deal of my report, but that was prevented as the others made sure to fill her in on what she missed.

For Charlie, I made the mistake of cracking a comment that his math couldn't possibly be useful in the real world… I got an extended lecture on how math is in everything and some generals on its application.

It wasn't right of the FBI to hire a bunch of people who didn't belong in the FBI and my efforts to point that out seemed to have had no effect. They either ignored my reproof, the problem was solved by others, or they had a reason rehearsed (that speech of Charlie's sounded like he had used it many times). Then the agents who work with them didn't feel any kind of need to help them prove their positions, it was like they believed their people had proved their worth with the FBI. Why was it that I was the only person who saw what was the matter?

Our group dynamics begin to change after a while.

Sue started to spend more time watching surveillance clips and writing transcripts of what was going on. This led to more surveillance trips and her being taken along to sit in the van so that she could watch more of the situations first hand as they happened. At first Jack continued to go through files in their space alone, but as she started moving into field he was brought along to assist her.

(If she couldn't go out into the field alone, why let her go out at all)?

As more information started to roll in and the investigation progressed, Neal started being more useful too. Instead of staring at files or fidgeting, he started adding information from his criminal knowledge. It was unnerving just how quickly he could whip out the facts though. I would give him a name, he would get a look on his face, and then he could tell me the person's life story. How did he know so much information and how did he be produce it so easily?

Then Charlie started to creep me out too. As we got more data on the perpetrators, he actually started running calculations to give us their address based on the locations of their activities. (How is that possible?) What made his work scarier was that as agents followed his lead, they continued to find evidence which helped him to take them closer.

(So he could sit in the office taking the data collected by agents in the field and use numbers to tell them how to proceed on the case? This taskforce was getting weirder the longer we worked together.)

While the assistants were making progress, the agents seemed to be doing the field work and more labor intensive activities. Peter and Don had teamed up in the room while they relegated Neal and Charlie to team up. As Neal and Charlie turned out information from the streets and mathematical result, Peter and Don transferred it to the rest of the agents and organized the use of the information. If Neal and Charlie said that the perpetrators were going to hit another location in two days, then Peter and Don arranged for a team to derail that attack. Like clockwork the four of them were working together and making leaps and bounds of progress.

Sitting acrossed the table watching them, I was still using files to make my progress.

While the case continued to progress I often found myself alone in the room with Neal and Charlie.

As I watched them working, I noticed that they seemed to get along fabulously. Charlie would bounce between his computer and white board as he worked his numbers while Neal simply curled up with his feet on the table and a lap top balanced on his legs. When Charlie rambled on in complicated numbers, Neal simply followed what he said or bounced his head and waved his hand while he waited for him to get to the point.

The rare times that Don was in the room he would smile at Neal's antics and say that his team had a phrase for it. "My team generally refers to your actions as 'nodding along while waiting for him to get to the punch line.'"

Since the phrase was said in jest, Charlie would duck his head in embarrassment as he smiled before jumping to the point he was trying to make. This often led to the rare occasions that I had an idea of what Charlie was always babbling on about.

When Charlie did eventually get to the point, he would usually break down the gibberish of the math into basic points. For example, he could figure out the home base of our perpetrators by finding the average distance between their crimes and work back to a likely point of origin (like finding the sprinkler from the placement of the water droplets).

I continued to find that these people defied my opinions of them. First, Sue proved that she was intelligent and capable of communicating with both the hearing and deaf worlds. Then, Charlie slowly showed that his math really did have its uses in the field when his work had results. Fortunately, I could rely on Neal keeping to my expectations. "Once a criminal, always a criminal" after all.

Thank you everyone for reading, reviewing/commenting, bookmarking/following, leaving kudos, and choosing to favorite. :D Also, this is completed and will be posted on Sundays until finished.

I know this story is odd with so many crossovers, but they are all FBI and star people that you don't initially expect to find in the FBI. This story has been in my mind for some time and I hope that I didn't do too bad at pulling them all together.