CHAPTER 5
CLOSE YOUR MOUTH, YOU'RE DROOLING
"Good morning." A fellow FBI agent from a different division greeted Emily as they walked out of their cars and into the building.
"Oh, a glorious one, I shall say." Emily said grumpily. She never liked the guy particularly much anyways.
She made her way to her office, ignoring even the cute guy that she had been flirting with occasionally.
Somehow, the pile of documents on her desk never seemed to shrink. She had a theory that some magic elf must be appearing at night, leaving all these not-so-magical documents for her to go through and sort out. No matter how many hours she spent there, work seemed to never end.
With a loud sigh, she sat down behind her desk and started from the top, one page at a time.
By lunch time she was done with five pages of reports, now she only had about twenty-five more to go.
"Hey, how does pizza sound?" Rossi said while knocking on the door.
He had the confidence to just walk in without an invite. There was a weird understanding between him and Emily, an unofficial green card for both of them, to do or say whatever they wanted, at any given time. David took advantage of that when he appeared by her office door now.
"Forget pizza…" He trailed off. As he walked towards Emily, he noticed the huge black puffy under-eyes and it made him frown. "Have you even slept? What time did you get in here?"
"An hour ago." Emily replied calmly. She had seen the first one of her colleagues enter at around eleven o'clock, so she pretended like she had just walked in herself, at that time, when in reality she had been there since quarter past ten.
"It would take Garcia two minutes, and a new unicorn figure as a bribe, to give me your badge swipe activity." He raised an eyebrow and, very discretely, he took a look at the papers in front of Emily. He recognized them, he had dealt with such stuff before. However, asking Emily if she needed any help would be a dead end, so he stayed quiet. There was plenty of time to plot with the rest of the team at lunch, since he was sure Emily would not like to join them.
"Pizza sounds good." Unexpectedly, she gave in, but really it was just a clever way to change the topic.
FBI Academy
"PARTY PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE…." An annoyingly loud and obnoxious voice startled a whole bunch of half-drunk people from last night. Angie and her new friends were not the only ones who went out to celebrate. "REPORT TO THE GYM IN TEN!"
"What the-…" Amanda grunted, trying to pull the covers on top of her face, as if that would prevent her from facing the reality.
Angie, on the other hand, jumped out of bed with a smile.
"It's the loudspeaker." She cheerfully pointed out the obvious.
"No shit!?" Amanda had warmed up to Angie the night before, but she was starting to fall back into her sarcastic bitch mode. Or maybe she was just not a morning person.
"Come on. It's the second day of FBI Academy!" A second later, the covers were being thrown to the floor, forcing a breeze of fresh air to hit Amanda's bare legs and to help wake her up a little more.
"God, you're annoying." Amanda muttered on her way to the bathroom.
They both had ten minutes to shower quickly, dress up and sprint to the gym. They both made it in the nick of time.
"I beat you to it." Bryan stuck his tongue at Angie when he saw her all sweaty and out of breath.
"Hey! I had to fix the bow. It takes time." She laughed.
Her shirt might have been twisted sideways and the left rim of her pants was obviously higher than the right one, but the bow was most definitely in place.
"Do you own bow in all the colors possible?" Amanda tried to be rude once more.
"Yes!" Angie replied in a very calm and collected way, her voice full of pride.
"On today's agenda we have physical fitness training until noon. Lunch time. Then you'll be having your welcome speech in the auditorium. I see you've all put on your academy uniform, but it is time to sweat. Hope you brought your own gym clothes…" The voice on the loudspeaker announced, trailing off, otherwise he would have added a witty comment about the Bureau not providing the Academy with gym uniforms this year, as part of the budget cut.
"That only means one thing." Angie shrugged. "Race to the room and back?"
With those words she gave Amanda a head start. If they had to work their asses off, the least she could do was to make it sound fun and exciting.
After what seemed like an eternity of exercise, it was finally time to have lunch. Amanda offered sushi, but nobody was feeling it. Bryan's roommate went to get tacos with the other guys they had just met during training, so their little group was shrinking slowly.
"Burgers?" Bryan offered.
"As much as I love the sound of that and I hate the sound of me sounding like a complete snob…" Angie spoke while brushing sweat off her forehead in a very ladylike way – with her sweat-drenched tank top. "Guys, we need to eat healthy."
"Miss goody-two-shoes much?" Her roommate rolled her eyes.
"Look, Girl, all you ever do is bark out unwanted remarks. Can you, please, not?" Angie was not someone who would take crap from anyone. "I'm here to learn and to surround myself with people I like and people who like me. If I'm such a pain in your existence, file for a new roommate."
Angie walked away without another word. It was a new side of her, one that left Bryan speechless. He had already figured that she was feisty, but apparently, there was so much more to her than what met the eye. Was she even as immature as her bubbly personality suggested? Or was it just a façade? She had been handling herself quite well with Amanda's nasty remarks, so she was hardly a stupid little girl.
In a state of deep self-reflection and consumed by her own inner thoughts, she walked aimlessly around the campus. The one thing that guided her was the smell of food and she walked in that direction, which lead her to a court yard with a few restaurants. She scanned the area and picked the healthiest choice. Five minutes later, Bryan walked through the door.
"Before you ask, I knew I could find you at a place where the entire menu consists of avocado and quinoa." He laughed, placing a chair near her.
"Before you ask, I don't like girls who are rude to other girls." With those words, she looked at the menu and chose her meal carefully. Surely, he would have asked her about her outburst.
Bryan took whatever she had ordered, hoping it would be enough to satisfy his appetite.
After they finished eating, they spent a few minutes just lying on the freshly cut grass in the relax area outside. Angie applied a faintly colored pink lipstick and added some blush to her cheeks.
"Someone is excited about the sappy welcome speech." Bryan teased her. "Maybe we'll get a hot FBI agent to teach us some moves, huh?"
"Oh, I'm excited for all the different reasons." She smirked, not wanting to admit to him that she had a yet another side to her that he had no clue about.
She gasped as she entered what would be their classroom from that point forward. It was a huge auditorium, very monochromatic, with a gigantic FBI logo plastered on the wall behind the podium. To everyone else it seemed so plain. To Angie it looked inspiring.
"Hello everyone. Welcome to your classroom. Since this year we switched things up and you never really had a Welcome speech, we have here a very special guest who volunteered last-minute to say a few words to you." The guy, whose name they didn't yet know, but whose voice they had all heard on the loudspeaker, was on the podium, giving the introduction.
He seemed like the planner, not much like the teacher kind of type. Angie's guess was that he would be like a mentor to the class, making all the announcements and following everyone's progress, while for every category of study they would have a different Agent assigned. And she was right.
"Hello everyone and welcome to a very different version of the FBI Academy." To everyone's surprise, it was a female who walked to the podium and started talking.
Her voice was so soft, caring. It felt like she was giving warm hugs to everyone around her. It was soothing, the kind of voice that one would take great pleasure listening to for a long period of time, kind of like the voices they use for audio books. However, it was not her voice that caught the guys' attention.
"Damn, I can, apparently, foresee the future." Bryan said loudly and got scolded by Angie.
"I said that a hot FBI agent will come over and, wow…" He eyed the woman up and down. "I wouldn't mind her teaching me a few moves!" He added, licking his lips.
"Eww, eww, eww!" Angie put her hands to her ears, not wanting to hear another word.
"I mean, look at her. She's fine as Hell." He kept on talking because he could simply not contain himself. "Too early to ask her if she gives any private lessons?"
"You are disgusting and I will make you shut up, trust me, you won't like my ways!" Angie's fists swayed in the air in mock-attack.
"Oh, come on. Since when are you such a prude?" Up until now, Bryan had met his perfect match in Angie. But, was she really a prude?
"I'm not. It's just…ugh." She was speechless and that was a very rare occurrence. She simply shivered, imagining what Bryan might be thinking of at that moment.
"I am Supervisory Special Agent Emily Prentiss, Unit Chief for the BAU, that stands for Behavioral Analysis Unit, here at the FBI." The woman introduced herself, tugging on her shirt a little bit as she had noticed quite a few guys checking out the décolleté.
"Close your mouth, you're drooling. It's embarrassing!" Angie rolled her eyes again, slapping Bryan's cheek lightly, in attempts to get him back to reality.
