Emily glared up at the sun that was stubbornly beating down on them. She hated it. Eurgh. It was too warm, and she was all sticky, and she burned far too easily for her to enjoy the stereotypical, sunshine-y LA weather. Yes, they were on the west coast today, which was a stark difference to the stormy Midwest they had left two days ago. A change Emily wasn't exactly appreciating at the moment. Forgetting your sunscreen tended to do that to a person. Why she had forgotten it, she wasn't sure. She normally kept it in her go bag because they never knew if they were suddenly going to be redirected somewhere warm and you needed to be prepared for these sorts of things. Except she very obviously wasn't prepared.
She was going to blame Sergio for this. She had had to drag him out of her go bag the other day; howling all the way. Recently, he had really enjoyed curling up in there, spitefully getting hair all over her clothes. Which was definitely on purpose because he did not she'd tjat much around the whole flat in total. So she wouldn't put it past him to steal something from her bag in revenge.

And Reid, the one person who was bound to have emergency sunscreen, was nowhere near her. He was actually in the city itself, somewhere probably with great air-conditioning. Unlike her, sweating it out in this heat. And sweating was never fun. Actually, it was pretty disgusting, especially when you had decided to wear something that was form-fitting. And black. Because, you know, it was her. She was very much regretting being her right now. Urgh, why did the human body have to sweat behind the knees? Was that really necessary?

Then, of course, none of this was helped by the fact that she had to deal with local incompetence. Which was not the local police, for a change, but the local FBI. Eurgh. Did the LA heat sap them of any brain cells or something?

In the back of her mind, Emily knew that they weren't that incompetent, but she was warm and sweaty and getting redder by the second. She was in no mood to be nice.

"Hey," Reid said, looking throughly disgruntled as he approached her.

She hadn't even heard a car pull up.

"You finished?" Enily asked, rather redundantly because he wouldn't be here if he hadn't.

"Yeah, went through all of the shops receipts," he said happily.

Of course, he would be happy, the shop where their unsub might have sourced his materials from hadn't entered the twenty-first century and still kept paper records for everything. Not an electronic device in sight. Not even a non-functioning security camera as a deterrent!

"Did you get anything?"

"A few patterns that we might be looking for. Garcia's doing a deeper dive on some of the names."

"So, we'll have someone soon?"

"Hopefully."

"You here to help or just look pretty then?" She teased, which made him splutter in embarrassment.

"Hotch sent me to help," he answered, looking around him in distaste.

Oh yeah, Spencer didn't like beaches. Seagull poop and bacteria and all that. Something she really could have gone her entire life without knowing, thank you very much. But that was one of the perils when Spencer Reid was your friend.

"Please tell me you have sunscreen," she pleaded, resisting the urge to grab him frantically by the front of his shirt.

Looking somewhat alarmed, Reid took a careful step back and nodded slowly.

"Of course I do -"

"Oh, great," she said in relief.

"- in my hotel room."

Emily stared at him. He had to be kidding, he just had to be.

"Oh, come on!"

And now Reid just looked offended. "It's not my fault that you aren't prepared."

"Wow, would you look at that," the guy she had been questioning said, pointing behind her.

She sighed irritably. She was not going to turn around for some stupid surfer trick yet again. Yeah, sure, some of the tricks were pretty cool but she really didn't care. She got bored of them easily.

Even some of their rather impressive physiques could only hold her attention for so long, and they had used up that particular allocation already.

"I'm talking about something important with my partner," she informed him, rolling her eyes at Reid.

"You're talking about sunscreen."

"Exactly. It's important."

"No, seriously, look!"

It was only because there was a measure of urgency in the man's voice that she turned around. And it turned out that it was a good thing that she did.

"Uh..."

She was pretty sure that that wasn't supposed to be happening. Not even a little bit. There was just no way. The sea was foaming. Actually foaming. Kind of like an elementary school volcano experiment. It defintiely wasn't supposed to be doing that.

"Reid?" She asked hopefully.

He would have the reasoning behind this, wouldn't he?

"Nothing to worry about," he reassured her.

"Really?" She asked disbelievingly, raising an eyebrow.

It wasn't her fault she couldn't trust him, she still remembered the rainstorm from yesterday, which had definitely been something she had had to worry about even though he had said otherwise. And was unfortunately still feeling the effects of. Like the toes of her boots being soaked through and everything else from yesterday being partially dry. And yes, she had found that out about her boots accidentally this morning. Oh, she hated the feeling of damp socks.

"Really. It's actually the sign of a productive ecosystem," he said eagerly. "When large blooms of algae decay offshore, great amounts of decaying algal matter often wash ashore. Foam forms as this organic matter is churned up by the surf. Most sea foam is not harmful to humans and, like I said, is often an indication of a productive ocean ecosystem."

The surfer was looking at him with this awestruck face. Which made him look incredibly stupid.

"That's rad, dude!"

Emily turned to raise an eyebrow at him.
"Are we suddenly back in the eighties or something?"

"It's rad," the man stubbornly said. "Your skinny friend is rad."

Reid looked incredibly pleased at that.