FFA Fic: Sleepover

[kellifer]

Title: Sleepover
Rating/Warning: G
Wordcount: 570
Spoilers: None
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Category: Gen
Summary: Team Night.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.

It starts only a few weeks after The Event.

They call it The Event because calling it The Shooting makes everyone feel uncomfortable and Penelope would rather just section it away like the other horrible things she's had to deal with in this job.

She loves her job and wants to keep doing it.

Morgan turns up first with a bottle of wine and his annoyingly irrisistable smile. They've seen her inner sanctum already so Penelope's not that fazed by his presence but he's never really been the drop-in type. When Emily and Reid also show within five minutes of each other and exclaim, not very convincingly, about the coincidence of their presence, Penelope gets suspicious.

On the job they're all smooth as the smoothest baby butt but outside of it Penelope''s amazed a one of them can even tie their shoelaces.

"I'm really fine," she promises them and the funny thing is, she really is doing okay. It was a horrible night and the recovery wasn't exactly a picnic, considering the guy that had shot her on her own doorstep had still been trying to kill her but she knows he's gone now and she also knows something else that's very valuable.

She's surrounded on all sides by people that will protect her with their own lives.

They all look a little guilty about being busted for ganging up on her but she settles them all down in her living room, covers them with blankets and makes them watch Josie And The Pussycats. It's actually nice, having most of her sweet little ducklings where she can see them.

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The second time JJ comes along and they all look bruise-eyed and hollowed out. It's after a case with a man who had been luring children with balloon animals and then leaving them to die in a basement of horrors. The kid ones always sap them, wring the good humor right on out and it's very hard to refill.

Reid and Morgan are arguing good-naturedly over the choice of movies and Emily's already passed out. JJ follows Penelope into her kitchen and then smiles tiredly when Penelope tucks an arm around her.

Penelope thinks she could get used to this.

0

The last person she's expecting to come along to one of their nights is Hotch. He looks extremely uncomfortable the entire night, takes maybe one sip of beer and is the first to leave.

Penelope doesn't mind because she gives him a long overdue crush of a hug right before he beats a hasty retreat and for a second he sags into it, everything stiff in him going lax all at once. He's upright, spluttering and blushing about three seconds afterwards but all the next day he's in a good mood and the haunted look has eased a little from his eyes.

Maybe he needed to know there were people there too.

0

Rossi makes a big fuss about not being invited to team night and Penelope laughs at him and tells him that her door is always open, she just didn't think he was the slumber party type.

He isn't. He brings a large bottle of good scotch and looks personally offended by Bridget Jones' Diary.

He stays though, grumbling and trying to remind them that grownups don't do this kind of thing.

Everyone laughs at him using the term grownups and drink his scotch.

He's the first one her doorstep the very next time.