No one had ever told her the BAU would be easy, but Jane had grown to love the unit. It was always interesting, thanks, for the most part, to the agents themselves.
Jane had voluntarily taken an observational seat on their last case, preferring to watch and learn from her new colleagues. That wasn’t to say she didn’t offer her own thoughts and opinions throughout the case, she’d just decided that the interplay of the team was better than a romance-slash-action/adventure film.
Take her superior, for example. Agent Hotchner intimidated her. He was cold, aloof, only really connecting himself in any visible way to Agent Prentiss. He tolerated her, and she knew it. She knew at least part of him still saw her as a transplant to a team he’d painstakingly hand-picked and cultivated. She was an irritating fly buzzing about Agent Hotchner’s head.
And she’d heard the stories. FBI legend held him as both an exulted innovator and a cold-hearted bastard and upon working with him, she could see why. He was awesomely good at his job. He poured his heart and soul into his work and it showed in the lines that developed on his face during a case. He was wickedly intelligent, capable of getting into the most complex and twisted heads Jane had ever read about. He was dedicated to the job and that’s what the rumour mills were saying broke up his marriage.
But Agent Hotchner didn’t seem fazed by the change. On the contrary, whatever existed between him and Agent Prentiss seemed to have recovered him beautifully. There had been cases where Jane had watched Hotchner push himself to the edge of his rope and tolerance, only to be brought back to the problem at hand by the deceptively delicate-looking Prentiss. They fed off of each other so well that it was sometimes difficult to determine whether the idea had originally been his or hers.
Which brought her to her analysis of Prentiss herself, a woman Jane had come to admire as a mentor of sorts in the unit. Jane didn’t mind politics, but she’d discovered that Prentiss hated them with a blinding firey passion. In a way, Jane could understand where that utter loathing was coming from. Growing up in a world of politics would probably turn anyone off to the prospect, though Agent Hotchner seemed to do just fine in his political role.
Prentiss had been the first one to really accept her as a member of the team. Jane wasn’t sure if it was because she was off on medical leave when she’d originally been transferred or if it was her uncanny ability to relate to just about anyone, but Jane had almost always felt comfortable with the older woman. The fact that Jane had discovered Prentiss had been virtually drafted as Strauss’ mole by her own ambitions had gone a long way in helping Jane understand the woman’s point of view.
Still, Prentiss was someone who was on the high end of the behavioural spectrum. People like their tech genius, Garcia, were easy to read. She kept most of her emotions very close to the surface and as a result, it was never difficult to understand where she stood. Agents Hotchner and Prentiss, on the other hand, and Dr Reid included, had stone poker faces that Jane had a difficult time penetrating. But really, with a man like Agent Hotchner, a man who could probably be one of their unsubs, who was she to blame herself? Jane had long ago determined that it was probably safer not to know what the man was thinking and she never begrudged Agent Prentiss for her ability to do what no one else seemed to be able to.
Yet in many ways, Jane still envied probably the only person in the unit she could truly call a friend. Prentiss, Jareau – Jane had never really felt friendly enough with the blond to call her JJ – and Garcia had a bond that she yearned for. Sure, she had her college friends, but even they had grown apart from her when Jane’s job changed so drastically. Sometimes it wasn’t the same to go out with friends and be able to read the behaviours of the world around her. It often put a damper on a quality girls’ night of bar hopping.
It seemed like Prentiss, Jareau and Garcia never had that problem. They knew each other so well, were so in tune with how each woman reacted to cases that it seemed like every night they planned to go out it was a rousing success. Jane yearned to be a part of that little group but she knew she had to wait for a sort of invitation.
She also knew Jareau and Garcia didn’t fully trust her yet. Jane had heard the stories of Agent Greenaway and had to admit that she couldn’t really blame them. They were naturally mistrusting of anyone to come into the unit simply out of self-preservation. Not only that, but they seemed to be nervous about anything to do with Unit Chief Strauss. Not that Jane could really blame them. The only person she probably feared more than that woman was Agent Hotchner himself. And really, Jane had a difficult time understanding why Strauss had it in for the man. From what Jane could see, he was perfectly content where he was and had no dire need to move up the FBI ladder.
But she was digressing. Jareau and Garcia, right.
Both blonds were bubbly in their own right, compassionate and sympathetic. Garcia was lethal in her little bunker of computer toys. Jane had learned quickly that asking where information may have come from left her without any plausible deniability. Where the tech found everything she did, how she managed to dig up some of the most spectacular links in the history of the FBI Jane would never know, and would never ask. There was probably a good reason as to why she was on the watch list of the CIA.
Jareau was, in many ways, an enigma. She was black and white at exactly the same time. She was small, slight and drop-dead gorgeous, but Jane had watched her manipulate even the most seasoned detectives into getting exactly what she wanted. Jane had no idea how the woman managed to coral both the media and local police forces without breaking a sweat. She made the job look so easy sometimes. And, technically, by her job description, that was where her involvement was supposed to end, but in pure A-Team fashion, she went above and beyond the call of duty. Jane couldn’t remember a case where Jareau didn’t put herself on the line when she had to.
And their latest was no exception. Of course, Jane had observed more drastic changes in her team over the course of the Tuscon investigation than she was sure she had in the months she’d been in the unit. Whatever existed between Hotchner and Prentiss – which, really, by this point was old news that she had no dire need to share with Strauss just yet – was overshadowed by the monstrous change between Jareau and the gangly Dr Reid.
No one could miss the man’s overprotective nature towards the blond. It had already been there when Jane had arrived, but that dire need to watch over the other seemed like it was a well ingrained habit and not something simply born of caring. Dr Reid did it subconsciously, as if he always had, and Jareau seemed to be marginally indifferent as to whether she was partnered with him or Morgan. In fact, Jane would bet money on her preference being the doctor, and not just because of her now-obvious deeper feelings.
Goodness her team was filled with general definition fraternization.
But when they worked so well as a cohesive unit, who was she to complain? The relationships between the team members seemed to simply strengthen the unit, rather than put it in any sort of danger. No one had argued about the pairings in the Tuscon case. No one had questioned whether or not safety was the top priority. And Jane knew it wasn’t just a concern for human lives. It was a preservational instinct each one of them had for the others.
Jareau and Reid, like Prentiss and Hotchner, simply had that instinct more deeply programmed for each other. Jane had a feeling both agents had been dancing around something for a while, if Prentiss and Garcia’s teasing was anything to go on. Most often, she found Dr Reid’s inevitable blush adorable.
Now there was a man that baffled any and all previous notions. While he was a kind of legend in the unit – inescapable when you are hand picked by one of the founding and most legendary members of the BAU like Jason Gideon was – the rumours were both over exaggerated and unfairly false. While Jane had noticed the poor man didn’t do well in many social situations, he was passable. He knew the strengths and weaknesses of each of his team members and probably had a better grip on them than many of them suspected.
And yet, he was like that nerdy younger brother that followed his siblings around everywhere they went. He was a walking, talking encyclopaedia, something Jane had come to value. Where other teams were forced to look up the large majority of their factual information, it was almost inevitable that Dr Reid had the answer before the question was even finished.
The man – for he was, even if he looked like a boy – was hot and cold, though not to the same extent as Hotchner. Everyone was intimidated by his intelligence, and Jane knew he hid behind it like a shield. Well, from most people anyway, herself included. Prentiss, Morgan, Jareau and Garcia on the other hand, he just didn’t bother. Hotchner was a useless battle. She yearned for the day he was that comfortable with her.
Which left her with one team member. Agent Morgan was the typical ladies man, or so Jane had thought before watching him in Tuscon. As the outsider, she liked to believe she saw things that others didn’t, though she had a sneaking suspicion that everyone but the often-relationship-oblivious Dr Reid already knew what she was just observing. She’d chalked his flirty nature with Garcia up to that ladies-man personality, but it became terribly obvious with his reaction to her flight to Tuscon, that his feelings ran deeper than that.
Which was too bad, considering he was running from them like a scared rabbit. There was something that baffled Jane immensely. With Jareau and Reid and Hotchner and Prentiss, she would have expected Morgan to jump at the chance to follow his teammates’ leads especially with someone as warm as Garcia. But something had changed between them drastically in the weeks that followed their Tuscon case, and since everything else in the team seemed fairly normal, Jane assumed that whatever it was hadn’t gotten around to the rest of the team just yet. It was just a matter of time really.
They were a family, all conflicts and romantic relationships aside, and Jane knew that. They were superheroes, people who metaphorically saved the world by day, then went home to significant others, children and friends.
It was just their way.