Cruel - Criminal minds enemies to lovers

Back to work

Athena's stubborn attitude and hatred of resting was truly put to the test after being ordered to spend two weeks away from work, only reluctantly doing so when Morgan demanded to take the time off with her, of which she took as more time to bully him for wanting to be with her of course.

That incentive was quickly taken away when Morgan was called in a week later for an emergency case that ended up dragging out for the entire 2 weeks of which Athena was supposed to spend recovering, instead of course finishing furnishing her apartment like any normal person with their own permanently saved hospital bed.

She spent her days doing all the things she had thought about when she was in prison; going on picnics by herself, spending an obscene amount of money on movie popcorn to purposely watch bad rom-coms and cringy horror films and setting up a bank account in her own legal name for the first time in her life.

"What did you idiots do today?" She lent on the kitchen counter she had varnished, sanded, and then painted twelve different colours until she was happy, explaining all of this 'thrilling' task to Morgan as they spoke on the phone before Garcia arrived for their 'lasagna night.'

It wasn't that Athena wasn't excited to spend time with her friend, it was just constant.

Garcia had become very protective of her during her recovery and was always popping round- eventually Athena had to tell her to stop just showing up at random hours of the day and night having to set up a dinner night twice a week to please her nurturing friend.

She knew it was natural for people to react this way, especially someone like Penelope, but for someone as inclined to ignore a problem until the sun burst, Athena found it difficult to not just mope around alone and lock herself away.

"Just been solidifying the profiles and crossing off suspects-" Morgan sighed, rubbing his face as he spoke down the phone, feeling more at peace from their simple conversation about carpentry than he had in the last two weeks, "-the interviews have all been at least 2 hours each with incredibly mind numbing 'intellectuals.'"

"That sounds boring- aren't the cases usually a lot faster paced than this?" Athena shrugged as she turned to adjust the tempreature on her stove, burning her arm in the process, "-You freaking whore!"

"Did you just call me a whore?" Morgan couldn't help laughing.

"What? Oh no sorry not you, I burnt my finger" she chuckled, popping her phone on speaker so she could cook without having to carry it, "anyway, why are the interviews taking so long?"

"Well for one we don't have our cocky fake profiler so we're having to use our brains" he teased "and we're having to cross reference everything since there's so many contradictions in the unsub's pattern that it's almost impossible to come up with a consistent profile."

"That sucks major balls dude" Athena casually responded before hearing a loud classic Rossi laugh at her language in the background, "wait- am I on speaker?" 

"The team wanted to hear you- say hi guys."

"Hey kiddo" 

"Hi Athena! JJ is here too-" 

"She knows what my voice sounds like Em-"

"You didn't say hi-"

"You guys absolutely suck for not telling me you were there-" Athena shook her head as the two bickered, "- I could have said something embarrassing."

"I think you already did when you put red onions in your lasagne" Rossi teased.

"Thanks for your input Mr Italy" Athena teased back before she heard a door open and close on the other side of the phone, "who was that? Did someone just walk in?"