Chapter Text
Chapter 30: i watched it begin again
Neither of them says a word.
They don’t really need to.
This is everything.
The hallway is quiet save for the soft humming of an air conditioner and the faint taps of Emily’s heels on the tile. The click of her keys in the door briefly drowns out the pounding of JJ’s heart, yellow light spreading from the doorway. Emily steps aside to allow JJ in first, holding the door open.
JJ draws in a breath, lingering in the foyer. She can’t remember the last time she was in Emily’s apartment, but something about the place feels familiar. It’s sparsely decorated, with a few framed prints, worn leatherbacks, and glass vases. There’s a faint whiff of woodsmoke, coming from a cracked window that overlooks the DC skyline. The only thing out of place is the fluffy, bright pink rug tucked away by the balcony.
“Yeah,” Emily sighs, following JJ’s frown. “Garcia thought the place needed some…color. I didn’t have a good enough reason to say no.”
“Oh, how dare she.” JJ sets her bag on the counter, its surface icy cool to the touch. “Emily Prentiss, color.”
Emily grimaces. “You’re telling me.”
There’s a beat of silence as they linger in the entryway. It’s then that JJ notices Emily is still wearing the same clothes from yesterday night, wrinkled from forty-eight hours of chaos. JJ knows some of that credit belongs to her, which…
Which is hot, but also a little gross, because those clothes been through a lot. That lot happens to include running through a suburban Tennessee forest, followed by inspecting Roadkill Voit on a road.
It suddenly seems very necessary for Emily to have those clothes off.
JJ is ready to say as much – she’s not due at Will’s for the boys until tomorrow afternoon – but Emily beats her to it.
Emily plucks at her shirt, sighing. “Yeah, I’m kind of done wearing these.”
JJ raises an eyebrow. “I think I can help you with that.”
Is it smooth? No, not really.
Does it work? Absolutely.
Carefully JJ edges Emily’s jacket off, leaving it discarded on the hardwood. Before she can do anything else, Emily pulls her close, her eyes glittering in the kitchen light.
“Follow me.”
Their hands tangle together as Emily leads JJ across the apartment, to a darkened room with an enormous bed in the middle. JJ braces, but Emily doesn’t stop, tugging her all the way to a stark-white bathroom. In here, they’re the only pops of color.
“I, um…” Emily briefly releases JJ’s hand, gaze flicking to the large shower. “I don’t know if you like doing this, so if you want, you can wait while I get cleaned up. I just really need to wash this afternoon off before we – ”
JJ’s heart skips a beat. “I think I can help with that, too.”
There’s plenty of room in that shower for what JJ has in mind, anyways.
A wry grin curves its way across Emily’s face. “Please do.”
And tonight, here – it’s different.
They go slow, steam beginning to fill the room as JJ pries off the rest of Emily’s clothes, leaning against the vanity while Emily strips her. Their clothes fall into a heap on the tile, JJ’s arms winding around Emily’s neck, following the soft outline of her jaw. Emily guides them backwards, holding the glass door, then shutting it tight.
The water is hot, but not painfully so, relaxing JJ’s worn muscles and startling awake the few parts of her that had dared to get tired. She steps aside to make sure Emily has space, watching transfixed as Emily’s eyes flutter shut under the warm spray.
She’s fucking beautiful.
It’s different, too, seeing her like this in the light. Everything in JJ’s house was dark, shadowy, desperation and anger blurring anything JJ might’ve seen.
In contrast, the bathroom is brightly lit, delicate white, illuminating every curve and inch of skin. JJ has it all, down to the drops of water running across Emily’s collarbone, where a few faint bruises remain. JJ traces over one and Emily’s hand comes up to lay over hers.
Their lips brush and JJ knows, knows this is it and this is right and this will ruin the rest of the world for her, except that’s fine, because JJ doesn’t want the rest of the world, she wants this, and she finally has it.
She’d known it, all those years ago.
---
“I don’t think so, sir.”
JJ paused outside Hotch’s office, hand on the wall, eyeing the cracked door. Cracked door, she’d learned, meant Hotch was open for business. His voice drifting out, though, didn’t sound so open.
“There’s definitely been a mistake.”
Her stomach twisted into a knot and she glanced back at the briefing room. This was an important case, but…maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to bother Hotch right now. He was clearly already being bothered by whatever woman JJ had heard inside. One of the brass? He definitely had a ‘fuck off, politics’ tone right now. JJ didn’t want to be involved in that.
Still, she had a job to do. With a swallow, JJ knocked on the door.
And – shit.
The woman standing in Hotch’s office was no politician, or if she was, she was like no politician JJ had ever seen. This woman was too – too bright, too beautiful to be any kind of professional liar.
Who was she?
Her dark eyes landed on JJ, lighting with curiosity.
Panic rose in JJ’s chest and she forced herself to speak, “Oh, excuse me. We’re getting started.”
She’d wanted to say a lot more than that, tell Hotch the case details, let him know what else she’d been vetting for the week, make sure he knew Haley had called, ask him who this woman was and if this woman was single and if this woman would possibly want JJ’s hand in marriage –
“Thank you,” Hotch said. “I’ll be right there.”
No ‘we’. This woman wasn’t coming with him.
JJ bolted before she could act too disappointed about that. God, she hated working with profilers. Nothing ever stayed secret for long.
She allowed herself a single second to breathe in the hall, out of anyone’s view.
Once that second had passed, JJ moved on.
Or she tried to, for about ten minutes.
The woman was still standing outside Hotch’s office when JJ left the conference room. Again she looked at JJ with those dark, piercing eyes. JJ pulled her files closer to her chest, eyeing where the rest of the team had vanished to. She knew she should go, but…
“Are you…staying here?” JJ asked.
An innocuous if unnecessary question.
The woman shrugged. “If that’s what it takes.”
Now JJ really was curious about more than this woman’s relationship status. This woman had fought with Hotch, but was refusing to let him win. Usually, only JJ could get away with that. She wanted to support the effort, so she asked, “Can I do anything for you?”
“No, thanks,” the woman said, lifting her chin. “I can wait.”
And so she waited.
And so JJ tried to move on.
She never did, though.
---
And so it’s different, stepping out of the shower with Emily’s robe wrapped around her, hair damp and body aching, skin lit by sensation and wrinkled with heat. Emily presses a kiss to JJ’s neck, tells her to wait while she finds another robe and that there’s red wine in the kitchen and that JJ can have it, can have anything she wants.
“But I already have everything I want,” she whispers back.
Emily’s lips ghost over her skin again. “I know.”
JJ smiles and goes and gets the wine anyways.
She stands in Emily’s kitchen in her bathrobe, fumbles through cupboards in search of glasses, filling two with the red once she finds them. There’s still rustling coming from Emily’s bedroom, so JJ takes the wine towards the window, setting one glass on a side table and bringing the other to her mouth.
She peers out the glass at the night sky, listens to the cars roaring by on I-95, headlights flashing against trees and rolling hills. There’s still a tiny crack that lets in smoke from chimneys in the suburbs, along with a breeze that tugs at the drops of water still on her skin. JJ exhales, takes a sip from her wineglass.
The taste isn’t far from the bottle JJ half-downed the night she found out about injurejeanfear. The memory is a bitter one.
JJ has a lot of bitter memories – memories that will keep her up at night for years to come, spilling moonlight and cigar smoke from her bedroom window. Memories that she’d still give anything not to have, memories that reflect the darkest impulses of JJ and those around her, those who have hurt her, that she’s hurt. Dead eyes and dead hearts and dead pieces of her, pieces that she’ll never get back. Pieces that shattered and left only broken, gaping holes in their wake.
Pieces that she is living without.
Pieces that she wants, but maybe doesn’t need.
Pieces whose absence do not make JJ any less than the whole she ought to be.
Nobody ever said that damaged and whole can’t exist in the same person. And if somebody did, JJ knows they were wrong. She knows they were wrong because she’s here and damage and wholeness coexist within her. It’s a messy coexistence, but fuck does it exist.
It exists and that could be all that matters. It could be enough.
It’s more because of Emily.
There’s a rustle of fabric and a creak of a door as Emily’s silhouette appears in the window. JJ doesn’t turn, but leans into Emily’s chest when she comes closer. The robe Emily found is thin, thin to where JJ can feel Emily’s heartbeat through the cloth. JJ listens to its thump, thump, thump for a moment.
Yeah.
It’s more.
It’s everything.
Emily rests her chin on JJ’s head and JJ can picture how her eyes are lit by the city lights across the river.
Neither of them says a word. They don’t really need to.
This is everything.