all my efforts fall like teardrops
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pairing: JJ/Emily, JJ/Will
Rating: M
Summary: “Pitter patter, pitter patter. The sounds of her lies, the sounds of her strides. They trample all over your heart.”
Warnings: Mentions of not-so-subtle het!sex, but it’s for the sake of the story so try to bear with me. This is also kind of all AU except for one tiny, baby sized fact. Other than that, we should all be okay.
AN: This has actually been sitting around on my laptop for the longest time, possibly for the better part of three weeks, but I've been having issues with finishing it because a) I've recently started working and a 9-5-and-sometimes-longer work day kind of makes writing difficult for me and b) I just have issues with finishing fics in general. Anyway, I kind of forced the ending here so I could get it over with and post. Hopefully it works out. :S
**
“I don’t think I’ve ever really loved anyone before.”
“… So. Do I count as your first?”
A smile. Her lips are so soft, so light. Against yours that are unworthy, she feels almost angelic.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
**
For once, just for once, you want to be a little less pathetic.
You think that maybe all you’ve really wanted is for her to look at you with a little less pity, a little less sad understanding. You want her to turn and face you with a smile, not a tension-filled mask. You’re not a burden to her. She must, after all, love you.
That’s what you think. That she loves you.
She smiles and laughs, so carefree, so happy, but the way she clutches your hand half like you’re a possession and half like she wants you to go says so many things that the twinkle in her eyes can’t silence. You squeeze back with a little bit of love, a little bit of faith, but she slips out of your grasp and she’s laughing, waving, she’s escaping and you find that if she’d just keep laughing like that, you could really let her go.
You’d really let her go.
You give yourself a little shake and tell yourself to stop it as she rounds the corner and bolts off to the concession stand. The way she flirtingly tells the boy manning the stand that she wants extra butter on her popcorn makes your heart jolt and you almost jut yourself into her side to glare at him, but he knows better when he sees your stubble-roughened face. It’s almost a concession, like he’s admitting defeat even before the fight begins. No-one’s going to challenge you for her when she makes you all seem so unworthy.
She’s digging in long before you make it to your seats and you almost feel the need to ruffle her hair like you would a little kid, but the way she walks, one hip heavier than the other, reminds you that even now on the pseudo-date you coerced her into while lying under the covers, she’s still carrying her gun. Armed, ready, and one hell of a shot, you move your shaking hand to the popcorn bag instead and get slapped away, the pout on her lips buttery from the extra dressing. She reprimands you like you’re the one who’s going to finish all the popcorn before the movie starts and as you watch her laugh, you don’t have the heart to say otherwise. Taking it like the man you think she wants you to be, you sigh:
“Fine, I won’t eat any of it.”
“Good,” she grins in return, dipping her hand in and gobbling another mouthful, “I bought it.”
You scoff, “Yeah. With my money.”
The exchange is good natured as is the slippery punch she lands on your shoulder, and you can’t help but look at the oily imprint of her knuckles she leaves behind on your shirt. Looking up, you find she’s already pulled ahead, athletic legs toned and efficient.
“Hey, wait for me.”
She turns around and gives you a schoolgirl beam, all wide-eyed and bright, and when you catch up to her, she throws an arm around your broad shoulders and whispers, “Always.”
Somehow, you don’t think that’s true.
**
Sunrises have always made your heart ache. You told her that, the first time you stayed up together, working hard on a case.
“I think sunrises give you hope.”
The answer you got back was so childlike, so just like her, and the hesitant smile she paired it with made your heart ache too, because she seemed so scared of contradicting you. You wanted to tell her that you’re not perfect, that there’s a story behind the pain and that you’d love to share it with her, but her eyes were making it so hard to speak at the time, so you hadn’t.
Staring up at the first rays of sunlight seeping in through your curtains, you wish you had. At least then you would have had someone on the team to share this small, painful moment with.
She’s sleeping on your bed, denim-clad legs splayed on top of the covers. Her hair is mussed, her make-up’s smudged, but to you, she couldn’t have looked any more beautiful. You shouldn’t have let her work so much last night, you should have sent her back to her room, but the way she looked at you, puppy dog, kiddie pout, made the bed seem so much closer than the door, so you’d let her stay. Now she’s got file folders pressed under her head and your old faded Yale sweater draped across her chest and somehow, you can’t shake the feeling that she looks so yours.
You rise up from your perch on the edge of the bed and the mattress squeaks, undipping itself as it loses your weight. She’s not yours. She’s not anyone’s.
“….Emily?”
You turn around as you hear her moan, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand and coming awake, “Hey, did I wake you?”
She smiles at you in her breathtaking way, white teeth gleaming ever so slightly in the rapidly pinkening darkness, “Kind of. Yeah.” She pauses and sighs, voice still rough with sleep and eyelids at half-mast, “What time is it?”
You catch a glimpse of the clock in your peripheral vision, eyes never leaving hers, but you don’t need to look, don’t want to look, “Sometime around five, five thirty-ish.”
“Mmmm,” she gives a little moan and squirms a bit, curling herself deeper into the still-made covers, “It’s early.”
Kneeling down beside the bed, you lower yourself until you’re at eye level with her and resist the urge to chuckle as she tries to focus on you, blue eyes going cross-eyed, “Go back to sleep.”
Your voice is so low, so thick, you wonder if maybe she hasn’t heard you when she lies perfectly still, head turned, body sprawled, but then she gives a little noise of acknowledgement and you smile as she murmurs, “Aren’t you going to sleep too? We’ve still got an hour before we need to meet up.”
You shake your head and reach up to brush back a patch of bright blonde that’s slipped down and draped itself across her eyes, ignoring the way she unconsciously leans into your touch and lets her eyes drift shut, “No, I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep in time, anyway. I’ll just watch the sunrise.”
You think of all the times as a child you rose with that gigantic star, so eager, so bright, so ready to meet the day. You remember watching as the large, looming shadows of the lobby were chased away by invading streams of light, scared of being touched, afraid of being burned, and you remember how you admired the sun for being able to do that, for taking away all the darkness. And then you remember seeing one solitary shadow ruining the whole effect, growing itself along the cold marble floor beneath your bare feet, and you looked up with such horror and such hope.
It was never your mother to greet you with a soft good morning and a hug. It was always her driver, to tell you that she’d be gone again for the night. You gave up hope so long ago. Sunrises will always remind you of that.
“Hey, Emily?”
Looking down as you stand over the bed, knees weak, you stare at her half-blonde, half-mascaraed eyelashes and reach down with a slender hand, letting her touch hers to yours, “Yes?”
“Sunrises make my heart ache, too.”
She puffs out a breath onto your fingertips as you pull your hand back up to yourself and you resist the urge to touch her lips, to feel the soft pink surface and understand just what you could be kissing. She snuggles deeper into the bed, into your Yale sweater, and as she pulls the worn navy up to her chin and breathes in deeply, you wonder if she does that with anyone else’s things.
“Thank you, JJ.”
No response. She’s already fast asleep.
**
Her body is so beautiful, shadows and moonlight dancing across her skin. Lips falling open, she breathes in in gasps and the enraptured look on her face almost makes you forget the way she’s raking her fingernails across your back, but you can’t quite push away the sting and you squeeze her tightly, hoping to somehow convey to her that she’ s hurting you.
Not that she hasn’t always been hurting you to begin with.
She seems to get the unspoken message and she wraps her arms around you instead, palms flat and smooth. Fumbling, you bump noses with her a couple of times before you finally make it to your mark and your lips crash onto hers, rough and chapped on smooth and sweet. She makes a little noise at the back of her throat, like she’s got a name caught back there, but you’re not sure you really want to hear it so you press closer, tongue slipping between her teeth and brushing up against the roof of her mouth. She gives a little muffled giggle and pushes your tongue away with hers.
“That tickles.”
She’s breathless and you notice she’s not the only one who’s breathing heavily as you respond, “Sorry. I thought you liked that.”
Her thighs hurt your hips as she clamps them tightly around you and you push into her with a little more resolve, a little bit of vengeance. The bed creaks as she pushes back and sinks the both of you into the mattress, and your head lolls, giving her lips access to the flushed skin of your neck. She nips here and there, dropping words every so often, “Well, I don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
You tug on her hair gently and she releases the fold of skin she’s got caught between her teeth, leaving a mark you know you’ll have to cover tomorrow with the collar of your shirt and a well-chosen neck tie. The boys will make fun of you for it, but it’s a price you’re more than willing to pay. As she gyrates against you, you hold her close and wonder why she’s never moaned your name.
“Hey, JJ?”
She reaches forward and grips the back of your head with a steady hand, the other reaching down between the two of you to press warmly against your abs, “Yeah?”
There’s a hot trembling just beneath where her palm is pressed and you shiver as the feeling starts to ebb out into the rest of your body. You know she’s close too, from the way that her brow’s furrowed and her head is dipped. She’s got her lower lip caught between her teeth now, nose flaring sharply with each desperate breath, and you want to reach up and get her to stop worrying her lip but your hands are grasping her waist too tightly to let go, “Do you love me?”
You think she might have came as you said that, but from the way that her eyes snap open and her head snaps up instead of back, you know she hasn’t, “W-what?”
You have your answer, just as you always have. Leaning forward, you kiss her, pushing one last time, one hard last time, and she makes a breathless sound, mouth open in the silent cry of a name you somehow know is not yours. She holds onto you so tightly you think maybe she actually needs you, in this one timeless moment, but then all of a sudden she’s down, she’s back, and as she pushes her hair out of her eyes and slides off of you, you realize with a vague sinking feeling that maybe she was never really here with you to begin with.
“I’m taking a shower now, don’t come in here with me,” she says, giving a little laugh, and then she’s dancing off into the bathroom, skin gleaming in the darkness and twinkling some sort of goodbye to you in post-coital Morse code.
You nod, knowing that she can’t see you and not really caring, and then you reach down beneath the covers and pull off the condom, tossing it into the garbage bin across the room. As the shower begins to run, you slip back into your boxers and pull on your shirt, and then your pants and shoes come on and you’re trekking off to the hotel lobby, looking for some beer. By the time you find a decent six pack and make it back to the room, she’s already done and in bed.
You sit down and crack open a can.
You love her.
You just wish you knew who she loved.
**
You think it’s heartrending, the way she presents herself to the world. So fragile. So young.
You wish she wasn’t crying.
She’s hunched into herself as she sits precariously on the edge of the toilet seat, cover down, and as she reaches up to rub the heels of her palms against her already swelling eyelids, you rush into the stall and stop her.
“Don’t. It’s not clean.”
Her head’s dipped down and you can’t see her face, but you know she’s frowning, “Leave me alone.”
She yanks her hands out of your cold fingers and moves to touch her eyes again, but you catch her in time. You try to ignore the harsh rebuff of her teary demand, but each syllable pushes at you like they’re real, “I said, don’t, JJ.”
For a moment, you’re prepared to brace yourself for a push, a blow, something, but even as you feel the muscles beneath her skin ripple, she’s already stopped. Instead, she falls forward, body racked with what you can only assume are the sobs of the heartbroken, and as her head comes to a stop against your abdomen, forehead pressed into the warm cushion of your abs, you step in closer and gently let go of her hands.
“JJ, what’s going on?”
The answer you get is in tears and sniffles and breathless little gasps for air, and you feel each and every shard of sorrow burrow into your stomach like they’re your own. A puddle’s forming on the warm grey wool of your sweater but you ignore it, willing the article of clothing to take away her pain though you know all too well that it, and you, can’t.
You wrap your arms around her now, tender and caring, and when she sinks into you and snakes her arms around your waist, you let yourself tangle a few fingers into her hair, marvelling at the silky smoothness and the warmth the back of her neck seems to effortlessly exude. She seems to make a small keening noise as you touch her and you give in, burying a hand in her golden mane and pressing her closer to you. You want to take her into you. You want to make her yours.
“Emily…”
Her voice is so raw, broken. Your name, usually bright and rich on her tongue, falls like the teardrops dripping onto your stomach and it makes you tremble with an urgent need to make it all go away. Yet, you don’t know what to do. You don’t even know what it is. You begin to rub comforting circles along the curve of her back with your free hand, the other gently massaging the base of her neck, but it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough.
“JJ…. What is it? You can tell me. Please.”
It seems your words are doing nothing for her except making it worse. She lets out such a strangled yelp that you can’t help a small hurt whine of your own and before you know it, she’s pulled away from you with such ferocity that she nearly throws herself off of her seat on the toilet. When she looks up at you, you choke on your eerily still heart.
“JJ?”
Broken. Heart. Pain. Ache. You want to take her into the shower with you and wash away all his sins, but he’s crawled inside. Oh, he’s crawled inside.
“Emily…” Gasp, “Emily…”
She’s your angel and you’re her God, but you know you two are nothing. You two are nothing.
“…. I’m pregnant.”
She runs out of the stall and out of the bathroom, door bouncing off the cracked tile wall, and it’s all you can do to just stand there. An eternity passes in all those seconds, and all you can do is stand there.
Lifetimes pass, and all you can do is stand there.
You fall.
**
“Will…”
She seems oddly subdued tonight, as the both of you settle into bed and she pushes your beseeching hand from her side. She’s never really openly sought your touch before, but she’s never openly rebuked it, either. You stay propped up on an elbow and give her a long, searching look, “JJ. What’s wrong.”
Her eyes seem to blame you for not putting the customary lilt of an inquiry on the end of your last word, but you can’t bring yourself to really care. She’s lying on the far-most edge of the bed and any further away from you, she’s going to fall off, and it bugs you, the way she’s running.
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
Pitter patter, pitter patter. The sounds of her lies, the sounds of her strides. They trample all over your heart, “No, you’re not.”
She sits up and looks at you, really looks at you, and you’re surprised at just how much hate and anger there is in the endless blue depths of her eyes. You realize you’ve overstepped some sort of invisible line, but for the life of you, you can’t figure out which one, “And how would you know that, Will?”
The venom in her voice bothers you a lot more than it really should, you think, just as you realize that the idea of there being an invisible line set up that you can’t cross does as well. You’re supposed to be a couple, you’re supposed to be in love. There shouldn’t have been any overstepping involved because it’s not like there’s anything to overstep. Except, of course, there is.
There always has been.
“JJ, I know the cases you get at the BAU are tiring, but you’ve never been like this before…”
Her eyes widen in shock.
“Don’t tell me what I would or wouldn’t be like, Will! You don’t know the first thing about the cases the BAU takes because you’re not a part of it.”
For a second, you’re shocked beyond words. She sits, rigid, bristling, on her side of the bed with one leg flung over the side as though in preparation to flee, and you’d reach over to pull it back in but you don’t have the heart to touch her. Not now. Not when she looks like she’d rather be murdered than let your hands reach her, “W-what do you mean by that?”
She scoffs, runs a hand through her hair until the strands arch a little too far away from her forehead, “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” you push, and you half expect her to just get up and leave now, but she doesn’t, “JJ, it’s not nothing. What’s wrong? I’m only worried ‘bout you, is all.”
Your attempt at a caring wheedle falls flat as she fails to turn to face you, and this time, she really does get up to leave. Reaching back, she picks up her pillow before bending down for her discarded pants and her wrinkled blue dress shirt. By the time she speaks again, she’s straightened up and has walked to the doorway, “I’m sleeping on the couch tonight. Don’t try and come for me.”
You remember all those times she’s used the same phrase on you, only in relation to the shower, and only in a sort of mock seriousness. Now, her eyes bore into you like two large, sharp, serrated meat knives, and you’re surprised you’re not bleeding from two holes in your chest, “Al-alright.”
She gives you another long look and mutters, “Goodnight.” and then she’s out the door and into the hallway, down the darkened stretch and into your living room, and you hear the coils squeak as she settles onto the couch and throws something over herself, probably her coat that she left lying there before she came to bed with you.
“Goodnight.”
As you lie down onto your cold mattress and rest your head on your pillow, you wonder just where you two went wrong, and how much worse this could all get. Sleep claims you pretty late into the night and when the sunlight creeps between your eyelids, you’ve barely slept a wink.
Padding out into your living room, you find the couch and your entire flat empty.
Somehow, you’re not surprised.
Sighing, you slink outside onto your patio and run a hand through your hair.
At least she hasn’t broken up with you yet.
It’s only a matter of time.
**
You’re sitting on the bench outside of the Academy when it hits you: the first drop of what appears to be one very major thunderstorm.
You hope you’ll get struck by lightning. You know you more than deserve it.
Somehow, things have devolved into something you’ve absolutely no hold over, and it scares you, someone who’s prided herself in always having complete control over everything. Hotch may be the leader of this team, but it’s really you who pulls the strings.
Yet, how badly you’ve let things become.
As the rain begins to come down in earnest, you can’t help but tilt your head back and let the raindrops fall onto your face. Maybe they’ll wash away all your pain. Maybe they’ll cleanse you of your sins. You sigh and look back down, eyelashes heavy with water droplets. You’ll need to cut yourself open to make that come true, and right now, you’re not sure that you could afford to split yourself anymore than you already have, else you’ll become a splintered, fractured mess of what you used to be.
You swear you can feel the baby kick at you in your barely swelling stomach, but you know better than that. It’s just an embryo. A secret borne from something you wish you’d never indulged in. You wish you could just finish digesting it and let it pass through, but then, anatomically or not, you know that can’t be right. You hope that it’ll have dark brown hair and eyes, but genetics beg to differ. Still, you’d love it just a little bit more if maybe you knew it wouldn’t stare at you with wide blue eyes not your shade of crystalline.
God. When did things become so twisted?
Hand rubbing absent-mindedly at the invisible bump in your abdomen, you sigh and brush sagging strands of soggy blonde from your eyes. The dark blue of your jeans is turning a molten black from the rain and you know that if you don’t get inside and get dry soon, you’ll not only be endangering the baby but you’ll also be putting yourself up for a cold. Still, even the thought of having to suffer through the sickness or hurting the baby can’t bring you to get up and go. You can’t face Emily, since you know she knows and she’s pretending she doesn’t. You can’t face Hotch, because he’s seen your cell phone buzzing incessantly on your desk and has caught a glimpse of the caller you’re ignoring. You can’t face yourself, because you know that if there was anyone who could’ve stopped this, it was you, and yet you hadn’t.
It’s so stupid. So wrong. So you sit yourself on a bench outside in the pouring rain and hope that you’ll either come out clean on the other side, or you’ll possibly die from pneumonia. Such morbid thoughts.
You sigh. It’s your life that’s morbid.
The sound of heavy footsteps, sudden and intrusive, makes you look up, and what you see makes you wish you could wash away with the rain and disappear into the sewer grates. From the one side, Emily is quietly striding out of the Academy, hands in her pockets, eyes focussed on anything but you. From the other, Will is slowly walking in from the parking lot, purposeful and direct, an umbrella in his firm grasp. You’re sitting right between them, head in your hands, and you wonder if maybe God put you all up to this: some obscene, twisted physical representation of your lives playing out like a corny soap opera.
“JJ.”
You don’t know who said it first, Emily or Will. You don’t particularly care, “Go away.”
The two of them stand there, like guard dogs, carefully attentive and bristling. Deciding in the midst of your silence that it’d be best to acknowledge each other, Emily gives a slow nod of her head, “Detective.” while Will raises two fingers, “Agent.”
From where you sit, it looks like Will’s fingers form the barrel of a gun, and he’s cocking it to shoot. You wonder if he’s really that perceptive, if he’d somehow become smart enough to know that Emily’s the right target to aim at. You scoff as he lowers his hand and turns to look at you, extending his other one to make his deep navy umbrella hover over you. If he’d really been that astute, he would have known that you don’t want to escape from the rain. It’s not the rain you want to escape from.
“You should come back inside, JJ. It’s raining pretty hard. You’ll catch a cold.”
Emily’s bangs are beginning to droop into her unreadable eyes as thick wet drops fall onto them, but the brunette makes no move to brush the offending fringe away. Instead, she stares down at you, gaze heavy, and you can’t help but shiver as you shake your head, “I’m fine out here.”
She doesn’t move to respond, so Will decides to step up, take his turn, “At least come into the car with me, then. We’ll get you dried up, keep the baby warm.”
For some odd reason, you find yourself almost proud when Emily bristles at Will’s words, almost like the fighter you’re championing has stepped up from their corner and is ready to brawl. When Emily imperceptibly moves forward, closer to Will, and stands up to her full height, you quiver in anticipation.
“I’d like to keep JJ warm too,” Emily begins, tone deceptively conversational for uttering words so accusing, “I’m sure Penelope has a couple of extra blankets in her office she could lend out.”
“I’d be glad to take them,” Will replies easily, placing a hand on your shoulder, “And then I can drive JJ home.”
It’s almost like you’re not here anymore, like it’s just them two, stalking around each other and defending their territory. Defending you. You shrug off Will’s hand, “I’m not going anywhere, Will. Go home.”
“JJ… ”
He reaches for you again, despite the fact that you’ve already rebuffed him, and when you shrink away, Emily seems unable to restrain herself any longer, and takes a step between the two of you.
“You heard her, Detective.”
It’s not rare for Emily to be stepping into what she knows is other people’s business, but for her to come between two people in something so intimate makes you feel slightly guilty, like you’ve forced her hand. Will looks between the two of you, incredulous at Emily’s gall, incredulous at your lack of response, and when you look down and away instead of defending him, he takes a step back.
“Right. Well, I can see when I’m not needed.”
He looks at you again, this time less accusing, more pleading, but you refuse to give him any sort of response and he sighs. You feel like you owe it to him, to the baby, to at least give him some sort of explanation, an apology, maybe, but the gentle warmth of Emily’s body standing just in front of you makes the way Will gives you one final, baleful glance hurt a lot less than it should. And then he’s gone.
“…Emily…”
You half expect her to turn to you and maybe put a gentle hand on your shoulder, but she doesn’t. It surprises you when she simply steps forward and away, her strong, solid back the only thing she lets you see, “Don’t.”
“…What?”
“I don’t fight your battles, JJ, and I most certainly don’t stand around to fend off your men. If you don’t want him, at least have the heart to let him know. Otherwise, deal with it.”
Harsh words softened only by the slight sagging of her shoulders, Emily finally, finally turns to face you. The look on her face borders on disappointment, anger, hurt, and some sort of vague, distant sadness, and when she opens her mouth to speak again, her voice breaks:
“None of us need to be strung along by you any longer.”
With that, she turns and heads off, back into the Academy, back into where you really can’t go. The rain hasn’t let up any yet and you’re beginning to feel the first signs of a cold, but Will’s disappointment and Emily’s words keep you from being able to move. It’s not because you’re afraid of what Emily’s said. It’s more the fact that you know that what Emily’s said is true.
You’ve been so stupid.
Standing, you push your hair back and begin to walk away, figuring that by the time you make it to your car, you’ll have some legitimate excuse made up to offer to Hotch on why you’re taking the rest of the week off. Not that he doesn’t probably already know exactly what you’re going to say. Still, you wish that someone could tell you, or could have told you, before things got so out of hand.
You’ve always been hanging onto her. Now all she wants is to let go of you.
You sigh. “I’m sorry.”
Somehow, you can hear Emily’s response, though the woman’s probably already at her desk and working, “It’s a little too late for that.”
You get into your car and cry.
**
Pairing: JJ/Emily, JJ/Will
Rating: M
Summary: “Pitter patter, pitter patter. The sounds of her lies, the sounds of her strides. They trample all over your heart.”
Warnings: Mentions of not-so-subtle het!sex, but it’s for the sake of the story so try to bear with me. This is also kind of all AU except for one tiny, baby sized fact. Other than that, we should all be okay.
AN: This has actually been sitting around on my laptop for the longest time, possibly for the better part of three weeks, but I've been having issues with finishing it because a) I've recently started working and a 9-5-and-sometimes-longer work day kind of makes writing difficult for me and b) I just have issues with finishing fics in general. Anyway, I kind of forced the ending here so I could get it over with and post. Hopefully it works out. :S
**
“I don’t think I’ve ever really loved anyone before.”
“… So. Do I count as your first?”
A smile. Her lips are so soft, so light. Against yours that are unworthy, she feels almost angelic.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
**
For once, just for once, you want to be a little less pathetic.
You think that maybe all you’ve really wanted is for her to look at you with a little less pity, a little less sad understanding. You want her to turn and face you with a smile, not a tension-filled mask. You’re not a burden to her. She must, after all, love you.
That’s what you think. That she loves you.
She smiles and laughs, so carefree, so happy, but the way she clutches your hand half like you’re a possession and half like she wants you to go says so many things that the twinkle in her eyes can’t silence. You squeeze back with a little bit of love, a little bit of faith, but she slips out of your grasp and she’s laughing, waving, she’s escaping and you find that if she’d just keep laughing like that, you could really let her go.
You’d really let her go.
You give yourself a little shake and tell yourself to stop it as she rounds the corner and bolts off to the concession stand. The way she flirtingly tells the boy manning the stand that she wants extra butter on her popcorn makes your heart jolt and you almost jut yourself into her side to glare at him, but he knows better when he sees your stubble-roughened face. It’s almost a concession, like he’s admitting defeat even before the fight begins. No-one’s going to challenge you for her when she makes you all seem so unworthy.
She’s digging in long before you make it to your seats and you almost feel the need to ruffle her hair like you would a little kid, but the way she walks, one hip heavier than the other, reminds you that even now on the pseudo-date you coerced her into while lying under the covers, she’s still carrying her gun. Armed, ready, and one hell of a shot, you move your shaking hand to the popcorn bag instead and get slapped away, the pout on her lips buttery from the extra dressing. She reprimands you like you’re the one who’s going to finish all the popcorn before the movie starts and as you watch her laugh, you don’t have the heart to say otherwise. Taking it like the man you think she wants you to be, you sigh:
“Fine, I won’t eat any of it.”
“Good,” she grins in return, dipping her hand in and gobbling another mouthful, “I bought it.”
You scoff, “Yeah. With my money.”
The exchange is good natured as is the slippery punch she lands on your shoulder, and you can’t help but look at the oily imprint of her knuckles she leaves behind on your shirt. Looking up, you find she’s already pulled ahead, athletic legs toned and efficient.
“Hey, wait for me.”
She turns around and gives you a schoolgirl beam, all wide-eyed and bright, and when you catch up to her, she throws an arm around your broad shoulders and whispers, “Always.”
Somehow, you don’t think that’s true.
**
Sunrises have always made your heart ache. You told her that, the first time you stayed up together, working hard on a case.
“I think sunrises give you hope.”
The answer you got back was so childlike, so just like her, and the hesitant smile she paired it with made your heart ache too, because she seemed so scared of contradicting you. You wanted to tell her that you’re not perfect, that there’s a story behind the pain and that you’d love to share it with her, but her eyes were making it so hard to speak at the time, so you hadn’t.
Staring up at the first rays of sunlight seeping in through your curtains, you wish you had. At least then you would have had someone on the team to share this small, painful moment with.
She’s sleeping on your bed, denim-clad legs splayed on top of the covers. Her hair is mussed, her make-up’s smudged, but to you, she couldn’t have looked any more beautiful. You shouldn’t have let her work so much last night, you should have sent her back to her room, but the way she looked at you, puppy dog, kiddie pout, made the bed seem so much closer than the door, so you’d let her stay. Now she’s got file folders pressed under her head and your old faded Yale sweater draped across her chest and somehow, you can’t shake the feeling that she looks so yours.
You rise up from your perch on the edge of the bed and the mattress squeaks, undipping itself as it loses your weight. She’s not yours. She’s not anyone’s.
“….Emily?”
You turn around as you hear her moan, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand and coming awake, “Hey, did I wake you?”
She smiles at you in her breathtaking way, white teeth gleaming ever so slightly in the rapidly pinkening darkness, “Kind of. Yeah.” She pauses and sighs, voice still rough with sleep and eyelids at half-mast, “What time is it?”
You catch a glimpse of the clock in your peripheral vision, eyes never leaving hers, but you don’t need to look, don’t want to look, “Sometime around five, five thirty-ish.”
“Mmmm,” she gives a little moan and squirms a bit, curling herself deeper into the still-made covers, “It’s early.”
Kneeling down beside the bed, you lower yourself until you’re at eye level with her and resist the urge to chuckle as she tries to focus on you, blue eyes going cross-eyed, “Go back to sleep.”
Your voice is so low, so thick, you wonder if maybe she hasn’t heard you when she lies perfectly still, head turned, body sprawled, but then she gives a little noise of acknowledgement and you smile as she murmurs, “Aren’t you going to sleep too? We’ve still got an hour before we need to meet up.”
You shake your head and reach up to brush back a patch of bright blonde that’s slipped down and draped itself across her eyes, ignoring the way she unconsciously leans into your touch and lets her eyes drift shut, “No, I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep in time, anyway. I’ll just watch the sunrise.”
You think of all the times as a child you rose with that gigantic star, so eager, so bright, so ready to meet the day. You remember watching as the large, looming shadows of the lobby were chased away by invading streams of light, scared of being touched, afraid of being burned, and you remember how you admired the sun for being able to do that, for taking away all the darkness. And then you remember seeing one solitary shadow ruining the whole effect, growing itself along the cold marble floor beneath your bare feet, and you looked up with such horror and such hope.
It was never your mother to greet you with a soft good morning and a hug. It was always her driver, to tell you that she’d be gone again for the night. You gave up hope so long ago. Sunrises will always remind you of that.
“Hey, Emily?”
Looking down as you stand over the bed, knees weak, you stare at her half-blonde, half-mascaraed eyelashes and reach down with a slender hand, letting her touch hers to yours, “Yes?”
“Sunrises make my heart ache, too.”
She puffs out a breath onto your fingertips as you pull your hand back up to yourself and you resist the urge to touch her lips, to feel the soft pink surface and understand just what you could be kissing. She snuggles deeper into the bed, into your Yale sweater, and as she pulls the worn navy up to her chin and breathes in deeply, you wonder if she does that with anyone else’s things.
“Thank you, JJ.”
No response. She’s already fast asleep.
**
Her body is so beautiful, shadows and moonlight dancing across her skin. Lips falling open, she breathes in in gasps and the enraptured look on her face almost makes you forget the way she’s raking her fingernails across your back, but you can’t quite push away the sting and you squeeze her tightly, hoping to somehow convey to her that she’ s hurting you.
Not that she hasn’t always been hurting you to begin with.
She seems to get the unspoken message and she wraps her arms around you instead, palms flat and smooth. Fumbling, you bump noses with her a couple of times before you finally make it to your mark and your lips crash onto hers, rough and chapped on smooth and sweet. She makes a little noise at the back of her throat, like she’s got a name caught back there, but you’re not sure you really want to hear it so you press closer, tongue slipping between her teeth and brushing up against the roof of her mouth. She gives a little muffled giggle and pushes your tongue away with hers.
“That tickles.”
She’s breathless and you notice she’s not the only one who’s breathing heavily as you respond, “Sorry. I thought you liked that.”
Her thighs hurt your hips as she clamps them tightly around you and you push into her with a little more resolve, a little bit of vengeance. The bed creaks as she pushes back and sinks the both of you into the mattress, and your head lolls, giving her lips access to the flushed skin of your neck. She nips here and there, dropping words every so often, “Well, I don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
You tug on her hair gently and she releases the fold of skin she’s got caught between her teeth, leaving a mark you know you’ll have to cover tomorrow with the collar of your shirt and a well-chosen neck tie. The boys will make fun of you for it, but it’s a price you’re more than willing to pay. As she gyrates against you, you hold her close and wonder why she’s never moaned your name.
“Hey, JJ?”
She reaches forward and grips the back of your head with a steady hand, the other reaching down between the two of you to press warmly against your abs, “Yeah?”
There’s a hot trembling just beneath where her palm is pressed and you shiver as the feeling starts to ebb out into the rest of your body. You know she’s close too, from the way that her brow’s furrowed and her head is dipped. She’s got her lower lip caught between her teeth now, nose flaring sharply with each desperate breath, and you want to reach up and get her to stop worrying her lip but your hands are grasping her waist too tightly to let go, “Do you love me?”
You think she might have came as you said that, but from the way that her eyes snap open and her head snaps up instead of back, you know she hasn’t, “W-what?”
You have your answer, just as you always have. Leaning forward, you kiss her, pushing one last time, one hard last time, and she makes a breathless sound, mouth open in the silent cry of a name you somehow know is not yours. She holds onto you so tightly you think maybe she actually needs you, in this one timeless moment, but then all of a sudden she’s down, she’s back, and as she pushes her hair out of her eyes and slides off of you, you realize with a vague sinking feeling that maybe she was never really here with you to begin with.
“I’m taking a shower now, don’t come in here with me,” she says, giving a little laugh, and then she’s dancing off into the bathroom, skin gleaming in the darkness and twinkling some sort of goodbye to you in post-coital Morse code.
You nod, knowing that she can’t see you and not really caring, and then you reach down beneath the covers and pull off the condom, tossing it into the garbage bin across the room. As the shower begins to run, you slip back into your boxers and pull on your shirt, and then your pants and shoes come on and you’re trekking off to the hotel lobby, looking for some beer. By the time you find a decent six pack and make it back to the room, she’s already done and in bed.
You sit down and crack open a can.
You love her.
You just wish you knew who she loved.
**
You think it’s heartrending, the way she presents herself to the world. So fragile. So young.
You wish she wasn’t crying.
She’s hunched into herself as she sits precariously on the edge of the toilet seat, cover down, and as she reaches up to rub the heels of her palms against her already swelling eyelids, you rush into the stall and stop her.
“Don’t. It’s not clean.”
Her head’s dipped down and you can’t see her face, but you know she’s frowning, “Leave me alone.”
She yanks her hands out of your cold fingers and moves to touch her eyes again, but you catch her in time. You try to ignore the harsh rebuff of her teary demand, but each syllable pushes at you like they’re real, “I said, don’t, JJ.”
For a moment, you’re prepared to brace yourself for a push, a blow, something, but even as you feel the muscles beneath her skin ripple, she’s already stopped. Instead, she falls forward, body racked with what you can only assume are the sobs of the heartbroken, and as her head comes to a stop against your abdomen, forehead pressed into the warm cushion of your abs, you step in closer and gently let go of her hands.
“JJ, what’s going on?”
The answer you get is in tears and sniffles and breathless little gasps for air, and you feel each and every shard of sorrow burrow into your stomach like they’re your own. A puddle’s forming on the warm grey wool of your sweater but you ignore it, willing the article of clothing to take away her pain though you know all too well that it, and you, can’t.
You wrap your arms around her now, tender and caring, and when she sinks into you and snakes her arms around your waist, you let yourself tangle a few fingers into her hair, marvelling at the silky smoothness and the warmth the back of her neck seems to effortlessly exude. She seems to make a small keening noise as you touch her and you give in, burying a hand in her golden mane and pressing her closer to you. You want to take her into you. You want to make her yours.
“Emily…”
Her voice is so raw, broken. Your name, usually bright and rich on her tongue, falls like the teardrops dripping onto your stomach and it makes you tremble with an urgent need to make it all go away. Yet, you don’t know what to do. You don’t even know what it is. You begin to rub comforting circles along the curve of her back with your free hand, the other gently massaging the base of her neck, but it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough.
“JJ…. What is it? You can tell me. Please.”
It seems your words are doing nothing for her except making it worse. She lets out such a strangled yelp that you can’t help a small hurt whine of your own and before you know it, she’s pulled away from you with such ferocity that she nearly throws herself off of her seat on the toilet. When she looks up at you, you choke on your eerily still heart.
“JJ?”
Broken. Heart. Pain. Ache. You want to take her into the shower with you and wash away all his sins, but he’s crawled inside. Oh, he’s crawled inside.
“Emily…” Gasp, “Emily…”
She’s your angel and you’re her God, but you know you two are nothing. You two are nothing.
“…. I’m pregnant.”
She runs out of the stall and out of the bathroom, door bouncing off the cracked tile wall, and it’s all you can do to just stand there. An eternity passes in all those seconds, and all you can do is stand there.
Lifetimes pass, and all you can do is stand there.
You fall.
**
“Will…”
She seems oddly subdued tonight, as the both of you settle into bed and she pushes your beseeching hand from her side. She’s never really openly sought your touch before, but she’s never openly rebuked it, either. You stay propped up on an elbow and give her a long, searching look, “JJ. What’s wrong.”
Her eyes seem to blame you for not putting the customary lilt of an inquiry on the end of your last word, but you can’t bring yourself to really care. She’s lying on the far-most edge of the bed and any further away from you, she’s going to fall off, and it bugs you, the way she’s running.
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
Pitter patter, pitter patter. The sounds of her lies, the sounds of her strides. They trample all over your heart, “No, you’re not.”
She sits up and looks at you, really looks at you, and you’re surprised at just how much hate and anger there is in the endless blue depths of her eyes. You realize you’ve overstepped some sort of invisible line, but for the life of you, you can’t figure out which one, “And how would you know that, Will?”
The venom in her voice bothers you a lot more than it really should, you think, just as you realize that the idea of there being an invisible line set up that you can’t cross does as well. You’re supposed to be a couple, you’re supposed to be in love. There shouldn’t have been any overstepping involved because it’s not like there’s anything to overstep. Except, of course, there is.
There always has been.
“JJ, I know the cases you get at the BAU are tiring, but you’ve never been like this before…”
Her eyes widen in shock.
“Don’t tell me what I would or wouldn’t be like, Will! You don’t know the first thing about the cases the BAU takes because you’re not a part of it.”
For a second, you’re shocked beyond words. She sits, rigid, bristling, on her side of the bed with one leg flung over the side as though in preparation to flee, and you’d reach over to pull it back in but you don’t have the heart to touch her. Not now. Not when she looks like she’d rather be murdered than let your hands reach her, “W-what do you mean by that?”
She scoffs, runs a hand through her hair until the strands arch a little too far away from her forehead, “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” you push, and you half expect her to just get up and leave now, but she doesn’t, “JJ, it’s not nothing. What’s wrong? I’m only worried ‘bout you, is all.”
Your attempt at a caring wheedle falls flat as she fails to turn to face you, and this time, she really does get up to leave. Reaching back, she picks up her pillow before bending down for her discarded pants and her wrinkled blue dress shirt. By the time she speaks again, she’s straightened up and has walked to the doorway, “I’m sleeping on the couch tonight. Don’t try and come for me.”
You remember all those times she’s used the same phrase on you, only in relation to the shower, and only in a sort of mock seriousness. Now, her eyes bore into you like two large, sharp, serrated meat knives, and you’re surprised you’re not bleeding from two holes in your chest, “Al-alright.”
She gives you another long look and mutters, “Goodnight.” and then she’s out the door and into the hallway, down the darkened stretch and into your living room, and you hear the coils squeak as she settles onto the couch and throws something over herself, probably her coat that she left lying there before she came to bed with you.
“Goodnight.”
As you lie down onto your cold mattress and rest your head on your pillow, you wonder just where you two went wrong, and how much worse this could all get. Sleep claims you pretty late into the night and when the sunlight creeps between your eyelids, you’ve barely slept a wink.
Padding out into your living room, you find the couch and your entire flat empty.
Somehow, you’re not surprised.
Sighing, you slink outside onto your patio and run a hand through your hair.
At least she hasn’t broken up with you yet.
It’s only a matter of time.
**
You’re sitting on the bench outside of the Academy when it hits you: the first drop of what appears to be one very major thunderstorm.
You hope you’ll get struck by lightning. You know you more than deserve it.
Somehow, things have devolved into something you’ve absolutely no hold over, and it scares you, someone who’s prided herself in always having complete control over everything. Hotch may be the leader of this team, but it’s really you who pulls the strings.
Yet, how badly you’ve let things become.
As the rain begins to come down in earnest, you can’t help but tilt your head back and let the raindrops fall onto your face. Maybe they’ll wash away all your pain. Maybe they’ll cleanse you of your sins. You sigh and look back down, eyelashes heavy with water droplets. You’ll need to cut yourself open to make that come true, and right now, you’re not sure that you could afford to split yourself anymore than you already have, else you’ll become a splintered, fractured mess of what you used to be.
You swear you can feel the baby kick at you in your barely swelling stomach, but you know better than that. It’s just an embryo. A secret borne from something you wish you’d never indulged in. You wish you could just finish digesting it and let it pass through, but then, anatomically or not, you know that can’t be right. You hope that it’ll have dark brown hair and eyes, but genetics beg to differ. Still, you’d love it just a little bit more if maybe you knew it wouldn’t stare at you with wide blue eyes not your shade of crystalline.
God. When did things become so twisted?
Hand rubbing absent-mindedly at the invisible bump in your abdomen, you sigh and brush sagging strands of soggy blonde from your eyes. The dark blue of your jeans is turning a molten black from the rain and you know that if you don’t get inside and get dry soon, you’ll not only be endangering the baby but you’ll also be putting yourself up for a cold. Still, even the thought of having to suffer through the sickness or hurting the baby can’t bring you to get up and go. You can’t face Emily, since you know she knows and she’s pretending she doesn’t. You can’t face Hotch, because he’s seen your cell phone buzzing incessantly on your desk and has caught a glimpse of the caller you’re ignoring. You can’t face yourself, because you know that if there was anyone who could’ve stopped this, it was you, and yet you hadn’t.
It’s so stupid. So wrong. So you sit yourself on a bench outside in the pouring rain and hope that you’ll either come out clean on the other side, or you’ll possibly die from pneumonia. Such morbid thoughts.
You sigh. It’s your life that’s morbid.
The sound of heavy footsteps, sudden and intrusive, makes you look up, and what you see makes you wish you could wash away with the rain and disappear into the sewer grates. From the one side, Emily is quietly striding out of the Academy, hands in her pockets, eyes focussed on anything but you. From the other, Will is slowly walking in from the parking lot, purposeful and direct, an umbrella in his firm grasp. You’re sitting right between them, head in your hands, and you wonder if maybe God put you all up to this: some obscene, twisted physical representation of your lives playing out like a corny soap opera.
“JJ.”
You don’t know who said it first, Emily or Will. You don’t particularly care, “Go away.”
The two of them stand there, like guard dogs, carefully attentive and bristling. Deciding in the midst of your silence that it’d be best to acknowledge each other, Emily gives a slow nod of her head, “Detective.” while Will raises two fingers, “Agent.”
From where you sit, it looks like Will’s fingers form the barrel of a gun, and he’s cocking it to shoot. You wonder if he’s really that perceptive, if he’d somehow become smart enough to know that Emily’s the right target to aim at. You scoff as he lowers his hand and turns to look at you, extending his other one to make his deep navy umbrella hover over you. If he’d really been that astute, he would have known that you don’t want to escape from the rain. It’s not the rain you want to escape from.
“You should come back inside, JJ. It’s raining pretty hard. You’ll catch a cold.”
Emily’s bangs are beginning to droop into her unreadable eyes as thick wet drops fall onto them, but the brunette makes no move to brush the offending fringe away. Instead, she stares down at you, gaze heavy, and you can’t help but shiver as you shake your head, “I’m fine out here.”
She doesn’t move to respond, so Will decides to step up, take his turn, “At least come into the car with me, then. We’ll get you dried up, keep the baby warm.”
For some odd reason, you find yourself almost proud when Emily bristles at Will’s words, almost like the fighter you’re championing has stepped up from their corner and is ready to brawl. When Emily imperceptibly moves forward, closer to Will, and stands up to her full height, you quiver in anticipation.
“I’d like to keep JJ warm too,” Emily begins, tone deceptively conversational for uttering words so accusing, “I’m sure Penelope has a couple of extra blankets in her office she could lend out.”
“I’d be glad to take them,” Will replies easily, placing a hand on your shoulder, “And then I can drive JJ home.”
It’s almost like you’re not here anymore, like it’s just them two, stalking around each other and defending their territory. Defending you. You shrug off Will’s hand, “I’m not going anywhere, Will. Go home.”
“JJ… ”
He reaches for you again, despite the fact that you’ve already rebuffed him, and when you shrink away, Emily seems unable to restrain herself any longer, and takes a step between the two of you.
“You heard her, Detective.”
It’s not rare for Emily to be stepping into what she knows is other people’s business, but for her to come between two people in something so intimate makes you feel slightly guilty, like you’ve forced her hand. Will looks between the two of you, incredulous at Emily’s gall, incredulous at your lack of response, and when you look down and away instead of defending him, he takes a step back.
“Right. Well, I can see when I’m not needed.”
He looks at you again, this time less accusing, more pleading, but you refuse to give him any sort of response and he sighs. You feel like you owe it to him, to the baby, to at least give him some sort of explanation, an apology, maybe, but the gentle warmth of Emily’s body standing just in front of you makes the way Will gives you one final, baleful glance hurt a lot less than it should. And then he’s gone.
“…Emily…”
You half expect her to turn to you and maybe put a gentle hand on your shoulder, but she doesn’t. It surprises you when she simply steps forward and away, her strong, solid back the only thing she lets you see, “Don’t.”
“…What?”
“I don’t fight your battles, JJ, and I most certainly don’t stand around to fend off your men. If you don’t want him, at least have the heart to let him know. Otherwise, deal with it.”
Harsh words softened only by the slight sagging of her shoulders, Emily finally, finally turns to face you. The look on her face borders on disappointment, anger, hurt, and some sort of vague, distant sadness, and when she opens her mouth to speak again, her voice breaks:
“None of us need to be strung along by you any longer.”
With that, she turns and heads off, back into the Academy, back into where you really can’t go. The rain hasn’t let up any yet and you’re beginning to feel the first signs of a cold, but Will’s disappointment and Emily’s words keep you from being able to move. It’s not because you’re afraid of what Emily’s said. It’s more the fact that you know that what Emily’s said is true.
You’ve been so stupid.
Standing, you push your hair back and begin to walk away, figuring that by the time you make it to your car, you’ll have some legitimate excuse made up to offer to Hotch on why you’re taking the rest of the week off. Not that he doesn’t probably already know exactly what you’re going to say. Still, you wish that someone could tell you, or could have told you, before things got so out of hand.
You’ve always been hanging onto her. Now all she wants is to let go of you.
You sigh. “I’m sorry.”
Somehow, you can hear Emily’s response, though the woman’s probably already at her desk and working, “It’s a little too late for that.”
You get into your car and cry.
**