Various cm_het_drabble Bits & Baubles
Title: Untitled
Pairing: Reid/Prentiss (sort of)
Prompt: What is wrong with you?
Rating: PG
Words: 489
Warnings: A naughty word; spoilers for Minimal Loss
It takes a long time for the bruising to fade. For days, he has to look at her, bruised and battered even through her flawless makeup, and all he can do is imagine how much worse she must look without it. He can't seem to stop staring, cataloging the colors, the pattern, the ways it changes her expressions. The ways in which it is all his fault.
Finally, she corners him by the coffee pot, holding his mug hostage until he looks her in the eye. "What is wrong with you?"
He doesn't pretend not to understand. Emily's got a way of cutting through his bullshit. Besides, he might never get his coffee otherwise. He leans back against the counter and twists his hands together in defeat. "Your face."
Emily sighs, but her eyes go soft almost instantly. "I told you that it wasn't your fault. I'm a big girl, Reid. I made that call, and I stand by it, and I'd do it again and again and again."
"I know. I just... why?" That's the real question. That's what's been crawling under his skin and into his dreams.
Emily sets the mug down. "Cyrus had a gun to your head, Reid. You'd already told him that you didn't know what he was talking about, and he already knew that one of us did. He was agitated and aggressive and I think he would have killed you right there if I'd let him think you might be lying to him. I couldn't have let that happen. I couldn't... I couldn't let him hurt you."
"But I let him hurt you! I just stood there, like..."
Emily interrupts him, leaning forward for emphasis, her eyes intent. "Like you had a gun in your face, Reid. Which you did."
"He could have killed you, Emily." Reid clenches his hands tight, like he's holding in a secret, and Emily instinctively reaches for them.
"But he didn't. And he wouldn't have. I'm a woman, Reid. Think about it. A man like Cyrus isn't going to shoot an unarmed woman. He never perceived me as any real threat. He left me alone and unguarded upstairs, for Christ's sake! He beat me to make a point, that's all. To assert control. But you?" She rubs Reid's hands, opening them up, and draws her fingertips across his palms until he swallows hard around the lump in his throat and twines their fingers together. "He would have killed you right there. And then I think I'd've had to kill that bastard with my bare hands. Show him what a real threat looks like."
She smiles a little, then, without thinking, brings his hands to her lips and kisses them. He lets her, watching her carefully for a moment before pulling her into his body, awkward and tentative, and wrapping his arms around her. "I'm sorry, Emily," he whispers against her hair.
"Well, I'm not," she murmurs back.
_______________
Title: The Mystery
Pairing: Reid/Elle
Prompt: Early
Rating: G
Words: 164
Warnings: None
Elle never changed her number. She left behind her Bureau-issued phone, of course, but her personal number has been the same since the day she turned in her badge.
Reid knows this because he gets texts from her every three months like clockwork. They always come on the ninth, and they are never words. They're pictures: the ocean, the ace of hearts, melting ice, a set of plastic fangs. If he didn't know better, he'd think they were random, but the Elle he knows always has a purpose, even if it's solely her own. He's never asked her what it is, because his favorite thing about her has always been the mystery.
She leaves little doubt, however, when she sends one two weeks early three years down the line. It's the arrivals and departures board of a train station in New Mexico, followed immediately by two Coronas on a crowded bar, followed finally by a question mark.
All he says in return is yes.
_______________
Title: Fire to Ash
Pairing: Elle/Hotch
Prompt: Remember
Rating: PG
Words: 247
Warnings: None
"Do you remember who were were?" Elle stretches, long and lithe, and rolls sideways out of the halo of his arms, her hair like a thunderhead around her face.
Hotch props himself up on an elbow. "What do you mean?"
"Before this."
"Before what?" Hotch cannot really recall a time when this did not exist, the low simmer between them, the constant and dangerous exchange of energy as unstable as a bomb.
That isn't what she's talking about, though. Elle draws one finger across a slant-wise slash at the side of his bare chest, then moves slowly down, tracing every single angry mark. Never one to flinch, Hotch feels something inside of him recoil, duck low down in his belly with revulsion, but he keeps his face steady.
When she has finished following the path of Foyet's knife, Elle takes Hotch's wrist and pulls his hand to her flushed chest, pressing his finger into the jagged scar there. "Before this," she says. "Before our insides looked like our outsides."
"Yes," Hotch answers, his tone measured. "I remember."
"Remind me, then," she says, her eyes sleepy and hooded and as haunted as they've ever been. "I look at you sometimes and..."
Her voice dissipates to nothing like the filmy tail of a comet, like fire to smoking ash, and the ache inside of them both is ancient as he pulls her back against him and makes promises he isn't sure he can keep, murmurs okay when nothing is.
_______________
Title: When the House is Falling Down
Pairing: Reid & JJ
Prompt: staring out the window
Rating: G
Words: 297
Warnings: None
Will isn't even home when she figures it out; he's -- well, she isn't exactly sure where he is, actually, which has been much the case in recent months, but he isn't home. She is standing at the front window, Henry on her hip, staring out at the lawn with its straggly rose-a-sharon bush and scorched-looking grass, when it hits her. It's over. Done. Finito. Kaput. Dead.
All of it.
The lawn. The house. The promises. Them. All malnourished and starved, burned and forgotten.
JJ is surprised to find that she doesn't really feel anything, and it isn't the strange numbness of grief or shock or defense. It's stone cold apathy. She's too young to have arrived here, she thinks, adjusting Henry against her body as his head lolls sleepily from side to side. But then, she is older than most women her age, has seen more than most with double her years. This is just a tiny blip on the radar of tragedy, and as such, it barely registers.
"All right, sweetheart," she whispers to her sleeping son. "When the house is falling down around you, you've got to get out, right? Right."
He's still asleep when she straps him into his car seat, and she gets behind the wheel and puts it in drive before she even considers where she might go. In the end, she doesn't really consider at all, just goes, and she isn't all that surprised to find herself in a familiar neighborhood when the road-fatigue sets in.
He'll be home. He's just like her, with nowhere to go on a Saturday night.
"JJ?" he says, answering within seconds of her knock. "Are you okay?"
"Hey, Spence." She smiles at him, wan and exhausted. "Mind if we come in?"
Title: Ideal
Pairing: Reid/JJ
Prompt: just kiss me
Rating: PG13
Words: 496
Warnings: A tiny bit of innuendo and some language.
Notes: This is a direct follow-up to When the House is Falling Down.
The arrangement, suffice it to say, is far from ideal. Spencer's apartment has one bedroom, no tub, and a neighbor to the left who wears more crosses than a nun and eyes her like she's shacking up with Satan himself. Every day for the past week-and-four-days, JJ has said, either to herself or to Henry or to Spencer, that this is a mess and she's sorry and she'll be out of here tomorrow at the latest. It's not like she can't afford a place of her own; she just needed a minute to think and catch her breath.
It's odd, though, how she feels like she's losing it instead. How he thinks she's asleep one night and wanders out of the shower dripping in his towel, and she bumps smack into him in the narrow hallway, and he says, "Oh! I'm sorry, I got you all wet!" and she blushes for the first time in six years. How he (almost) always seems to know when she can't sleep and knocks gently on the bedroom door so he doesn't wake Henry (of course he took the couch, and of course all of the pillows smell just like him) and brings her in tea and a fried egg on toast. How he gives her privacy for her phone calls to Will and does magic for Henry and watches Wendy Williams on DVR and eats Pop Tarts for dinner -- at least, for two days before she starts cooking for him, he does. How he wakes up rumpled and has to crack every joint in his body before he can move and looks, for at least an hour, like his dreams haven't quite left yet.
That's part of the problem. That's why she has to get the hell out of here. And that's also why she can't, why every time she starts putting her shit into a bag, something important is missing and she starts getting panicky thinking about it and says she'll find it later, in an hour, after the game -- and then forgets. And then it's bedtime, and Spencer is giving Henry a bath in a giant plastic storage bin that they have to empty into the street afterwards, and the whole thing is absurd and beautiful and bizarre, and JJ starts taking pictures and getting -- ahem -- wet right along with them, and another day has gone by, and then...
Well, and then she shifts wrong as Spencer's kissing Henry goodnight, and he kisses her instead, just below her thumb, and their eyes meet, startled and embarrassed, and she says you just kissed me but he hears just kiss me, and then he doesn't even clarify before he does.
And then everything inside of her lurches violently back to life, all at once, and she starts crying like an idiot for the first time since she left, but maybe that's okay. Maybe it's all right to be salty and sloppy and kissing and alive.
Pairing: Reid/Prentiss (sort of)
Prompt: What is wrong with you?
Rating: PG
Words: 489
Warnings: A naughty word; spoilers for Minimal Loss
It takes a long time for the bruising to fade. For days, he has to look at her, bruised and battered even through her flawless makeup, and all he can do is imagine how much worse she must look without it. He can't seem to stop staring, cataloging the colors, the pattern, the ways it changes her expressions. The ways in which it is all his fault.
Finally, she corners him by the coffee pot, holding his mug hostage until he looks her in the eye. "What is wrong with you?"
He doesn't pretend not to understand. Emily's got a way of cutting through his bullshit. Besides, he might never get his coffee otherwise. He leans back against the counter and twists his hands together in defeat. "Your face."
Emily sighs, but her eyes go soft almost instantly. "I told you that it wasn't your fault. I'm a big girl, Reid. I made that call, and I stand by it, and I'd do it again and again and again."
"I know. I just... why?" That's the real question. That's what's been crawling under his skin and into his dreams.
Emily sets the mug down. "Cyrus had a gun to your head, Reid. You'd already told him that you didn't know what he was talking about, and he already knew that one of us did. He was agitated and aggressive and I think he would have killed you right there if I'd let him think you might be lying to him. I couldn't have let that happen. I couldn't... I couldn't let him hurt you."
"But I let him hurt you! I just stood there, like..."
Emily interrupts him, leaning forward for emphasis, her eyes intent. "Like you had a gun in your face, Reid. Which you did."
"He could have killed you, Emily." Reid clenches his hands tight, like he's holding in a secret, and Emily instinctively reaches for them.
"But he didn't. And he wouldn't have. I'm a woman, Reid. Think about it. A man like Cyrus isn't going to shoot an unarmed woman. He never perceived me as any real threat. He left me alone and unguarded upstairs, for Christ's sake! He beat me to make a point, that's all. To assert control. But you?" She rubs Reid's hands, opening them up, and draws her fingertips across his palms until he swallows hard around the lump in his throat and twines their fingers together. "He would have killed you right there. And then I think I'd've had to kill that bastard with my bare hands. Show him what a real threat looks like."
She smiles a little, then, without thinking, brings his hands to her lips and kisses them. He lets her, watching her carefully for a moment before pulling her into his body, awkward and tentative, and wrapping his arms around her. "I'm sorry, Emily," he whispers against her hair.
"Well, I'm not," she murmurs back.
_______________
Title: The Mystery
Pairing: Reid/Elle
Prompt: Early
Rating: G
Words: 164
Warnings: None
Elle never changed her number. She left behind her Bureau-issued phone, of course, but her personal number has been the same since the day she turned in her badge.
Reid knows this because he gets texts from her every three months like clockwork. They always come on the ninth, and they are never words. They're pictures: the ocean, the ace of hearts, melting ice, a set of plastic fangs. If he didn't know better, he'd think they were random, but the Elle he knows always has a purpose, even if it's solely her own. He's never asked her what it is, because his favorite thing about her has always been the mystery.
She leaves little doubt, however, when she sends one two weeks early three years down the line. It's the arrivals and departures board of a train station in New Mexico, followed immediately by two Coronas on a crowded bar, followed finally by a question mark.
All he says in return is yes.
_______________
Title: Fire to Ash
Pairing: Elle/Hotch
Prompt: Remember
Rating: PG
Words: 247
Warnings: None
"Do you remember who were were?" Elle stretches, long and lithe, and rolls sideways out of the halo of his arms, her hair like a thunderhead around her face.
Hotch props himself up on an elbow. "What do you mean?"
"Before this."
"Before what?" Hotch cannot really recall a time when this did not exist, the low simmer between them, the constant and dangerous exchange of energy as unstable as a bomb.
That isn't what she's talking about, though. Elle draws one finger across a slant-wise slash at the side of his bare chest, then moves slowly down, tracing every single angry mark. Never one to flinch, Hotch feels something inside of him recoil, duck low down in his belly with revulsion, but he keeps his face steady.
When she has finished following the path of Foyet's knife, Elle takes Hotch's wrist and pulls his hand to her flushed chest, pressing his finger into the jagged scar there. "Before this," she says. "Before our insides looked like our outsides."
"Yes," Hotch answers, his tone measured. "I remember."
"Remind me, then," she says, her eyes sleepy and hooded and as haunted as they've ever been. "I look at you sometimes and..."
Her voice dissipates to nothing like the filmy tail of a comet, like fire to smoking ash, and the ache inside of them both is ancient as he pulls her back against him and makes promises he isn't sure he can keep, murmurs okay when nothing is.
_______________
Title: When the House is Falling Down
Pairing: Reid & JJ
Prompt: staring out the window
Rating: G
Words: 297
Warnings: None
Will isn't even home when she figures it out; he's -- well, she isn't exactly sure where he is, actually, which has been much the case in recent months, but he isn't home. She is standing at the front window, Henry on her hip, staring out at the lawn with its straggly rose-a-sharon bush and scorched-looking grass, when it hits her. It's over. Done. Finito. Kaput. Dead.
All of it.
The lawn. The house. The promises. Them. All malnourished and starved, burned and forgotten.
JJ is surprised to find that she doesn't really feel anything, and it isn't the strange numbness of grief or shock or defense. It's stone cold apathy. She's too young to have arrived here, she thinks, adjusting Henry against her body as his head lolls sleepily from side to side. But then, she is older than most women her age, has seen more than most with double her years. This is just a tiny blip on the radar of tragedy, and as such, it barely registers.
"All right, sweetheart," she whispers to her sleeping son. "When the house is falling down around you, you've got to get out, right? Right."
He's still asleep when she straps him into his car seat, and she gets behind the wheel and puts it in drive before she even considers where she might go. In the end, she doesn't really consider at all, just goes, and she isn't all that surprised to find herself in a familiar neighborhood when the road-fatigue sets in.
He'll be home. He's just like her, with nowhere to go on a Saturday night.
"JJ?" he says, answering within seconds of her knock. "Are you okay?"
"Hey, Spence." She smiles at him, wan and exhausted. "Mind if we come in?"
Title: Ideal
Pairing: Reid/JJ
Prompt: just kiss me
Rating: PG13
Words: 496
Warnings: A tiny bit of innuendo and some language.
Notes: This is a direct follow-up to When the House is Falling Down.
The arrangement, suffice it to say, is far from ideal. Spencer's apartment has one bedroom, no tub, and a neighbor to the left who wears more crosses than a nun and eyes her like she's shacking up with Satan himself. Every day for the past week-and-four-days, JJ has said, either to herself or to Henry or to Spencer, that this is a mess and she's sorry and she'll be out of here tomorrow at the latest. It's not like she can't afford a place of her own; she just needed a minute to think and catch her breath.
It's odd, though, how she feels like she's losing it instead. How he thinks she's asleep one night and wanders out of the shower dripping in his towel, and she bumps smack into him in the narrow hallway, and he says, "Oh! I'm sorry, I got you all wet!" and she blushes for the first time in six years. How he (almost) always seems to know when she can't sleep and knocks gently on the bedroom door so he doesn't wake Henry (of course he took the couch, and of course all of the pillows smell just like him) and brings her in tea and a fried egg on toast. How he gives her privacy for her phone calls to Will and does magic for Henry and watches Wendy Williams on DVR and eats Pop Tarts for dinner -- at least, for two days before she starts cooking for him, he does. How he wakes up rumpled and has to crack every joint in his body before he can move and looks, for at least an hour, like his dreams haven't quite left yet.
That's part of the problem. That's why she has to get the hell out of here. And that's also why she can't, why every time she starts putting her shit into a bag, something important is missing and she starts getting panicky thinking about it and says she'll find it later, in an hour, after the game -- and then forgets. And then it's bedtime, and Spencer is giving Henry a bath in a giant plastic storage bin that they have to empty into the street afterwards, and the whole thing is absurd and beautiful and bizarre, and JJ starts taking pictures and getting -- ahem -- wet right along with them, and another day has gone by, and then...
Well, and then she shifts wrong as Spencer's kissing Henry goodnight, and he kisses her instead, just below her thumb, and their eyes meet, startled and embarrassed, and she says you just kissed me but he hears just kiss me, and then he doesn't even clarify before he does.
And then everything inside of her lurches violently back to life, all at once, and she starts crying like an idiot for the first time since she left, but maybe that's okay. Maybe it's all right to be salty and sloppy and kissing and alive.