Oh, cm_het_drabbles, how I love you for keeping my creative muscles (kinda) toned.
Title: In Which Reid is a Romantic Hero
Characters/Pairing: Reid/JJ, Garcia
Prompt: back
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Language, gag-worthy fluff, silliness, refusal to accept AJ Cook's impending departure
Garcia dropped into Reid's chair with a heavy sigh and watched him for a moment. He was perched cross-legged on his desk, passing a deck of cards back and forth through his hands the way lost men handle maps, that helpless shuffle of anxious frustration. When he didn't acknowledge her, she spoke. "You're just going to let her walk out of here like that?"
Reid didn't break pattern; he didn't meet her eye; he just stared into his lap, his thumbs pressing into the well-worn edges as they whirred by in a blur of black and red. "What do you mean let? JJ's an adult, Garcia. She's made her decision. I'm not her father."
Garcia leaned in and jammed the point of her pencil into his stack. The cards scattered, and as he moved to pick them up, his mouth set into a petulant line, Garcia caught him by the wrist. "Look at me, brat-boy."
Reid lifted his gaze, his eyes dark and hot. "What?"
"You've got less than three hours before she gets on an airplane and flies a thousand miles away from you. Actually, less than three, because she gets to pre-board with that baby you love almost as much as you love her. Right now, she's probably packing them both up, and when she gets there, she's going to shut her phone off. And you're here? Pardon my French, mon cherie, but what the hell is wrong with you?"
"What am I supposed to do about it? She turned in her badge. She's leaving."
"She waited more than two years for you to grow a pair, Reid, and when you didn't, she just assumed she had it all wrong and hopped into bed with Baby Daddy. Which turned out awesomesauce, didn't it? Because now everywhere she looks here she just sees heartbreak and fuckups and failures, so she's running away from it, because that's what she does. For a profiler, you're pretty dumb about how women work, aren't you? That change of scenery she was talking about was your face. You let her down. Big time. And now you're doing it again."
Reid stared like he'd been slapped, the cards falling out of his suddenly-lax grip and sliding to the floor. "What? No, I thought..."
"I know what you thought. You thought wrong. And I was just letting it be, because she was with Will, but now..." Garcia checked her watch. "I've been sitting on my tuchus waiting for you to do something, but time's up. You're the only one she's going to turn around for, so you better hustle, unless you want to have this discussion at the Denver field office instead of Dulles."
"I don't," Reid said, scrambling to his feet. "I don't. Garcia?"
She raised an eyebrow, the beginnings of a smile - her first genuine one since JJ announced that she was leaving - at the corners of her mouth. "What, baby?"
"Are you sure?"
"Have I ever steered you wrong?"
"No. Never." Reid jammed his hands frantically into his pockets, searching for his keys.
Garcia plucked them calmly from his desk and handed them over. Relief washed over his face as he gripped them in his fist. "Thanks. Garcia?" he said again, his voice rising into a renewed panic.
"What?"
"What do I say?"
Garcia's smile took over her face now as she watched him, her eyes full of fondness. "Well, the whole bursting-into-the-airport business is pretty sappy romance movie already, so I wouldn't go overboard with the flowery speech, or she might shoot you."
"She doesn't have a..."
"I know," Garcia said. "I know. It was a joke. I'd definitely start with an apology, if I were you. Then how about this -- I know she's a grown up and all that jazz, but you just go in there and be her daddy. Okay?
Reid's forehead creased. "Be her..."
"Think about it on the way!" Garcia shooed him away with her hands. "Go!"
He made it almost to the elevator before he turned around again, hollering wildly back at her. "Hotch! Hotch!"
"He knows!" Garcia yelled back. "He says good luck. Go!"
"What do you mean he..."
"Reid, GO!"
Just as he was stepping in, Garcia called after him, "Save the naughty-girl spanking til you get back home with her, Daddy!"
The doors closed, separating his red face from the chorus of applause that had broken out across the office in his wake.
Title: Hero
Characters: Reid, JJ, baby!Henry
Prompt: arms
Rating: G
Warnings: None
JJ turns her key in the lock, then she turns the second key in the second lock, and when she steps into her living room, everything is quiet and dark, except for a table lamp left on for her beside the door. She smiles at it, drops her purse and the paper doggie bag beside her shoes, locks back up behind her, then calls "Spence?" into the silence.
There is no reply. She tries again, padding in her stocking feet towards the slice of light coming from Henry's room. Again, she is answered by nothing but the low crackle of the baby monitor making breath sounds. Gently, she pushes open Henry's door, and she isn't sure if she wants to laugh, cry, or take a picture first.
She decides on the latter, but when she pulls her cell out of her pocket, the rustle of it against the fabric of her pants makes Spencer blink awake and sit straight up. He's in the rocking chair, his long legs bracing it in place, Henry leaning flush against his shoulder. He's got both arms wrapped tight around her son -- one hand under his bottom, the other against the back of his head, both elbows on the arms of the chair -- and a red mark on his cheek from where it had lolled against Henry's ear. Even as Spencer startles, Henry doesn't stir; he's secure and silent and fast asleep.
JJ chuckles and takes the picture anyway, and as she slips her phone back into her pocket, she asks, "What's going on in here?"
"Bedtime," Spencer answers, straightening up further and holding Henry against him.
JJ smiles. "You can put him in the crib for that, you know."
"Well... the infant mortality rate in the United States is 6.68%, and male infants are more likely to have sleep-related breathing problems. And I just thought... you know, I can hear him like this." His voice trails off at the end, and even through the darkness, JJ can see that his cheeks are coloring up.
She rolls her eyes affectionately. "He's fine, Spence. Plus, you have the monitor in the living room."
"I know," Spencer answers, leaning on the arm of the chair to stand up. "I know, I'm sorry, I just..."
"It's okay," JJ says, reaching out to take her son. "Thank you for taking good care of him. I really needed a night to myself, and with Will away..."
"Yeah, yeah, of course. Did you have a good time?"
"The best. Penelope felt bad and sent you home half of her burrito. She wanted to send you a margarita, but they wouldn't give her a to-go cup for it." JJ laughs, and Henry stirs against her. She shushes him, then says, "You can let me send her that picture as payment if you want."
Spencer grins wryly. "It might ruin my alpha male reputation."
"Mmmm, not necessarily... but the drool on your shoulder is another story." She smiles as he pulls the fabric out to check, and when he bends for closer look, she leans up to press her lips to his cheek. "You're wonderful," she whispers, and when his blush deepens, she kisses him again and again and again, punctuating her words, and says, "Fantastic. Beautiful. The best. You. Are. My. Hero."
Title: The Movement of Unnamed Tides
Pairing: Elle/Reid
Prompt: hips
Rating: R
Warnings: sexuality
She doesn't wear her weapon on her hips because they're dangerous enough without it, because she can kill a man with a 20-degree tilt, cock one like a gun and pull the trigger when she walks, blow a hole straight through his chest and peer in to watch his heart thump itself to death at the sight of her.
He doesn't mind, though. He doesn't mind when she's got him pinned between the counter and her thigh and she's holding his hipbones like saddlehorns in the hot palms of her hands, dark-eyed and predatory, and he doesn't mind that he didn't invite her in and that she's given up her badge and that it's 1am and she smells like the ashcan on the stoop of a bar he's never been to. He doesn't mind at all when she says I'm leaving in nine hours, when she says either throw me out or take off your clothes, when she says bend me over the table and make me say your name.
And she says it, she does, and all he has to do is pull her hair -- once, by accident, his fingers tangling in a rogue curl. She says it with her hips back and her spine arched, says it in the middle of a chorus of vowels like tongues, and all of the sudden he can't remember Latin, can't translate, and all he knows is that he has to see her, has to watch, so he makes words -- everything is backwards and screwed up and on fire, and they come out in French first and he doesn't know why, tournez autour -- at her, tells her turn around, and she listens.
Elle has never listened to anyone in her life, never taken orders well, never toed the line, but she listens to him. She obeys. She turns around, their bodies slipping apart and tangling in all of their angles and planes and haste, and then they are eye-to-eye and face-to-face and breathing into each other's open mouths in his kitchen, and his glasses push back hard against his face and she wraps her legs around his waist and the world becomes unbearably small.
She tugs his hips into hers with the hard line of her Achilles, pulls him all the way inside, says make me feel before I leave make me feel please give me something to remember, swallows him up and spins him like a funnel cloud.
And Gideon said you don't need a gun to kill someone, and this isn't what he meant, but it's the first time Spencer understands it down to his bones, understands it in his belly, his guts, his raw, eviscerated soul. Elle shot a man -- cold blood or hot, it doesn't really matter; he's been there; he knows that dead is dead is dead -- but this thing she's doing, this slipperyrockingbeggingmoaningneeding thing, this laid bare thing without her gun or her badge or her hard, high walls, this is the thing that unravels. This is what is going to hit him in the morning like a fist when she's on that plane she threatened him with, haunt him like the thing he fears the most, the thousand chattering voices in his head all saying you couldn't protect her you couldn't save her you couldn't stop her you couldn't give her what she needed.
And maybe he couldn't. Maybe he can't. Maybe it's too late for both of them, and maybe that's why she's here -- because she knows that he can't contain her, just pour into her like good gin and fill her up. And that's what she's asking for when she says give me give me give me I'm not coming until you give it to me, so he does the only thing he can and lets her see him fall apart.
It's a small privilege, a small concession, a small acknowledgment between them of all the things that just happen, the movement of unnamed tides, and she watches him with wide open eyes. It leaves him breathless and terrified, and before she comes she tells him thank you, her voice suddenly a little girl's, and he sees, for a moment, who she was.
Elle, he whispers, her hair in his mouth and one hip angled down into the cradle between his, I don't want you to go, but she does.
She does.
Elle does what she has to do. That's why she came, and that's why she left, and that's why he pats futilely at his pockets when she does, like she took something with her that he can't quite recall.
Title: Flood
Pairing: JJ/Reid (sort of)
Prompt: hands
Rating: PG13
Warnings: language, angstiness?
JJ knows instantly that she has made a fatal mistake.
She steers clear of his hands whenever she can, using her own as a buffer, some way to keep distance between them, propriety, honesty. When she presses her palm into his shoulder or lets her knuckles linger against his when she passes him his coffee, she is maintaining control. She is the one in charge. If she creates the touch, she also creates the space, and that she can live with.
But the minute she pulls Spencer's hand to her belly and takes her own away, it's all over. It takes a fraction of a second for the world to crash down and another fraction for her to put a pretty bandaid over it, make her face a pretty mask -- that's her job, isn't it, this calm, cool beacon in the chaos of the storm? -- and she doesn't think he notices, but the baby does. The baby feels her heart kick up and her stomach drop, feels the muscles in her body turn to bow strings, feels that rush of awful knowledge and terror and heat through her veins, and her first thought after oh, shit is does he know?
He must. The baby must. He flips over; he batters her with his tiny heels; he pushes the soles of his feet flush against Spencer's warm, warm hand and kicks a Morse code hello. He does acrobatics.
JJ wants to answer yes when Spencer asks if it freaks her out -- how could it not, this little sentient being she hasn't even met responding to the desire and dread and ache inside of her -- but she doesn't, of course. She can't say yes, because she's afraid if she starts with one small truth, it will become a flood, and she will drown them all right here. Herself. Spencer. Will. The nameless innocent swimming through her belly.
Later, when she is alone in the shower, naked and dripping wet and huge, she apologizes. She puts her hands over the spot where Spencer touched her -- the spot where she allowed him to touch her -- and she says I'm sorry, babything, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, but she doesn't tell him why.
She doesn't know how to begin. If she says I picked the wrong daddy, it's like saying I'm having the wrong son, and she cannot visit her own mistakes on her child. She cannot tell him that he isn't exactly what she wanted; that the half of him that isn't her is wrong.
She will have to, of course. The monster inside of her is big and hungry, and sometimes it sleeps, but most of the time, it doesn't. And there is only one way to get it to go away for good.
But all of that will wait. It has to. For now she will bide her time with an arm's length between them, and she will force herself not to imagine an infant with her eyes and his pretty, pretty lips, because, really, hasn't she already disappointed herself enough?
Characters/Pairing: Reid/JJ, Garcia
Prompt: back
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Language, gag-worthy fluff, silliness, refusal to accept AJ Cook's impending departure
Garcia dropped into Reid's chair with a heavy sigh and watched him for a moment. He was perched cross-legged on his desk, passing a deck of cards back and forth through his hands the way lost men handle maps, that helpless shuffle of anxious frustration. When he didn't acknowledge her, she spoke. "You're just going to let her walk out of here like that?"
Reid didn't break pattern; he didn't meet her eye; he just stared into his lap, his thumbs pressing into the well-worn edges as they whirred by in a blur of black and red. "What do you mean let? JJ's an adult, Garcia. She's made her decision. I'm not her father."
Garcia leaned in and jammed the point of her pencil into his stack. The cards scattered, and as he moved to pick them up, his mouth set into a petulant line, Garcia caught him by the wrist. "Look at me, brat-boy."
Reid lifted his gaze, his eyes dark and hot. "What?"
"You've got less than three hours before she gets on an airplane and flies a thousand miles away from you. Actually, less than three, because she gets to pre-board with that baby you love almost as much as you love her. Right now, she's probably packing them both up, and when she gets there, she's going to shut her phone off. And you're here? Pardon my French, mon cherie, but what the hell is wrong with you?"
"What am I supposed to do about it? She turned in her badge. She's leaving."
"She waited more than two years for you to grow a pair, Reid, and when you didn't, she just assumed she had it all wrong and hopped into bed with Baby Daddy. Which turned out awesomesauce, didn't it? Because now everywhere she looks here she just sees heartbreak and fuckups and failures, so she's running away from it, because that's what she does. For a profiler, you're pretty dumb about how women work, aren't you? That change of scenery she was talking about was your face. You let her down. Big time. And now you're doing it again."
Reid stared like he'd been slapped, the cards falling out of his suddenly-lax grip and sliding to the floor. "What? No, I thought..."
"I know what you thought. You thought wrong. And I was just letting it be, because she was with Will, but now..." Garcia checked her watch. "I've been sitting on my tuchus waiting for you to do something, but time's up. You're the only one she's going to turn around for, so you better hustle, unless you want to have this discussion at the Denver field office instead of Dulles."
"I don't," Reid said, scrambling to his feet. "I don't. Garcia?"
She raised an eyebrow, the beginnings of a smile - her first genuine one since JJ announced that she was leaving - at the corners of her mouth. "What, baby?"
"Are you sure?"
"Have I ever steered you wrong?"
"No. Never." Reid jammed his hands frantically into his pockets, searching for his keys.
Garcia plucked them calmly from his desk and handed them over. Relief washed over his face as he gripped them in his fist. "Thanks. Garcia?" he said again, his voice rising into a renewed panic.
"What?"
"What do I say?"
Garcia's smile took over her face now as she watched him, her eyes full of fondness. "Well, the whole bursting-into-the-airport business is pretty sappy romance movie already, so I wouldn't go overboard with the flowery speech, or she might shoot you."
"She doesn't have a..."
"I know," Garcia said. "I know. It was a joke. I'd definitely start with an apology, if I were you. Then how about this -- I know she's a grown up and all that jazz, but you just go in there and be her daddy. Okay?
Reid's forehead creased. "Be her..."
"Think about it on the way!" Garcia shooed him away with her hands. "Go!"
He made it almost to the elevator before he turned around again, hollering wildly back at her. "Hotch! Hotch!"
"He knows!" Garcia yelled back. "He says good luck. Go!"
"What do you mean he..."
"Reid, GO!"
Just as he was stepping in, Garcia called after him, "Save the naughty-girl spanking til you get back home with her, Daddy!"
The doors closed, separating his red face from the chorus of applause that had broken out across the office in his wake.
Title: Hero
Characters: Reid, JJ, baby!Henry
Prompt: arms
Rating: G
Warnings: None
JJ turns her key in the lock, then she turns the second key in the second lock, and when she steps into her living room, everything is quiet and dark, except for a table lamp left on for her beside the door. She smiles at it, drops her purse and the paper doggie bag beside her shoes, locks back up behind her, then calls "Spence?" into the silence.
There is no reply. She tries again, padding in her stocking feet towards the slice of light coming from Henry's room. Again, she is answered by nothing but the low crackle of the baby monitor making breath sounds. Gently, she pushes open Henry's door, and she isn't sure if she wants to laugh, cry, or take a picture first.
She decides on the latter, but when she pulls her cell out of her pocket, the rustle of it against the fabric of her pants makes Spencer blink awake and sit straight up. He's in the rocking chair, his long legs bracing it in place, Henry leaning flush against his shoulder. He's got both arms wrapped tight around her son -- one hand under his bottom, the other against the back of his head, both elbows on the arms of the chair -- and a red mark on his cheek from where it had lolled against Henry's ear. Even as Spencer startles, Henry doesn't stir; he's secure and silent and fast asleep.
JJ chuckles and takes the picture anyway, and as she slips her phone back into her pocket, she asks, "What's going on in here?"
"Bedtime," Spencer answers, straightening up further and holding Henry against him.
JJ smiles. "You can put him in the crib for that, you know."
"Well... the infant mortality rate in the United States is 6.68%, and male infants are more likely to have sleep-related breathing problems. And I just thought... you know, I can hear him like this." His voice trails off at the end, and even through the darkness, JJ can see that his cheeks are coloring up.
She rolls her eyes affectionately. "He's fine, Spence. Plus, you have the monitor in the living room."
"I know," Spencer answers, leaning on the arm of the chair to stand up. "I know, I'm sorry, I just..."
"It's okay," JJ says, reaching out to take her son. "Thank you for taking good care of him. I really needed a night to myself, and with Will away..."
"Yeah, yeah, of course. Did you have a good time?"
"The best. Penelope felt bad and sent you home half of her burrito. She wanted to send you a margarita, but they wouldn't give her a to-go cup for it." JJ laughs, and Henry stirs against her. She shushes him, then says, "You can let me send her that picture as payment if you want."
Spencer grins wryly. "It might ruin my alpha male reputation."
"Mmmm, not necessarily... but the drool on your shoulder is another story." She smiles as he pulls the fabric out to check, and when he bends for closer look, she leans up to press her lips to his cheek. "You're wonderful," she whispers, and when his blush deepens, she kisses him again and again and again, punctuating her words, and says, "Fantastic. Beautiful. The best. You. Are. My. Hero."
Title: The Movement of Unnamed Tides
Pairing: Elle/Reid
Prompt: hips
Rating: R
Warnings: sexuality
She doesn't wear her weapon on her hips because they're dangerous enough without it, because she can kill a man with a 20-degree tilt, cock one like a gun and pull the trigger when she walks, blow a hole straight through his chest and peer in to watch his heart thump itself to death at the sight of her.
He doesn't mind, though. He doesn't mind when she's got him pinned between the counter and her thigh and she's holding his hipbones like saddlehorns in the hot palms of her hands, dark-eyed and predatory, and he doesn't mind that he didn't invite her in and that she's given up her badge and that it's 1am and she smells like the ashcan on the stoop of a bar he's never been to. He doesn't mind at all when she says I'm leaving in nine hours, when she says either throw me out or take off your clothes, when she says bend me over the table and make me say your name.
And she says it, she does, and all he has to do is pull her hair -- once, by accident, his fingers tangling in a rogue curl. She says it with her hips back and her spine arched, says it in the middle of a chorus of vowels like tongues, and all of the sudden he can't remember Latin, can't translate, and all he knows is that he has to see her, has to watch, so he makes words -- everything is backwards and screwed up and on fire, and they come out in French first and he doesn't know why, tournez autour -- at her, tells her turn around, and she listens.
Elle has never listened to anyone in her life, never taken orders well, never toed the line, but she listens to him. She obeys. She turns around, their bodies slipping apart and tangling in all of their angles and planes and haste, and then they are eye-to-eye and face-to-face and breathing into each other's open mouths in his kitchen, and his glasses push back hard against his face and she wraps her legs around his waist and the world becomes unbearably small.
She tugs his hips into hers with the hard line of her Achilles, pulls him all the way inside, says make me feel before I leave make me feel please give me something to remember, swallows him up and spins him like a funnel cloud.
And Gideon said you don't need a gun to kill someone, and this isn't what he meant, but it's the first time Spencer understands it down to his bones, understands it in his belly, his guts, his raw, eviscerated soul. Elle shot a man -- cold blood or hot, it doesn't really matter; he's been there; he knows that dead is dead is dead -- but this thing she's doing, this slipperyrockingbeggingmoaningneeding thing, this laid bare thing without her gun or her badge or her hard, high walls, this is the thing that unravels. This is what is going to hit him in the morning like a fist when she's on that plane she threatened him with, haunt him like the thing he fears the most, the thousand chattering voices in his head all saying you couldn't protect her you couldn't save her you couldn't stop her you couldn't give her what she needed.
And maybe he couldn't. Maybe he can't. Maybe it's too late for both of them, and maybe that's why she's here -- because she knows that he can't contain her, just pour into her like good gin and fill her up. And that's what she's asking for when she says give me give me give me I'm not coming until you give it to me, so he does the only thing he can and lets her see him fall apart.
It's a small privilege, a small concession, a small acknowledgment between them of all the things that just happen, the movement of unnamed tides, and she watches him with wide open eyes. It leaves him breathless and terrified, and before she comes she tells him thank you, her voice suddenly a little girl's, and he sees, for a moment, who she was.
Elle, he whispers, her hair in his mouth and one hip angled down into the cradle between his, I don't want you to go, but she does.
She does.
Elle does what she has to do. That's why she came, and that's why she left, and that's why he pats futilely at his pockets when she does, like she took something with her that he can't quite recall.
Title: Flood
Pairing: JJ/Reid (sort of)
Prompt: hands
Rating: PG13
Warnings: language, angstiness?
JJ knows instantly that she has made a fatal mistake.
She steers clear of his hands whenever she can, using her own as a buffer, some way to keep distance between them, propriety, honesty. When she presses her palm into his shoulder or lets her knuckles linger against his when she passes him his coffee, she is maintaining control. She is the one in charge. If she creates the touch, she also creates the space, and that she can live with.
But the minute she pulls Spencer's hand to her belly and takes her own away, it's all over. It takes a fraction of a second for the world to crash down and another fraction for her to put a pretty bandaid over it, make her face a pretty mask -- that's her job, isn't it, this calm, cool beacon in the chaos of the storm? -- and she doesn't think he notices, but the baby does. The baby feels her heart kick up and her stomach drop, feels the muscles in her body turn to bow strings, feels that rush of awful knowledge and terror and heat through her veins, and her first thought after oh, shit is does he know?
He must. The baby must. He flips over; he batters her with his tiny heels; he pushes the soles of his feet flush against Spencer's warm, warm hand and kicks a Morse code hello. He does acrobatics.
JJ wants to answer yes when Spencer asks if it freaks her out -- how could it not, this little sentient being she hasn't even met responding to the desire and dread and ache inside of her -- but she doesn't, of course. She can't say yes, because she's afraid if she starts with one small truth, it will become a flood, and she will drown them all right here. Herself. Spencer. Will. The nameless innocent swimming through her belly.
Later, when she is alone in the shower, naked and dripping wet and huge, she apologizes. She puts her hands over the spot where Spencer touched her -- the spot where she allowed him to touch her -- and she says I'm sorry, babything, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, but she doesn't tell him why.
She doesn't know how to begin. If she says I picked the wrong daddy, it's like saying I'm having the wrong son, and she cannot visit her own mistakes on her child. She cannot tell him that he isn't exactly what she wanted; that the half of him that isn't her is wrong.
She will have to, of course. The monster inside of her is big and hungry, and sometimes it sleeps, but most of the time, it doesn't. And there is only one way to get it to go away for good.
But all of that will wait. It has to. For now she will bide her time with an arm's length between them, and she will force herself not to imagine an infant with her eyes and his pretty, pretty lips, because, really, hasn't she already disappointed herself enough?