Drabble-ish!
Title: Strange Magic
Pairing/Characters: Reid & JJ, or Reid/JJ if you want
Prompt: Fix You by Coldplay
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Spoilers for 3rd Life, language, mentions of drug abuse/addiction
Notes: For cm_het_drabble
The night is hard. It presses down on the back of his neck like it's trying to grind his face into the dirt; it fills up his nose and his mouth like a rotting body in the thick of July; it beats against his brain and reaches between his ribs and slides its nails along his veins trying to open him up, bleed him out, push all the dirtyfilthyneedy things back inside, and he hasn't felt this willing in months.
He paces the floor, makes a loop from the front door to the kitchen to the bathroom then back again, barefoot like a penitent with his nails digging pink half-moons into his palms, reciting to himself. Talking out loud like crazy, dead Jane. First the Periodic Table, then The Wife of Bath from the Canterbury Tales, then Exodus, Pi, the Twelve Steps that should lead him out of the grave but are walking him back in circles towards it instead. He can hear his breath like a train whistle, like sirens pulling in too late; hear his own heart go off like shots in his chest, one beat after another, bang! bang! bang!, the sound of Ryan Phillips dying over and over and over echoing through the hollow places in his body. There are too many. He is a vessel. He is the empty chamber of Jack Vaughn's gun, hot and smoking. He is nothing. He is failure.
And tonight he remembers how easy it is to erase it all, to clean the barrel with a needle, to disintegrate for a few seconds, make the voices - his own, his mother's, Tobias Hankel's - grind to a halt like sticky gears and have the silence hum through his body, the white noise of the void. It's nothing, just a pinch. Just a tiny bead of blood. He was so good that he could line it up and close his eyes, that he wouldn't even have to see, and his memory is all in his eyes, so if he doesn't look, it isn't there, and one more time just one more time that's all just now just for this just now just once is a bargain he's just a few miles from making.
And then she knocks.
It's past midnight, and he's seething like a live wire downed in the street, and the sound is a sizzle and a jolt. It makes his elbows knock and his knees buckle, and he almost doesn't look, but he does, his gun in his sweaty, futile hand as he peers through the window to find her hair white in the porchlight.
She's in her pajamas, plaid bottoms and a t-shirt the same gray as the eerie city sky. She is ghostly and grim, and for a second he thinks it's a hallucination. For a second he wonders if he's already succumbed, knelt like a whore for his addiction and let it suck the truth right out of him and leave her standing at his door, some bizarre vision of the Virgin he doesn't believe in, all halo and bright-bleeding heart.
But she's real. She's real and she's here, and his car is in the driveway, so what choice does he have?
"JJ?" he says.
"Hey, Spence," she says back.
He sets his gun down on the counter and lets her in. "What are you doing here? Is everything okay?"
"That's why I'm here. I'm not sure. Is it?" Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. It's the voice she saves for people who have shattered, for children standing alone in the wreckage of their own innocence. Another day, it might piss him off. Tonight, it makes him want to bow his head and take communion from her hands.
"No." His arms shake. His vocal chords shake. His life shakes, too; it comes in and out of focus like a weird mirage, like strange magic he can't master.
"Sit down," she says. "You're making me nervous. Sit down. Let's talk."
He can't talk, though. Not in any way that makes sense; not in any way that excuses every light on in his apartment, three separate half-full glasses of water on the coffee table, the sweat at the hollow of his throat. He feels ridiculous. Embarrassed. Dry-mouthed. Mute. All he manages are fragments: He shot him. I watched. I did nothing. I couldn't. I didn't. I wasn't. He died.
JJ listens. She leans in close and holds his clammy hands across the table and doesn't give voice to the thing she knows: that it's his own life that hangs there, too, one foot on either side of a line they aren't allowed to name.
When he's said all he can - and it isn't much; it isn't what she had hoped for - she says, "You did enough. You are enough. Even if you never stop seeing his face when you close your eyes. Even if the next one dies, too. Even if you have to keep the lights on forever. You. Are. Enough."
JJ puts his gun into the drawer and leads him to bed. She climbs in beside him, shuts off the lamp, and holds his fingers still in the dark, pressing them together between her hands like a prayer. She hooks her knees into his through the tangle of sheets. He doesn't sleep, but eventually she does, and he watches the movement of her dreaming eyes until the night seeps out between their bodies and the morning takes its place.
Before she wakes up, he kisses her forehead open-mouthed, breathes in her skin and her soap and her shampoo. The taste is a hard, bitter victory, but a victory nonetheless.
JJ smiles, edges closer, and sighs, and when he gets out of bed, he takes the paper off the porch and looks up a meeting before he puts the coffee on.
Title: In Which Reid Uses the Word Slut
Pairing/Characters: Reid, Garcia, JJ, implied Reid/Elle
Prompt: mouth
Rating: PG13
Warnings: language, silliness
Notes: for cm_het_drabble
"That was sexy. Actually, it was ridiculously sexy. Don't you think so, Jayje?" Garcia raised an eyebrow mischievously and pulled her lollipop from between her lips with a loud pop.
"Definitely," JJ grinned. "I liked the part where he told the detective that he was slut-shaming and said his language was connotatively misogynist and unhelpful."
Reid folded his arms into his body and shifted his position against the desk, flustered. "It was! He was suggesting that the victim was responsible because she had had sex with another man earlier in the evening. And slut-shaming is a perfectly acceptable term; it's used broadly in feminist theory to...."
"I know, sweet cheeks," Garcia said, interrupting him to lean closer and tap him on the nose. "That's why I love you so. What other man would so eagerly leap to defend my right to fornicate at will? Oh, wait..." She and JJ broke into raucous laughter.
"I'm glad you think it's funny," Reid muttered. "I was just trying to..."
"I know," JJ said, taking a deep breath. "Didn't you hear us say how sexy it was? Say it again."
"Say what again?" Reid looked confused.
"Slut."
"What? No, you're being ridiculous. I..."
"C'mon." JJ paused, and when he didn't respond, she made her eyes wide and said, "Please? Just once."
Reid turned to look at Garcia, who was also staring at him with a plaintive expression. Finally, he sighed, and said, "Fine. Slut."
JJ and Garcia broke into giggles again, and JJ reached over to ruffle his hair. "Definitely hot," Garcia said again, sticking the lollipop back into the pocket of her cheek. "I love it when you put creeps in their place. It makes me all warm and tingly. Where'd you pick all that up, b-t-w?"
Reid shifted again, looking even more uncomfortable. "I read a lot."
"Before or after you're done not slut-shaming Elle?" JJ asked, her face breaking open into a grin again.
Reid didn't make eye contact, just picked a pencil up off the desk and began twirling it through his fingers. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Garcia leveled her gaze at him. "C'mon, lover. Hearing you school that bastard was like having her standing right there. You can tell us. She's gone. It's not like you're going to get in trouble."
Reid shook his head, and the pencil snapped in his hands. He dropped the pieces, startled.
"That's what I thought," JJ said, giving him a meaningful look. "Well. She taught you well." She winked before adding, "And tell her hello for us."
Reid nodded weakly and threw the pencil halves into the trash.
Pairing/Characters: Reid & JJ, or Reid/JJ if you want
Prompt: Fix You by Coldplay
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Spoilers for 3rd Life, language, mentions of drug abuse/addiction
Notes: For cm_het_drabble
The night is hard. It presses down on the back of his neck like it's trying to grind his face into the dirt; it fills up his nose and his mouth like a rotting body in the thick of July; it beats against his brain and reaches between his ribs and slides its nails along his veins trying to open him up, bleed him out, push all the dirtyfilthyneedy things back inside, and he hasn't felt this willing in months.
He paces the floor, makes a loop from the front door to the kitchen to the bathroom then back again, barefoot like a penitent with his nails digging pink half-moons into his palms, reciting to himself. Talking out loud like crazy, dead Jane. First the Periodic Table, then The Wife of Bath from the Canterbury Tales, then Exodus, Pi, the Twelve Steps that should lead him out of the grave but are walking him back in circles towards it instead. He can hear his breath like a train whistle, like sirens pulling in too late; hear his own heart go off like shots in his chest, one beat after another, bang! bang! bang!, the sound of Ryan Phillips dying over and over and over echoing through the hollow places in his body. There are too many. He is a vessel. He is the empty chamber of Jack Vaughn's gun, hot and smoking. He is nothing. He is failure.
And tonight he remembers how easy it is to erase it all, to clean the barrel with a needle, to disintegrate for a few seconds, make the voices - his own, his mother's, Tobias Hankel's - grind to a halt like sticky gears and have the silence hum through his body, the white noise of the void. It's nothing, just a pinch. Just a tiny bead of blood. He was so good that he could line it up and close his eyes, that he wouldn't even have to see, and his memory is all in his eyes, so if he doesn't look, it isn't there, and one more time just one more time that's all just now just for this just now just once is a bargain he's just a few miles from making.
And then she knocks.
It's past midnight, and he's seething like a live wire downed in the street, and the sound is a sizzle and a jolt. It makes his elbows knock and his knees buckle, and he almost doesn't look, but he does, his gun in his sweaty, futile hand as he peers through the window to find her hair white in the porchlight.
She's in her pajamas, plaid bottoms and a t-shirt the same gray as the eerie city sky. She is ghostly and grim, and for a second he thinks it's a hallucination. For a second he wonders if he's already succumbed, knelt like a whore for his addiction and let it suck the truth right out of him and leave her standing at his door, some bizarre vision of the Virgin he doesn't believe in, all halo and bright-bleeding heart.
But she's real. She's real and she's here, and his car is in the driveway, so what choice does he have?
"JJ?" he says.
"Hey, Spence," she says back.
He sets his gun down on the counter and lets her in. "What are you doing here? Is everything okay?"
"That's why I'm here. I'm not sure. Is it?" Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. It's the voice she saves for people who have shattered, for children standing alone in the wreckage of their own innocence. Another day, it might piss him off. Tonight, it makes him want to bow his head and take communion from her hands.
"No." His arms shake. His vocal chords shake. His life shakes, too; it comes in and out of focus like a weird mirage, like strange magic he can't master.
"Sit down," she says. "You're making me nervous. Sit down. Let's talk."
He can't talk, though. Not in any way that makes sense; not in any way that excuses every light on in his apartment, three separate half-full glasses of water on the coffee table, the sweat at the hollow of his throat. He feels ridiculous. Embarrassed. Dry-mouthed. Mute. All he manages are fragments: He shot him. I watched. I did nothing. I couldn't. I didn't. I wasn't. He died.
JJ listens. She leans in close and holds his clammy hands across the table and doesn't give voice to the thing she knows: that it's his own life that hangs there, too, one foot on either side of a line they aren't allowed to name.
When he's said all he can - and it isn't much; it isn't what she had hoped for - she says, "You did enough. You are enough. Even if you never stop seeing his face when you close your eyes. Even if the next one dies, too. Even if you have to keep the lights on forever. You. Are. Enough."
JJ puts his gun into the drawer and leads him to bed. She climbs in beside him, shuts off the lamp, and holds his fingers still in the dark, pressing them together between her hands like a prayer. She hooks her knees into his through the tangle of sheets. He doesn't sleep, but eventually she does, and he watches the movement of her dreaming eyes until the night seeps out between their bodies and the morning takes its place.
Before she wakes up, he kisses her forehead open-mouthed, breathes in her skin and her soap and her shampoo. The taste is a hard, bitter victory, but a victory nonetheless.
JJ smiles, edges closer, and sighs, and when he gets out of bed, he takes the paper off the porch and looks up a meeting before he puts the coffee on.
Title: In Which Reid Uses the Word Slut
Pairing/Characters: Reid, Garcia, JJ, implied Reid/Elle
Prompt: mouth
Rating: PG13
Warnings: language, silliness
Notes: for cm_het_drabble
"That was sexy. Actually, it was ridiculously sexy. Don't you think so, Jayje?" Garcia raised an eyebrow mischievously and pulled her lollipop from between her lips with a loud pop.
"Definitely," JJ grinned. "I liked the part where he told the detective that he was slut-shaming and said his language was connotatively misogynist and unhelpful."
Reid folded his arms into his body and shifted his position against the desk, flustered. "It was! He was suggesting that the victim was responsible because she had had sex with another man earlier in the evening. And slut-shaming is a perfectly acceptable term; it's used broadly in feminist theory to...."
"I know, sweet cheeks," Garcia said, interrupting him to lean closer and tap him on the nose. "That's why I love you so. What other man would so eagerly leap to defend my right to fornicate at will? Oh, wait..." She and JJ broke into raucous laughter.
"I'm glad you think it's funny," Reid muttered. "I was just trying to..."
"I know," JJ said, taking a deep breath. "Didn't you hear us say how sexy it was? Say it again."
"Say what again?" Reid looked confused.
"Slut."
"What? No, you're being ridiculous. I..."
"C'mon." JJ paused, and when he didn't respond, she made her eyes wide and said, "Please? Just once."
Reid turned to look at Garcia, who was also staring at him with a plaintive expression. Finally, he sighed, and said, "Fine. Slut."
JJ and Garcia broke into giggles again, and JJ reached over to ruffle his hair. "Definitely hot," Garcia said again, sticking the lollipop back into the pocket of her cheek. "I love it when you put creeps in their place. It makes me all warm and tingly. Where'd you pick all that up, b-t-w?"
Reid shifted again, looking even more uncomfortable. "I read a lot."
"Before or after you're done not slut-shaming Elle?" JJ asked, her face breaking open into a grin again.
Reid didn't make eye contact, just picked a pencil up off the desk and began twirling it through his fingers. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Garcia leveled her gaze at him. "C'mon, lover. Hearing you school that bastard was like having her standing right there. You can tell us. She's gone. It's not like you're going to get in trouble."
Reid shook his head, and the pencil snapped in his hands. He dropped the pieces, startled.
"That's what I thought," JJ said, giving him a meaningful look. "Well. She taught you well." She winked before adding, "And tell her hello for us."
Reid nodded weakly and threw the pencil halves into the trash.