20in20
So. I finished my 20in20 for crimeland, where the challenge was to create twenty 100-word(ish) drabbles in three different categories. As usual, I failed at NOT BEING FUCKING WORDY, but luckily we had a ten-word leeway in either direction, haha. So most of these are around 110 words.
Category One: Themes
(in order: fierce, family, smile, quote, pairing, crossover, two, close, angst, distance)
Fierce
JJ's searching for the right word, Elle's death-cold hands between her own, her anxious knees bouncing, her pretty lips trembling towards collapse. It's late - well past midnight - and here she is, appearing out of nowhere like a ghost on JJ's doorstep, drained of her defiance and her bravado, but not...
not...
not her ferocity. It's there still, black and hot and beautiful, and that's what JJ tells her when the tears start to fall. You're fierce, she says. Fierce, the word clicking into place, the safety off, the barrel level. Fierce, the way gods are fierce, and monsters, and the sacrifices women make for one another.
Plenty
As he falls asleep, there's only Prentiss, organizing his antibiotics into a pill-case, and JJ, listening to him breathe. Unnecessary, he's said. He's fine. But they're there. They're comfort. They're plenty.
But when he wakes, he smells cooking and hears voices. Garcia enters laughing in her flowered apron and tells him Morgan's burned the bacon. Somewhere, Rossi's on the phone, and when Garcia plops down on the bed and tells him they've all taken three days of family leave - even Hotch, whose crisp steps he can hear now in the hallway - all Reid can do is shake his head, bemused, and smile as she kisses his cheek.
Kill You Quicker
"You kept it short." The voice in Elle's ear is soft and low and unmistakable. The hand at her neck, its thumb reaching gently up into her hairline, is as familiar as it is unexpected.
She whirls around and cocks one eyebrow. "You ought to know better than to startle me, Hotch. I'm liable to put one right between your eyes."
His mouth moves like he's trying to smile but can't quite remember how. "Nice to see you, too."
"What took you so long?"
"Life," he says. "Work." After a moment's pause, he adds, "Guilt."
"See, that? That'll kill you quicker than I will," she whispers. "Now where's my kiss?"
Out of His Sphere
"I've got one!" Garcia pipes up. "I'm not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it."
Reid flips through the filebox of his brain, coming up empty but reluctant to admit it.
"Three... two... one," Garcia counts down, and when she dingdingding!s, Kevin leans forward and puts his chin on her shoulder.
"Give up?" he asks Reid.
"I suppose."
"Stargirl," Kevin answers. "Jerry Spinelli."
Reid starts to protest that it's not fair, that's obviously out of his sphere of knowledge, but it falls on deaf ears as Garcia and Kevin press their lips together, laughing.
All the Way
JJ laughs against his lips, one hand fumbling at his buckle as she yanks the closet shut with the other. "I feel like I'm back in highschool," she snickers. "Don't you?"
"Shhhh," Reid hisses, flushing red in the dim light seeping under the door. "And I was eleven in highschool."
"Right," she says, her voice softer now, her mouth moving against his neck. "I forget sometimes. Well, then, let me show you what it's all about." JJ grins as he rucks her skirt up around her hips, then bats her eyes in an approximation of her sixteen year-old self. "So do you wanna go all the way?"
Stumped
"Agent Jareau? Thanks for coming. We're really at a loss with this one." The detective shook JJ's hand with a firm, if exhausted, grip.
"We're glad to help," JJ said, smiling and introducing the team.
"We don't get stumped often around here. I supposed you'll see why when you meet the lead."
JJ's eyebrows drew together quizzically as the detective led them to a corner office. Peering through the window, she heard Emily's baffled whisper in her ear. "That guy dresses worse than Reid! And is he smoking?"
The door opened, and the man turned around slowly. "Holmes," he said, pulling the pipe from between his lips. "Detective Sherlock Holmes."
Home
He still isn't used to her voice sounding so far away. It's thinner, tinny, shot through with static, and it's somehow just a little harder to hear when he knows he won't see her again before he goes to sleep.
"How is it?" JJ asks.
"It's a bad one," he tells her. "Two bodies in two days. He's completely off-script now. Devolving fast. Hotch thinks he's going to run, turn this into a spree."
JJ sighs. "You'll get him," she says, but she sounds weary. Cynical. "But... Spence?"
"Hm?"
"Be careful, okay? Promise."
"Of course," he says, and he means it. Lately, it's become more important to come back home.
Recovery
They've never said the words - confessions are dangerous in the Bureau - but they don't have to. Emily's eyes are mirrors; he looks into them, and his flaws are exposed, magnified, shared.
Reid doesn't need to explain his 2am text - help - and she doesn't need to explain why she knows what to do. Sometimes, they just pace. Sometimes it's three pots of coffee and a game of War. Sometimes - tonight - she wraps around him from behind, pins his arms, holds him down in bed with her voice against his neck: Just breathe until it's over. I promise I won't let you go.
Wallow
"How are you feeling?"
JJ sighed. "Well. My tits feel like they're going to explode; I've puked twice since seven, and I've only left this couch to pee. Every ten minutes."
Spencer's mouth set into an anxious, sympathetic line. "That bad, huh?"
"Ten times worse than with Henry. I swear it's you and your shitty genes." She knew her mistake instantly; knew that what she'd meant to bring levity had been a knife right to the gut. His face confirmed it. "Spence, no, I didn't mean..."
He shrugged. "I know. It's okay."
"It's not." JJ patted the cushion with a tentative smile. "Come sit with me, Daddy. Let's wallow together."
Wet
JJ stepped back to admire their work from a distance and smiled. Her shoulders ached; her arms were burning, and she had sweat dripping down into her eyes, but it was worth it. The living room was a thoroughly satisfying shade of blue.
"What do you think?" she asked, resting her hands against her hips as Elle stepped to her side to check it out.
"I think we kicked its ass," Elle said with a decisive nod.
"I'd have to agree. Thoroughly. What now?"
"Now?" Elle grinned and tugged mischievously at the hem of JJ's paint-spattered t-shirt. "Now is the fun part. We let it dry... and we get wet."
Category Two: Character (All drabbles must feature the same character. I chose Elle.)
The Answer
The two men at the end of the bar keep looking at them sideways, trying to figure out what she’s doing here with this kid. Elle can read their faces. Her brother? Her gay friend? Some homeless guy she felt sorry for?
Nope. No resemblance. He’s looked the pretty waitress up and down twice (unconsciously, Elle notes, so he isn’t in trouble.) Too well-dressed.
While Reid’s got his head turned, she leans towards the exposed side of his throat and bites, lipstick and spit and the whole shebang. His eyes snap to hers, startled, and she just smiles, thinking That ought to answer their questions.
Conscience
She knows what Hotch wants. He wants an apology; he wants her to say she wished she hadn’t had to do it; he wants her to say it was the hardest thing she's ever done. He wants her to feel guilty, conflicted, haunted.
The truth is that Elle neither wishes nor feels any of that. The truth is that it was easier than she imagined. The truth is that she's relieved William Lee's dead, because when she closes her eyes, she sees Cheryl Cosgrove, not him.
The truth is that he would've done it again, and that isn’t something she could live with.
Trouble
The first time she fired a gun, Elle was seven years old, tucked against her father's broad chest, his hands over hers steady and serious and as warm as the sun. "You think before you do this," he'd told her. "Every single time, you think."
Before anyone had ever written impatient or short-tempered in her personnel file, before she’d ever been dressed down for second-guessing her superior in public, before she’d ever put a bullet into anything other than a paper target, Elle had nodded gravely and made a promise.
"Okay, Daddy," she'd said.
Sometimes, though? The more she thought, the more trouble she got.
Raising the Stakes
Elle had to bite her lip so hard it almost bled when she saw him walk onto that train so that she wouldn't scream in frustration. It wasn't bad enough that she was disarmed in the Texas heat with a psycho and his car full of hostages, but then they sent Reid in after her; Reid with his little-boy face and dangerous brain; Reid with his pretty hands and pretty heart; Reid, who was way too young to die like this.
Reid, who was prone to stripping off his fucking vest.
Elle put her head in her hands and took a deep breath. The stakes were suddenly entirely too high.
Untitled
"I hate that face," she murmurs, pressing her palms flat against his cheeks and kissing the frown that's etched its way into his forehead. "God. You make me feel like I've just killed your kitten." The kiss helps, but just barely. The pout in his lower lip relaxes, at least, and Elle works her way down until she's licking at it, pulling it wider, working his mouth into a smile. "Theeeere we go, baby. See? Not so bad."
"Says you," Reid answers, milking his petulance for all it's worth.
"If you don't let me get dressed," she chides, "how am I supposed to get the door? Nobody likes cold pizza."
Category Three: Author's Choice (five drabbles of your choice)
In Which Reid Makes a Clever Deduction
Reid figures it out first. He wanders into her office without knocking one morning, shuffling files, staring distractedly down at them, muttering in her direction. The answer is a queasy moan that makes him drop everything and rush around her desk.
"JJ! Are you okay?"
She's greenish, frail-looking, and reaches suddenly for the trash can. Reid pulls her hair back and holds it while she retches, then she slumps down into her chair. "Sorry."
"No, it's okay," he says. "Are you... you're... are you...?"
JJ nods weakly, then puts her finger to her lips.
"Of course," Reid says, half-awed and smiling. "Yeah. Um. Do you... do you want some gum?"
Jenny
"You sure know how to stomp all over a girl's self-esteem," JJ says, toeing off her shoe and glaring from the bed.
"What do you mean?" Reid looks away from her vanity, eyebrows drawn in confusion.
"You're more interested in my apartment!"
Reid shakes his head. "No. I'm interested in you." He gestures to a card stuck in the mirror's frame. "Who called you Jenny?"
JJ freezes. The moment hangs suspended for a breath until she says, tentatively, "My sister."
"She's gone." His voice is gentle. It's not a question. "What happened?"
"Fucking profilers," she sighs shakily. "Come sit, and I'll tell you."
Bloom
The flowers bloomed from Reid's palm with a pop and almost clocked her in the nose. Penelope shrieked as he grinned, his face somewhere between apology and amused self-satisfaction.
"Jiminy effing cricket! If I hadn't just spent a week's pay on a manicure, I'd... wait. Are those camellias?" She stepped back to look without her eyes crossing. "They are! They're my... how did you know?"
"You told me."
"I did? When?"
"October 23rd of last year."
"And you... of course you did." She smiled broadly. "In flower lore they mean..."
"Loveliness and gratitude."
"Right. Well, I certainly feel gratitude, sweetcheeks."
Reid blushed. "And you were lovely in the play tonight."
Praying Mantis
Elle likes him because he isn't afraid of her, because he doesn't look at her like he's wary of her, like she might go all praying mantis on his ass and fuck him and kill him in blindingly rapid succession.
He knows she could do both without even a flinch - she wouldn't bother with him if he didn't - but Derek also knows that she's soft, that she's ticklish behind her knees, that she's never squished a spider in her entire fucking life.
He knows because he's as fearless as she is, because he dives right in, because when her eyes flash keep out, he doesn't take the suggestion.
Wind-Chime Bones
He has jangly bones, loud ones, wind-chime bones like the ones in the Nevada desert that Reid hears in his dreams. As he rolls his thumbs up Nathan Harris' ribs, that's what he remembers - that sound, Death toasting Himself on Crazy Jane's doorstep - and he can't stop .
The noise knocks around his brain, bouncing off of every shrieking no, every alarm flashing behind his eyes, every red flag rising up off of his spine, and Reid knows it's all in his head - there's nothing here but hot breath and Nathan's cold, pretty skin - but still. Still.
Doesn't he know better than this by now?
Category One: Themes
(in order: fierce, family, smile, quote, pairing, crossover, two, close, angst, distance)
Fierce
JJ's searching for the right word, Elle's death-cold hands between her own, her anxious knees bouncing, her pretty lips trembling towards collapse. It's late - well past midnight - and here she is, appearing out of nowhere like a ghost on JJ's doorstep, drained of her defiance and her bravado, but not...
not...
not her ferocity. It's there still, black and hot and beautiful, and that's what JJ tells her when the tears start to fall. You're fierce, she says. Fierce, the word clicking into place, the safety off, the barrel level. Fierce, the way gods are fierce, and monsters, and the sacrifices women make for one another.
Plenty
As he falls asleep, there's only Prentiss, organizing his antibiotics into a pill-case, and JJ, listening to him breathe. Unnecessary, he's said. He's fine. But they're there. They're comfort. They're plenty.
But when he wakes, he smells cooking and hears voices. Garcia enters laughing in her flowered apron and tells him Morgan's burned the bacon. Somewhere, Rossi's on the phone, and when Garcia plops down on the bed and tells him they've all taken three days of family leave - even Hotch, whose crisp steps he can hear now in the hallway - all Reid can do is shake his head, bemused, and smile as she kisses his cheek.
Kill You Quicker
"You kept it short." The voice in Elle's ear is soft and low and unmistakable. The hand at her neck, its thumb reaching gently up into her hairline, is as familiar as it is unexpected.
She whirls around and cocks one eyebrow. "You ought to know better than to startle me, Hotch. I'm liable to put one right between your eyes."
His mouth moves like he's trying to smile but can't quite remember how. "Nice to see you, too."
"What took you so long?"
"Life," he says. "Work." After a moment's pause, he adds, "Guilt."
"See, that? That'll kill you quicker than I will," she whispers. "Now where's my kiss?"
Out of His Sphere
"I've got one!" Garcia pipes up. "I'm not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it."
Reid flips through the filebox of his brain, coming up empty but reluctant to admit it.
"Three... two... one," Garcia counts down, and when she dingdingding!s, Kevin leans forward and puts his chin on her shoulder.
"Give up?" he asks Reid.
"I suppose."
"Stargirl," Kevin answers. "Jerry Spinelli."
Reid starts to protest that it's not fair, that's obviously out of his sphere of knowledge, but it falls on deaf ears as Garcia and Kevin press their lips together, laughing.
All the Way
JJ laughs against his lips, one hand fumbling at his buckle as she yanks the closet shut with the other. "I feel like I'm back in highschool," she snickers. "Don't you?"
"Shhhh," Reid hisses, flushing red in the dim light seeping under the door. "And I was eleven in highschool."
"Right," she says, her voice softer now, her mouth moving against his neck. "I forget sometimes. Well, then, let me show you what it's all about." JJ grins as he rucks her skirt up around her hips, then bats her eyes in an approximation of her sixteen year-old self. "So do you wanna go all the way?"
Stumped
"Agent Jareau? Thanks for coming. We're really at a loss with this one." The detective shook JJ's hand with a firm, if exhausted, grip.
"We're glad to help," JJ said, smiling and introducing the team.
"We don't get stumped often around here. I supposed you'll see why when you meet the lead."
JJ's eyebrows drew together quizzically as the detective led them to a corner office. Peering through the window, she heard Emily's baffled whisper in her ear. "That guy dresses worse than Reid! And is he smoking?"
The door opened, and the man turned around slowly. "Holmes," he said, pulling the pipe from between his lips. "Detective Sherlock Holmes."
Home
He still isn't used to her voice sounding so far away. It's thinner, tinny, shot through with static, and it's somehow just a little harder to hear when he knows he won't see her again before he goes to sleep.
"How is it?" JJ asks.
"It's a bad one," he tells her. "Two bodies in two days. He's completely off-script now. Devolving fast. Hotch thinks he's going to run, turn this into a spree."
JJ sighs. "You'll get him," she says, but she sounds weary. Cynical. "But... Spence?"
"Hm?"
"Be careful, okay? Promise."
"Of course," he says, and he means it. Lately, it's become more important to come back home.
Recovery
They've never said the words - confessions are dangerous in the Bureau - but they don't have to. Emily's eyes are mirrors; he looks into them, and his flaws are exposed, magnified, shared.
Reid doesn't need to explain his 2am text - help - and she doesn't need to explain why she knows what to do. Sometimes, they just pace. Sometimes it's three pots of coffee and a game of War. Sometimes - tonight - she wraps around him from behind, pins his arms, holds him down in bed with her voice against his neck: Just breathe until it's over. I promise I won't let you go.
Wallow
"How are you feeling?"
JJ sighed. "Well. My tits feel like they're going to explode; I've puked twice since seven, and I've only left this couch to pee. Every ten minutes."
Spencer's mouth set into an anxious, sympathetic line. "That bad, huh?"
"Ten times worse than with Henry. I swear it's you and your shitty genes." She knew her mistake instantly; knew that what she'd meant to bring levity had been a knife right to the gut. His face confirmed it. "Spence, no, I didn't mean..."
He shrugged. "I know. It's okay."
"It's not." JJ patted the cushion with a tentative smile. "Come sit with me, Daddy. Let's wallow together."
Wet
JJ stepped back to admire their work from a distance and smiled. Her shoulders ached; her arms were burning, and she had sweat dripping down into her eyes, but it was worth it. The living room was a thoroughly satisfying shade of blue.
"What do you think?" she asked, resting her hands against her hips as Elle stepped to her side to check it out.
"I think we kicked its ass," Elle said with a decisive nod.
"I'd have to agree. Thoroughly. What now?"
"Now?" Elle grinned and tugged mischievously at the hem of JJ's paint-spattered t-shirt. "Now is the fun part. We let it dry... and we get wet."
Category Two: Character (All drabbles must feature the same character. I chose Elle.)
The Answer
The two men at the end of the bar keep looking at them sideways, trying to figure out what she’s doing here with this kid. Elle can read their faces. Her brother? Her gay friend? Some homeless guy she felt sorry for?
Nope. No resemblance. He’s looked the pretty waitress up and down twice (unconsciously, Elle notes, so he isn’t in trouble.) Too well-dressed.
While Reid’s got his head turned, she leans towards the exposed side of his throat and bites, lipstick and spit and the whole shebang. His eyes snap to hers, startled, and she just smiles, thinking That ought to answer their questions.
Conscience
She knows what Hotch wants. He wants an apology; he wants her to say she wished she hadn’t had to do it; he wants her to say it was the hardest thing she's ever done. He wants her to feel guilty, conflicted, haunted.
The truth is that Elle neither wishes nor feels any of that. The truth is that it was easier than she imagined. The truth is that she's relieved William Lee's dead, because when she closes her eyes, she sees Cheryl Cosgrove, not him.
The truth is that he would've done it again, and that isn’t something she could live with.
Trouble
The first time she fired a gun, Elle was seven years old, tucked against her father's broad chest, his hands over hers steady and serious and as warm as the sun. "You think before you do this," he'd told her. "Every single time, you think."
Before anyone had ever written impatient or short-tempered in her personnel file, before she’d ever been dressed down for second-guessing her superior in public, before she’d ever put a bullet into anything other than a paper target, Elle had nodded gravely and made a promise.
"Okay, Daddy," she'd said.
Sometimes, though? The more she thought, the more trouble she got.
Raising the Stakes
Elle had to bite her lip so hard it almost bled when she saw him walk onto that train so that she wouldn't scream in frustration. It wasn't bad enough that she was disarmed in the Texas heat with a psycho and his car full of hostages, but then they sent Reid in after her; Reid with his little-boy face and dangerous brain; Reid with his pretty hands and pretty heart; Reid, who was way too young to die like this.
Reid, who was prone to stripping off his fucking vest.
Elle put her head in her hands and took a deep breath. The stakes were suddenly entirely too high.
Untitled
"I hate that face," she murmurs, pressing her palms flat against his cheeks and kissing the frown that's etched its way into his forehead. "God. You make me feel like I've just killed your kitten." The kiss helps, but just barely. The pout in his lower lip relaxes, at least, and Elle works her way down until she's licking at it, pulling it wider, working his mouth into a smile. "Theeeere we go, baby. See? Not so bad."
"Says you," Reid answers, milking his petulance for all it's worth.
"If you don't let me get dressed," she chides, "how am I supposed to get the door? Nobody likes cold pizza."
Category Three: Author's Choice (five drabbles of your choice)
In Which Reid Makes a Clever Deduction
Reid figures it out first. He wanders into her office without knocking one morning, shuffling files, staring distractedly down at them, muttering in her direction. The answer is a queasy moan that makes him drop everything and rush around her desk.
"JJ! Are you okay?"
She's greenish, frail-looking, and reaches suddenly for the trash can. Reid pulls her hair back and holds it while she retches, then she slumps down into her chair. "Sorry."
"No, it's okay," he says. "Are you... you're... are you...?"
JJ nods weakly, then puts her finger to her lips.
"Of course," Reid says, half-awed and smiling. "Yeah. Um. Do you... do you want some gum?"
Jenny
"You sure know how to stomp all over a girl's self-esteem," JJ says, toeing off her shoe and glaring from the bed.
"What do you mean?" Reid looks away from her vanity, eyebrows drawn in confusion.
"You're more interested in my apartment!"
Reid shakes his head. "No. I'm interested in you." He gestures to a card stuck in the mirror's frame. "Who called you Jenny?"
JJ freezes. The moment hangs suspended for a breath until she says, tentatively, "My sister."
"She's gone." His voice is gentle. It's not a question. "What happened?"
"Fucking profilers," she sighs shakily. "Come sit, and I'll tell you."
Bloom
The flowers bloomed from Reid's palm with a pop and almost clocked her in the nose. Penelope shrieked as he grinned, his face somewhere between apology and amused self-satisfaction.
"Jiminy effing cricket! If I hadn't just spent a week's pay on a manicure, I'd... wait. Are those camellias?" She stepped back to look without her eyes crossing. "They are! They're my... how did you know?"
"You told me."
"I did? When?"
"October 23rd of last year."
"And you... of course you did." She smiled broadly. "In flower lore they mean..."
"Loveliness and gratitude."
"Right. Well, I certainly feel gratitude, sweetcheeks."
Reid blushed. "And you were lovely in the play tonight."
Praying Mantis
Elle likes him because he isn't afraid of her, because he doesn't look at her like he's wary of her, like she might go all praying mantis on his ass and fuck him and kill him in blindingly rapid succession.
He knows she could do both without even a flinch - she wouldn't bother with him if he didn't - but Derek also knows that she's soft, that she's ticklish behind her knees, that she's never squished a spider in her entire fucking life.
He knows because he's as fearless as she is, because he dives right in, because when her eyes flash keep out, he doesn't take the suggestion.
Wind-Chime Bones
He has jangly bones, loud ones, wind-chime bones like the ones in the Nevada desert that Reid hears in his dreams. As he rolls his thumbs up Nathan Harris' ribs, that's what he remembers - that sound, Death toasting Himself on Crazy Jane's doorstep - and he can't stop .
The noise knocks around his brain, bouncing off of every shrieking no, every alarm flashing behind his eyes, every red flag rising up off of his spine, and Reid knows it's all in his head - there's nothing here but hot breath and Nathan's cold, pretty skin - but still. Still.
Doesn't he know better than this by now?