Security 31/?
Title: Security 31/?
Pairing: JJ/Prentiss
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This is how it starts, with a friendship that can't stop from becoming more.
Warnings: Femslash, some language.
Spoiler Warnings: None
Author's Note: A blast from the past comes through. I'm winding down on writing this - I'm almost done, but I'm writing Part 48 right now, and I think there's going to be a few more parts at least, so there's a bit to come yet.
I'd like to thank queenof1000days for her continued encouragement and inspiration as I tackle writing this behemoth. She's been invaluable and I honestly don't know what I would do without her. Security is dedicated to her.
Word Count: c. 1869
Disclaimer: Without prejudice. The names of all characters contained here-in are the property of CBS and their respective creators. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
Together they decided that they didn’t want to announce their engagement to the team until they had rings to show off, so the next day they and Harrison went shopping.
“You’re very quiet,” Emily said after a long period of silence from JJ.
“I was just thinking,” JJ said awkwardly. “I forget sometimes that even though we’re both on government salaries, you have a lot more money in reserve than I do. I don’t want you to go all out, because I… I can’t compete.”
Emily frowned. “I’m not asking you to compete, Jay. I’m just asking you to love me. You could give me the ring out of a box of cereal and it’d be perfect, because it’d mean I’m getting you.”
JJ smiled brightly, and was just about to lean in and kiss her when a familiar voice gave her pause. “JJ, is that you?” JJ looked up and Emily watched as her face went white, her smile tight.
“Elle Greenaway.”
Elle walked over with an awkward smile on her face and held out her arms for JJ. They embraced lightly, neither letting themselves linger.
“This is Emily Prentiss,” JJ introduced. “Emily, this is Elle Greenaway. Emily is actually the agent hired to take your position when you… left, Elle.” She offered that same tight smile. “And, uh, we’re…” She looked to Emily for confirmation that it was okay to reveal the rest, and she nodded. “We’re getting married,” she said uncomfortably.
Harrison piped up from Emily’s arms, where he’d scrambled when the stranger had approached them. “Who is that lady, Mama?”
JJ turned to explain the connection to Harrison as Elle’s expression turned almost shocked. “You’re getting married to her?” She let out a long breath. “So you lied to me.”
“What do you mean, she lied to you?” Emily asked curiously. There was something going on here that she didn’t quite understand, and from the stricken expression on JJ’s face and the anxious way Elle was shifting her weight from foot to foot, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“It’s… complicated,” JJ said cagily.
“Well, you two clearly have a lot to catch up on,” Emily said after a short pause to process this. She shifted Harrison in her arms and bit her lip. “But I have an idea - why don’t you and Elle go for coffee, and Harry and I will go pick out a ring for you, Mama Jay? And you can take my AmEx and pick one out for me, if you want? We can talk finances later tonight.”
JJ nodded, so Emily took her leave, carrying Harrison away and leaving JJ with Elle. “Mommy, I didn’t like that lady,” Harrison whispered.
“I’m not sure I did either,” Emily said, letting out a breath to try to keep her face steady. After kissing JJ - rather self-consciously - she carried Harrison in the direction of a jewelry store that had caught her eye, while JJ and Elle headed for a nearby coffee shop.
***
Elle didn’t even wait until they had made it to a table with their coffees before she started in on JJ. “So that night, in the hotel, you lied to me,” she stated. “You told me you were straight, and that you weren’t interested.”
JJ sighed. She hadn’t ever thought she would have to explain things to Elle, that what she had said that night would be enough. She’d thought that when Elle had left, she would never see her again. By the time she was meeting and falling in love with Emily, she’d put that night with Elle out of her mind completely. Of course they would have to run into her while shopping for engagement rings, of all things.
“I didn’t lie to you,” she said finally. “Look, what happened in that hotel room… that had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with that case and how I felt when it was all over. You know the FBI has rules about same sex roommates on location… and you know that those rules are the only reason we were even sharing a room that night. If it had been Morgan, or Hotch, or Jesus, even Gideon in that hotel room, I would have done the same thing.”
“You kissed me!” Elle insisted.
“No, you kissed me,” JJ responded. “I hugged you. You hugged back. I needed the human contact, Elle. It was you who leaned in and kissed me, and yeah, I probably should have stopped it before it started, but I was… needy, I was desperate to feel something that wasn’t horror and despair. You were warm. I remember you being warm and soft…”
Elle looked stricken. “So you used me, then,” she accused, hurt coloring her features.
“It wasn’t like that!” JJ exclaimed. “If you hadn’t kissed me then all it would have been was a simple hug between two coworkers who had had a bad day! You just… caught me off guard with the kiss, was all. It… wasn’t bad,” she said, blushing.
“You said you were straight,” Elle insisted. “When you pushed me away, you said it was because you were straight, and you didn’t feel that way about me.”
“At the time, that’s what I truly believed. I mean, I liked that kiss, but I convinced myself I liked it because it came at a time when I was craving human contact, and well, because you’re just plain good at kissing. I never once let myself consider that I might be attracted to women. It just wasn’t in my realm of experience.”
Elle sighed and looked down at her coffee. “See, here’s the thing. I liked you, JJ. I thought… when you came to me that night, I thought maybe you felt the same way. You hurt me. You kissed back, JJ! I wouldn’t have pushed if I didn’t think…” She sighed again and changed the subject slightly. “So tell me about her.”
The way JJ lit up from the inside out when she talked about Emily was painfully obvious to Elle. “When we first started to get close, I still didn’t know I like women… but she and I just worked. She gave me a backrub one night and I ended up staying at her house, and it just went from there. We didn’t even… make love, until long after I realized that I’d fallen for her hard. Our relationship wasn’t ever about that, about the physical stuff, not until we were ready and we’d built something real without sex.”
“What does she have that I don’t?”
JJ looked at Elle for a long moment before answering. What did Emily have that Elle didn’t? For starters, Emily was soft and safe where Elle had been prickly and volatile. Emily had offered genuine friendship that had grown, and Elle had taken an opening for friendship and pushed physicality on her. Emily let JJ see her vulnerability, despite how hard it was for her to let anyone in, while Elle was so closed off that no one had even had a chance to help her before she had exploded in on herself and killed a man. But JJ couldn’t say any of that, not if she wanted to get out of this coffee shop without fighting.
“She has my heart,” she said at length. She shrugged, smiling a little at how corny she knew she sounded. “I don’t know how she got it - she just crept in like a thief in the night and took it, before I realized what had happened.”
“That’s… thank God you work for the FBI and not for Hallmark, because that was god awful,” Elle joked weakly. JJ returned her tentative smile. “And… is the little boy hers?”
“He’s a long story,” JJ said. “You could… come for dinner, maybe - tomorrow night? We could tell you about him then. The short version is that he’s ours now.”
They stood as one, and left the coffee shop together. “I think maybe I will,” Elle said, “if that’s okay. I’d like to meet her properly. I don’t think I made a very good first impression. I was too busy… remembering how much I wanted you.”
“Why didn’t you just say something back then?” JJ asked uncomfortably.
“Why didn’t you notice?” Elle countered as they parted ways.
***
“Hotch, the baby is kicking!” Garcia garbled into the phone. She heard swift footsteps approaching her lair in moments, and grinned as he opened the door and barged in, a matching grin on his face.
“Let me feel,” he requested. Garcia took his hand and guided it to the spot where their child was making its presence known to the outside world. “Oh, we’ve got ourselves a quarterback,” he said fondly.
***
“We need to talk,” JJ said to Emily once she had let herself into their house a couple of hours later. “I owe you an explanation for what happened back there.”
“Whatever it was, it happened before you knew me,” Emily said uncomfortably. “I don’t… you don’t have to explain it to me.”
“But I want to,” JJ said simply. “Where’s Harry?”
“He’s watching Nemo in our room. Listen before we get into this whole “sharing our past” thing… let me do this, okay?” She pulled a ring box out of her pocket and got down on one knee. “I screwed this up, and I should have done it right, but I’m hoping this makes up for it. Marry me, Jennifer. Marry me, because as long as I live, I want you by my side.” She smiled sheepishly.
JJ took one look at the stunning ring and gasped. It was big, but she had expected that. It wasn’t so big that it was tacky though. A single diamond adorned the top of the white gold ring, flanked on either side by two smaller diamonds. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly, and held out her hand for Emily to slip the ring on her finger. “And yes, I’ll marry you. I know there’s nowhere else I’m ever going to want to be.”
She reached into the small bag she was carrying and held out her own offering. It was simple gold with one central diamond. When she had seen it in the store, she had thought that it was very like Emily. It was practical but beautiful, precious but understated. It looked like it belonged on her finger. They kissed, lingering sweetly before pulling away just far enough to sink into each other’s’ embrace. “I love you,” JJ murmured. “I love you more than I was aware I was capable of loving anyone.”
Emily smiled and sat down on the couch, pulling JJ into her arms. “I love you too. Now tell me what you want to tell me, before it eats you alive.”
Pairing: JJ/Prentiss
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This is how it starts, with a friendship that can't stop from becoming more.
Warnings: Femslash, some language.
Spoiler Warnings: None
Author's Note: A blast from the past comes through. I'm winding down on writing this - I'm almost done, but I'm writing Part 48 right now, and I think there's going to be a few more parts at least, so there's a bit to come yet.
I'd like to thank queenof1000days for her continued encouragement and inspiration as I tackle writing this behemoth. She's been invaluable and I honestly don't know what I would do without her. Security is dedicated to her.
Word Count: c. 1869
Disclaimer: Without prejudice. The names of all characters contained here-in are the property of CBS and their respective creators. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
Together they decided that they didn’t want to announce their engagement to the team until they had rings to show off, so the next day they and Harrison went shopping.
“You’re very quiet,” Emily said after a long period of silence from JJ.
“I was just thinking,” JJ said awkwardly. “I forget sometimes that even though we’re both on government salaries, you have a lot more money in reserve than I do. I don’t want you to go all out, because I… I can’t compete.”
Emily frowned. “I’m not asking you to compete, Jay. I’m just asking you to love me. You could give me the ring out of a box of cereal and it’d be perfect, because it’d mean I’m getting you.”
JJ smiled brightly, and was just about to lean in and kiss her when a familiar voice gave her pause. “JJ, is that you?” JJ looked up and Emily watched as her face went white, her smile tight.
“Elle Greenaway.”
Elle walked over with an awkward smile on her face and held out her arms for JJ. They embraced lightly, neither letting themselves linger.
“This is Emily Prentiss,” JJ introduced. “Emily, this is Elle Greenaway. Emily is actually the agent hired to take your position when you… left, Elle.” She offered that same tight smile. “And, uh, we’re…” She looked to Emily for confirmation that it was okay to reveal the rest, and she nodded. “We’re getting married,” she said uncomfortably.
Harrison piped up from Emily’s arms, where he’d scrambled when the stranger had approached them. “Who is that lady, Mama?”
JJ turned to explain the connection to Harrison as Elle’s expression turned almost shocked. “You’re getting married to her?” She let out a long breath. “So you lied to me.”
“What do you mean, she lied to you?” Emily asked curiously. There was something going on here that she didn’t quite understand, and from the stricken expression on JJ’s face and the anxious way Elle was shifting her weight from foot to foot, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“It’s… complicated,” JJ said cagily.
“Well, you two clearly have a lot to catch up on,” Emily said after a short pause to process this. She shifted Harrison in her arms and bit her lip. “But I have an idea - why don’t you and Elle go for coffee, and Harry and I will go pick out a ring for you, Mama Jay? And you can take my AmEx and pick one out for me, if you want? We can talk finances later tonight.”
JJ nodded, so Emily took her leave, carrying Harrison away and leaving JJ with Elle. “Mommy, I didn’t like that lady,” Harrison whispered.
“I’m not sure I did either,” Emily said, letting out a breath to try to keep her face steady. After kissing JJ - rather self-consciously - she carried Harrison in the direction of a jewelry store that had caught her eye, while JJ and Elle headed for a nearby coffee shop.
***
Elle didn’t even wait until they had made it to a table with their coffees before she started in on JJ. “So that night, in the hotel, you lied to me,” she stated. “You told me you were straight, and that you weren’t interested.”
JJ sighed. She hadn’t ever thought she would have to explain things to Elle, that what she had said that night would be enough. She’d thought that when Elle had left, she would never see her again. By the time she was meeting and falling in love with Emily, she’d put that night with Elle out of her mind completely. Of course they would have to run into her while shopping for engagement rings, of all things.
“I didn’t lie to you,” she said finally. “Look, what happened in that hotel room… that had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with that case and how I felt when it was all over. You know the FBI has rules about same sex roommates on location… and you know that those rules are the only reason we were even sharing a room that night. If it had been Morgan, or Hotch, or Jesus, even Gideon in that hotel room, I would have done the same thing.”
“You kissed me!” Elle insisted.
“No, you kissed me,” JJ responded. “I hugged you. You hugged back. I needed the human contact, Elle. It was you who leaned in and kissed me, and yeah, I probably should have stopped it before it started, but I was… needy, I was desperate to feel something that wasn’t horror and despair. You were warm. I remember you being warm and soft…”
Elle looked stricken. “So you used me, then,” she accused, hurt coloring her features.
“It wasn’t like that!” JJ exclaimed. “If you hadn’t kissed me then all it would have been was a simple hug between two coworkers who had had a bad day! You just… caught me off guard with the kiss, was all. It… wasn’t bad,” she said, blushing.
“You said you were straight,” Elle insisted. “When you pushed me away, you said it was because you were straight, and you didn’t feel that way about me.”
“At the time, that’s what I truly believed. I mean, I liked that kiss, but I convinced myself I liked it because it came at a time when I was craving human contact, and well, because you’re just plain good at kissing. I never once let myself consider that I might be attracted to women. It just wasn’t in my realm of experience.”
Elle sighed and looked down at her coffee. “See, here’s the thing. I liked you, JJ. I thought… when you came to me that night, I thought maybe you felt the same way. You hurt me. You kissed back, JJ! I wouldn’t have pushed if I didn’t think…” She sighed again and changed the subject slightly. “So tell me about her.”
The way JJ lit up from the inside out when she talked about Emily was painfully obvious to Elle. “When we first started to get close, I still didn’t know I like women… but she and I just worked. She gave me a backrub one night and I ended up staying at her house, and it just went from there. We didn’t even… make love, until long after I realized that I’d fallen for her hard. Our relationship wasn’t ever about that, about the physical stuff, not until we were ready and we’d built something real without sex.”
“What does she have that I don’t?”
JJ looked at Elle for a long moment before answering. What did Emily have that Elle didn’t? For starters, Emily was soft and safe where Elle had been prickly and volatile. Emily had offered genuine friendship that had grown, and Elle had taken an opening for friendship and pushed physicality on her. Emily let JJ see her vulnerability, despite how hard it was for her to let anyone in, while Elle was so closed off that no one had even had a chance to help her before she had exploded in on herself and killed a man. But JJ couldn’t say any of that, not if she wanted to get out of this coffee shop without fighting.
“She has my heart,” she said at length. She shrugged, smiling a little at how corny she knew she sounded. “I don’t know how she got it - she just crept in like a thief in the night and took it, before I realized what had happened.”
“That’s… thank God you work for the FBI and not for Hallmark, because that was god awful,” Elle joked weakly. JJ returned her tentative smile. “And… is the little boy hers?”
“He’s a long story,” JJ said. “You could… come for dinner, maybe - tomorrow night? We could tell you about him then. The short version is that he’s ours now.”
They stood as one, and left the coffee shop together. “I think maybe I will,” Elle said, “if that’s okay. I’d like to meet her properly. I don’t think I made a very good first impression. I was too busy… remembering how much I wanted you.”
“Why didn’t you just say something back then?” JJ asked uncomfortably.
“Why didn’t you notice?” Elle countered as they parted ways.
***
“Hotch, the baby is kicking!” Garcia garbled into the phone. She heard swift footsteps approaching her lair in moments, and grinned as he opened the door and barged in, a matching grin on his face.
“Let me feel,” he requested. Garcia took his hand and guided it to the spot where their child was making its presence known to the outside world. “Oh, we’ve got ourselves a quarterback,” he said fondly.
***
“We need to talk,” JJ said to Emily once she had let herself into their house a couple of hours later. “I owe you an explanation for what happened back there.”
“Whatever it was, it happened before you knew me,” Emily said uncomfortably. “I don’t… you don’t have to explain it to me.”
“But I want to,” JJ said simply. “Where’s Harry?”
“He’s watching Nemo in our room. Listen before we get into this whole “sharing our past” thing… let me do this, okay?” She pulled a ring box out of her pocket and got down on one knee. “I screwed this up, and I should have done it right, but I’m hoping this makes up for it. Marry me, Jennifer. Marry me, because as long as I live, I want you by my side.” She smiled sheepishly.
JJ took one look at the stunning ring and gasped. It was big, but she had expected that. It wasn’t so big that it was tacky though. A single diamond adorned the top of the white gold ring, flanked on either side by two smaller diamonds. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly, and held out her hand for Emily to slip the ring on her finger. “And yes, I’ll marry you. I know there’s nowhere else I’m ever going to want to be.”
She reached into the small bag she was carrying and held out her own offering. It was simple gold with one central diamond. When she had seen it in the store, she had thought that it was very like Emily. It was practical but beautiful, precious but understated. It looked like it belonged on her finger. They kissed, lingering sweetly before pulling away just far enough to sink into each other’s’ embrace. “I love you,” JJ murmured. “I love you more than I was aware I was capable of loving anyone.”
Emily smiled and sat down on the couch, pulling JJ into her arms. “I love you too. Now tell me what you want to tell me, before it eats you alive.”