Talk, Talk, Talk
This is a jotch fic requested by the wonderful @dontshootmespence. It’s actually the first jemily that I’ve written, so I really hope I did alright haha. Please, please enjoy, my loves :)
JJ loses Will after Hotch loses Haley. It starts as just two people confiding in each other, but maybe it devolves into other feelings, hmm?
“Hotch?” JJ gasped, pulling her sweatshirt tighter around her, “What are you doing here?”
Hotch held out the wine bottle, a sort of olive branch, “I figured you could use somebody to talk to you.”
“I’m fine,” She answered, lips a firm, straight line. He knew better.
“C’mon, just talk. It was a tough case, and what with everything that’s happened…”
“You wouldn’t unders-” JJ stopped because that wasn’t true. If anybody were to understand what she was going through, it would be hotch. He had gone through it, too. He’d been widowed and dragged down into the terrifying trenches of single parenthood. JJ sighed, “Come in,”
They end up settled onto the couch, wine glasses clutched in their hands, and popcorn on the table. That night, the two of them talk late into the night. JJ cries and Hotch hugs, shares advice. He’d learned things the hard way, and he knows that if he can do anything to prevent this amazing woman- coworker, he reminds himself- that she can make it through this, then he is most definitely going to do that. Just because he’s a good guy like that.
At 2 in the morning, JJ walks Hotch to the door, feeling tired, exhausted, and… better?
“Thank you, Hotch,” She tells him, “For everything. I really appreciate having somebody to talk to that actually understands.”
“You have no idea what I would have done to have somebody to just talk to after I lost Haley. I know what it’s like. I’m always here.” He reassures her, and she smiles softly as she shuts the door behind him and watches Hotch’s receding figure down the snowy driveway toward his car.
They do the whole ‘late night talk’ thing for a couple weeks after that. They do it every night they don’t have a case, and a couple nights that they do. It’s good and… familiar somehow.
One night, the dimness of the Jareau living room doesn’t feel like enough, and the two of them somehow end up at a coffee shop a couple of blocks over. Her mom volunteers to watch the kids, and JJ has the opportunity to talk and breathe and be out of a space that reminds her of somebody she lost, of a loss that left her as a widow and her children fatherless.
She tells Hotch how she feels, how congesting the house feels, with its haunts and memories, and she does her best not to shed tears (she’s stronger than this, dammit). But with Hotch everything feels easier and now Hotch has his arm wrapped comfortingly around her, his thumb rubbing soft circles against her palm, whispering quiet reassurances into her ear in the center of a coffee shop.
She tries not to think about how nice he smells and he tries not to attempt to pin down the scent of her shampoo (it’s vanilla and strawberries, he decides). They both fail miserably.
When they get up to leave, JJ realizes that her hand had been folded in his for the past hour, and that she’s reluctant to let go. She chalks it up to loneliness and the warmth of just having a good friend, and tries not to think about it too long as they step out into the cold, dark winter outside as they say their goodbyes.
At first, they try to keep it private, not make a big deal out of things. They’re just friends, it doesn’t matter anyway. But then one day, Hotch falls asleep beside her on the couch as some movie plays on the television. When the credits play, JJ doesn’t have the heart to wake him up.
In the morning, she makes pancakes and bacon for Henry and Michael. Hotch wakes up to the smell of the bacon and the sound of plates and forks and glasses clinking together. JJ left a mug of still-hot coffee on the coffee table for him to drink when he got up, made to order just as he liked it (black with the smallest amount of milk).
Hotch grunted as he rose off of the couch, shuffling into JJ’s kitchen to find Henry and Micheal chowing down hungrily on pancakes and bacon in the bright breakfast nook.
“Good morning, Mr. Hotchner!” Henry coos happily through a mouthful of pancake.
Hotch just smiles back at the young boy as JJ berates him for talking with his mouth full. He doesn’t say much over breakfast, he feels like he’s intruding and he allows Jareau domesticity reign over his silence.
When the two boys scurry off to get dressed for the school day, each pressing a kiss to their mother’s cheek, Hotch remarks to himself that for all of the sadness that plagues JJ, she’s an amazing mother, who has done an amazing job shielding her son’s from the pains of the world during her own troubles.
“You’re a really good mom,” He says quietly as he grabs for the last piece of bacon.
“Thank you,” JJ says back just as quietly, tensing a little for some reason that even she isn’t sure of.
She moves to do the dishes in silence then, and Hotch tries not to think too hard about how he possibly just messed up very much there.
The boys race back in ten minutes later, smiling and laughing and somehow making all sorts of noise as they get ready for the bus to come for them.
“Mr. Hotchner?” Henry looks up, “Can Jack sleep over at our place this weekend?”
“If it’s okay with your mom, “ Hotch answers, and all three of the boys look over at JJ in freakish unison. JJ tries not to think about how good the three of them look together, no sirree she does not.
“Jack is always welcome here,” She answers, and the way Hotch smiles back makes her insides feel a lot more at ease, which is weird to say the least.
After the boys get loaded onto the bus, JJ turns to Hotch, “Are you going to go home or straight to work?”
“I have my go bag in my car, I figured I’d just use that.”
JJ smiles, “We can car pool. It’ll be fun.” Hotch laughs at that and JJ smiles a little wider, “And Hotch? You’re always welcome here, too, just like Jack is.”
“I know, JJ.” He answers softly, “Thank you.”
The BAU profilers (and the brilliant technical analyst) start to notice the times JJ and Hotch car pool to work are starting to add up after about two and a half months of them car pooling with their late night talks and twice weekly trysts. Some of the junior agents are rumored to have started a betting pool about the whole thing. Everybody is very suspicious about the whole thing. But nobody, nobody, is more suspicious that Penelope Garcia.
The technical analyst has seemingly made it her life duty to discover what is going on between her unit chief and best friend. Unfortunately, all of her attempts at intrusion and infiltration proved fruitless. JJ and Hotch denied anything other than professional friendship. According to them, they worked cases together and that was it- yeah, right!
It all changed when JJ rushed into work late one day with her kids trailing after her. She looked a mess, stressed beyond belief.
“I am so, so sorry about this guys,” She told her coworkers, and she looked even more sorry about it than she claimed, “The babysitter fell through, and my mom is out of town visiting my uncle, and apparently nobody can babysit last minute on a Wednesday, and they didn’t tell me they had the day off until last night, and-”
“It’s fine, JJ,” Hotch said from the door of his office, “We all know they won’t make trouble. We understand.”
“Thank you,” She nodded her head in his direction just as Garcia appeared.
“Children! Yay!” And then the vibrant woman was hugging the Jareau boys, “What did I do to deserve the pleasure of seeing my two favorite boys in the world today?”
“Mom couldn’t find a sitter, so we came to work with her!” Henry announced excitedly
“Cool!” Garcia announced, “Do you guys want cookies? I made some last night!”
They cheered, looking to their mom for the ‘ok’ before racing off after Aunt Garcia. After being fed and sugared, they collapsed in chairs, giggling as they played games on one of Garcia’s computers.
“So, can I ask you two something?” Garcia eventually turned toward them, deviously quiet, “You can’t tell your mom that I asked you this, okay?”
They nodded eagerly.
“Do you ever see your mom hanging out with Mr. Hotchner?”
“Oh yeah,” Henry replied easily, taking another bite of cookie, “He comes over all the time.”
“Really?”
“Mhm,” Little Micheal piped up, “He sleeps on the couch sometimes. We always have bacon the next day when that happens!”
Garcia smirked, “Interesting.”
“Gonna have to take a rain check tonight, Hotch” JJ said as she leaned into the doorway of Hotch’s office. She had felt much better in the weeks that followed the Incident of No Sitter a few weeks earlier.
“Oh?” Hotch grunted, trying to convince himself that that was most definitely not disappointed buried in his stomach because he hadn’t felt that since he had dated Haley, “Big plans?”
JJ shrugged, “Garcia insists on hosting this big slumber party thing for the girls. She seems to think that we need to bond more or something. I suspect that there will be lots of alcohol and giggling, and not much of anything else.”
“Alright, well, have fun. Don’t let Garcia get into too much trouble. We don’t want a repeat of what happened last time.”
JJ’s laugh was real and big and made Hotch’s stomach churn, “Of course,”
When JJ showed up at Garcia’s house, cheap wine in hand and an extra pair of sweat pants in her purse, she had not expected to be attacked by Garcia within the next two hours. But of course, she had willingly shown up at Garcia’s house. She should have expected something.
“Excuse me?” JJ repeated, incredulous. She never should have agreed to drinking so much if she knew this would happen, “Why would anything be happening between me and Hotch? We work together?”
Emily snorted from the chair across from her and Penelope laughed from her spot on the floor.
“How about the fact that you two frequently car pool to work together?” Emily supplied
“We both have kids that go to the same school!” JJ attempted to dispute
Emily continued to provide reasons that there was apparently definitely something going on between the blonde profiler and Hotch. JJ did her best to deflect them, and she did fairly well, all things considering, until Garcia smirked and declared, “What about the bacon?”
“What does that mean?”
“I have an inside source that tells me you always make bacon whenever he falls asleep on your couch.”
“WHY IS THIS BOY FALLING ASLEEP ON YOUR COUCH, JJ?” Emily drunkenly bellowed, “YOU LIKE HIM!”
JJ blushed, but okay she was much too drunk to properly be able to keep this up, “Okay, so maybe I… like him a little.”
Garcia was smirking and JJ hated it just a little bit, “We need details now,”
“I don’t know. He just… he was the only person that really understand what I was going through after I lost Will, and he was always there to comfort me, and always willing to talk…”
“JJ LIKES A BOOO-OOO-OY” Emily bellowed obnoxiously, devolving into nothing but giggles as she fell off her chair and onto Garcia’s hardwood floor. JJ felt like she didn’t stop rolling her eyes for the rest of the night.
“So, how was the slumber party?” Hotch asked, as he took his usual place beside JJ on her couch
“It was alright,” JJ shrugged, feeling her cheeks burn because they had talked about him, “I was right. Lots of alcohol and giggling.”
Hotch chuckled lowly, shaking his head, “Was there bonding like Garcia had hoped?”
“Yeah,” JJ said, taking a nervous sip of her wine and rather determinedly not looking at Hotch’s face, “We talked about, um…” She almost shared something she most definitely should not, “Well, we talked about lots of things,”
“Really?” Hotch laughed, leaning naturally toward her, “Like what?”
JJ looked up to find him incredibly close. Incredibly close. She could see every part of his face, every wrinkle and memory, smile lines and brow lines alike. He was chuckling softly, his lips pink, his face light, and before she realized what she was doing, she was swept up into the moment and found herself breathing out, “You.”
“W-what?” He stuttered, surprised, just barely pulling away.
Oh, god. Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god. She had really screwed up, hadn’t she. Oh, no. JJ felt her face burn.
“We, um, talked about you,” She murmured embarrassed
“You did? About what? Did Garcia complain about her hours again?” He refused to believe that this wonderful woman that he liked so much talked about him to her best friends in a capacity that wasn’t purely about their work. There was no way she liked him enough. No way.
“No, um,” God, she screwed up, didn’t she, “The girls seemed to have noticed that we come to work together sometimes, and Garcia managed to get me to admit that…” It was all or nothing. JJ took a deep breath and look nervously up toward Hotch, still incredibly, comfortably close, warm and terrifying, “that I like you.”
“Really?” Hotch breathed out in surprise.
JJ nodded weakly, but Hotch didn’t move away, didn’t flinch in disgust like she had expected. Instead, after the original surprise subsided, he… smiled, “Well, that’s really, really good news, JJ because I like you, too. Kinda a lot.”
JJ smiled at that, because how could she possibly not. Her face lit up, beyond happy, beyond everything.
Hotch leaned in closer, and she could feel his warmth, his absolute electricity. She felt his shoulder bump against hers, and his elbow push into his couch, and then….his lips against hers. She tried not to gasp, but it escaped because it had been so long since she had felt this, power and passion and happiness all rolled into one.
When he pulled away, JJ groaned a little in disappointment. Hotch just smiled, slightly breathless, “So,” He said, “Good talk.”
JJ just laughed and kissed him again. Maybe they’d talked a little too much.
