‘I can't exist in a way that comforts you’ Claire C.Holland.
If London had taught her anything, it was that no matter the circumstances it was okay to leave.
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The universe had never been totally aligned for Emily when it came to her life, neither her zodiac sign was correct, the times Penelope read it to her, which happened almost everyday she came early into the bureau. Emily never believed in that. She was a lovable mess, it was how Garcia had described her in one of her first girls night games when they used to host them at least. Penelope, who every morning brought her lunch when she forgot to eat, when the mountain of files at her desk seemed to be interminable. Or Reid who recommended her books, when they were in some foreing airport, the way he noticed her restless in ways nobody ever did. Then she confessed to him that the airport had always made her uneasy.
Agitated, Emily had to always move her leg tap tap tap, as they waited for the jet to come, Rossi, new to the team, the last member to join them, had been the first to notice, or even to care to ask her about it. The reason was simple. She hated airports. There was something behind that statement, something Emily never really had the courage to explore in more depth, something that she knows must be connected to her childhood. Perhaps the lack of stability she had growing up.
That was something good wherever she had to pack her life into a little suitcase, for cases that they somehow knew would take them too long to figure out. Her go-bag was something she always had in hand in case she was called immediately. Emily loved the uncertainty of working as a profiler, how rapidly changes were made, how their work was solid, in ways her life had never been.
Ever since she came to London, she could finally breathe, the accent British people had was refreshing to her, something she took comfort in. London, where she lived a big chunk of her twenties, where she started her career in Interpol where her first team was formed. Sean, Clyde, Tsia and Jeremy. Four names she still holds so much memories into, people she can never see again because of past mistakes. Clyde, the only one apart from her who survived Doyle.
Emily felt so at home in a country forein to the one she grew up in that she only had little reasons as to if she could ever come back to the states, where she knew her life would be turned upside down again. It always was, but the same person brought her back time and time again. This time it was not JJ, who asked her to come, but Will. An anxious Will had woken her up that same night panicking about JJ’s disappearance. Something that had socked her was what JJ told his husband to do, what he repeated to her in the same phone call ‘if something would to happen to me, call Emily’
How would JJ know that she would leave everything behind? That the moment Hotch called her she was right here, in the airport waiting for that jet to come and bring her to the BAU, to solve yet another case with a team she left behind, to save someone. This time to save a woman she ached to have, her best friend, whom she did things that she was sure other friends didn’t. She had wondered, the first time it happened, if it was normal to know the taste of the blonde woman's lips. They didn’t really go anywhere apart from a few kisses, nothing more than two women exploring new territory.
When Emily landed, she immediately recognized the black SUV, a car she had driven wherever they had to go on a case, the vehicle so familiar, Anderson had been the agent assigned to drive her back to the bureau, the man had always been quite silent with everyone, but JJ, she had always been so familiar with everyone that it was hard, not to end up loving her.
When both of them reached the sixth floor, he put a hand on her back, stopping her for a moment, a pleading ‘find her’ fell from his lips. Emily could only nod, because as Hotch had informed her, JJ had been missing for at least 48 hours since Will called. Emily thought that it was strange, that Will had reached out to her leaving so much time apart. He was a cop after all, he should have known to act sooner.
Her eyes flickered into the wall of those who had not made it, those who tragically and heroically had died on a case. Emily was up there once. She didn't consider what she did exactly heroic, she did what she had to and still managed to mess everything up by getting them involved in something that was only hers to fight. Her eyes always took over her own picture hanging by a wall that she didn't deserve. In a twisted way that picture grounded her the first time she stepped in after Paris.
After coming back from the dead, when she took back what was hers to cherish a life that had never been important enough for her. Not until she met them, she was still reckless and still felt the adrenaline pumping through her veins everytime she chased after an unsub. The few times she did especially now that most days than not she was in her office with reports.
She tried to conjure up the image of JJ up there, what picture would they chose to honor her among the lost ones, her brain could not make the image up, ironically because she had faith in the team, the same belief she had when she chased after Doyle, moments before she went to face him alone, when she was hearing Penelope’s last call to her. She knew then that she had to act before he could hurt them, perhaps that rushed plan was what failed, she should have checked better. JJ would be okay, she had to.
Emily walked out to the bullpen, as she expected nobody was there, the team must be outside, maybe they went to JJ’s house, in search of clues just like they did when she vanished, profiling anyone of the team was always a hard, but necessary thing, that most days than not they used, but she spots Penelope in the conference room, Kevin by her side. Emily was glad that even when they both broke up, they could still work with each other, not letting their relationship ruin their friendship. Not like she and JJ did. Still Emily thinks that what they had was different.
“Blackbird” Penelope states noticing the new alert that came by a second ago, turning to Kevin she muttered, “What does that mean?”
Blackbird, a term so familiar to her, a code between them, Emily was in awe that JJ would ever use something so personal for them as a password if something went wrong, Will’s words replaying in her head ‘she asked me to call you’. Even if that call had not been made, that word had been a detonant into the state department indicating that something was wrong. That she would have been in danger, she knows, she had used that same password when Doyle was arrested.
“That’s JJ” Emily announces as she forces herself to enter inside the room, both technical analysts turn towards her, that same scene so different when she came back after Paris. Although, this time the hugs were not there, neither were the happy tears from Penelope that followed after they stepped apart. No, this time, she had to save her. Return the favor JJ did when she herself was kidnapped, and try to save her. If not for her, because JJ was someone she could never have solely for herself, for Henry and a husband that loves her.
After all JJ deserved to be happy, it was everything she strived for, wherever she was with her. Emily supposed that it was the price of love. Giving away everything she could, to make her best friend happy, she knew that Will was the one who would make her whole. Emily knew that no matter how much she would have tried, she could never be the one for her, she was destined to be alone. But alone was good. She could make it alone, Emily never needed anyone to begin with.
"We have a location" Garcia stated enthusiastically, looking at her, but really, it was not that Emily did a lot, only sent them preliminary information of who she thought had JJ. She barely could do anything more than that, nothing more than wait. Emily wasn't strong enough to face it. She was not the same person that was left unscratched. She decided to stay, to let the team face it alone, it would be hard enough to see JJ in person, she could not imagine how her heart would suffer if she saw her like she had once been, vulnerable, broken.
This time Emily was not sure that she could stitch back pieces of herself into JJ, like the ex-liaison did with her in Paris, trying to love her unconditionally, living with borrowed time, the few days off JJ took from the state department, where instead of coming back to the states and see her family she decided to visit her time and time again, they walked side by side by Paris, as if everything was fine.
Neither of them talked about it, nor the way their bodies fit so well together when they spent the night in the same bed, intertwined, with only hours and minutes in between. Emily stills thinks that somewhere deep, beneath all those times and laughs that JJ would feel guilty, for not going back to her family, for lying to her husband telling him that she had rescheduled yet another free day because they needed her. It was true in a way Emily did need her more than him, it was nice not to wake up alone for once.
Will. That's the first thing she thinks when her phone vibrates, she needs to find him, at least for a few minutes, the team are already on their way to the location, some abandoned buildings not too far from DC. She has decided not to go, not to step in some unfamiliar territory where JJ could do something that she might regret later, like kissing her in front of the team, when she had a family worried about her. JJ might be under so much stress that the smallest thing, even herself could detonant something within her.
Emily walks away, not wanting to hear Garcia re-directing the team, talking with them, and pleading to bring her home. She gets out of the room and she eventually finds him in Hotch's office, a little four year old Henry with his head on his father's lap, fast asleep. Will scrolling through his phone, probably waiting for an update. "Hey"
"Emily" He turns around and smiles at her, it doesn't reach his eyes, but really how could it, JJ's missing, a person they both care about is in danger. "I'm glad you are back"
"If the circumstances were better so would I." She scratches the back of her hair. She realizes then that she and Will hadn't had so many conversations, apart from where JJ or Henry were the topic. "How are you?"
"Holding on" He replies touching Henry's forehead lovingly, it's strange in a sense that he had not asked once if they had any new information regarding JJ, "I have to get this one back home, we only have one more day after all"
Emily watches, with how much ease he picks his son up, she wonders if it felt natural, if picking Henry up was something he was used to doing. If the child feels safe enough for him to sleep. If Henry would not have had the doubt she had when she was a kid and had to drag herself back to bed, with no one around to guide her through the dark corridors of her home. Where the only light coming down the doorway was the one of her mother's office. How her mother had never considered doing that for her, simply picking her up when she was tired.
"They found her" Emily states as he stops in the doorway, Henry's arms around his neck, Will doesn't turn around, he doesn't ask where she is going to be sent to for a check up. He simply mutters, "Good"
He walks out, just as Hotch and Rossi come inside the bureau, they shake hands with him. She watches him go. Will, who some years ago was the perfect person for her best friend, kind, with a smile plastered on his face, bad jokes for whatever circumstances they were going through. Now he looked to be a shadow of the man she once knew. Emily thinks that the years must have taken a toll with him. Maybe the longer hours JJ had been spending now that she had her position were getting through them.
"She's getting checked by the paramedics" Rossi announces as he steps right in her view, "Reid's with her, we are hoping that she accepts going to an actual hospital, but she is just like you isn’t she?"
Emily snorts, she knows JJ or the person she was exactly, the same hard convincing woman who slept every night for two entire consecutive weeks beside her in the hospital, when she was supposed to be dead. No matter how many times Emily had insisted for her to go home with her family. "It's going to be hard, that's for sure"
"You should go to see her" Rossi says as they go to the elevators, her job here is finished, JJ is alive and she will heal, Emily was sure of it. She had a life that she needed to go back to, a job back in London, a team who needed her. "She asked about you"
Emily closed her eyes, she heard the sound the elevator made wherever they reached their destination, she kept them closed as she breathed out a lie she had been holding onto since she came inside “My plane leaves in a few hours”. She heard Dave walk out. There was really not an explanation that would be enough, not for her or for anyone of why she didn't want to see JJ. After being kidnapped she asked for her. Not for Will, Henry or even Penelope who she has known forever, but she chose her. Emily could not really comprehend it.
She has an early flight to catch, a flight that leaves in no more than a few hours. Emily had every movement calculated, from the time she picked her ticket to how much her hotel room would cost if she stayed there less than five hours. She knew back in the jet to DC that she could not go through everything this city reminded her of. How many things she lost and gained in the span of seven years, if the suffering she went through had been enough for her to try again.
DC, where she had lived the majority of her childhood once her mother was named ambassador. A city that not until she entered the BAU could not be called home. The smell of food constantly in the air as she walked back to a car they let her have reminded her that she missed lunch. Emily had been so focused on JJ, like so many times she had been during the years she spent on the team. How she checked after every case if the then liaison was okay after a particularly rough case. How she could not move closer for this one. How could she not be the one that this time around comforted her.
Their work Emily thought was everything that united them, somehow the suffering other people, victims and families went through made them closer. That pain, palpable on the victims they came across during the years they worked side by side, had enforced how much of themselves they let out, measured actions and words. Emily had always felt that words between them were unnecessary. They could understand each other by merely looking at each other.
It was a curse that Emily learned to live with. Being able to touch her best friend, but not confess, in the way she wanted to what they felt, or what she thought the both felt for each other. But it finished before it started, Will came in and JJ was happier around him, at least happier than when she was with her. It would not be fair to drag them both down the drain just because her heart hurt around the newly married couple, with their son a few feet apart. It was easier to leave. It always was.
Without barely noticing she took the way of the notification her phone had received an hour ago. She could not exactly walk away and leave her like that. JJ had fought so hard for her to have the anonymity she had always carved for when they went to Paris. Anonymity, something that Emily had always wanted to have, but that it could not be compatible with being the Ambassador's daughter.
JJ and her were different yet, the dynamic between the two of them never failed to amaze her. How they could be so close without even knowing each other so well. How JJ laid everything out in the open. Contrary to herself, she preferred to hide the truth, partly it had to be because of their different growing ups. Childhood moments that would shape them, not in ways they both had preferred to. Those unfair moments helped them to deal better with their respective works.
Emily stops the car, most vehicles from the FBI gone, only an ambulance and a black SUV that Reid must have driven. She notices JJ and Spencer arguing. She doesn't get out, the only thing Emily can do is lower her car lights so she won’t be noticed. Emily merely looks up to the scene in front of her, how they are screaming to each other, relieving the tension both of them probably carried. How she and JJ had done the exact same thing the first time she woke up in the hospital cautious whispers, but it was the same anger that JJ must feel. The same rage Emily felt within herself for driving back, not comforting her best friend. Not knowing how to, that anger she thinks it had been hand in hand with a guilt she still hadn’t processed, after all these years she was incapable of forgiving herself.
If London had taught her anything, it was that no matter the circumstances it was okay to leave. She felt good in that city, where she could go to the cemetery and visit her old colleagues. She mostly visited Tsia. Who didn't get to marry, to continue living a life she had planned with Jeremy. Leaving her favorite flowers every two weeks.
They meet solely for that last mission, it was supposed to be easy, to capture Doyle and keep on with their lives, but Emily never lost contact with them. They were, after all, an important part of her life. People that when she was undercover had seen around his house. They had her back. Emily failed to save them, she failed to save herself.
She doesn’t remember exactly how she was opening her hotel room, she barely remembers telling the receptionist her own name. Emily knew where she was getting into when she declined every offer from her old team to pay for her accommodation when she stated that in no circumstances she was going to stay at either of their homes. She felt that in a way would be something that would stay there, she might have to own them her time, her space, something she was not ready to share.
London, she was focusing on the plane back, no matter how much she loathed flying, nothing prepared her for the feeling of estrangement she had felt since the jet landed. Everything felt so familiar yet so far from her reach, so many things had changed over the course of the years. As if the world had left her apart from everything that happened, every milestone her friends reached. Really, she was the only one to blame here, she was after all who decided that she needed space. The one who decided that leaving was for the best.
The little hotel room she booked funnily enough looked like the ones the bureau chose wherever they had to go away on a case, always the cheapest motels. It was fine, Emily knew that she would have to be up in about five hours, the cab to take her to the airport was already booked beforehand. She took out the necessary contents from her go-bag, some sweater that she had mostly used to sleep in and a sandwich she stopped by to buy. She wanted to avoid DC as much as she could. Emily could not really let the city enchant her once again, she had already a life made up in London, where she had nearly everything she wanted. It had to be enough, she was content in London, yet she knew deep down that comparing the two places would not be fair.
That city was unknowingly the change she needed so hard to have, some sort of escape from all that happened the last time she was in DC. London was familiar to her, the first place she had lived all on her own without bodyguards constantly chasing after her or her mother who had her own room in every house she ever lived. Emily can guarantee that her mother's bed had only been used on at least two occasions. Both nights Emily doubted her mother really had gotten a full night of sleep before disappearing the next morning.
London where she took a liking to walking through the farmers market every Saturday, where she could chose fresh hand-picked products on the same exact day (or that’s what the salesperson always claimed), later with her food already bought she walked through the Primrose Hill park, that was a few feet away from the market. Emily liked the views that park offered her, it had the best view of London’s skyline. She packed a new book with her and spent some hours taking in the sunrays, taking in the sun. Enjoying the good weather while it lasted. Until the sky turned dark and the families around dissipated.
That farmers market was very different from the one she visited in DC, her last house in DuPont had a market which was available during January through late December. The only problem was her schedule with her work as an FBI agent and the little time it was open to the buyers and visitors and mostly due to the desire she had to cook herself above cooked meals. Little by little with a few extra classes Rossi gave her, she could finally get a hang of his pasta recipe, one she had cooked a lot since she left to friends that came to join her for lunch, her kitchen at Londo so small, but it was a rented cheap apartment she could not really ask more than that. She hadn’t bothered to buy a house there.
Back in DC, Emily more times than not had dinner with Dave, who offered her a weekly dinner with him when she came back. She supposed that the offer might have been decided when he noticed the distance that her old teammates had with her. Most of them could take it, brush apart their personal relationship or what was left from it, based on lies and stories that didn't hold onto one another anymore. But it was JJ, the hardest person to get close to when she arrived, more so, her shocked expression when she noticed the bright new engagement ring on her left hand.
That moment was what it took for Emily to make that decision to leave. Leaving DC for the first time in years, solely for herself. JJ married Will, while they promised each other forever in Paris, the first time they kissed, when all their secrets were exposed and nothing more than the two of them knew, they belonged to each other. It was the only time in all her life that Emily had seen the universe aligning for her, for her happiness.
It was not intentional on her part that Clyde had called her that day with the offer to direct the interpol. An escape plan. She thought that saying goodbye would hurt more than it actually did. But it didn’t. Emily left and started a new life for herself, she was so used to starting over that the change of London didn’t hurt her as much. She made new friends, being forced to move a lot when she was a child, there was something that she had learned to do, talking with strangers, more times than not profiling them, not too much, just to know if they would be compatible enough. If they would be trustworthy, like Hotch or as welcoming as Penelope. Her friends now are different. Different from her family here in DC, but equally as important. They tease her about her American accent, almost constantly, but Emily’s getting used to it, she mostly teases them back.
Emily was fond of them, she stayed more time with colleagues after work, perhaps to fill up the void that she somehow still had after DC, about her team, no matter how many rounds in the bar or how funny those moments where, in the back of her mind she was unknowingly comparing each and every moment to her old life, to her team, to her first family. Even when Clyde and her arranged to meet each week to talk about how she as settling in, to talk about the old times, about Sean, Jeremy and Tsia, to commemorate them and sometimes bring them to life between happy times and somewhat bittersweet moments, their last time batling side by side, how they cared about them. How much their deaths impacted Emily and what was she using to cope with that, after those years, she had learned to accept it. It was not her fault, she was not the one who made that team, who assigned them to Doyle, she was not the one holding the gun.
Emily laid her head on the bed, the pillow was uncomfortable, it sinked along with the mattress. The cushion was not the worst she had been too, but the sheets against her bare legs were a little itchy. She wondered how many times they had been washed with a good detergent. Although Emily has to admit that she had never found sheets like the ones Spencer had given her one Christmas, that soft material made it impossible not to fall asleep wherever she touched her bed at London, those sheets had been probably the only thing she didn’t leave behind.
A series of knocks to her hotel room wakes her up hours later, she briefly cheeked the time, the light of her phone made her shut her eyes in the darkness and she switched on the lamp that was a few meters from her, illuminating dimly the hotel room, she walked towards the door and open it bare, wondering silently who had woken up at such an hour.
She expected Derek, with an excuse to get some drinks at a bar, or Rossi with a new invitation for dinner, she never expected her. She never expected to have to face things with JJ, not today, she was supposed to go back to London unnoticed. Like she did when she first moved there permanently, away from every ghost she carried.
Emily observed Jennifer’s messy aspect, where once have been a woman unpolluted, always organized and grounded, now she looked totally opposite to the woman she left dancing with her husband nearly three years ago. She left knowing that JJ would be happy, comfortable without having her around, a constant reminder of what happened between them, of what it nearly transcurred those events into. JJ’s eye bore into her, Emily felt a certain discomfort by the lack of light in those blue eyes she always saw, there was something empty there. An emptiness that might have been settled before her kidnapping.
There has always been a pull between them, something that Emily could not find the right words to explain, how well they seemed to understand each other, how they knew each other, their lies, or a little part of them. JJ might be the only person Emily had not to profile to get along with her, it was not that she couldn’t (it had become harder with the years apart), but she simply didn’t want to. JJ was the only person Emily accepted a heartbreak from, her best friend who took her out of serious situations, who constantly supported her through everything, was in front of her, as the only thing she had ever been, a friend, nothing more, whatever they felt for each other could not be comforted.
Not since Will entered the picture, Emily felt herself resigned to be an almost lover. Something that could have been but that because of the circumstances or timing it was not possible, Emily felt as the gravity separated them, holding them apart. She felt jealous of Will, wherever they held hands, she wanted to be in his place, so many times Emily wished to be him. To have a chance with JJ, a chance that she never got to have in the first place.
“Emily” JJ’s voice was deep, familiar. Her name has always sounded so sweet to her own ears when Jennifer pronounced it, there was something beneath this time, Emily could not exactly place it. “Hi”
“You were there” JJ muttered softly, her tongue clicked with her teeth, softly, as she admitted what she might have known forever, repeating her words, louder this time to let them out, “You were there”
Emily’s eyelids felt heavy and the many hours of difference between London and DC was getting to her, she shook her head and step into her room, she needed to sleep and JJ didn’t look so well rested. “Come inside”
Emily looked through her go bag, searching for another sweater for JJ, whose teeth were colliding, the FBI profiler was shivering, with only a blue shirt, that looked to be the one she had been hostaged into. Emily hands her one of her Yale sweaters and she observes the difficulties the blonde woman has when she has to put it on, as she assumed. “You didn’t get checked out did you?”
“I had to come here” JJ stated blowing her own breath in her hands to warm them up, “The receptionist didn’t want to give me your room number so I had to spend a few hours calling into strangers rooms and waking them up” She chuckles, and Emily knows that she is trying to divert the answer to the question.
JJ distracted herself playing with the slaves of Emily's hoodie, it was a little big on her, she was warm and it smelled like her, the lavender perfume Emily had always used, "Rossi told me where you were staying"
Emily nods, she already knew why Dave would be so adamant for them to see each other again. It was him who offered to book her the room, somewhere she had to pass the night since she declined nearly all the team's invitations, she could not bear to spend a last night in company of someone else, because she knew that they might get to her, change her minds and her desires to leave DC.
"I hoped that you would have gone with the team" JJ states looking directly at her, she was not angry, how could she? JJ knew that it was already hard enough for Emily being here. "When Hotch and Reid arrived I knew you didn't, but I knew deep down that you would be here"
"Will called me" Emily admits, she would have come if Hotch had been the first, but Will. She still remembers the trembling his voice holded when he was explaining to her about JJ’s sudden disappearance. Emily recalled his fear, how his voice sounded while she was in a bureau meeting, she cut it short, because it was Will, he was unexpected.
"He did?" JJ inquires surprised, she knows that he was probably wondering why she had not replied to either of his missed calls, she checked all her messages when Spencer gave her phone, JJ makes a mental note to call him later, or maybe tomorrow when she has to pick Henry up. "We got a divorce two years ago, we have Henry's custody split"
Emily understands Will's cold shoulder with JJ's disappearance, the way he grabbed Henry a little too tight while she observed them before entering the room, how he mentioned that they still had one more day. It all made sense, still he called her, because her best friend was in danger.
"How much time do you have left?" JJ frowned when she saw Emily’s suitcase closed, only a few items out, just, like the times they shared a room, she breathed in as Emily looked closely at her clock.
"I leave a couple of hours" Emily swallows because JJ was addressing it, pointing out that she knew. Emily could not stay, not in DC. Jennifer’s presence had always calmed her, maybe they were the years that passed by but her whole body reacted when JJ grabbed her hand and squeezed hard.
"I saw you" JJ tells her, her hands still connected, the lack of ring in her hand made their intimate posture better, more relaxed, somehow less guilty by doing something so normal, "when I was in the basement, they had me lowered to the floor…I was about to give up, but then you appeared and told me to hold on" JJ sniffs a little before adding, "Emily you saved me, I fought for you, for us"
"I can't do that" Emily shakes her head, she was not sure if her heart could take being broken twice by the same person, "I can't exist in a way that comforts you"
"Emily, please don't go" JJ pleaded, her body was shaking, tears so close to falling, her heart ached, in ways it had never been for Will, "I can't ask you to love me back, but I never stopped needing you"
Emily singhs those were the words she longed to hear all those years ago, when she came back from Paris, with what they did in the back of her mind, the moments they shared together, early morning soft kisses as they hid under the covers. Late afternoons together, both sleeveless with cups of coffee rested in their hands as they watched the sun go down. Or the sleepless nights they had because she had woken up startled, only to seek comfort in the firm warm body pressed next to her. "I can't let you break my heart again" Emily admitted, "I can't come back one day and realize that I was nothing more than a distraction from your perfect relationship"
"You were more than that" Jennifer’s voice broke, she felt her throat tighten, it felt impossible for her to mutter her last words,"It won't be the same as it was"
Clyde once told her what she would change from the past, so that the hurt wouldn't be so permanent in the future. Out of all the things she could choose from her mother, to saving Tsia or not getting involved with Doyle or Declan. The only thing that came out was JJ's name, she had wished to be a better version of herself. A person who would have been brave enough to admit her own feelings, taking all the opportunities they had to make it work. Now she shook her head, she had another opportunity.
Emily was older, both of them were, they learned from past mistakes, relationships that were wrong, they had been each other's constant thing during years. Emily thinks that they must be meant to be if JJ came back from her. It's supposed to work, if she dreamt about her, it must mean something more than love solely from a friend.
"You really should get checked in the hospital" Emily ponders taking her phone and deactivating the alarm on her phone, "But I believe that we can leave that for tomorrow"
"That means that.." Emily nods, she could go to London, maybe once a month or ask for her to be transferred back to the team. She had grown not very found of paperwork, "I'm going to stay"
Emily smiled at JJ’s reaction, a small smile in her face as the FBI profiler traced her lips with her index finger, making sure that she wanted it. Making sure that she was ready to experience a kiss that would change everything for then. “You can stop me, if you want”
Emily chuckled, goosebumps were forming in the crown of her head, “We could start slowly as friends”. JJ shook her head and kissed her, a short peck was placed on Emily’s lips, barely noticeable, a firmer one was placed next to the corner of her mouth.
“We were never supposed to be friends” Jennifer mutters close to her lips, before placing one more short kiss, Emily looked to be exhausted from the flight and JJ wanted nothing more to curl up with her. Like they sometimes did when they shared a room.
“Hi” Emily murmurs, as they both lay next to each other, faces bare and clean, hearts relaxed and full. Something she had wished so many times already that it felt hopeless to even think about it.
“Hey you” Jennifer replies playing with the only ring Emily had stayed with, her zodiac sign in it, a present she chose herself on the last birthday they spent together, “Just for the record, you already do exist in a way that comforts me”. They fall asleep together, pressed against each other, their bodies puzzled in a way that they were meant to be.
