Oct 1, 2025
01. memory
I figured I went for something devastating fic wise so fluff was needed to make up for it 😅
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01. memory
I figured I went for something devastating fic wise so fluff was needed to make up for it 😅
Here's the Truth From My Red Lips.
ੈ✩‧₊˚ For @cargopantsprentiss’s jemtober prompt 5. ‘Lipstick’ | 3K words |
summary: JJ helps Emily get through an embassy dinner hosted by Elizabeth by playing the “very good friend”—right up until a quick escape to the ladies’ room leaves evidence they miss and Elizabeth doesn’t.
tags: Earlier seasons, Established relationship, Secret dating (sort of), Soft but there’s some light angst, Hurt/comfort, Mother-daughter conflict, Fancy dresses, Domestic jemily <333
Emily is on her third attempt at eyeliner when JJ gently wrestles the pencil from her hand.
“I’m filing charges,” JJ says, amused and soft. “Assault on a perfectly good eyelid.”
Emily’s answering sigh fogs the mirror. “I can negotiate with serial killers in four different languages, but apparently not with winged liner.”
“You don’t need a wing,” JJ murmurs, tipping Emily’s chin toward the glow of the vanity. “You need to breathe.”
JJ has been ready for twenty minutes—hair in glossy waves, gown mysteriously black that somehow turns her eyes an even deeper blue, makeup so careful it looks effortless. Emily, in contrast, has applied foundation and then scrubbed it off twice, tried a smoky shadow that made her look like she’d lost a fistfight with a chimney, and is now hovering somewhere between panic and stubbornness. The dress she chose (Maroon, classy, the fabric skimming rather than clinging) fits like it was made just for her.
“I’m fine,” Emily lies.
JJ kisses the lie away from the corner of her mouth. “I know you hate politics,” she says, voice low and warm. “But the makeup—or your face, isn’t the enemy.”
“It’s not the makeup,” Emily admits. “It’s… everything.” The venue. The donors. The photographs. The inevitable small talk about legacy and duty and who, exactly, she brought. And mother.
That last word, even in her own head, sharpens her shoulders.
JJ sees the shift and slides in closer. “Let me do it?” she asks, as if offering a blanket.
Emily huffs a laugh and surrenders the chair, knees bumping JJ’s. “I’m going to owe you so many favors.”
“Oh, you will,” JJ says, lightly, and begins.
She starts with fingers instead of brushes—cool touch to warm skin. She smooths the faint red where Emily had scrubbed too hard, thumbs careful around the stubborn set of her jaw. “You have ridiculous cheekbones,” JJ says, clinically admiring. “We could file paperwork under them.”
“Tell the Bureau,” Emily says. “Maybe they’ll give me a raise.”
JJ grins. “Doubtful. Tilt your head.” She blends, dabs, blurs edges until the mirror stops reflecting Emily-vs.-Cosmetics and starts reflecting Emily. The woman JJ has been falling for in small, steady ways: the one whose dimples arrive like mercy, whose laugh lands low, who picks at her thumb when the world feels like it’s demanding a performance.
“Hey.” JJ catches that hand where the thumbnail is already raw at the edge, kisses the knuckle. “Not that,” she says softly.
The brunette nods, eyes tipping down with gratitude she doesn’t yet know how to voice. “You’re good at this.”
“At you,” JJ corrects, so tender Emily feels it more than hears it.
Mascara. A sweep of sparkly shadow. A whisper of bronzer that ought to be illegal. JJ never rushes; she moves like the seconds are theirs to command. When she reaches for the lipstick tubes, she hesitates just long enough to look at Emily’s mouth and forget how to be a person.
“What?” Emily asks, small smile like bait.
“You know what.” JJ uncaps the red—Emily’s red, deep and certain as a decision. “Try not to distract the artist.”
“Impossible.” Emily’s grin slips dimples into place, and JJ, undone, braces a hand at Emily’s jaw.
“Part your lips,” JJ says, and Emily does, obedient only for JJ. The red goes on with a patience JJ didn’t know she had. Cupid’s bow. Lower lip. Blot. JJ’s thumb hovers to clean a line she doesn’t actually need to fix because it’s perfect, because Emily is perfect.
“You’re staring,” Emily says, pleased and dooming them both.
JJ puts the cap back on. “Occupational hazard.”
“Of being—?”
“In love with trouble.” Then JJ, losing the last inch of restraint, kisses her.
It’s supposed to be brief. It fails. The first press is worship; the second is a laugh that opens into something warm and hungry. Emily tastes like mint and nerves and home. When JJ finally pulls away, her own mouth is a crime scene: red and nude tangled, a telltale sunset.
“Oops,” Emily says, smug and a little breathless.
“Oops,” JJ echoes, equal parts apology and delight.
They laugh, rush, reapply—JJ’s rosy nude back to soft, Emily’s red back to brave. JJ steadies Emily’s hand as she blots. Somewhere between funny and tender, JJ says, “About tonight… I know you don’t want to hide us. I don’t either. But if calling me a very good friend for a few hours makes the politics the only thing you have to battle—maybe we do that. Just for tonight.”
Emily meets her eyes in the mirror, steady. “It won’t be because I’m ashamed.”
“I know.” JJ leans in, presses a clean kiss to Emily’s temple. “I’m the one suggesting it, remember?”
“Very good friend,” Emily repeats, the phrase tasting like a compromise she can survive. “Temporarily.”
“Temporarily,” JJ promises. She slides her hand down Emily’s arm, laces their fingers. “And after, you can cash in those favors.”
“Oh, I definitely intend to.”
—
The hotel ballroom is all crystal hum and old money, light glancing off wineglasses like camera flashes. The floral arrangements are taller than some of the interns. Laughter slicks across conversation like oil. Emily’s spine betrays her by straightening at the threshold; she knows these rooms the way soldiers know terrain.
“Little Emily?” someone croons, pinning thirty years of history to a single syllable.
“Ambassador Roulade,” Emily answers, smile weaponized and distant, his name remembered because her brain is a Rolodex she never asked for. “You look well.”
“And you’ve brought—”
“My very good friend,” Emily says before he can fill the blank with a guess that would sour his mouth. “Jennifer Jareau.”
“JJ,” JJ says, warm, offering a hand because she was raised to be polite. “It’s nice to meet you.”
The man blinks, recalibrates; JJ has that disarming effect. He drifts away when he spots someone richer.
They weave through introductions like a tide: donors who smell like cologne and influence, staffers whose smiles are too tight, an old colleague of Elizabeth’s who remembers Emily as a teenager and insists she loved chess back then (she didn’t; she loved beating men at their own game).
Her mother appears like a weather front.
“Mother,” Emily says, pulse a thread she holds between two fingers.
Elizabeth Prentiss is knives in silk. She brings a gentleman in her wake and an assessment in her eyes. “Emily,” she says the way other people usually say “actually.”
“You came.” Her glance skims to JJ and pauses—cataloguing, calculating. “I’d thought you might bring a man.”
JJ feels Emily’s hand tense, a tiny flinch only she would notice. She squeezes back.
“It was my fault,” JJ says before the air can frost. She puts a touch of small-town sheepish in her voice, something that translates in any embassy. “Emily mentioned the dinner, and I said I’d always wanted an excuse to wear a real gown. I—um—I never went to prom. Life got in the way. So she offered to take me so I could feel like a princess for a night.”
There’s a beat. Elizabeth’s eyes do that minute, surgical squint that would be funny if it hadn’t once made a little girl feel two inches tall.
“Very well then,” Elizabeth says, verdict crisp. “Emily, is there a man in your life at present?”
“No,” Emily says, and doesn’t look at JJ, because the truth sits like heat in her chest and she wants to keep it there, private and whole. “Work is… demanding.”
“Nonsense.” Elizabeth dismisses the Bureau with a flick of the wrist. “Come along, I’ve someone you simply must meet.” It sets the pattern of the night: one widowed banker with a laugh like a car alarm, one diplomat’s son who speaks three languages and none of them to JJ, one man who assumes the BAU is “like CSI, right?” Emily smiles until the expression feels like a bruise; she picks at her thumb until the cuticle stings.
Introductions and small talk stack until JJ’s pinned in place by a man with a yacht and a story about Italy. Over his shoulder she watches Emily straighten, swallow, and leave the circle without a sound. JJ lets the monologue die on its own and follows.
—
The ladies’ room is all marble and echo. JJ’s heels click toward the stalls. “Em?”
A lock slides. Emily opens the second stall like she’s bracing for a reprimand and gets JJ instead.
“Hi.” JJ slips inside, closes them into their own little square of privacy, and sets both hands on Emily’s waist. “Breathe with me.”
They do. In for four. Hold for four. Out for six. Emily’s heartbeat stops being a small animal. JJ reaches down and gently pries at her thumb, the one she’s been worrying until it stings.
“You’re bleeding,” she says, the smallest frown. She kisses the sore spot as if that could undo it.
“Sorry.” Emily grimaces. “Old habit.”
“Understandable one.” JJ rests their foreheads together. “We can leave.”
“Not yet.” Emily swallows. “I just—she’s been trying to marry me off since I was fourteen. Summer in Geneva, some ambassador’s son with hair like seaweed. And the girls… when she caught me—” Emily laughs without humor. “She sent the girl home and booked me an etiquette class.”
JJ’s mouth softens around anger. “You don’t owe her a performance. Not anymore.”
“I know.” Emily looks at her like the truth. “What I want is you.”
JJ smiles, helpless and proud. “Good,” she says. “Because you have me.”
It flips a switch in Emily; you can almost see it. Her shoulders lower. The brittle layer cracks. “Tell me again about tonight’s post-game plan.”
JJ’s smirk blooms. “When we get home, we are going to have fantastic, mind-blowing sex, Ms. Prentiss,” she says, formal title like a dare.
Emily arches a brow. “Is that so, Ms. Jareau?”
“Mmhm. You in that dress and those heels is not a situation I’m designed to tolerate.”
Emily laughs—real, uncoiled. She lifts JJ’s chin with two fingers and kisses her, slow at first, then grateful. JJ presses back, hand splayed at the small of Emily’s back, the other threading into dark hair. It feels like choosing. It feels like coming up for air and deciding to stay on the surface.
They come apart, breath settling. JJ keeps her hands at Emily’s waist for one last grounding second.
“Are you sure you don’t want to leave right now?” JJ murmurs.
“Tempting,” Emily says, a small smile returning. “But it’s almost over. I can handle the last stretch. Very good friend, for now.”
“I’m right beside you,” JJ says.
Emily nods; the latch clicks, and they slip out together without lingering, shoulders squared as they move straight down the corridor and back into the hum of crystal and conversation.
They return to the ballroom. Two minutes later, Elizabeth locates them with a man in tow.
“Emily,” she says, “Mr. Cartwright oversees—” She breaks off, eyes narrowing to a laser. “Your lipstick is smudged.”
Emily feels the old reflex—a flinch, a sorry—but it dies on impact. JJ’s hand finds hers, squeezes once.
“Unladylike,” Elizabeth adds, tone arctic, gaze flicking to JJ—and catching. There, plain as evidence, JJ’s mouth wears a faint bruised red over her soft nude, a tell she hadn’t thought of to hide. Elizabeth’s eyes jump between their faces. Algebra done.
“Mr. Cartwright,” Elizabeth says without looking at the man, “give us a moment.”
He retreats.
Elizabeth inhales, sets the line of her shoulders. “You will have a very good explanation,” she says, voice even enough to make the words worse.
“It’s not what it looks—” JJ begins, reflexively protective.
“I asked my daughter,” Elizabeth cuts, sharp.
“Don’t talk to her like that.” Emily is surprised by how steady she sounds. The look her mother gives her is the look that used to curdle summer: disapproval as posture, disappointment as weather. It lands, and it fails to freeze.
Emily lets go of JJ’s hand only so she can set it at her own side, grounded. “Mother, I don’t want a rich man who will treat me like a chess piece you moved into his path. I never have.”
“Don’t say foolish things,” Elizabeth says, low. “Keep your voice down. You’re embarrassing—”
“No.” Emily hears the word and feels it root. “No, Mother, I won’t. I am a grown woman. I know exactly who I want.” She tips her chin toward JJ. “My lipstick is on her mouth because we kissed. We kiss all the time, because it makes me happy to do so, because she is my girlfriend.” The blonde finds Emily’s hand again and gives it another squeeze, once, the smallest yes.
For a moment, Elizabeth’s face is unreadable marble. Then the fissures show. “You are still making the same mistakes you made as a girl,” she says, quiet with the weight of theater.
“How would you know?” Emily asks, not cruel, just done. “You were busy being an ambassador. Someone had to be my mother, so the nannies took the job.” It’s harder than she meant it to be. It’s also true. The truth echoes. “Coming here was a mistake,” Emily adds, softer and certain. “If you don’t want to see your daughter happy, that’s on you. I’ll be fine without this. I always have been.”
Elizabeth’s mouth parts, a retort on deck, but Emily doesn’t wait to be cut apart and then rebuilt to someone else’s scale. She threads her fingers with JJ’s and turns for the door. The room registers the disturbance like a shift in air pressure; old money is excellent at pretending it didn’t hear a thing.
They make it out of the lobby before JJ stops. “Hey.” She tugs until Emily faces her. Outside, valet lights halo the night. “I’m so proud of you.”
“I feel like I just learned how to breathe.” Emily laughs, watery, dizzy. “God, that look. It used to terrify me.”
“You were a kid then,” JJ says. “You’re not anymore.”
“Right.” Emily exhales. “Let’s go home. Let’s—”
“Emily!”
They both freeze. It’s not the name; it’s the volume. Elizabeth does not raise her voice, never. She advances, wind in a dress, the door swinging shut behind her. For a second all Emily’s old instincts line up like soldiers. Then Elizabeth stops an arm’s length away and does something stranger than yelling: she hesitates.
“I was… wrong,” Elizabeth says.
Emily blinks. The word lands like a misprint.
“I mean,” Elizabeth amends, slower, as if relearning vocabulary, “I was wrong.” She studies Emily’s face like it’s a briefing she cannot afford to misread. “I have been—bad at mothering. You deserved better, I understand that now. I can’t rewrite your childhood and I can’t—pretend to be a different woman tomorrow morning. But.” Her gaze skims, catches on JJ, returns. “It is clear you find comfort with… Ms…”
“Jareau,” JJ supplies, gentle. “JJ.”
“Ms. Jareau.” Elizabeth nods once, tucks the name into the right drawer. “And I don’t want us to fight. I admit I had a picture of your future that did not include this.” A flick of eyes toward their linked hands and the faintly incriminating mouths. “I may never be elegant about changing pictures. But I don’t want you to be miserable the way I have been.” The honesty there is a bead of rain on a windowsill—unlikely, fragile. “If she makes you happy… then I am—” She forces it out, the hardest word in her lexicon. “—okay with it.”
JJ hears her own heart in her throat. Emily, for once, has no script.
Elizabeth inhales as if the night is cold. “Back inside, you said I don’t want to see you happy. That is where you’re wrong. What’s true is that I haven’t known how to recognize your happiness unless it looked like mine—appointments, promotions, the right rooms with the right men. I pushed you toward that picture. Too hard. You were right about that.” She looks tired in a way she would never permit inside the ballroom. “I wanted success for you because it was the only language I knew for love. But it isn’t yours. I am… learning.”
Emily looks at Elizabeth like she sees water burn.
“I want the time we have left to be peaceful. Perhaps we could… meet. Lunch, coffee. Talk.” A faint, wry twitch. “Properly.”
Emily stands very still. The apology is a bird too rare to startle. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t.” Elizabeth’s chin lifts, but not in challenge. “Think it over.” She glances, at last, at JJ with something approaching humanity. “Welcome to the family, Ms. Jareau. If that is what you want.” It lands less like a decree and more like an attempt.
JJ musters a small, sincere smile. “It is.”
Elizabeth’s eyes tip down to their mouths, helplessly, habit warring with truce. “And do—” she clears her throat “—clean up your lips.” Old reflexes, stubborn to the end. She turns, reenters the weather of her party.
Emily watches the door swing shut, then lets out a breath that hitches into a laugh. “She told us to fix our lipstick,” she murmurs, leaning into JJ’s shoulder. “Of course she did.”
“Some things are eternal,” JJ says, fishing a folded cocktail napkin from her clutch. She lifts it to Emily’s mouth, gentle. “Blot.” Emily does; JJ turns the napkin, blots her own, then uses a thumb to tidy the edge of Emily’s upper lip. It’s quick, practiced, intimate as a secret in plain sight. “Good enough.”
“Good enough,” Emily echoes. They lace fingers and head for the valet.
In the car, the quiet hits. JJ exhales a disbelieving little laugh. “Okay—so that just happened?”
“It’s a lot,” Emily says, eyes on the windshield, then on JJ. “I don’t know where it came from. It’ll take time. But she seemed… genuine?”
“She did,” JJ says. “And I’m proud of you.” She squeezes Emily’s hand. “For all of it.”
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about all the ‘fun’ you promised once we get home,” Emily adds, mouth curving.
JJ’s grin tips wicked. “Excellent. I fully intend to ruin that lipstick again.”
“Likewise,” Emily says, dimples out, armor lighter than it’s felt in years.
“Home?” JJ asks, easing the car into the night.
“Home,” Emily answers, the napkin with both shades tucked away like proof that the evening ended on their terms.
Anesthesia | J.J./E.P.
My entry for @cargopantsprentiss Jemtober 2025! ✨
Prompt: Memory Word Count: 320 Tags: fluff, hospital setting, surgery
A/N: It's a very short piece but I still hope you guys like it! 💘
What are you 🫵 doing to push the gay agenda this Jemtober?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Criminal Minds (US TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss Characters: Emily Prentiss, Original Female Character(s) Additional Tags: Fluff, POV Emily Prentiss, BAU Unit Chief Emily Prentiss, Momily, Soft Feels, maudverse, jemily as girl moms, Jemtober25 Series: Part 2 of what makes life so sweet Summary:
"Your hair isn't grey. It's shiny, like silver."
Oh.
jemtober25 day two: silver and gold
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Criminal Minds (US TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss Characters: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau, Emily Prentiss, Original Female Character(s) Additional Tags: Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Light Angst, Jemtober25 Summary:
written for Jemtober 2025; prompt: silver & gold
when I saw this prompt, all I could think of was the Stevie Nicks song "Gold Dust Woman," and how Emily Prentiss was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and how she wishes she wasn't.
or, Emily Prentiss reminisces on her teenage years.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Title: love’s such an old fashioned word - ghost Fandom: Criminal Minds Spoilers: set somewhere in S9, AU Pairings: Jennifer “JJ” Jareau/Emily Prentiss Rating: FRT Words: ~2,300 Summary: fill for the Jemtober25 prompt “Ghost”