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“For how long?” JJ's eyes bore into Emily's, carefully disguised shock swimming through soft blue. Emily, making intense, meaningful eye contact with the table, replied quickly, tossing the question away while making every effort to ignore the enormous gravity with which JJ had spoken.
“It doesn't matter.” She shrugged, flicking her head slightly, silver hair glinting in the dim courtyard light.
“Emily…” JJ sighed, tilting her head in an exasperated, amused smile that at some point between way back when and now, became reserved only for Emily; specifically when she was being stubborn or intentionally difficult. JJ had got good use out of this smile over the years. Emily, suddenly remarkably interested in her cigarette package, didn’t lift her eyes, instead setting her jaw as the rest of her demeanour crumpled. When she spoke, it was a quiet murmur to the table.
“Eighteen years, three months, eleven days and…” She paused, turning her wrist to glance at her watch, “around six hours.” A wry smile forced its way onto her lips, as she turned the paper rectangle over between her fingers. JJ’s mouth fell open a little, her eyes softening with surprise; though Emily wouldn’t see it for being unable to meet JJ’s gaze. Though she didn’t particularly intend to, JJ let the silence linger as she watched Emily, warm air from the night sitting heavily between them.
“Eighteen-” The realisation JJ was working her way towards was visible on her face. “Why did you push me towards Will?” If Emily was surprised that this was the detail JJ chose to latch onto, she didn’t show it. She lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. On most people, a smile like the one on Emily's lips would have looked piteous or self-deprecating, but on Emily it only looked genuine. Sad, but genuine.
“He loved you,” she answered simply. The easiest way to lie is not to lie at all; tell a truth, any truth, just not the truth. That Emily pushed JJ towards Will because he loved her was a truth, part of the truth. The whole truth was more complicated; it always is.
JJ frowned as though she’d almost untangled the words Emily had knotted together, but couldn’t place a finger on where exactly the lie was. This was often the case with Emily; if she didn’t want you to know something, the only thing you could be sure of was that you wouldn’t know it.
“But you-” JJ began.
“Also loved you?” Emily interrupted softly. “Yeah.” Her voice was low and a little sad, but for all her searching, JJ couldn’t find any resentment in it. “It didn’t matter,” Emily continued, aching smile never slipping. “He made you so happy, Jayje. Do you know how we all figured you out when you were trying to hide him from us?” JJ opened her mouth, but Emily didn’t pause for her to answer. “It was because you were happy. You were caught out because you were so goddamn happy.” She paused, the words sticking to the inside of her throat. “It was worth it, seeing you smile like that.”
JJ found it in herself to smile too, briefly derailed by the memory of that sweaty police station in Florida.
“I always wondered how you knew,” she hummed distractedly.
JJ let the scenes play out in her head, coated in the hazy filter that sixteen years' distance gives a memory. She watched herself chase Will down the hall and found him clouded in mist, unable to get a clear image of him; of what he looked like, what he was wearing. Winding the tape back further, she found she could see Emily with no trouble; dark hair contrasting brilliantly against a white top, fitted black slacks… every detail down to the silver pendant she wore around her neck, in sparkling clarity. JJ had been watching her own memories like this for a while now, always finding Emily crisp and clear, regardless of what was clouded over around her. She placed the tape back in its case in her mind and brought herself back to the present.
“Will gave me my boys and I will always love him for that,” she said slowly. “And yeah, Em, for a long time, he did make me happy.” She wanted not to pause, not to give Emily time to interrupt or to panic, but the statement needed time to settle and she knew it. She and Will were over now and she wouldn’t have it any other way, but sixteen birthdays, sixteen Christmases and sixteen Thanksgivings, for better or worse, makes someone family. She couldn’t dismiss that on a whim; she’d made herself a promise long ago that she never, ever would. “But you…” She paused, wondering how far she could push her luck before she scared Emily off. Hedging her bets, she continued, “-you could have made me happy too, Em. Why didn’t you let me make that choice for myself?”
Emily plucked out a cigarette and lit it instead of answering, buying herself time with a deep inhale, encouraging steady hands around an open flame. A few heavy drags and a slowly building haze between them saw JJ realise that she wasn’t going to be given an answer. She hadn’t expected one; it was kind of an unfair question. How do you answer a question like that at all, let alone sixteen years after the fact?
A younger JJ might have left it there; she’d have let Emily breathe the moment out into the air and watched as it dissipated into the night, then made a poor attempt at a joke and listened with delight as Emily laughed anyway. A younger JJ had left it there. Time and time again, she’d left it there. Countless quiet moments that might have been more if she hadn’t been too frightened to push it. Images fluttered through her mind; of hushed conversations outside of time in the warmth of the jet, of comfortable silence in the surreal space a shared hotel room post-case created, of pieces of evenings spent laughing, away from the group, in Rossi’s garden.
Time and time again, a younger JJ had let the moment go. She wouldn’t realise until the words had fallen from her lips that she was older now, that the days of letting it pass were over.
“Do you still love me?” she asked firmly. A younger JJ would have been terrified. Now, all she could bring herself to be was determined. Emily's response came too quickly, words slipping out in a flimsy line of defence.
“Of course I love you, JJ, we all do,” she deflected. Emily wasn’t stupid, she had to have known that it wasn’t that easy to lure JJ off the warpath, but it was typically Emily to try regardless.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” JJ replied softly, allowing herself a small smile in place of a chuckle at Emily's stubbornness. Emily squared her shoulders, defeat painted on sharp features, voice low to match.
“JJ, please,” she begged, “don’t do this.” Emily's loss of resolve hardened JJ’s, lending her voice strength. Insistent words fell out in a staccato, almost as though they were each their own sentence.
“Do you still love me, Emily?” While Emily's eyes had scarcely flickered up to JJ at all, JJ’s gaze had been firmly planted on Emily from the moment they sat down. Blue eyes had been uninterrupted in their study of their subject: lean fingers twisting over each other in constant motion, thin eyebrows drawn inwards, dark eyes clouded over the way they always do, always have done, whenever Emily had something she felt she had to hide. JJ would pretend not to notice but would soften her gaze reflexively anyways.
Emily drew her bottom lip into her mouth, only releasing it to take a drag of her cigarette. Turning to breathe out the smoke, she shut her eyes, leaving JJ to watch the cloud filter out into the night air alone. When she opened her eyes again they were focussed on her hands. JJ didn’t expect Emily to break the silence that clung thickly to the air between them, so she was quietly surprised at the sound of Emily's voice.
“Yes.” One word, murmured in a tone so reticent that if the courtyard air wasn’t so still, a light breeze might have swallowed it up and carried it away before it reached JJ’s ears.
If Emily weren’t so attentively studying the tobacco burning between her fingers, she might have seen the glow from the light burning at her fingertips refract in blue eyes, giving the impression that they were glittering from the inside out. She might have seen the corners of pink lips pull upwards as teeth sunk lightly into them, in a half-hearted attempt to disguise a smile. She might have seen that smile grow unabashedly, reaching warm cheeks and softened brow-bones.
But Emily didn’t look up, eyes neatly focussed on her own hands, so she saw nothing change and found no comfort in her own gaze, which was becoming cloudy and wet at its edges in the silence.
“JJ, please.” The words came out in a whisper. “Say something.” Emily's eyes stayed trained on the cigarette between her fingers, shifting as she flicked at it with her thumb, a pillar of ash crumbling to the wooden surface below. JJ’s voice came back firm and round, a reassuring softness to its edges.
“I'm waiting for you to look at me.” Careful not to spook Emily, a grin was tamed into a gentle smile; she could only hope that her eyes had followed suit. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip when Emily’s eyes eventually met her own. “Say it again,” she said gently.
“JJ…” Emily pleaded, shoulders sinking.
“Emily.” JJ placed a hand reassuringly over Emily's free one. “Please.” Contrary to her prior avoidance, now that she was looking at JJ, Emily found that no matter how she tried, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from baby blue; it was as though all other colours had been drained from the courtyard to lock her focus in place. And so it was JJ's eyes that Emily spoke to.
“I still love you.” Quiet and unsteady though they were, the words fell from Emily's lips with all the reverence she could muster. “...Jennifer Jareau,” she added as an afterthought, accompanied by a scared, shy smile.
“Good.” JJ caught her tongue between her teeth in a grin. Emily tilted her chin downwards as her eyebrows raised sceptically in protest.
“Good?” she repeated, tone settling somewhere between confusion and shock. JJ pursed her lips and nodded.
“Good...” JJ reached out and carefully extricated the fire hazard from between Emily's fingers, putting it out on the wall and letting it fall to the table, the last smoke tendrils dancing up between them. Her nose crinkled into a smile as she steadied an outstretched arm on the table to push herself forward. “Because otherwise this would have been really awkward.” Two fingers tilted Emily's chin upwards, as the pad of her thumb traced over soft lips. “Is this-”
“Yes,” Emily interrupted breathlessly.
JJ slipped her hand around Emily's neck, fingers tangling into her hair to tug her closer, sinking forward as soft lips brushed against her own. She felt Emily smile against her mouth as they met, sparks colliding in her brain as she considered that for all the times she’d thought Emily’s smile to be pretty, it felt even prettier against her own lips. Emily's tongue swept against her bottom lip, and as the ashy taste of smoke seeped into her mouth, JJ couldn’t help but think that the usually gritty flavour tasted rich and decadent on Emily's tongue; reminiscent of the deep, spiced perfume she always wore. Fabric against the back of her neck pulled taut as Emily's hand found the collar of her shirt, tugging her closer, while her other hand grasped JJ’s atop the table. With Emily's tongue in her mouth and hand in hers, JJ didn't even try to quiet the feeling building in her stomach telling her that she could get used to this.
“I love you too,” JJ hummed against Emily’s smile as they parted. Then, almost as an afterthought; “...Emily Prentiss.” Several moments of hovering close to Emily's lips and gazing gently into dark eyes passed before JJ sank back into her seat. Her teeth worried about her bottom lip, as though the words themselves had strained the last of her confidence from her body. She picked up the discarded cigarette box and turned it over in her free hand the way Emily had been doing earlier. She nodded toward the packet.
“Nasty habit, by the way,” she quipped. Had Emily been in just about any other situation, she might have rolled her eyes, but with the ghost of JJ’s tongue still on her lips, she just chuckled.
“I know.” JJ's eyes, having been trained on Emily the whole night, finally broke to glance down at the table. Emily felt the absence of their warmth immediately, and the desire to keep JJ's eyes on her tripled in its gravity. She watched as JJ’s gaze skated across the space between them, and as she pulled the corner of her lip into her mouth.
“It's kind of hot though,” JJ hummed to their joined hands. “Just a little bit.” She didn’t need to look up to see the expression spreading across Emily's face. After eighteen years, Emily's mannerisms were like a second language to JJ, and the cocky grin she was sure was on display right now was an Emily classic. She knew she was right when Emily spoke, for the smile bled into her voice;
“Oh yeah?” JJ stifled a chuckle, wondering if she would come to fear the monster she’d created. Her eyes shot up to the sky in mock innocence, drawing her lips together to cover a smile.
“Maybe.” A cheeky laugh escaped with the word.
Emily didn’t respond, dropping her grin to a smirk and stretching a hand across the table to the packet in JJ's hand. Covering JJ’s fingers with her own, she opened it and slid a cigarette from its packaging, twirling it between her fingers as she drew it back across the table, leaving the box in JJ’s palm. She ran her tongue along her bottom lip, only to replace it with a cigarette, striking the spark wheel and lighting it against her lips. Taking a slow, deep breath, her eyes locked with JJ’s as she drew patterns on the back of her hand. JJ found herself mirroring Emily's breathing, drawing deep breaths in and out as she watched the smoke filter out of her mouth.
Anybody observing in the courtyard that night might have sworn to have seen stars in Jennifer Jareau’s eyes, but then again, it could have just been the light of a cigarette flickering between two women who after eighteen years, three months, eleven days and six hours, had finally relented to calling this love.