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JJ keeps her calendar open like it’s a lifeline.
It’s easier to stare at little squares than to think about the dark rooms in her head. Will’s handwriting — a messy, affectionate scrawl on a printed itinerary — sits on her kitchen counter like a talisman. He’s louder in small ways: he jokes more than usual, humming slightly off-key while making their coffee, lingering in the doorway with questions that inevitably turn to more questions just so he can be near her — just so he can feel her presence close to him. Like always, she answers his questions easily.
He presses his forehead against hers, like he’s trying to slow down time.
“I love you, Jennifer,” Will whispers softly.
She smiles in return because being with him feels necessary and ordinary and for once, the ordinary is a miracle.
“I love you too,” JJ replies fondly.
Over the next week, Emily starts to notice the tiny changes first: JJ’s texts become shorter and shorter, slowly turning into JJ forgetting to text back.The tiredness isn’t a lack of sleep but something heavier folded into the day-to-day routine. The way she hums—like echoing Will’s own off-key tunes— when she thinks no one is listening.
Emily doesn’t just step into JJ’s space; she rearranges it. A takeout container appears on JJ’s desk with a short note — Eat something, please. — Em — left right where her eyes would naturally fall. When JJ forgets to take her coffee cup to the kitchen, Emily grabs it, rinses it and sets it back as if she’s only returning a small favor. When JJ laughs—soft and surprised at the thing—Emily lets out a relieved breath disguised as a laugh, pretending it’s a shared joke between them.
And later, when JJ looks like she might fall inward again, Emily offers a palm on the small of her back; JJ accepts like it’s second nature. But Emily doesn’t hold on when JJ pulls back.
Then there are afternoons when they’re all together — off days away from unsubs and victims — when Will insists on terrible jokes and JJ rolls her eyes, and Emily pictures them later, cataloguing the little moments like preserving them will make them last. She doesn’t say anything about if she should stay or go; she just simply sits with JJ on the couch while Will stands at the kitchen counter. They didn’t feel the weight of his eyes on them. They didn’t see the way it settled over him. Like what he saw may be didn’t even exist. The three of them just occupy the room like an ordinary constellation. Emily’s presence is simply steady, unobtrusive— like an unspoken promise that she will always be there if JJ reaches for her.
Then the call happened. And if becomes when.
The team had just landed from a case out of Washington state. The vibration of her phone is a physical thing— it is a shiver up her spine and her hands going cold. Emily drove her. The team following behind. Emily breaking more laws than she can think of to get JJ to Will. She had to get her there.
The hospital room was quiet except for the low, steady hum of machines and the distant sounds of nurses and techs moving through the halls. JJ pulled the chair closer to Will’s bedside, wrapping her fingers around his hand. The skin that had once been warm and strong now felt fragile. JJ hated it. She hated every tube, every piece of equipment, every reminder that this was real— that this was happening to them. Will opened his eyes slowly and gave her a tired smile.
“Hey, baby,” Will’s tone was gravel.
JJ’s throat tightened.
“Hey yourself.”
“You been crying?”
She laughed despite the tears welling in her eyes.
“You’re impossible.”
“One of us has to keep things normal.”
For a moment, they sat in silence.
The silence had history.
Years of marriage.
Years of arguments and makeups.
Two boys.
A life built together.
“I don’t want to leave you,” Will whispered.
JJ bowed her head, squeezing his hand.
“I don’t want you to either,” and the words barely escaped her lips.
“Hell of a time to tell you this, but…” His breath hitched. “You were always my favorite person.”
It escaped her almost as a sob, “You’re mine too.”
Will smiled softly.
“No… Jen.” His smile turned bittersweet. “Not like that.”
JJ grimaced—like she was bracing for a hit.
“What do you mean?”
His eyes drifted toward the window before returning to her.
“I know you, Jennifer.”
A lump formed in her throat.
“You always look at everyone else first. Always taking care of everyone.” He paused. “But… there’s one person you never stop looking for when you walk into a room.”
JJ froze.
Emily.
The thought flashed through her mind before she could stop it.
It landed as a weight on her chest.
Will’s smile grew faint.
“I’ve seen it for years.”
Tears blurred her vision without permission.
“Will…”
“I’m not angry.”
His voice was barely audible now.
“I just want you to be happy.”
A tear slipped onto her cheek in a silence louder than the words they were speaking.
JJ shook her head.
“Don’t do this. Please, Will.”
“Promise me.”
His eyes were pleading.
“Promise me you’ll keep living after this. Even if it’s with her. That’s okay too.”
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t imagine a world without him in it. Didn’t want to. Couldn’t fathom it even at this moment. But she nodded then, if only for him. If it kept him there a minute longer.
“I— Will— Yeah, I promise, baby. I promise.”
Will exhaled slowly, relief settling over his features.
“Good.”
A long silence followed. Then another. The same historied silence. She sat in it like it was a second skin she had lived in for years.
It simmered slowly.
Machines.
Equipment.
They hummed.
She listened for his breathing and it came shallow.
Then JJ felt his grip loosen.
“Will?”
The name cut through the history.
Through the silence.
His eyes remained closed.
“Will?”
They did not open again.
The monitor’s rhythm changed. A nurse rushed into the room. Voices filled the air. People moved all around her. But JJ didn’t hear any of it. All she could see was the man who had given her Henry and Michael. The man who had loved her completely. The man she was losing.
The man wasn’t there anymore.
He was gone.
A husk. A shell.
Just a body.
She had seen thousands of bodies, just like this.
But it had never been like this.
She pressed her forehead against his hand and whispered the only words she could manage.
“Thank you—baby, I just—thank you for loving me.”
A moment later, the monitor gave the final tone.
She didn’t know how, she didn’t know when but she walked out to the waiting room — the team was there— Emily was there. They all looked up the moment the doors opened and saw JJ’s red rimmed eyes. The profilers all read it on her face before the words could—even though they couldn’t—fall from her lips.
Penelope gasped and put her face in Luke’s chest, his arms coming up automatically. Tara and Rossi stood there still in their shock. And Emily— Emily didn’t waver— just watched her, eyes soft in the way they only ever were for her and when their eyes met— the world completely shattered.
Emily approached her slowly, careful not to startle her. Then her arms closed around JJ with the ease of someone who knew exactly how hard to press to give support without flattening her. It was a long embrace and when JJ finally broke from it, her eyes connected with Emily’s eyes and she whispered so soft that Emily almost missed it:
“Help.”
Emily nodded—sure, steady and with complete devotion.
The aftermath—the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months—was physical.
She had to move. There was no choice in the matter and she was grateful for that.
There are photographs to choose, a service to plan, people who want to say the right things and still everyone is clumsy with grief.
Emily and Penelope stay with her at the house. They are the only ones keeping her upright and standing and moving at all, if she were honest.
Penelope is all bleeding-heart-on-sleeve and jokes and light as she can manage. She’s also nervous energy. And so she manages. Keeping the boys in line and orderly and as content as possible in the moment.
Emily is all logistics: she arranges clean clothes, she brings soup, she leaves a light on. She answers questions that JJ falters on — even — and sometimes especially — the more personal ones. And Emily never once cornered JJ with feelings. She understood the slow cadence of mourning and love and the difference between proximity and pressure.
JJ could not have been more grateful.
But that was just the first few days.
Penelope came and went like a storm through the house — Will always joked she was worse than the hurricanes back home in New Orleans. Once the face of the funeral was done, she left the LaMontagnes to the privacy of their grief.
Emily stayed.
She worked. Section Chief status meant she kept the team grounded since they were short a profiler. Then she returned, there at the house as a steadying instrument, a constant orbit JJ could return to without explanation.
She’s there even through what JJ, in retrospect, would call her lesser moments.
She rescues JJ from a late-night walk through a neighborhood of memories, and sits in silence beside her on the couch while JJ stares at a reel of Will’s laugh.
She lets JJ tell stories and stops herself from editing in skewed details.
When JJ asked a question in the middle of the night — small, terrible, practical — Emily answered, and when she doesn’t know, she says so and stays still until JJ calms back into slumber.
It was worse on the nights where the boys said his name — Dad — present tense. When they momentarily forgot.
Michael mentioned a Nationals game Will was going to take him to like all the game still formed was the shape of dugouts and popcorn and fly balls.
Emily says We’ll go and JJ whips her head around fast because Emily Prentiss at a baseball game was as foreign as the countries that this woman had grown up in.
She let it pass because that was all she knew to do in the moment.
Once, after a long day, JJ stared at a photograph on her nightstand.
“I don’t know how I'm supposed to do this.”
Emily sat down on the bed, tucked a loose strand of JJ’s hair behind her ear, and says, “You don’t have to know right now. I’ll be here.”
The promise carries no obligation, only consistency.
By the second week, Emily walked out of the house with her on JJ’s first day back with the unit. Emily wouldn’t walk back into the house again that night. She loosened her grip along with every baby step JJ took back to herself.
The hollow shifted into routine, and that routine is treacherous because it looked like recovery.
The boys returned to school like a scab over a fresh wound. Not quite bleeding but scar tissue hadn’t seared over either.
JJ returned part time. Emily stood at the glass panes of her office, overlooking the bullpen and watched JJ’s jaw work around a sentence, saw the tremor in her hands when she signed a form, the way she flinched at door slams.
Emily leaves notes in JJ’s drawer — nothing grand, tiny anchors: a coffee coupon, a pressed flower from the bush outside of Emily’s building, a one-line memory of Will that’s obscure enough to remain private. When JJ laughs, Emily lets the sound be small and contained as if it’s fragile china. When JJ faltered, Emily appeared without making an entrance.
The next week the grief softened but did not dissipate. JJ, at least, started sleeping through the night more often. The condolences had stopped. The endless casseroles had finally disappeared from the refrigerator.
She tells a longer story about a memory with Will — the two of them at a fair, greasy fries, a ridiculous hat. She talks about the hat like it’s still absurdly present.
Emily listened like she was hearing a confession.
Then something shifted. Emily became a touch. Grounding and ever present. Sometimes she reached for JJ’s hand; sometimes she rested her palm on JJ’s back while JJ sorted through a backlog of Will’s emails. Emily’s gestures are deliberate: not possessive and not performative. The orbit that JJ drifted into every time.
On a rainy afternoon three weeks out, JJ reached for Emily’s hand not because she needed instruction but because the touch is permission — permission to be human, to laugh at something stupid in a case file, to cry without apology. JJ’s fingers curl around Emily’s with a familiarity that has different weight. It’s a small clasp: a daily practice, a quiet insistence. You’re here. I’m here. Emily squeezes once and lets go.
Emily’s love for JJ is never loud, never announces itself but is, instead, a patient architecture built in moments. She shows up at the scattershot anniversaries — the first holiday without Will, the first movie night with the boys, the last Friday of the month that would’ve been date night — not to lead JJ through them but to be a shadow at her side.
By the end of the three weeks, JJ’s storm settled but the clouds kept— grief is not that clean— but her ship has a shape to keep moving toward. Emily is the shadow of the shape: a silhouette that follows her, always present. There are moments where JJ catches Emily watching her — not in pity, but with a fierce, patient affection that blooms slowly into something JJ can see faintly on the horizon through the fog.
The house was too quiet.
It is late. Too late. The boys are tucked away in their rooms for the night, Michael already snoring and Henry probably on his phone fighting the burn of his eyelids. It’s a Monday night. The routine had stuck its landing. Schoolwork, dinner, a sitcom, bed by 9. It is ordinary. Too ordinary.
Emily was there because where else would Emily be.
She sits at the kitchen table, laptop and case files sprawled out like they were still on the clock. They were still going over a consult of JJ’s. That had been the excuse anyway.
Why Emily hadn’t already gone home on a work night.
Her grey hair was haloed yellow by the cheap chandelier, she looked over her black-rimmed glasses, watching JJ by the counter stare blankly into a cup as hot water poured from the machine, the tea bags settling inside of it.
JJ wasn’t home. Not in that moment. She wasn’t anywhere near home. She was somewhere between a fair with a ridiculous hat and one person you never stop looking for.
“You’re supposed to drink that, you know,” Emily said softly.
JJ looked up, hardly managing a weak smile. “I’m trying to remember if this is my first cup or my third.”
Emily crossed the room and gently took the cup JJ had picked up from her hands and set it aside. “Definitely your third.”
A small laugh escaped JJ before her expression crumbled. She rubbed at her eyes and then looked at Emily.
“Hey.” Emily murmured. She took the oversized frames from her face and set them down on the counter with the cup. She looked at JJ open and earnest. “You know you don’t have to pretend with me.”
The words seemed to break something open.
JJ stared at her now like being drawn into a black hole.
And suddenly, the realization hit her so hard it stole the breath from her lungs.
Oh.
Oh.
It wasn’t grief.
Or loneliness.
Or the fear of being alone.
All the things that come with burying a husband.
It was, instead, something she’d buried years ago.
Something she’d convinced herself wasn’t real.
Because it had been easier.
Because she’d had Will.
Because life had happened.
But looking at Emily now, open and earnest and somewhere between ridiculous hat and one person, JJ couldn’t deny it anymore.
She was in love with her.
She had always been in love with her.
The way Emily could calm her with a single touch. The way she had literally crossed oceans and continents for her without hesitation — no matter the cost. The way she’d become family long before either of them realized it. The way JJ searched for her in every room. The way home had never really been a place.
It had been Emily. Home had always been Emily.
She saw it now.
She saw what Will saw.
The thing he had said right before.
There’s one person you never stop looking for when you walk into a room.
Suddenly tears filled her eyes.
“Hey,” Emily said immediately. “What’s wrong?”
JJ’s shoulders shook as tears spilled down her cheeks. “I keep thinking about Will and this stupid ridiculous hat he got from the fair — it was this big, red cowboy hat— and it doesn’t matter,” she chuckled. “I don’t know. It’s every little thing. A funny story from work. Something Henry said. And then I remember again.”
Emily’s expression softened.
“He loved you so much.”
And she did know.
Will had been kind. Patient. Steady.
“I know,” JJ closed her eyes and she could almost feel it again.
JJ smiled sadly.
“I loved him,” she whispered.
“I know you did,” Emily said, patiently.
“I loved you.”
Emily’s breath caught. For a micro-second.
JJ caught it. Of course, she did. She was trained in micro-expressions from the woman standing in front of her.
“I’ll always love him,” JJ admitted.
Emily nodded immediately.
“I know.”
“And I’ll always miss him.”
“I know that too.”
“But I love you, Em. I’m— I’m in love with you.”
Emily’s eyes fluttered closed for a second. Not giving an inch.
“Jay—“
“I loved you long before I had any right to, I know,” JJ shakes her head. “And I don’t know— I— I don’t know, I’m all—“
“Jen,” Emily said, grounding her back to the earth without even realizing she was doing it.
“No, really. I just…” JJ swallowed hard. “I’ve been thinking about Will and date night and that stupid big, red cowboy hat and I just— I loved him.“
“I know.”
Will had given her a life she cherished. Most importantly, he’d given her Henry and Michael.
Her boys. The greatest gifts she could ever receive.
“I’ve been telling myself the only thing I regret,” JJ said quietly, “is that I never let myself be honest.”
Emily frowned.
“Honest about what?”
JJ’s heart pounded.
She looked down at their hands. She was leaning against the counter now, Emily’s hand steady next to hers, unmoving now. It had been moving towards her since Will died but in this moment it was still.
“I loved Will.”
The words hung between them.
Emily shook her head.
“You don’t have to—”
JJ finally gripped her hand over Emily’s. Insistent.
“I do. I did. But it was never—“
JJ took a shaky breath.
“But if I could go back…” Her voice cracked. “The only thing I wouldn’t change — even with that big, stupid hat — is Henry and Michael.”
“Jay,” Emily sighed. “You married him.”
“I thought it was—“ JJ cut herself at the quick. “For Henry. We were already a family and I couldn’t— I couldn’t take that away from him.”
Emily inhaled sharply.
The words hung in the air between them, fragile and terrifying.
JJ shook her head.
Emily went very still.
Understanding flickered across her face.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Hope mingled with disbelief.
JJ looked at her.
All those years.
All those almosts.
All those moments they’d ignored.
“I think I’ve been in love with you for a very long time, Em.”
“God, Jay,” Emily let out a shaky laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
“No, let me finish before I lose my nerve.”
Emily nodded.
JJ squeezed her hand tighter.
“I think part of me knew years ago. Maybe not consciously. But every time something happened, every time I was scared, every time I needed someone…” She shook her head. “I looked for you. Even he saw it, Em.”
Emily’s eyes glistened.
“You were always my person.”
The confession seemed to crack something open inside Emily.
“You were mine too.”
JJ blinked.
“What?”
Emily laughed softly.
“You think you were the only one?”
JJ’s breath caught.
“Em…”
“But I’ve loved you too. God, I’ve always loved you,” Emily smiled sadly. “I just never thought I’d get to tell you.”
The world seemed to narrow until there was only the two of them.
Past.
Present.
Future.
Years of late-night conversations.
Shared hotel rooms.
Lingering glances.
Near misses.
Every moment suddenly made sense.
“I was terrified of ruining what we had,” Emily admitted.
“So was I.”
“And then you married Will.”
JJ looked down.
“I did.”
Emily flipped her hand and squeezed JJ’s back.
“And I left and I’m not angry,” Emily tilts her head. “I was never angry.”
“I know.”
“And I loved him too.”
That made the tears already welling in JJ’s eyes spill over.
Because Emily had.
Emily had loved Will. Respected him. Grieved him even.
She wasn’t trying to erase him.
She never would.
A moment later — as if pulled by the gravity of the black hole again — JJ pulled her into a hug.
Not rushed.
Not desperate.
Just years of love finally finding somewhere to go.
JJ buried her face in Emily’s shoulder.
For the first time since Will’s death, the ache in her chest eased.
Not because she missed him any less.
Not because she loved him any less.
But because she finally understood something she’d spent years running from.
Emily didn’t pull away.
Neither of them did.
JJ simply leaned back and looked at Emily.
Then she tilted closer again.
Emily met her halfway.
Their first kiss wasn’t dramatic.
There were no fireworks.
Sparks were for teenaged-somethings that fumbled and found themselves.
This wasn’t that.
Just soft lips and years of affection finally, finally allowed to find a home.
It was gentle.
Careful.
Like they were both afraid the moment would disappear if they moved too quickly.
When they finally pulled apart, neither could stop smiling.
“Huh,” JJ breathed like she’d just discovered a new planet.
Emily smirked and huffed a laugh.
“Yeah.”
“That might’ve been worth waiting for,” JJ said, playfully.
“About fifteen years worth, Jareau?” Emily quirked an eyebrow at her skeptically.
JJ grinned wider than she had in weeks.
“Yeah, Prentiss,” JJ beamed. “Something like that.”
A few weeks later, they were still figuring things out.
They moved slowly.
Not because they weren’t sure.
But because they were.
The boys came first.
Always.
When JJ finally told Henry and Michael, the boys were fighting over who would get to play Waluigi in Mario Kart.
JJ had said it plain and simple. Emily was a wall of support.
And Henry had looked at them for exactly three seconds before shrugging.
“Yeah, we know.”
JJ nearly choked on nothing but air.
“You know?” she rasped.
Henry rolled his eyes, “Mom. Please.”
Michael nodded enthusiastically.
“You always smile more when Aunt Emily is here.”
Emily didn’t stop blushing for the rest of the day.
“Can we get back to our game?” Michael whined.
“Uh… sure?” JJ was confused. The best kind, she’d admit.
The boys went back to their Switch 2 and their Mario Kart and Michael won the Waluigi battle and the day went on like any other.
Emily cracked a smile.
“You know, for two FBI profilers, we’re handling this very poorly.”
JJ snorted.
“Terribly.”
“Absolutely embarrassing.”
“Criminal, honestly.”
At first, their relationship wasn’t wildly different from their friendship.
They still spent hours talking on the couch.
Still drank coffee together in the mornings.
Still texted each other constantly.
Still reached for each other after difficult cases.
The biggest difference was that now they didn’t stop themselves.
Emily kissed JJ’s forehead while making breakfast.
JJ curled up against Emily during movie nights.
They held hands in the car.
Shared a bed during the particularly bad cases — the ones that forced Emily out into the field with them — without pretending it was just convenience.
And for the first time in either of their lives, neither of them had to wonder.
They knew.
They knew who they’d call after a bad day.
Who they’d reach for in the middle of the night.
Who they’d grow old with.
One evening, months later, JJ found Emily asleep on the couch with Michael sprawled across her lap and Henry leaning against her shoulder.
The sight nearly brought tears to her eyes.
Emily looked so natural there.
Like she’d always belonged.
Maybe she had.
Emily stirred awake — refusing to admit the defeat of sleep — and smiled lazily at her.
“What?”
JJ crossed the room and kissed her softly, one hand on her chin. She reaches for Emily on purpose, not by accident, and the contact is mutual and deliberate.
Emily answers back with nothing grand, only the same quiet promise she’s kept since the week it all began: I’m here.
“Nothing,” JJ shook her head once.
Emily narrowed her eyes.
“You’re being sentimental.”
“Guilty,” JJ smiled so wide, she bared teeth.
“Why?” and Emily crooked that damned brow.
JJ looked at the three people she loved most in the world.
Then back at Emily.
It was the first time JJ allows herself to imagine more than survival, she lets the thought sit beside the rest of her pain without shame.
“Because for the first time in a long time, I can picture the future.”
Emily’s expression softened.
“And?”
JJ’s eyes fluttered and lit up at the very idea of it — even as she said it aloud.
“It looks a lot like this.”
And as Emily reached for her hand, something hit JJ the way so many things had flung themselves at her since Will’s death — that grief and love could exist together.
She would always carry Will with her.
Always be grateful for the life they’d built and for Henry and Michael. He would always live in her boys.
But this — Emily’s hand in hers, laughter filling the house, a future she hadn’t dared imagine — felt like the beginning of something she had only seen in shadows on the horizon months ago.
Loving Will had been a chapter of her life.
Loving Emily had been woven through the entire story.
Emily had been her always.
Not a replacement.
A continuation.
A home that had been waiting years for its chance to take shape.