Chapter Text
On Wednesday, after helping Emily with her 2nd shift, Emily agrees to go to a diner to get food afterwards. Emily drives them there since JJ's car is at her dorm and it's just easier to drive there together.
JJ orders fried chicken and Emily orders a burger and fries. When they wait for their food, JJ tries to get a conversation going again, pulling desperately on questions that have nothing to do with Emily's work or horses. “So, Emily Prentiss,” she tries, and picks at the napkin next to the empty space in front of her. “How come you're here? What made you decide to move so far away from everything?”
Emily tenses immediately. JJ swallows and clears her throat, but Emily talks first. “Why do you want to know?” she asks. Her eyes are dark now, harder than she's seen them in the days they've known each other and it's slightly unnerving. “I'm here for work. There's not a lot more to say.”
JJ tries smiling, but it comes off crooked and more like a grimace. “I’m curious,” JJ says and meets her eyes, lifting a brow. “Do I need a reason to want to know more about you?”
Emily avoids her gaze and she breathes, clearly doing some kind of self regulation. “I don’t know, do you?” JJ doesn’t say anything and lets Emily turn back to her, her eyes softer this time. “I can give you a hundred reasons why you shouldn’t.”
JJ asks, “What’s that supposed to mean?” before she can stop herself.
Emily’s gaze changes so fast that JJ thinks she might have hallucinated the moment earlier, the way she’d looked close to vulnerable. “You don't know me, JJ,” Emily snaps, her eyes drilling holes through JJ's. “So forgive me if I have a hard time telling you my darkest secrets.”
JJ swallows and tries not to take Emily’s words too personally. “I'm not asking you to do that,” she says, her voice hardening slightly. “I am literally just trying to get to know you because – excuse the bluntness – I genuinely like being around you, and if you'll let me, I would like to be your friend.”
Emily blinks repeatedly at her, and then looks away. “I am sorry,” she says, eyeing her cutlery instead of JJ. “I shouldn't have snapped like that.”
JJ shrugs, pushing the weight off her shoulders. “It’s okay.” Emily looks up and gives her a crooked smile, apologetic, but genuine. “Do you want to tell me what you're doing in Pennsylvania then?”
And Emily does. Not in detail and JJ doesn't ask follow up questions, she just listens.
After that, they fall into a habit of doing it every time after Emily's shifts. It's nice, really. JJ can relax and not worry and she's here with this person she's starting to enjoy herself around. There's no denying that Emily is attractive, and there's no denying that JJ is attracted to her. It's not surprising, really. Dark hair and brown eyes and confidence that reminds her all too much of Elle.
That’s exactly the problem though; she can't get past the fact that she's friends with her. It hurts, because Elle left and she didn't apologize and now she sent her a new person that JJ can't help but be intrigued about.
A week passes and JJ tries to ignore the way she lets her anger at Elle out on Emily. It's not bad, most of the time. Mostly just quick remarks and comments about picking a side.
Emily clearly picks up on it, but doesn't comment. Not until her second Thursday shift when they go out for lunch and Emily asks her, “did you ever come here with Elle?”
JJ tenses and looks away. She tries to hide it by pretending to look at the clock over the door. “I did, yeah.”
Emily catches her eye and JJ knows what she's going to say. “I don't know what happened between you two, but clearly something did.”
JJ clears her throat and looks down. She tries to convince herself to say something, anything that isn’t harsh or cruel, but looking for something honest. It doesn’t work very well, when after a long moment, she mumbles out, “It's nothing you deserve to know.” Emily physically flinches, yet JJ continues. “It's my business, okay, and we’re barely friends anyway,” she says and she watches Emily trying to act like it doesn’t hurt.
The waiter comes with their food and JJ offers them a polite, “thank you,” and avoids Emily’s gaze.
Emily stabs her burger with the fork, cutting through it in a heavy silence. “Have you tried reaching out to her?” she asks after she’s chewed the first bite. JJ picks at the fries she ordered and tries to convince herself to eat one. “I can help if you want me to.”
“Easy for you to say,” JJ mumbles, keeping her gaze on her plate instead of Emily. “You're gonna run right back to her and say oh yeah, JJ, who you probably haven't thought about since you left told me what happened and I don't know who to trust.”
A loud clink cuts through the silence when Emily sets her cutlery down on the plate, and JJ doesn’t miss how a few heads turn at the sound. “Okay, what the hell, JJ?” she snaps, her eyes hardening as she looks at her. “I’m not your enemy.”
JJ takes a deep breath, but it's helpless. “You don't know anything, Emily!” she snaps, raising her voice even though she tries to keep it together. “Elle left like it was nothing, just–” she cuts herself off before she reveals too much, but the words linger on her tongue, sour and bitter and true. Just like my parents. “She didn't say anything, just vanished into thin air without a word. She blocked me everywhere so no, I can't just reach out to her even if I wanted to.”
Emily holds her gaze with eyes that are a twisted mix of concerned and afraid, yet stubborn and impossible to look away from. “All I'm saying is I'm not the one you're angry with.”
JJ runs a hand through her hair, standing because she can’t just sit there and pretend like Emily hasn’t figured her out. “You’re wrong.” She digs her nails into the back of the chair she sat in moments ago, and eyes the door. Emily stays quiet and it stings so much that she blurts out, “I'm gonna get some air. I'll be right back.” She grabs her sweatshirt from next to her and then she’s out the door.
She takes a walk around the block, when she comes back inside, Emily has almost finished her meal. “I'm sorry,” JJ says when she sits back down, and starts picking at her fries which are slowly turning cold. “You’re right. It’s not you, and it wasn’t fair of me to act like it was.”
Emily wipes her hands on her napkin. “I appreciate the apology,” she says and her gaze softens. She shrugs and offers, “I just wanted to help.”
JJ clears her throat, fearing that she'll say too much if she tries speaking. “I know, and I might tell you at some point, but I–” she bites her lip and turns her head, and Emily just waits for her to continue. “It’s hard to open up,” she says after a moment.
Emily nods and looks down, focusing on the food in front of her. “I get that.”
They eat in silence for a few minutes, but it's comfortable and not heavy.
“We are friends, by the way,” Emily says suddenly. “I know I’m not good at the whole being honest thing, but I swear I’m trying, and I do like being around you.” She meets JJ's eyes again, hesitant and nervous, yet kind.
“Good,” JJ says and smiles, “because I do consider you my friend as well.”
Emily smiles back and it’s more this time. It’s relief, like she’d been fearing JJ didn’t see her as an equal, and now that she does, she can finally relax.
A week after, the first Friday of the summer break, Emily surprises JJ. After a long shift, JJ is fully prepared to go home and have leftovers for dinner and then go to sleep, but Emily nods to her car. “Would you want to go somewhere?” she asks, stopping her with a hand on her arm. It’s not the first time she’s touched her, but it’s the first time it’s meant something, the first time JJ has felt it tingling on her skin. “Not the diner and not here, just somewhere else? We can get food and go for a walk or something.” Emily shrugs.
JJ blinks in surprise which Emily must read as something else entirely. “I mean, we don’t have to,” she says quickly and shakes her head, her hands in front of her, picking at the skin on her nails. “Forget I asked.”
JJ chuckles and nods. “No, sure, I would like that.” Emily grins at her, but before she gets to say anything, JJ interjects, “As long as we can go to my dorm and get my truck instead of whatever that is.” She points at the tiny black wreck that makes up Emily’s car, all dusty and rusty in certain places.
“Hey, she works!” Emily laughs. “She’s seen better days though.”
“Sure,” JJ says with a raised brow, “but I have a great idea for what we could do that isn’t walking because personally, I need a break.”
Emily furrows her brows slightly. “Okay.”
JJ just nods towards the street towards the dorms and urges for Emily to follow her. “Come with me,” she says and Emily does.
They walk back to JJ’s dorms in a comfortable silence, JJ picking at the grass on the field next to them, Emily a few steps behind her. She tries not to be self-conscious about the fact that Emily’s gaze is probably stuck somewhere between her back and her neck.
JJ runs up to her room to get her car keys while Emily waits outside. “So, here’s my idea,” she says and unlocks the truck, urging Emily to take the passenger seat. “We can go to the city and find something to eat, then I’ll drive us… somewhere else. It’s better if you don’t know.”
Emily blinks at her. “That sounds like a trap, but okay.”
“Hey, you can trust me,” JJ says, and without thinking, she rests her hand on Emily’s shoulder.
Emily doesn’t let go of her gaze for even a second. “That’s something a serial killer would say too, JJ.”
Her gaze is so intense, burning right into JJ’s that she has to look away. She steps back and hides her flustering by chuckling. “Right, I forgot you kind of know stuff about that.” JJ opens her car door and gets into the driver's seat while Emily stands there, head tilted and watching her with a raised brow. “Well, you can check for weapons or secrets if that makes you feel any better,” JJ adds.
Emily laughs, whole and deep and it makes something in JJ’s chest flutter. “No, let’s do it, let’s go.” She steps into the seat next to JJ, using the top of JJ’s truck to support her as she steps up.
JJ turns on the radio, and drives out, raising a hand in a wave to Spencer who’s just leaving as well. “What kind of music do you listen to?” JJ asks after a moment, her eyes leaving the road for just a moment.
“I don’t know, a lot of different stuff,” Emily offers. “I like rock and punk-like music. I find it relaxing.”
“Relaxing?” JJ asks with surprise, unable to stop her brows from rising.
Emily laughs. “I don’t know, it’s loud enough to quiet my brain, you know? I have anxiety and…” she trails off and looks away, her hands picking at a thread on her jeans and JJ decides not to ask. “It helps me manage that, I guess. I also like older kinds of music, like The Cranberries, The Beatles and Pixies. And then like political rage.”
JJ nods thoughtfully. “Makes sense for you, actually,” she says before she can stop herself. “You can play me something if you want to. It’s a 15-minute drive, so like, three songs or something.”
Emily smiles and opens her phone. “Sure.”
“My car is too old to have Bluetooth, but there’s the aux cord.” Emily plugs it in and scrolls through options on her phone. It takes her a moment, but then she decides, and a song JJ recognizes starts playing. “Paramore?” she asks with a grin and Emily just nods. JJ quickly identifies the song as All I wanted. Elle showed her that one, a few weeks before they kissed and Elle left. JJ had loved it, but now it just hurts.
It’s like Emily is transported into a whole different world. She focuses out the window and JJ focuses on the road, but she can’t help her gaze from falling to Emily a few too many times. Emily mouths the words without singing, and JJ hums along, and she catches Emily smiling at her.
After that, she plays two songs that JJ doesn’t know. One she introduces as Burning Pile by a band called Mother Mother, another called Nerve by Destroy Boys and JJ notes the titles in her head. There’s still a few minutes left of the drive when the songs are over, and Emily fills the silence. “What about you? What kind of music do you like?”
JJ chuckles and focuses on the road instead of Emily’s eyes on her. She can almost feel it, the way her eyes trail over her. “I like a lot of sad stuff. Tom Odell and Sufjan Stevens, that kind of thing. My favorite artists are Noah Kahan and Hozier though.”
Emily surprises her for the second time that day; “What’s that one Hozier song that everyone knows?”
“Take Me to Church?” she asks and glances to see Emily nodding in agreement. “Yeah, I like that one.” It’s all she can say without saying too much, without saying that it felt like someone had taken her thoughts and written them down in a way she couldn’t. She’d listened to it repeatedly after Elle’s departure, replaying that night over and over again and trying not to feel disgusted with herself.
She knows she had the realization later than a lot of people. Some people know when they’re 5, some people realize when they’re teenagers, and JJ didn’t know until she was 22. She knew she was different from a young age, and knowing what she knows now, it’s hard to tell whether it’s the autism or the queerness. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether they’re separate things or if they were always entwined with each other.
They’re in the city before JJ knows it and she parks outside her favorite takeout place – they make it just 10 minutes before closing time. They get their food and JJ grins when Emily hesitates again. “Where are we going again?” she asks when JJ gets inside the driver’s seat and hands the bag with their food to her.
“You’ll see,” is all JJ says and it’s enough to make Emily hop in beside her. It’s a shorter drive this time, one of JJ’s favorite places. Emily looks out the window, the food on her lap like she’s guarding it. That’s what happens when JJ’s pickup truck only has two seats, and a trunk filled with hay.
They drive in a comfortable silence for a few moments before Emily breaks it. “Okay, five minutes ago we were in the city and now there’s no one but us. It’s looking more and more like you’re planning to kill me.”
JJ laughs softly, surprised to see genuine unease in Emily’s eyes. “Relax, Emily,” she tries, and shrugs. “We are going to eat our food and watch the sunset from the trunk of my car. Sounds good?”
Still looking slightly nervous, her hands in her lap and her eyes everywhere but JJ, Emily stays quiet. A long moment passes before she admits, “I’ve never really done this before.”
JJ reaches the field she’d been thinking of, the flower fields that seem never-ending, the place she spends hours on end when the world feels too heavy. She parks the truck, only slightly unstable on the grass edge. “Done what?” she prompts.
Emily keeps her eyes away from her, and it makes JJ doubt if she misread the whole situation. “I’ve never really hung out with someone like this. I don’t know.” She shrugs, but JJ catches the nervousness in her body, like she’s trying to protect herself. “I dropped out of high school before I really had the chance to make friends. I have one friend back home, but he’s– it’s complicated.”
JJ nods and lets out a chuckle. “Yeah, I understand complicated.”
Emily turns to her. “No, it’s not like that. At all.” She looks so genuinely offended that JJ made that connection and JJ swallows the urge to apologize. “Matthew’s an addict.”
That, she had not seen coming. JJ feels her eyes widening, but she tries to hide it by looking out the window. “Shit,” is all JJ can get past her tongue. “I’m sorry.” She’s not sure what she means herself. She’s sorry that she insinuated something that was so far from the truth, she’s sorry that Emily is dealing with something like that, she’s sorry for a friend of a friend she hasn’t even met.
“It’s messy,” Emily says. “He’s like family to me.”
JJ nods and fights the urge to reach for her, to put a hand on her shoulder, to squeeze her arm, just something. She doesn’t though, and the silence between them grows heavy. JJ fills it before she even considers the consequences. “When I was 11, I lost someone very close to me, and it tore my family apart. They didn't have space or time for me anymore so they just kind of… sent me here like I was a problem to be solved.” This time, JJ turns her head away from her, while Emily watches her, all concern and dark eyes and she feels like for the first time in her life, some is regarding her feelings about the situation rather than her mom’s feelings. “I haven't heard from my mom in a year, and I know I'm an adult, but I'm still her kid, you know?”
Emily doesn’t hold herself back the way JJ had done. She rests her hand on JJ’s lower arm and squeezes, and it brings something alive in JJ’s chest and her heart that she doesn’t allow herself to name. “I’m sorry, JJ,” Emily says, her voice low and gentle, the softest she’s ever heard it. It’s kind of funny to look back at their argument the week before where Emily had said she’s not good at being honest, because here she is, opening herself up to JJ and making JJ open up in return.
“Yeah, it’s a lot.”
Emily squeezes her arm again and JJ looks up at her, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly, the smallest smile on her lips. “Now, if we’re done with the sad backstories, can we eat the food before it gets cold?” Emily asks then, and JJ stifles a chuckle, but agrees.
They settle in the back of her truck, JJ smoothing out the gray fleece blanket and crawling in on top of it. Emily hands her the food and JJ offers her a hand up. Emily almost crashes into her and it’s insanely awkward for 5 seconds when they’re trying to untangle their limbs from each other. Emily laughs out, “Sorry,” before settling down beside JJ.
JJ swallows a laugh, and hands Emily’s noodle box to her, taking out her own as well. It’s still relatively warm and JJ breathes in relief when she takes the first bite. JJ focuses on the sky in the distance, all pink and orange hues mixing together like an abstract painting.
“This is almost romantic,” Emily says after a few minutes of them eating in silence. JJ fails to hide a chuckle, keeping her eyes on the sky and her food instead of Emily. “You don’t have a boyfriend to bring, so you take me here instead? Is that what’s happening?”
“No,” JJ says, but it comes out more like a question.
Emily laughs, her arm lightly gracing JJ's. It's soft enough that JJ knows it's accidental, the kind of touch you're barely supposed to notice, yet she does because it sends a tingling sensation down her back. “I’m messing with you, Jareau,” Emily says and meets her eyes with a grin. Then she turns back to her food and takes a bite before she adds, “This is nice.”
JJ nods in agreement as she chews. “I’m glad you think so.” She doesn't say more because of she does, she's afraid she'll say too much, reveal something she doesn't know if she wants her to know. “I do this all of the time. I’ve accidentally fallen asleep and woken up to 10 missed calls from friends who were worried I’d been kidnapped. Penelope now demands to have location sharing on so she can find out where I am.”
Emily tilts her head thoughtfully. “I mean, statistically, that could have happened.” JJ looks at her in surprise, feeling her eyes widen before she gets to stop it. “You’re the right age, you’re a woman, blonde and attractive.”
JJ doesn't let her mind settle on the fact that Emily called her attractive. It’s too late in the day and too early in their friendship to linger on it, so she just moves on. “Now you sound like Spence.” She points her plastic fork at Emily.
They both try to stifle their laughter, but Emily doesn’t stop smiling. JJ catches herself wanting to memorize how it looks, her dimples and her bright eyes and her full lips that she finds herself wanting to know how feels. She tears her eyes away when Emily doesn’t, and JJ can’t stop herself from admitting, “I’ve never done this with someone else though.” She circles noodles around her fork, but doesn’t take the bite. “So this is a first for me too.”
Emily looks up in surprise and JJ meets her gaze again. “Really?” Emily asks, eyes curious and soft. JJ hums and shakes her head, but Emily's eyes doesn't leave her. “Not with Spencer or Penelope?”
JJ shakes her head again, chewing noodles and mushrooms. A long moment passes, but then she swallows. “I’m glad it’s with you.”
Emily looks up and her eyes light up and JJ can't help but return the bright smile on her lips. “Me too,” Emily says.
They continue to eat, while sharing random thoughts and memories. JJ talks about her classes and how she wants to study horse behavior and work with horses professionally, while Emily confesses she dropped out of high school and done small part-time jobs ever since. She doesn't explain much more and JJ lets her get away with it, letting her redirect the question back to JJ.
JJ thought she would feel terrified at the idea of sharing this place with someone else – it’s hers, in a way nothing else is hers and sharing it with someone she doesn’t know beyond a few diner meals and work should feel like more. But she’s here and talking and showing Emily a part of her life she didn’t know how to share with anyone else until now. It feels weirdly comforting, especially when the other person is watching her with quiet dark eyes and raised brows and a smile as infectious as Emily’s.
JJ drops Emily off at her apartment, lingers there and watching Emily raise her hand it a wave. She stays until Emily unlocks the front door and the door shuts behind her. Then she drives back to her dorm and wonders what the Hell makes Emily so special.