Chapter Text
The soft knock catches Emily’s attention. She yawns, setting her wine glass on the coffee table, and heads to the door. When the peep hole reveals the blonde media liaison, Emily opens it straight away. “Hey, you. Why not just use your key?” Somewhere between flustered and determined, JJ strides into the living room and takes a long sip from Emily’s wine. “Okay,” Emily drawls slowly. “What’s going on, Jayje?”
“I need a favor.”
“Shoot,” Emily replies, grabbing a second glass from the wine rack and filling it without the slightest drip or slosh. There’s not much Emily wouldn’t do for JJ; the whole team of profilers could see that as clear as day. For more reasons than Emily cares to admit.
“Will and I came to an agreement,” JJ starts, as her hands rub against her skirt nervously. “I’ve been wanting to explore some things about myself, and we came to an agreement,” she emphasizes again. For her part, Emily stays silent, having learned long ago that she doesn’t need to fill the silence. “Things are fine with Will,” JJ states offhandedly. “I just can’t stop wondering what it’d be like to be with a woman.” Thank God for a poker face and decades of ambassador-necessary compartmentalization, Emily thinks to herself. “We came to an agreement,” she says a third time. “So I need a favor.”
“And that is,” Emily prompts, trying to figure out where exactly this conversation is going. “Do you want me to set you up with someone?”
“No, no not like that,” JJ hastens. “I want it to be with you.” Emily’s mouth completely dries out. “I know just because you’re gay that doesn’t mean you’re attracted to me like that or anything. I just want to explore it with someone who knows me, loves me in some sense of the word. Not a stranger, you know?” Speechless. Emily opens and closes her mouth a few times, but can’t quite find the words. That doesn’t happen often. “Can you say something please,” JJ begs. “You’re freaking me out over here.”
Emily takes a long fortifying sip from her wine. “You want to explore your sexuality with me, and your current partner agrees to this activity. Am I getting that correctly?” JJ nods. “Agrees willingly or under duress?” The blonde shoots her a mockingly offended look. “Well, you could convince anyone of anything. That’s for sure. A few questions. What’s the end goal here? Soothe the itch and go back to married life?”
“Yes. Ish. I’m not sure married life, this married life to Will, is for me. So maybe this leads to a divorce, but we talked about that possibility. It’s kind of a final Hail Mary to see if we both can get some space and branch out a little in the ways we want if we can come back together with a renewed interest.” Emily purses her lips at the information. “But no, this, if you’ll help me do this, this wouldn’t be the cause of any divorce or any ill-will between me and Will. If that ship is going to sail, it has already sailed. This is more about me. I need to know this about myself and I want to do it with someone I trust.”
“And how would this affect us? Our friendship? Our work? Because I’m not in a position to lose you over this, even if it goes worst case scenario, so if that’s a possible outcome, I can’t do it.” JJ smiles softly, understanding written across her expressive face, knowing the profiler will see. Emily takes a few long sips, chewing her bottom lip lightly in between. JJ can’t help but stare at the action; it always draws her in. That and Emily’s damn uncentered belt buckle.
She knows she’s not being fully honest. She knows she doesn’t want to explore with just any woman; she wants to explore specifically with Emily. JJ knows she’s purposefully avoiding the knowledge that Emily has invaded her thoughts and senses in a way she can’t remember ever happening before. Her heart calls it love, but her brain isn’t ready to hold that truth. JJ waits. Hopefully. Watching every micro reaction or body adjustment.
For her part Emily feels at war. Of course it’s a possibility that this all goes sideways and she loses JJ completely. It’s always a possible outcome with any sort of friends-with-benefits situation. And she’d be absolutely lying to herself if she didn’t want it desperately. “We should make sure you’re attracted to me first, I guess.”
“What,” JJ manages with a small cough.
“If it’s about learning more about your sexuality, it doesn’t just work with any woman. Just like you don’t want to sleep with every man. You’d want to make sure your experiment involves you and a person you find attractive.”
“You’re gorgeous, Em. You’re everybody’s type.” The brunette blushes lightly at the compliment but doesn’t yield. “Okay, how do we test out this attraction theory of yours?” With a slight gesture for consent, Emily scoots closer on the couch. After a breath to steel her nerves, Emily reaches out to tuck a loose blond curl behind JJ’s ear. Before closing the space, she asks one last time. “Yes I’m sure, damnit, Em. Just kiss me.”
It’s tentative and soft at first - JJ cataloging all the ways it’s different from kissing Will and Emily trying to commit to memory every last detail. When Emily pulls away slowly, JJ pulls her back with insistence, twining her fingers in brunette locks. Emily smiles into the touch, more than happy to continue. The kisses increase in number and intensity; first five, ten, then twenty. Closed lips to eagerly exploring tongues and gentle teeth. The next time Emily pulls back, JJ lets her go and tries to catch her breath, her fingers dancing over her kiss-swollen lips in awe.
Emily watches carefully. She sees those beautiful blue eyes hazy with desire, the way her chest rises and falls in rapid succession, the darkening of pink lips. Through all of it, she watches and lets JJ process. “It’s different,” JJ murmurs with fingertips still brushing over her own lips. “God it’s good and so different. Again,” she requests. “Just more.” Moving both wine glasses off to the side, JJ settles atop Emily’s lap. “Okay?”
Emily answers with a kiss, capturing JJ’s lower lip between her own. The blonde moans, and Emily flushes with heat, reacting to each and every little sound or shift of movement. It emboldens her that JJ seems as affected by their make out session as she feels, with it comes her usual confidence in this department. Nips, licks, sucks, gentle brushes of lips. JJ is putty in her lap. Purposefully, Emily kisses the corner of JJ’s mouth, then her jaw, then the spot below her ear, where she sucks a small mark. “How far do you want this to go, Jayje?” JJ rocks her hips down and presses Emily further into the couch back, hands boldly snaking down the Emily’s chest.
Emily is about to request a verbal answer, when JJ’s phone rings in her bag. She slumps back exasperatedly. “Agent Jareau,” she answers with a wince at the rough timber of her voice. Clearing her throat, she nods understanding and offers a resigned look to her best friend. “Yes ma’am. High priority, I understand… I’ll recall the team… yes ma’am… Bye.”
“Duty calls,” JJ sighs and stands. “Unfortunate timing because I… I’m very turned on, and we don’t have time to finish what we started.”
Emily scrubs hands over her face, willing her own arousal back to some manageable level. “If you do decide to finish this,” she says, gesturing vaguely around, “you know where to find me.”
JJ steps in close, bodies flush against one another, and steals a kiss. “I definitely want to finish this, Em.” Boldly, feeing far braver than she feels, JJ takes Emily’s hand and brings it under the loose hem of her skirt. Emily moans, deep and low, feeling the warmth and wetness against JJ’s center. “Does that sufficiently answer the question if I’m attracted to you?”
“Fuck, Jay,” Emily manages, brain struggling to produce words or sounds when confronted with the feeling of JJ’s arousal.
“Soon,” JJ teases. “Right now, I’ve got to run home and get my go bag. I’ll call the team from the road. I’ll meet you at the plane in an hour. Debrief on the way to Minneapolis.”
When the door closes and the car rolls smoothly out of the driveway, Emily quickly shoves her hands in her own pants to take care of the deep ache between her legs. Easily pulling to mind the sounds JJ made and the feeling of her touch, it doesn’t take Emily long at all to reach her climax.
After a quick clean up of herself and the living room, Emily double checks her go-bag and heads to the hanger. Somehow both excited and nervous to be in JJ’s presence again.
She’s relieved when it’s business as usual on the plane. The banter is still there, the closeness between the two women which has always been apparent. It’s easy to fall back into team mode when faced with a killer on a clock. The case itself turns out to be fairly standard for BAU work; requested by a political supporter of Strauss and thusly assigned. Even the hotel arrangements work in favor of their agreement when each agent has their own room, again thanks to political supports and the ever-familiar “you scratch my back, I scratch yours.”
Less than 72 hours and they’re all heading back to DC, interspersed throughout the plane with each agent picking their own spot to relax and decompress before landing. A brief respite from the case loads and the never-ending paperwork. JJ smiles watching her best friend snooze; she can still feel the kisses on her lips and the heat pooling in her belly. She has an inkling that this won’t be a one-time thing- too much history, love, and trust between the women. And man, the chemistry, that rightness. It’s unlike anything she’s felt in quite some time and certainly more than anything she ever felt with Will, even during their whirlwind romance at the beginning.
“Movie night at your place,” JJ calls out to Emily when they’re walking across the tarmac. “Your choice.” Reid spouts some statistic about movie night as a pastime, and to be completely frank, JJ doesn’t hear a word of it. Emily shouts confirmation over the wind and hanger noise, tossing her go bag on the back floor of her Range Rover.
Emily makes it home first, just a few minutes to spare, and thank God for that because her anxiety would go haywire waiting much longer. JJ knocks again, instead of bursting in with her key. Emily offers a couple of movie choices, and JJ scoffs. “Not interested in that. Very much interested in you. If that’s ok.” She invades Emily’s personal space, pulling the other woman flush against her, faces nearly touching. “Very interested in kissing these lips.” A barely-there graze of a kiss. “And everything it might lead to.”
“How far do you want to go,” Emily breathes into the space between them. Keeping her composure to understand the boundaries and hear explicit consent.
JJ cups Emily’s face, thumb grazing her cheek. “I trust you.” Another small, gingerly-placed kiss. “Take me to bed.”