The author owns nothing from the television series.
Chapter 1
Emily shut off the ignition and got out of the four wheel drive, surveying the old house before embarking on a circuit of the compound. The roof looked fine for now but it still needed work if it was to last many more winters. The dry stone wall that ran behind the well needed repairing but the well pulley, bucket and rope were in good condition. Her family paid for general maintenance of the grounds and major repairs to the house, but the general air of the place being unloved now was pervasive.
This had been the right decision, Emily decided. This house had been loved all through the time her Grandpêre had lived here, and she wanted it to know that it would continue being loved. Buildings had an atmosphere, a sort of soul, and although it was fanciful to anthromorphise them, she could sense it and that was enough.
She'd called ahead and arranged for a thorough cleaning of the house the day before so it would be fit to stay in. The wine cellar, without which no French home was complete, wasn't completely empty. The house was too remote to have been broken into by opportunists. By the light of her torch, she inspected the labels. Hardly a collector's dream but very acceptable for all that.
She unloaded her vehicle. New sheets and bedlinens went at once on the bed she would use, spares into the big cedar chest at the foot of the bed. She hung a dried ham and saucissons up in the cool pantry with a bunch of garlic and put the cheeses, butter, eggs and pasta she had bought in there as well. Onions and potatoes and other dry provisions were put into their respective bins.
Outside, she collected kindling and put to use the new hatchet she had bought. By the time she had enough firewood for the next few nights, she was ready for a break. It was time to settle in. She brought in a bucket of water and made coffee, using the rest of the water to wash herself off.
Sitting in the sun with her coffee, she already felt better surrounded by the soothing sense of clean air and of wood and wool, leather and cotton and earth. She was so still and quiet that a fox popped its head up from the brush and regarded her curiously before going about its vulpine business. There would be marmots over the hill: she was fond of them and decided to bring a few carrots over to them tomorrow. A swift darted over her head, too quick for her to follow its flight path.
She went into the house to start the day's bread.
...
Three days later she had done as much with the roof as she could. She made a note to call in professionals for the tavaillons. Now it was time for the dry stone wall.
She had just fitted the first stone when she heard the growl of a car engine and frowned. People did not tend to come here by accident and she wasn't expecting visitors. On the other hand there was no phone line here and no electricity with which to recharge her cell phone, and therefore no way for anyone to tell her they were coming. Withdrawing circumspectly into the treeline, she waited. In case this was some flunkey delivering a maternal 'request' for her mandatory attendance at some diplomatic function, she prepared a fluent diatribe with the choicest idiomatic cursing.
The new vehicle halted a short distance behind hers and with bewilderment she recognised Morgan and JJ getting out and making for the front door of the house. She was already walking up behind them but many summers and winters of her formative years spent out here made her progress in that terrain actually rather quiet. Thus it was that when she opened her mouth and said rustily, in a voice that hadn't been used for English for a week and hadn't been used at all for three days, "Hi," Morgan jumped and JJ shrieked and they both swung round, eyes wide, Morgan's hand reaching for a gun that wasn't there.
Emily herself had fallen a step back, not expecting the violence of their surprise. They all stood there for an instant while their hearts slowed down.
Emily recovered first, this being home ground for her. "Hi," she tried again tentatively.
JJ smiled like a toothpaste commercial. "Emily!" she cried out happily and lunged in for a hug.
"Prentiss," Morgan grinned and hugged her too.
After that, they both just stood back and smiled at her, in no apparent hurry to drag her back home. Seeing that nothing really urgent was on their minds, Emily asked, "Where did you drive up from today?"
"English, Prentiss," Morgan prompted.
Emily blinked and changed gears in her brain. She repeated her question in the right language.
"Annecy," was JJ's answer.
"Well, would you like some coffee? Only there's no milk."
"YES!" they chorused and followed her indoors.
"Make yourselves comfortable," she said deliberately as she hung up her old suede coat and took their jackets. It was weird speaking English at all in France but here in this house where she was so used to thinking and speaking in French, it was actually hard to reconcile and remember to do it.
They didn't make themselves comfortable. They trotted after her and watched with absurd fascination as she drew water from the well and brought it in, scooped some out into a kettle, put the kettle on the big black stovetop, poked some kindling in and built up the banked fire in the stove, adding a small log and then retrieving coffee from the pantry, spooning it into a French press.
They sat at the kitchen table silently as she casually put out sugar and teaspoons, cut on the bare tabletop thick slices of bread she'd made that morning and laid it out with butter, St Nectaire and Comtè and dried apricots, then handed out plates and knives. In the last minute before the water boiled, she absently ladled more from the bucket into a glass and drank. When she looked up, both of them were perched eagerly upright with bright eyes, like a pair of mismatched meerkats.
"What is it?" she looked down at herself in perplexity. Sure, she wasn't in FBI attire or spotlessly clean, but it wasn't as if anyone could reasonably expect either of those things in these circumstances.
"Emily Prentiss, mountain woman!" Morgan grinned. "Look at you, girl! You're like a pin-up for some Marlboro woman ad!"
Emily refrained from rolling her eyes. "Morgan," she said patiently, "you do realise the people in ads are all models, right? In real life, people who live where there's no electricity or piped gas tend to have worn boots and shapeless, faded old clothes that don't match, and they don't have manicures, or nicely-groomed stubble, or morning and evening showers with scented shower gel."
"So we got us the real thing, then?" Irrepressibly Morgan waggled his eyebrows.
"I'll say!" JJ's voice was oddly breathy. Both Morgan and Emily shot her such astonished looks that she giggled and blushed. "Sorry, Em, but honestly ..." she waved her hand in an all-encompassing gesture at Emily. "I mean ... right?" she turned to Morgan for support for this strange and incoherent endorsement.
Emily didn't register his response because the water boiled and she had to grab an oven mitt to pour some over the coffee grounds. Only then did she take a seat herself. After handing round the coffee, she rested her hands on the table and watched with indulgent amusement as Morgan and JJ tucked into this simplest of repasts as if they'd been starved for days.
She waited until they sat back looking replete and content. "Now, it's really good to see you both and you are very welcome here but you can understand that I want to know why you've come. Which of you is going to tell me?"
"You took off so suddenly, Emily," JJ bit her lip. "After all that business with Hotch's transfer and your resignation and Strauss and your head injury, we weren't sure what to think."
"But you must know I'm still with the team," Emily furrowed her brow. "Didn't Hotch make this clear? I'm just on vacation."
"Well, yes ..." Morgan looked at his hands, hesitating. Emily saw movement that signified JJ kicking him under the table and suppressed a smile.
"I'm sorry," he said quickly. That kick couldn't have too gentle, Emily concluded. Not that this made things any clearer.
"For what?"
"We haven't made things easy for you, coming onto the team, have we?" He wouldn't look at her yet.
Emily inhaled a long breath. "A newcomer to an established circle can always expect that. It's natural. And when the work the team does is so critical and cohesion so much more necessary, it's even more natural."
"In the very beginning, yes." JJ answered. "But sometimes Reid and Gideon can, for different reasons, behave so like children that I long to slap them. Not liking change is no excuse for grownups with real grown-up battles to fight against real evil. I love Reid, I do, but if he wants to be taken seriously in an adult job in an adult world I won't make any allowances for him that I wouldn't make for any other individual in this job. I refuse to humour him when he's behaving like a child defending a sandpit. He may have issues with Dilaudid but he gets the adult allowance of us not telling anyone outside the team. He doesn't get away with failing to ask any of us for help or for being snippy with only you. Considering that he must know what it's like to be bullied, it's especially bad of him to behave like he has towards you just because he feels he has an advantage on his side for once."
Emily was very touched by JJ's unexpected fervour on her behalf but she still wanted an answer. "You two apologizing for their behaviour is hardly meaningful, though. You know that. And it looks like Gideon's not coming back anyway. So why are you really here?"
"Because Reid is largely our fault," Morgan admitted, ready to meet her eyes at last. "He does take social cues from us. If we'd been better about it, he would have warmed up to you faster. I was comfortable with you in the field a long time ago. It was stupid to act as if I wasn't just because I'd known Elle Greenaway longer. And in fact I didn't trust Elle in the field towards the end anyway."
"I didn't know that," Emily said. "But in all fairness, you had every right to be cautious."
"Because you came off a desk job?" JJ asked sharply.
Emily said nothing.
"Em, I haven't ever had to pull a trigger in a real situation yet," JJ pointed out.
"And," Morgan added, "I could tell from the first time you drew your gun that you knew what you were doing. You're not afraid of it or cocky or a show-off. You're always focused and levelheaded and thorough. Reid is indispensable and I love the guy but I don't trust him 100% to clear a room yet because he gets excited and he can be distracted. Plus you know your profiling, that's obvious. So it's no excuse for me to say that just because I didn't know you well personally yet, I wasn't comfortable with you professionally, in the office or in the field. Personal and professional might be related but generally, whether or not you know who someone went home with last night has nothing to do with whether you trust them to shoot or not shoot at the right time, and to shoot straight. So I've come to apologise for my own behaviour and for any effect it had on Reid."
"It wasn't all that noticeable to me, but you've come all this way. You mean it sincerely so all right, I accept." Emily turned her eyes to JJ. "But I'm not sure why you think you need to apologise. You've been kind and welcoming to me."
JJ flushed. "I could have been better. Anyway, Morgan and I just wanted to be sure that you weren't using this vacation to re-think your decision to stay with the team because of our lousy attitudes. It's just that you left so abruptly and so soon after all ... that." She made another of those all-encompassing waves of the hand. "So we talked to each other and we thought that after everything that's happened and no promotion prospects according to Strauss, you might think you don't have much of an incentive to stay and Morgan and I don't want you to go anywhere else."
Morgan nodded. "We really don't. And you also know now that Hotch wants you to stay, and why."
"He told you why?" Aaron Hotchner did not strike her as someone who communicated more than he absolutely needed to.
"Yeah, I think he felt bad that his unjust suspicion of you might have affected the rest of us and contributed to any sense you might have that you weren't completely welcome among us for so long." JJ sounded a little bitter. Emily couldn't think why. She had also flagged JJ's deflection away from the topic of how she 'could have done better'. Things weren't entirely clear there but this was not the time to pursue it.
Morgan nodded again. "On the jet coming home from Milwaukee, he spoke to the rest of us. You were sleeping off the sedative the paramedic gave you and we made you take, remember?"
Oh, yes.
"And Garcia loves you," JJ pressed, "so she smacked Spence around a bit, figuratively, and then dug around to help us find out where you were. Look, four of us really want you and if Reid's gonna continue being a little pissant, we're shutting him down."
She and Morgan nodded definitely at each other, then turned to gaze at Emily earnestly.
Emily relaxed. "Oh, don't do that. It'll be better if he comes round on his own and I think he will now. Anyway, I'm big and ugly enough that I wouldn't quit just because of him. I was always coming back, but I've got to finish up here first. It's going to take at least a week and I took another one to be on the safe side. Mind telling me how you both got leave to come here at the same time?"
"I didn't," Morgan said. "We ducked out early Friday afternoon to fly to Paris, took the earliest train we could catch to Annecy yesterday and conked out from jet lag. We didn't think it was safe to drive up here late and risk the road in the dark while we were tired. I've got a flight back tomorrow morning, which is Independence Day, so I have recovery time before going back to work on Tuesday."
Emily winced. "Hell of a round trip. And Paris on Bastille Day can be a pain to get around. You'll still be tired on Tuesday. But thank you again for coming all this way just to say this to me personally. I really appreciate it. It wasn't a wasted trip even though I wasn't thinking of leaving. It's been a real boost to me to hear all that and I'll be a lot happier coming in to work." She reached out to squeeze his hand, then turned to JJ.
"I explained to Hotch why we were coming. The Bureau's been on at us to clear our leave and I have an indecent amount accumulated. The only reason Hotch limited me to five days this time is that the team's so shorthanded we can't have more than one of us off for longer. So including next weekend I have a full week," JJ said. "And I can cancel it if you'd rather be alone," she finished a bit wistfully.
"No, of course you're welcome, but there's no power here," Emily pointed out. "I have bottled gas for an emergency stove and, despite appearances, running water, but that's the extent of modern conveniences. No generator, no phones. No take out. Do you really think you'd be comfortable?"
"I'm game to try it," JJ said with no trace of hesitation. "I could use a proper break from work."
"OK. Well, we need to get Morgan on a train to Paris in time for his flight." Emily squinted at the sun. Four handsbreadths till sunset but it was summer, so that meant it was past 5pm now. "There are several from Annecy that will get you there late tonight or a night train that'll get you there in the early morning. Which you do prefer, Morgan?"
"Better safe then rushed," he said. "And I'd like to sleep in a bed tonight instead of on a train, before I have to fold myself up for another 5-hour commercial flight."
"All right. JJ, do you want to stay here and get some sleep?"
"No, I'm coming with. I can nap in the car."
...
At the Gare d'Annecy Emily queued for Morgan's ticket while he and JJ got a couple of baguette sandwiches and some juice for his dinner on the train. After Emily warned him against trying to bring cheese or dried sausage into the US and pressed a pound of coffee on him to share at work, she and JJ hugged him goodbye on the platform, waving as the train took off.
She gave JJ a level look. "How tired are you now, really?"
"Actually, the nap did me a world of good. I'm still a little on Eastern seaboard time so I'm doing pretty well."
"All right. Option one, we go to a laundromat, stay the night here and shop a bit in the morning before going back. Option two, we go straight back."
"Option one," JJ said decidedly. "I'm still not too thrilled about going up that road in the dark if we don't have to. Want me to ring Garcia and get her to book us a room?"
"No need unless you want luxury," Emily replied.
JJ smiled. "I reckon I'm in safe hands. As long as it's clean I don't mind where we go for the night."
Emily relaxed even more. She drove them to a laundromat she knew, put her things and JJ's in the washing machine and started it up. Then she took JJ up the street, round a corner and knocked on a door.
"This is where the couple who do ordinary maintenance on my Grandpêre's house live. I've known them a long time and their children have grown up and moved out. They always have room for me when I stay the night in town to catch an early train or go to the market. They'll want you to call them Benoit and Jeanne."
Chapter 2
It went well. They were indeed welcomed for the night and given a room. JJ watched with plain amusement the flurry of enthusiastic gesticulating and expostulating it seemed was required to speak French like a native as Emily refused to be given dinner and explained about the laundry. Then JJ was fussed over and told how pretty she was, which Emily gleefully translated just to make her blush, and given a glass of wine while Emily showered off the day's dirt. By the time they ventured out again, it was time to go back to the laundromat and transfer their things to a dryer. They had guinea fowl and rabbit for dinner, retrieved their laundry, got to bed before midnight and slept like logs while their cell phones got fully charged. The next day Emily bought preserves because she supposed JJ would like something sweet to eat in the mornings and it would make a change for herself anyway. Then she got milk, vegetables and more eggs and potatoes.
Over croque monsieurs and hot chocolate, she caught JJ's eye. "Jayje, you know I'm delighted to host you but you've never been to France, have you? There's plenty here for tourists to do and see and tours for English speakers. Are you certain you want to come back up the mountain with me? You might get awfully bored and as I said, there aren't any conveniences, not even TV, just a battery-operated radio."
"I'm certain," JJ said positively. "I'm really looking forward to it in fact. You know what to do and you can tell me. That's good enough. Besides I have a book to read. What are you doing with the house anyway?"
"Well, I've got to call some roofers to come and replace some tiles and give the roof a good going over to make sure it's going to continue being sound for as long as possible. I've been up there the last few days to make sure the underlying timberwork is fine, and to clean the surface and the gutters so the roofers can see everything they need to see. Now I'm repairing the dry stone wall behind the well. It's not big and there's not much damage otherwise I'd call for professional help with that too. As it is, it'll take me a day, maybe two. The main reason I needed time is that I wasn't sure what state the roof would be in and I don't know when the roofers can come out. I'm thinking of spending the rest of the time re-touching the paint work here and there. The front door and the windows certainly need it. So does the sauna hut."
JJ's eyes went round. "There's a sauna?" she repeated reverently. "Oh, I'm so definitely staying with you!"
Emily laughed. "No conveniences, remember. But if you'd like to take charge of the firewood, we can turn on the sauna every night even though it's really best in winter."
"You're on, Prentiss!" JJ's eyes gleamed avidly. "What about the water for it?"
"Oh, remember I said there was running water? Snow and glacier melt are piped to a tank which feeds the bathroom on the ground floor, the kitchen tap and the sauna hut. It tends to be very clean, but I use well water for cooking and drinking from an excess of caution. The well water is very finely filtered by the time it seeps in and it gets tested regularly, plus mostly I drink it only after it's been boiled and cooled. Anyway, that's pretty much the extent of what I wanted to do this time around."
Emily paused. "Jayje, I sort of ... forget to talk when I'm up there. I want to you know in advance because I hope you won't be offended - you might have to ... you know ... prod at me a bit now and then."
"Considering what my job involves," JJ said dryly, "it'll be heavenly not to be talking all the time. Just remember I'm going to need instructions here and there. And I say again, I have a book."
...
Back at the house, Emily stuck the plastic milk jug in the well bucket and lowered it back down to keep cool in the water. Together she and JJ made up the bed in the second bedroom, then she showed JJ the woodpile and left her to it while she herself started on the wall again, working to the hypnotic thump of the hatchet.
Chapter 3
The days were remarkably peaceful. JJ was sensible and practical. She had packed hiking boots and T-shirts and a goretex jacket and quick-dry hiking clothes. Emily found edible mushrooms and showed JJ how to pick spruce sprouts to add to their vegetables. These were eaten with baked eggs, bread, soup, pasta with garlic sauce and potato gratin.
When JJ had chopped and split enough wood to last for months, Emily finally got her to stop by enticing her out to see the marmots. They fed them bread spread with a little jam and watched in delight as four of them stood upright in a row, munching their treats neatly like tiny soldiers newly on furlough who had not yet remembered how to be disorderly.
JJ swept the house and cleaned the work surfaces and optimistically planted garlic, carrots, onions and potatoes in the vegetable patch. She made a sling just for fun and practised with it while Emily was finishing with the wall. Once she missed her targeted rock and by sheer unlikely accident hit a hidden ptarmigan instead, with fatal consequences. She was dismayed and remorseful until Emily unsentimentally cleaned and dressed it for dinner. The scent wafted through the house and by the time she tasted her first forkful, JJ's distress had faded entirely.
At night, Emily built up the fire for the sauna while JJ brought in the bucket of cold water and ladle. They wore swimsuits and huge towels inside and retreated into individual daydreams for an hour or so, periodically stepping under the cold shower outside to wash their bodies, T-shirts and underclothes with soap. With glowing skin, they would retire to the house for a couple of fingers of Calvados or lightly sugared chamomile tea before bed, listening drowsily to the BBC World Service or Voice Of America until the first yawn took them upstairs to sleep the sleep of the just.
Emily's sauna reveries were about adding solar-powered electricity next. It wouldn't be needed for much. The stove pipe went straight up between the walls of the bedrooms and warmed them in winter, enough to make it bearable to dress and undress if you didn't linger. The rest of the house was small enough that the stove warmed it through. You needed a sweater or two and woollen trousers and leggings, but after all, what was the point of choosing to go somewhere for winter if you just wanted to wear T-shirts and shorts and watch TV indoors? For a short-term holiday home, one only needed power for a refrigerator and oven and water heater, to charge phones, and for lights to cook or read by when it got dark early, but that was really about it. Maybe one day if she ever had a family, kids, took longer vacations here, a microwave, stereo, TV and computer might be needed ... but that would require more bedrooms, full renovations, and it was something that might never come to pass.
She also appreciated what good company she had. Since her Grandpêre had died, she'd only been here a few times and she'd come alone, not able to bear the prospect of answering ceaseless questions about him and her youth and the pressure from people who 'wanted to understand' and who would require her to chat and talk and chat and talk. What was there to understand anyway? This place just was.
Jennifer Jareau did not chatter. She would murmur with soft delight deep in her soul about everything from the swifts' nests under the eaves to an unexpected bed of saxifrage smiling up out of the green. She had boundless energy for hillwalking but would still freeze on a signal for as long as Emily wanted to watch a rare otter playing in the water or lie back to follow an eagle wheeling high until it dived for prey. She ate everything like food was a religious experience, becoming almost as much of a cheese hound as Emily herself.
Emily had to smile about that. As a cook, she was really only competent at the basics: using dairy for carbonara, burning garlic and overcooking pasta were cardinal sins and eggs came off the heat for the last minute no matter how you prepared them. But here they had the advantage that no produce was picked green to withstand the rigours of long distance transport. Everything was at its most flavourful when it arrived in the kitchen so almost nothing had to be done to it to make it taste good. And JJ took such joy in every mouthful that it infused the air around her, filling Emily herself with pleased surprise and benevolence towards all mankind.
With JJ, there was no pressure to keep up a good impression. Emily did not have to worry about geeking out or about entertaining her because JJ seemed quite self-sufficient and entirely capable of amusing herself. She didn't fuss about getting dirty outdoors. She didn't hesitate to put her bread on a stone or on the grass in between bites once she saw Emily doing it. And she didn't turn her phone on to take photos, as if she understood that no photo taken like that could possibly convey the context of clean air, delicious water and the flight of a bearded vulture in the wide openness of sky above while you heard Bruckner in your mind that made being there in that second a true phenomenon. At first Emily had just wanted to give JJ new experiences in this place that, if you added up the time she'd spent here, was more of a home to her than anywhere else including Yale and DC. As time passed, however, Emily found herself hoping that her colleague might like it enough to want to come back for another visit someday.
On the fourth day the roofers came. Emily took JJ on a long walk to get away from the noise and relative bustle. They stole early apples and saw mountain sheep and ate bread with an onion and a wonderfully droopy and aromatic Camembert, with a juniper sprout to finish off, atop a hill where the view stretched for miles.
That night, JJ, in T-shirt and sweats, crept quietly into Emily's bed as Emily, yawning, made room without fuss and they slept like snuggled puppies.
The next day, Emily shyly insisted on presenting to JJ her Grandpêre's old Laguiole pocketknife, explaining to her the significance of its inlaid cross, and was gratified that she received it with due reverence. JJ never went back to her own bed nor did she ever open her book.
...
JJ had always liked Emily tremendously even from the first. Emily had the nicest face. It telegraphed kindness and confidence in her element without arrogance, a sort of calm, capable self-restraint that made you feel instinctively that she could be relied on, that if you turned to her in the face of a crisis she would be thoughtful and practical and stable and honourable and never ever base or crude.
People who made a big deal of being against a class system often forgot that they were railing only against the worst excesses of it, the sort of things that had brought about the fall of Rome and made many members of colonial powers such complete assholes. It was like being angry with all Muslims or Christians because there were individual Muslims or Christians you objected to. Emily was the exemplar of the good things that could happen. She used her many competencies to help others, not just in her professional capacity, but on a personal basis. Unlike Reid, she had a social filter and she used it. She extended the concept of hospitality to include making people comfortable not only in her own physical territory but anywhere they happened to be. She took genuine care of Garcia and JJ herself without being patronising. She would listen to their choices in modern music and make a proper intelligent comment that showed she took those choices seriously, she paid attention when in their cups they wittered on about inanities from pop culture grouses to dating problems and contributed her share of stories and rounds of beer, without ever letting on that she might be able to read Cervantes and Proust in the original and loved Shakespeare and could hear Verdi just by reading a score. Indeed JJ only knew now for a fact what some of Emily's touchstones of excellence were because of the many well-thumbed books in this old house, most with Emily's or her Grandfather's name on the flyleaf and few of which JJ could read herself. They explained a great deal about what Emily took comfort and strength from when she was on her own, the bases of her seemingly never-ending internal resources.
There were other things that this place confirmed about Emily. The first time she made garlic sauce for pasta, she had asked JJ to choose whether she wanted a large mushroom, zucchini or red pepper to add to the sauce. JJ had been very curious about why Emily hadn't simply added them all. If it had been someone else, JJ would have thought it was likely a matter of financial hardship and not asked why because it would have been embarrassing for her host. But those ingrained manners also stopped her from asking Emily even though she knew that Emily was anything but hard up for money. Instead JJ gave her the pepper and just watched - and it eventually came to her that Emily practised this sort of frugality as a habit because she must have had friends in Europe who did the same thing in her youth and she wouldn't have embarrassed them even in such a simple thing, and also because one vegetable was enough anyway and excessiveness would have overpowered the perfection of al dente pasta.
These things were what she most particularly liked about Emily now she knew her better, the emotional generosity that Emily exhibited so unthinkingly all the time because it came so naturally to her and the fact that she did the things she did for good reason, often for more than one good reason.
The oddest thing that was happening here was something else altogether. JJ had friends who were gay, a few of whom were female. She'd never been attracted to any of them physically and had simply assumed she fell into what she thought was the vast majority of the population who were straight, an assumption backed up by her own history, by those to whom she had been sexually attracted in the past. But just in the last 10 years alone, the trend in the US was changing, probably because of television and other cultural media. People were getting more comfortable with the idea that sexuality could be fluid for anyone and an individual couldn't help who he found attractive at any particular point in his life. There might still be a large body of conservatives who weren't sympathetic but when one considered that the US was the only first world country with an appreciable number of people who didn't believe in the Theory of Evolution, that was only to be expected. (JJ didn't want to be disdainful but honestly, did these people also think the Theory of Gravity was something you could choose to believe in or not as you pleased? These weren't theories because they were spun from someone's head out of thin air. They were called Theories with a capital T because all available observable evidence supported them, no evidence had as yet been found to contradict them and after all this time no one expected that such contradictory evidence would ever be found. They were only called Theories because that was as close to fact as the strict language of science would allow in the absence of incontrovertible proof, like say a video of the Big Bang would prove that it had in fact occurred instead of its occurrence being another Theory. Believing them was simply not a choice.)
So out here where there was nothing to get in the way of the truth of how she was feeling, it was easy for her to acknowledge that even if Emily had looked like the Elephant Man, knowing her as she did JJ would have admired and loved her anyway and would continue to do so unless something inconceivably drastic happened to turn Emily into some sort of insane monster. With a truth like that right in her face, falling in love was but a single step forward, a step that JJ had been thrown forward into whether she would or no, with the taste of juniper in her mouth and a view of the earth falling away from her in every direction but Emily's.
There would be practical consequences to be faced of course. Life meant DC and Quantico and Bureau politics and family issues and social pressure. JJ could admit that these frightened her, but there were enough accepting people around to make it possible and bearable, and Garcia especially and Morgan and in the end, Reid too, would accept it and support it - provided Emily was all in with JJ.
JJ was much more worried that Emily wouldn't be all in than she was about everyone else. Because it wouldn't be by reason of Emily finding it offensive or being ignorant as to how to handle it. The woman was too laid-back and had seen and experienced and read too much to be a sexual conservative in attitude; she couldn't possibly have lived this long without at least one woman having made a pass at her. But JJ knew now how very discriminating Emily was in her tastes and why. They were informed by education and experiment rather than social pressure, partly because perhaps Emily could afford to be brave but mainly because, as she showed every day of her professional life, she just was brave and immovably honest in her integrity. She would be even more careful when it came to choosing a partner. So if Emily wasn't on the same page, it would be because JJ didn't appeal to her the way that Emily appealed to JJ and against that there was no argument to be made.
Still it was, unfortunately, clearly the first thing JJ had to find out. Being as sensible and practical as she was, JJ knew that being worried about the outcome didn't signify. She had to bite the bullet regardless of her fear. At least, though Emily might claim that dating was the weak point of her socialization skills, JJ knew she could count on Emily to be graceful about letting her down, do all she could to allow JJ her dignity, give her space if she needed it, and continue to be available to JJ with only, perhaps, a bit of added caution about sending mixed signals in the future. If she had nothing else, JJ held tight to the Laguiole, treasuring it more than any diamond because it was so Emily: practical yet beautiful, not materially excessive but speaking of long history and good usage. It was a meaningful gift and it meant that Emily treasured her as family: she just had to find out exactly how.
...
The morning of JJ's last full day there, she woke with the clear and certain knowledge that this had been the best week of her life. It just hadn't been quite long enough. She could have done with another.
She felt Emily stir and but refused to move the arm that had landed on Emily's midriff sometime during the night. Underneath it, she felt Emily stretch and wriggle herself awake and then, as if realizing that the light weight remaining on her meant that they were about have a Moment, fall still again.
After a second, Emily's fingers gently threaded through her hair. Thus deliciously encouraged, JJ whispered, "Em? This has been wonderful, all of it."
"Mmhmm," the fingers continued their soft caress.
"I don't want to let it all go."
The fingers didn't stop.
"I mean, home is so different ..." JJ turned to Emily. "But maybe ... it doesn't have to be so completely different, does it?"
Emily looked tranquil and luminous in the morning light as she considered this, clearly putting pieces that might not previously have quite fit together with the hopeful expression on JJ's pillow-crinkled face. And the really, really wonderful thing about her, JJ thought, was that Emily understood so much that was difficult to articulate because sometimes, English vocabulary, or maybe any vocabulary, wasn't sufficient or didn't readily come to you. She could cut through verbiage, incoherence or ambiguity, interpret a situation and then find a way to make things clear.
As she did now. Slowly she leaned in and let their lips meet in unhurried exploration. A hazy and wonderful time went by. Then Emily withdrew little by little and murmured, "Is that something to hold on to from here? Not just as a memory?"
It was like a second sun coming up.
JJ said, "Yes!" and beamed at her, then dived to cuddle up close. Hunting down serial killers in a country where cheese was mostly just processed jack or swiss as an accompaniment to meat no longer seemed like such a depressing addiction.
They didn't get out of bed that last day and Emily cancelled the rest of her leave, but they did eventually make plans to spend a fortnight there the next summer. Emily started on renovation plans for a well-loved holiday chalet the following year and JJ took up lessons in French.
FIN