A/N- So this just came to me as I battled a vicious spider in my own home. That being said, this may or may not be based on a true story ;). Tell me what you think. Also, this is my first ever Criminal Minds story, so we'll see how it goes!
Emily Prentiss's wife never failed to amaze her. First it was her looks, when Emily transferred to the BAU, she could hardly stumble through a full sentence when she tried to talk to the beautiful blonde. Then it was her brain, JJ knew so much, it no longer surprised Emily when she knew all the answers to the Sunday crossword, or could go toe to toe with Reid in a battle of the wits. But what had really hooked her, was JJ's compassion. The blonde cared so deeply about everyone.
Of course, these qualities in combination with Emily's own made their relationship extremely dynamic.
Everything from the first date, to the proposal, their wedding, and honeymoon, and even the decision to have their first child had been monumental.
Buying their first home was no exception.
The couple spent weeks being led through house after house by their determined realtor, Barb. In each house, Emily was completely content, and could see her small family easily. But JJ was the stickler, she systematically dismissed every single house by finding some minor imperfection.
It wasn't until countless homes, and about a month of searching that Barb managed to find a house that even JJ couldn't help but fall in love with. It was in a new subdivision that had just sprung up out of cleared field- that should have been Emily's first warning.
But that didn't even make a blip on the couple's radar as they secured the home for a modest price and moved in as quickly as possible with their four month old baby boy.
Emily's second warning should have been at the housewarming party they threw in the second week of living in the new home. She, Rossi, Hotch, and Morgan were out on the back porch sipping beers while JJ was showing a few people around the inside of their home with Henry on her hip.
"You've got quite a bit of land back here." Hotch said, nodding to the extensive backyard. It was the closest that Emily could hope to get to a 'good job' from the man. But she beamed in the praise all the same.
"Yeah, this whole area used to be a field, but it was cleared for the construction."
"Better watch out, Em." Morgan had a smile before he even delivered the punchline of his joke, "Before you know it, JJ will have you settled down with a picket fence and a dog named Rex."
The brunette rolled her eyes lazily, "Do I detect a hint of jealousy there, Derek?"
Rossi and Hotch both laughed at the younger agent. He had a comeback on the tip of his tongue, when suddenly his smile turned into a frown and he was slapping at his arm and jumping into the air with a shout.
"Shit!" He yelled as a spider fell to the porch ground beside him and he brought his heel down on it decisively.
The other three burst into laughter at his scared reaction, while Morgan tried to regain some of his dignity.
"Something spook you, Agent Morgan?" Rossi mocked with a good- natured smirk.
"Hey, I grew up in the city. Spiders don't get that big in the city, just out here in the boondocks." He tried to defend himself.
"I do not live in the boondocks!" Emily retorted, "We're actually closer to the field office than your apartment is."
The rest of the afternoon passed easily with the team laughing together as they celebrated the beginning of a new chapter in Emily and JJ's lives together. Emily didn't take her second warning to heart.
Exactly two days later, the team was supposed to be enjoying a nice Saturday without work when Emily got a call that she would have to go into the office to finish a report for a case that was being prosecuted soon.
"I promise I'll be back in two hours max, and then we can take Henry on a walk around the neighborhood and cuddle for the rest of the day." Emily said, slipping into her comfortable black flats to run into the office.
JJ pouted adorably, "Fine, but hurry back. We'll miss you."
Emily smiled at her wife's attempt to guilt her by using their son, "And I'll miss you too." She dropped a kiss to the foreheads of her favorite two blondes before exiting the house.
She returned in just over two and a half hours.
From the moment she parked, she was out of the car and jogging up the front walkway, not wanting to waste any more of the rare time she got off to spend with her wife and son, only to stop dead halfway between her car and the house.
The front door was wide open.
Instinctively, she reached for the gun on her hip, drawing it out and flattening herself against the wall of the house to creep silently to her front door. Her heart was pounding out of her chest as all the worst case scenarios flashed through her mind.
She pushed them away as she reached the door and crept inside, what she found in the foyer was even more distressing.
Her heavy winter boots were out on the tile, one lying on its side by the door, and the other a few feet into the house. There was a dark red and black mess oozing from beneath the shoe, something was very wrong.
As she was about to continue her search of the house, fast movement from behind caught her attention, and before she could lower her gun, Emily was enveloped in a tight hug.
"Thank god you're home! I was going to call you, and then I didn't have my phone, and I couldn't go back to get it, and I was so freaked out, and Henry was crying, but he's fine now. We have to move, I found a great house two blocks down, I just couldn't-" JJ was going a million miles a minute as she held her wife in a death grip. Henry babbled happily from where he was strapped safely into his baby carrier, JJ must have put him on the tile before latching onto her wife.
Finally relaxing in the knowledge that the blonde was alright, she hugged JJ back before realizing that she still had her gun drawn. JJ seemed to realize that at the same moment because she pulled back from the crushing hug slightly with a frown, "What are you doing with your gun?"
"I thought something had happened. You left the door wide open, you can't do that." She said forcefully. Her heart was still beating quickly from the scare, but she was returning to normal, "What happened here anyway?"
JJ blushed faintly, squirming under the intense look of her wife, "The important thing is that Henry and I are alright."
"Why wouldn't you be?"
"Well, you see, after you left, something happened." JJ released the brunette and stooped to pick up their son who was begging for attention before she began recounting her story.
"Looks like it's just you and me, big man!" JJ smiled at the five month year old, happily sitting in his high chair.
She set about cleaning the kitchen while waiting for Emily to return, "When Momma gets home we're going to go for a walk, and you're going to take a nap while Momma and I spend some quality time together." She grinned to herself, glad that the boy didn't quite grasp the English language yet.
Once she cleared the dishes, she picked Henry up, and was on her way to the living room to put him in his play area, when she stopped dead.
In the middle of the new white carpet of her living room was a massive wolf spider. It looked to be about two inches long and JJ was sure it was larger than her hand.
Henry seemed to notice the change in his mother because he stopped his happy babbling and became as silent as the blonde holding him.
Her first instinct was to draw her weapon and shoot the bug, but of course she wasn't wearing it. JJ stood her ground, staring the spider down. Neither party moved for about fifteen minutes, until Henry couldn't stand it any longer. He cried out and wiggled to be put down, JJ refused, knowing if she put her baby down, the spider might eat it.
When she resituated the child, trying to bounce him into calmness, the spider made its move. Leaping forward, it advanced on JJ. A high shriek escaped her mouth as she took a quick step back. The spider responded with a leap forward. This little exchange continued until JJ was flat against the wall with Henry clutched to her chest, the spider froze when she did.
By this point, Henry was practically catatonic, frozen in her arms. JJ's heart was beating wildly, in full fledged panic. She couldn't step on the spider, she was totally barefoot, she couldn't run, she was holding Henry. Trapped against the wall, JJ stares the spider down, daring it to come any closer.
Carefully, she edges sideways, the spider follows her, but doesn't move any closer. JJ managed to make it all the way to the door of the hall closet. She edged it open and slipped inside, slamming the door shut behind her.
Safe inside, she took a moment to regroup, Henry was crying quietly in her arms and she tried to rock him to calm the boy down. She had to come up with a plan to get them out.
JJ knew if she sprinted, she could make it out the front door before the spider got to then, but she couldn't just leave it in her house- what if it hid and had babies?
No, she had to squash it.
Rooting through the closet, she found the largest shoes they owned- Emily's snow boots, and pulled them on. Thankfully, Henry's carrier/ car seat was in the closet as well, so she buckled him in and took one final calming breath before the charge.
Henry, safely in one hand, she threw open the door of the closet, finding the spider exactly where she had left it.
JJ raised her foot to smash it, when she realized where she was and froze. She couldn't kill a massive spider on the new white carpet, she had to corral it back onto the tile floor. A whimper escaped her lips at the thought, but she persisted. She edged along the wall, getting the spider to follow her all the way back out to the foyer.
By this point, Henry was beside himself, wailing in his baby carrier, and JJ wasn't doing much better.
"Ok, baby." She cooed to the boy, "It's almost over." JJ hoisted Henry up higher, far away from the monstrous spider.
She cringed, squeezing her eyes shut as she brought Emily's large boot down on the bug before jumping back quickly in fear. She waited a moment, staring at the slightly flat looking spider.
Thinking she was safe, JJ released the breath she had been holding in and relaxed slightly. Suddenly, the spider moved, the little bastard was faking it! JJ thought as she lunged forward, stomping as hard as she could on the bug. She was rewarded with a sickening crunch as the boot crushed through the body of the spider and guts leaked out onto the tile.
Without pause, JJ slipped her small foot out of the boot and kicked the other one off, running as fast as she could from the house, she didn't pause even to close the door until she had buckled Henry into her car and peeled off down the driveway. She drove all the way out of the neighborhood before she realized that she had left her phone on the kitchen counter.
"Henry fell asleep pretty quickly in the car." JJ said with a weak smile.
Emily stared incredulously at her wife, "You were going to shoot the spider?"
"Do you know how big a two inch wolf spider is?"
The brunette smiled, "Of course I do. Once when my mother was working in Greece, a couple of locals I had befriended took me out to this field, it was covered in wolf spiders since they government had just cleared it of grass. They wanted to catch them to pull a prank on one of our teachers."
JJ rose an eyebrow, "They had just cleared the field?"
"Yeah, wolf spiders live in holes in the ground so when a large field is cleared, displaces the spiders." Emily couldn't see why her knowledge of biology was significant.
"What is our house built on?" JJ asked slowly, watching the lightbulb go off in her wife's eyes.
"A cleared field."
They shared a laugh at the predicament while Henry laid content on his mother's shoulder.
"Well I'll just got out this little guy down for a nap, and you can clean that up." JJ smiled, nodding at the squished spider, "When you're done I'll show my appreciation for my big hero." She promised with a suggestive smirk.
"Yeah, I'm counting on it."
Once JJ had disappeared upstairs, Emily whipped out her cell phone and dialed. It rang twice before it was picked up.
"What's up?"
"Morgan, I need a favor."
"Come on, it's the weekend Prentiss." The man whined.
"I'll do anything. Please?"
"What is it?"
"Can you come to my house and clean up a spider JJ killed?"
Derek laughed lowly, "Excuse me?"
"It's right in the entrance, I'll leave the door unlocked. Just don't come upstairs no matter what you do. Also, don't make any noise."
"Prentiss, what are you up to?"
Emily looked up the stairs where she knew her wife was waiting, "Just don't you dare go upstairs."
"Prentiss-"
"Thank you!"
She hung up and closed the door, leaving it unlocked before heading upstairs in search of the blonde.