Family, Order, Class, a criminal minds fanfic

Family, Order, Class

by Kshar

Disclaimer: Characters are the property of CBS, and are used without permission.

Warnings: Adult themes. "Huh?" factor.

Here is the first photo, which is actually the third. The real first photo is JJ on a raid, hair pulled back in a ponytail, eyes sparking and center, Kevlar vest rubbing the skin on her underarms through her shirt. (The second photo hasn't developed properly yet.)

The first photo which is the third is little Jennifer, rosebud lips pursed, hands cupped around a butterfly as it flutters against her palms. She has small fingers and a small mouth.

There's a matching, fluttering feeling in her stomach, low down, that she won't really recognize until years later.

(What you don't know is the moment after the photo was taken, she crushed her hands together, feeling the tiny squish of body and soul. She got soft yellow powder from the wings all over her hands. When she's older, she learns that Lepidoptera means 'scaly wings', that the pretty, fine dust is protection from the weather and predators.)

Here's a photo from later, when she's sixteen and going out with an older guy. He has a rifle and he carries it in the back of his ancient Chevy, and he shows her how to use it and she shoots cans, and rats in a neighbor's barn. There's something about pulling that trigger and watching something small explode, it makes her feel something that's almost shame and almost pure happiness.

Her boyfriend--a nice boy, her mother says, hoping Jennifer will settle down and stop being...what was the word? We don't use that word, Jennifer--stands behind her when she shoots, which isn't safe on a number of levels. She will learn this and live by it later on, because she takes weapons seriously. He stands behind her and she can feel his erection through his khakis and her jeans. She leans forward, shifting her center of gravity ahead of her. It helps her hit the target.

(She is careful, with that boy. She's going to college. Nothing is going to get in the way of her plans.)

Here she is in her dad's truck, after a trip to the abbatoir (she doesn't flinch. She's always known how meat gets to the table). She's maybe nine. There are spots of blood along her shirtsleeve, more on her jeans.

(They go on a lot of long trips alone together.)

"How much blood do you s'pose people got in them?" she asks him, biting a hangnail on her thumb, holding her hand out to examine it.

"Don't let your mother hear you ask things like that," he tells her roughly, and the subject's closed.

(She finds out by looking it up in the library, and again in high school biology, and in college, and at the Academy, and when she knows Spencer Reid, who understands numbers upside-down and inside-out and backward. The answer is, more (ten point six) than you'd think.)

When she's seven she has--had--a cat called Snuffy. (Her porn name, she'll discover years later on a quiet Wednesday afternoon in Garcia's office, is Snuffy Bay. Garcia's is Tinkerbell Placerita.)

It's a long road she lives on, and quiet, and no-one ever seems to drive up it unless they want to see the Jareaus, and there aren't all that many reasons to come see the Jareaus. (This day, it's a mail truck, and she never finds out what was in the mail, but it doesn't matter, because Snuffy's lying beside it with blood coming out of his mouth and he's all squishy to the touch. She reaches a hand to his small mouth and he bites her hard enough to draw blood, and her blood smears against the looping clots of his.)

She'll live on that street for eighteen long years, and after she leaves (finally leaves) she'll see the street in the moonlight, in her wet hot frightening dreams. (She'll never really leave.)

Here is another photo, from some anonymous source: soaked sheets in the Pennsylvania moonlight through cowgirl curtains.

She wets the bed until she's twelve, makes excuses not to go to slumber parties (her parents are really strict, they have relatives coming to visit, her dad needs help on the farm). It's never really an issue because from the time she's six she learns to get up early, strip the sheets off the bed, pile them into a basket to wash later in the day when she gets home from school, huddle under the blanket that's still slightly damp and think warm thoughts until it's time to get up properly. Her mom doesn't help her, because the only way she'll learn is to do it by herself.

Here are the photos Prentiss took with her surveillance lens (welcome to our nightmare, blurred mirror, snarling dog).

Here's a photo of JJ resting her hands on the sides of the washbasin, spots of blood on her shirt. Here's a photo of her smiling to show she is okay when she is not, not, not okay (it doesn't reach her eyes. Her eyes are wild. Tobias Hankel's the unsub. She had to kill them. They tore her apart). Here's Prentiss, all big dark eyes and listening like it's an Olympic sport.

Here's the bathroom, again, a little while later, after the M.E. gets there and they've gone back into that house, and JJ pushing her friend--her friend--up against the door, which closes but doesn't quite lock, kissing her roughly and seeing her friend's eyes change from sympathetic to shocked to bedroom, almost black with want.

Prentiss is pretty, and she's got a body that would make angels cry, if JJ was into that sort of thing, but most importantly, she really likes JJ. When JJ pushes the bathroom door shut, and pushes her hands down Prentiss's pants (bandages hooking on the belt loops, she twists her wrist free), Emily is already fucking soaking wet, and when JJ looks up Emily is biting her lip like she can't believe this is happening.

And it's easy. It takes maybe three pumps of her fingers in that slickness and Emily is coming, breath a whine through her teeth as she shuts her mouth hard, trying to keep from crying out. Soft waves pulse against JJ's fingers, like butterfly wings.

(Click.)

One day in her FBI training, back at the Academy, her class sits in on an autopsy. JJ hooks her fingers over the metal lip of the table when there's a lull in proceedings. While the instructor tells them about sectioning the coronary arteries, JJ lets two fingers steal closer, inch by inch. Finally, she can rest her hand beside the body. The cold leaches into her.

Her heart beats faster. Her hands are steady.

Here are the photos that Reid took. He likes old things, and odd things, so they're printed on Polaroid paper that has a weird balance in the hand, base-heavy. They flip over and over if you let them drop.

He's not much of a photographer, and in all of them it looks like she has kind eyes, so she hates them. The worst sin is committing a lie to paper.

Here is the realest, truest story she knows; here is the heart of the matter: when she went to that lecture, she was looking for someone like her, and the jigsaw puzzle fell into place. The BAU's her home--she thinks it always was--but it's not because of the victims.

Here are the drawings she did when she was six, here is her teacher showing them to her mom. Disturbing, Jennifer will always remember that word.

Here is Jennifer's mom, taking her by the hand, lips in a straight line. No more drawing. No more pictures. (You draw such lies.)

Years later, sometimes when she looks at her written class notes or her case files, she doesn't recognize her own hand. Curves and curlicues turn to hard, dark, slashed lines. Blocks of text turn to scratched lines of shorthand words. Ink clots into loops.

She sees, afterward, that Reid blames Emily. He snaps at her because she's always there, always paying attention. She's the one he can reach.

JJ knows that that much sympathy can be aggravating, but it doesn't unnerve her like it does him. A month after they get back from Georgia they're on another case and catching a late lunch in a roadside diner (Morgan's eyelids droop as he forks at his food; Reid, his pupils pinpoints, snaps his fingers at the waitress until she refills his coffee cup again). Emily corners JJ on her way to the bathroom, all bottomless eyes and long, delicate fingers brushing JJ's upper arm.

(Emily knows feelings, knows empathy, like Reid knows numbers. She breathes them in and out.)

"JJ," Emily says, and: "JJ, can we talk?"

JJ smiles the brisk, professional smile she's been perfecting since she was a little girl (six).

"Now's not a good time," she says.

Prentiss shifts her weight back on her heels: JJ sees her center of gravity backslide. She wrings one hand in the other. "When's a good time?"

JJ smiles again, makes perfect eye contact, and shakes her head just ever so slightly.

Here's what happens when she goes on her first raid in her new job (Kevlar vest scratching the soft underside of her arms, cinch around her waist a little too tight). Here's the contact print. You can see more detail through the loupe, if you choose. I'll leave it here for you.

The first frames you can see her hands are trembling, partly from excitement and partly from fear. Morrell, her partner (graying hair cut military-short, sunsquint wrinkles around his coffee eyes) kicks in the door, she's on his left ("Stay. On. My. Left. Jareau,"), her eyes are flicking around the room and she's bracing one hand under the other; regulation stance. The muscles along her lower arms stand out.

"Jareau?"

"Clear," she says, loudly. Calmly. Later, she'll commit her report to paper with typing fingers that are steady.

Remember the second photo? It'll be important later on.

(It's JJ in profile, blurring as she turns away.)

But it hasn't developed yet. We'll need to wait.

She pumps her fingers three times and the dogs are dead. The smaller one's breath whistles out through its teeth for a while as she waits for Reid. (Tobias Hankel's the unsub.)

She's ready for more, she's vigilant.

In the next room (lower down on the page, the photos get darker), there's a suspect with a knife, and Morrell warns him, once, twice (JJ can't say anything; hangs back, watching the glint of silver), then shoots him, thin trail of smoke in the air. The others have to keep going, but Jareau has to stay, paramedics on the way. JJ kicks the knife across the room and crouches down beside the guy.

She listens to his breath whistle through the hole in his chest, and reaches out a hand to his mouth (his small mouth). Blood bubbles against her hand, soft as a memory; teeth graze her fingers. It doesn't take a minute.

Something flutters in her stomach, low down.

(Smile.)

End.

Feedback of any kind would be gratefully received. Thanks for reading.

Kshar

October 2009