Criminal Minds – Not Exactly
Some things, you can never forgive
JJ didn't know if things would ever go back to the way they were. She was a profiler now, and she had known Spence for many years, so it wasn't difficult to see how distant he was. The fact that she was more in tune with the particulars of profiling, however, made it more painful how deeply Spence was hurt and upset.
And right. He was so right to be angry she wished she had never taken the profiling classes.
They had talked about it during the cooking lesson at Rossi's as they nursed wine glasses, sitting alone in the backyard. The rest of the team was inside, fooling around and relaxing like they could hardly ever do when on the job, during their long stays in lonely, bloody cities around the country.
"Hey, so, are we okay?" – she asked him when he made to get up and go back inside. Something flickered across his face and she wondered if she would have noticed it and been able to surmise its meaning before she became a profiler.
"Sure, Jennifer" – he said softly just before slipping away, and she sat there for a long, quiet moment.
He had called her Jennifer. Spence, her sweet, wonderfully kind best friend had called her Jennifer, and it hurt much more than when he did it at the police station. Then, she could have chalked it up to his built up anger and her pushing him (though Spencer Reid didn't do angry outbursts, not with her), but not this time. This time, he was cool and loose by Rossi's expensive wine, he was himself, and no matter the conversation they'd had, the apologies she made to him, he still resented her.
She could not then quite find it in herself to be upset with him in return.
Things went back to something like normalcy, though the wall Spence built the moment Emily stepped back into their lives remained exactly where it was, not as cold, maybe, but certainly just as solid. She was no longer his closest friend, she was his colleague and the mother of his godson, no more, no less. She was JJ, she was Jennifer, but she wasn't his friend, not like before, and she had no idea her heart could hurt so much.
Even when her sister killed herself, and recently when her baby died, it had been a different kind of loss, a different kind of grief to watching her once best friend walk away from her like they had never been more than workmates, like she had never chosen him to be her child's godson, like his face hadn't frozen in shock and horror at the privilege just before he held Henry in his arms and made soft promises to get him into any school of his choosing.
JJ was no longer Spence's confidant, which became painfully clear once Alex Blake came along, brilliant in a way closer to Spence, and she watched with hungry jealousy at the way they quickly became a team of brains, both so academically intelligent they could talk to one another in a way that no one else on the team could have – only Gideon had ever gotten close, but the warmth between Spence and Blake was palpable, and JJ missed him looking at her like he trusted her with more than his back on the job.
Not that long ago, Spence had trusted her with his tears, and for a man such as Spence, who could be as emotionally shut out as Hotch, it was saying something that he'd once willingly cried in front of her, sought her out for comfort. Now, she wondered if he would go to Blake, if the older woman would be able to make him feel safe and sound in a world that, more than most people, they knew was definitely not so.
Maeve dying left a mark on the entire team, the violence with which she was ripped from Spence right in front of them while they stood by, and in the aftermath, JJ was right there, trying to coax Spence out of his depression, but she didn't have the vocabulary for it, to soothe him after the devastating loss he suffered. Blake helped more, she thought, with her maternal softness and the bond she'd so easily forged with Spence.
God, the fact that Blake alone had even known Maeve existed made JJ feel something childish and loud in her scream that it wasn't fair, that she had done everything she could, everything she could think of in order to get back into Spence's good graces, and still he sometimes called her Jennifer (and, oh, how tightly she had to hold back from wincing whenever it happened). What else did he want from her? She just wanted to be his friend again, to have him come over for dinner not to see and spend time with Henry, but to talk to her, to hear her complain about Will, to somehow become close to Will (which, both men had admitted was difficult, no matter how much they loved JJ and Henry). But yeah, now he only showed up when Henry asked for him, and Spence was ever so gentle with Henry, hugging him tightly and showering the boy with so much love it never failed to make JJ cry once he left and Henry was in bed.
Will understood why she had done what she had, he softly told her, but he also laid out that it was solely Spence's choice to forgive her, and if he didn't, and he clearly hadn't although it had been a few years since, then she would just have to accept that whatever friendship they'd once had was now gone, it was in great part her own fault, and she would have to move on from it. Spence certainly seemed to, perfectly comfortable in her house but never too close to her.
If she had to, if she knew the consequences, she wondered if she would have done things the same way, if she would have lied to him instead of pulling him aside and telling him about Emily, if only so he wouldn't even have to consider taking drugs again. She didn't know, and it was useless to think of the 'what ifs'. It was done, they were done, and Will was right, she would just have to suck it up and carry on.
They couldn't be best friends anymore, but maybe they could be friends.
Eventually.
I still find this conflict one of the most interesting the show ever presented, it's just a shame that of course they couldn't touch on it all the time because it's not the show, and it's not fun to watch, but I do think the waves of JJ's lie and the confrontation have continued on afterwards, Reid did call JJ Jennifer a couple of times afterwards.