City Lights
by Kshar
Spoilers: Post-ep for 6x02, "JJ"
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Disclaimer: Characters are the property of CBS, and are used without permission.
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JJ goes home, later than usual on black-mirror streets, traffic easy, still processing the day with half her mind as the other half drives. When she gets there, Will tags her on the forehead with a kiss before walking out the door to his late poker game.
"Have fun," she says, hearing the absence in her own voice; her eyes on him, but her mind still several hours back. Still traveling. Still in the air. Maybe still in the water.
Will looks at her with narrowed cop eyes, assesses her for a moment and then steps back.
It's one of the things she loves about him, his ability to step back and leave her alone, and she trades him her keys despite his grimace. The SUV is uncomplainingly reliable; she doesn't entirely trust Will's vintage engine skills late at night.
He'll miss the opportunity to drive his own rattletrap, JJ thinks with amusement, but there's something in his eyes. Worry looks strange on Will's face. He knows what her week has been like. Knows what it's like to leave something you love behind.
He's here, after all, his old life packed into a duffel bag he'd brought with him. He'd let go of a lot of things for her and Henry. It feels strange when JJ thinks about it, a tugging at her side, like guilt and satisfaction together.
"Don't wait up," he drawls. She never does, any more than he waits up for her. They catch sleep where they can, around her schedule and Henry's schedule; never finding much spare time.
"We'll be fine," JJ tells him, but her hand lingers a moment on his arm before he leaves, and her fingers are colder in his absence.
When she moves in through the hallway, the scatter of untidiness in the apartment hits her, irritates and makes her feel guilty. Clothes, one of Henry's old baby blankets, Will's running shoes parked underneath the red couch JJ's had since college; a dog-eared copy of one of Rossi's books lying cat-corner on the coffee table with "Where The Wild Things Are". It's an odd combination, she supposes, but it's her life. It's been her life.
There's dust on her photo frames and Henry's smeared fingerprints on the lower half of the TV screen. It's home.
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Henry, in the kitchen, is grouching out the last of a long series of what she recognizes as crocodile-tear sobs. JJ Kleenexes his nose with one hand while dropping slices of heavy grain bread in the toaster with the other. His snuffles cease as he watches her from his chair, falling into uncharacteristic silence in Superman pajamas.
The apartment's suddenly quiet; she can hear floorboards settling and the crisp of crumbs on hot metal. The wind blows outside, rattling a window in its frame. Her sigh echoes, and she flicks on the radio on her way to butter toast; leans on the counter for a long few minutes, thinking.
"You're quiet tonight," she tells Henry conversationally before she sits down; presses her cheek to his forehead in a gesture half of affection, half of worry, as if she could ever divorce the two. His skin's cool, and she's grateful for the lack of fever.
He regards her mildly but holds out his hands for her toast.
"Pyease," he says.
"You ate already," JJ tells him, but since Henry would eat underwater, she breaks off a crust for him anyway. Maybe now, she thinks, she'll be spending more mealtimes at home, spending more quiet minutes with her family. It's a nice thought, but also a little disconcerting. She's always been the girl who couldn't sit still. Her feet have itched in cornfields and shopping malls and high school assemblies; she's never really seen herself settling down. Sometimes she looks at Henry, sees her mother's eyes looking back at her, and thinks she backed into this life kind of unexpectedly, and still isn't sure of her destination.
But tonight the imprint of his warm skin is still on her face, and he's baby-powder clean. It's the end of an era for her. There's a stack of laundry as tall as Henry himself in the other room, she knows, and the daily chaos to file back into normality. Usually she starts on these things at night, and reads case files by brass-lamp-light and symphony of swishing soapy water. Not tonight. Tonight's different, saved for the too-quiet Top 40, toast between her teeth, the lightheaded feeling of having her feet on the floor after a day's work and travel.
She puts her phone on to charge while Henry crunches at his piece of toast, watching her with bright, overtired eyes. A how-are-you-miss-you-already text from Garcia makes her jump, and the chirp of her phone is too loud in the apartment. She leaves it for a while before answering, trying to savor the lack of urgency. Maybe she'll even start leaving it on silent.
Probably not.
Tomorrow she'll start listing new numbers in her contacts, new names rising to the top. The thought grieves her, just a little bit, combined with everything that's gone on today: she cries a quick, self-indulgent tear, but Henry's comforting cotton shoulder soaks it up when she carries him to bed. She's never been someone who allows herself the indulgence of despair. A few tears, and then you pick yourself up and dust yourself off, by God. No looking back, she thinks, and sniffs and smiles when Henry pats her cheek with starfish fingers.
"Big boy bed," he says when she pushes down the side of his cradle. It's a week-old-argument, which in Henry-time is a lifetime. He'd decided, now, that cribs were for babies.
Neither Will nor JJ had understood where this was coming from, but JJ'd noticed that children were mystical like that, and that sometimes things came out of nowhere. And he was turning into a big boy, she thought, even though on some level she'd like to keep him a baby. Every day he changed a little, turned solider and taller and somehow more substantial. It's a mother's cognitive dissonance, she supposes, this seeing the baby in the child, and sometimes the man that he will be.
"Not yet, young man," she says, distractedly, looking out his window. But when she goes to turn out the light, he's still watching her, and she can't help herself. "We'll see," she tells him.
There's a tiny balcony off her living room; an indulgent touch in downtown Alexandria. She runs a palm across the cold door, her head full of the past. In the summer, she and Will sat out there and shot the breeze, almost thigh to thigh in JJ's Ikea kitchen chairs. The days are shorter, now, and too cold, but JJ likes to remember her bare toes hooked on the rail, lemony Corona at the back of her throat and strands of hair sticky on her neck; Will, as always, cool as a cat.
It feels strange already, not having anything to do. Her fingers itch for casefiles, her ear is lonely with its lack of tinny cellphone conversation. She's taken everything home over the years. She remembers files slipping onto the floor from the passenger seat of her car; remembers kissing Henry in his sleep with the memory of crime-scene photos still swimming in her vision.
Things will settle, she knows, like the sound and sigh of the apartment around her; her new work will fall into place like her old work, given a little time. She paces the hall a little, checks that she locked and chained the door, checks that the windows are closed and latched. The legacy of the job. Traffic lights the street outside, streaks the night with spots and lines in lamplight yellow, gives her the impression that the whole world is out there moving while she stands still, thinking and missing and letting go.
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End.
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Feedback of any kind would be gratefully received. Thanks for reading.
Kshar
April 2011