Author's note: Not too sure on how I feel about this chapter. Let me know! ;)
I arrive home with a pounding headache, which is interfering with my nonstop queasiness. Morgan convinced Hotch to let him have off to visit his mom, and I got off because I'm too sick to travel. Or so Hotch thinks. I throw my bag down immediately and head directly into Henry's bedroom. He's wide awake, scrunching balls of Play-Doh eagerly within his hands. Will's not in the room, but I'm guessing he's somewhere amongst the household. I grab a chunk of blue Play-Doh and feel it's almost-damp, cool and squishy texture between my fingers.
"Hi, Mommy." Henry says to me subconsciously; he's too invested in his creation to actually really notice me. It doesn't bother me, I enjoy watching him form a village of unfamiliar shapes and things on a sheet.
"Hey, honey," I say back, stroking his hair back with the hand that isn't stuck to gooey Play-Doh. "How've you been?" it feels like it's been ages since I've last spoken to my son. It makes me feel really sad, and at the same time, makes me question my ability to raise a second child. If I had another, I'd certainly have to quit the BAU; or at the very least, cut back on my hours. I could maybe still be involved with the FBI, but I'm not entirely sure what other job options there are for me. It's making me kind of nervous just considering another job offer.
"Good, Mommy." he says in a child-like excited tone, holding a funny shaped Play-Doh sculpture up toward my face. It's definitely some sort of animal, but the features seem kind of distorted. It makes me smile proudly. I take the crafted animal in my hands. "It's Rudolph." he clarifies.
I look at Rudolph's misshaped antlers and feel something sharp form in the back of my throat. It feels like it's cutting off my ability to talk, so I clear my throat. I feel tears prick the corners of my eyes. My son created this, and I wasn't here to help him. I wasn't here to see him create many imperfect creations that look perfect to me. I give Rudolph his own special place on the sheet that's covered in an assortment of colorful Play-Doh.
"You like it?" he asks, beaming at me with such hope. My hand graces his small, warm cheek and I cup it, leaving it there for a second.
"I love it." is all I can say behind the heaviness of my sadness. Will comes into the room, wiping his hands on a hand-towel. He looks surprised to see me.
"You're home?" he looks at the wall clock down the hall. "You're home so early. No case?" he sits beside me on the floor, grabbing bits and pieces of torn-off green Play-Doh, and he rolls it in his two hands until it becomes one long, fat pole. Then he starts crunching it into a ball. He repeats this over and over. The Play-Doh never grows tired, it just keeps forming to the shape he asks it to.
"Yeah," I shrug pensively. I'm not sure how to go about asking his permission to visit Morgan's mother. He doesn't seem to be mad at me for being miserable earlier, so that's a good sign. I smile tentatively at Henry, whose in front of us, starting on a new glob of Play-Doh, this time making something shorter and stubbier than Rudolph. "I didn't feel too good earlier."
"Hard day?" he asks, like he's genuinely curious. I think he's trying extra hard to be extra nice to me today. Maybe now's a good time to ask.
I sit up and start making an actual shape out of the blue Play-Doh still cupped in my hands. "Will, I know I've been gone a lot lately..." I begin hesitantly. I make my speech very slowly, easing him and myself into it, so he can process each syllable carefully before agreement. Or before an argument occurs. "And I'm really sorry about that. You have to understand, though-"
"I do understand." he insists, giving me a weak smile. "I've lost some good friends of mine, as well. I know how hard it is to just move on with your job," he locks his eyes on the masterpiece he's creating in his palms. "I've lost people in the field."
"So then you understand why I've been distracted." I'm saying this to make sure we're both on the same page.
He nods at me, which to me feels sincere, then drops the ball of Play-Doh uselessly on the sheet. "No good, son," he comments, patting Henry's shoulder after wiping his hands off on the towel. "You're much better than me." Henry smiles a bright, excited smile, and Will returns with one identical to it.
Watching them both interact definitely makes me feel better about my day. But not so much about the trip I'm secretly planning with Morgan. I feel the truth bubble up to the surface, and any minute I might blow, so I just dive in head-first. "Morgan invited me to Chicago to meet his mother for Thanksgiving," I say quickly. Will looks my way. His expression is kind of emotionless; not really much to read or to dissect. Just there. I decide to continue, because I'm guessing silence beats yelling.
"We'd be going tonight so I could be home for Thanksgiving tomorrow," I start playing with my hair nervously; twirling it, braiding it then un-braiding it repeatedly, to keep myself from stammering off. "And it won't take too long. It's important to Morgan's mother that she thanks me for helping with Reid, I guess."
Will sighs. The first noise I've heard him make since I started spieling off on my rant. "When did you both decide this?" he asks me, very still, very calm. I'm not sure how to react to this. I expected him to react one of two ways: Either scream and shout and say, "No, my girlfriend is NOT going over to some other man's house and spending the day before Thanksgiving with HIS family!" or, "Do you really have to? Okay, come back safely. And hurry back!" but not like this. This is hard to understand. I expected a reaction; this isn't a reaction, this is like asking my mom if I can go out for ice cream with the new kid in my class.
"Morgan asked me at work. I told him I'd have to run it by you, and that you probably wouldn't like the idea, but..."
He looks down, grabs some more Play-Doh and digs his thumbnail deep into it, until it begins forming a thin line. "I'm not going to stop you from going," he says quietly, almost under his breath. "I don't want to stop you if you want to go."
"It's not so much me wanting to go as it is that it's important that I go." I'm not sure if it's my uneasiness, but that almost sounded like it made no sense whatsoever. "It'll be nice to just meet her, ya know?"
He doesn't respond. He pulls his thumbnail out of the Play-Doh, reveals an even deeper line in the glob, then tosses the ball around like one of those gumball machine bouncy balls you can buy with twenty-five cents.
"I can stay if you'd like," I say. "But I'll be back before tomorrow."
"If you want to go, you should go." he says, sitting up on his knees. Slowly he starts cleaning up the sheet of Play-Doh, now that Henry's scampered off to across the room, entertaining himself with an action figure. I watch Henry for a second; he lifts the action figure above his head, sends it soaring through the sky, then back down with the rest of the soldiers collected on the floor. "If it's that important."
I'm not sure if he's angry or not. "It's not important, per se," I sit up and start helping him scrape or pick off the excess pieces that somehow wound up Henry's kiddie table. "It's not like it's something I have to do. It's not like it's a case."
"You'd leave for that too," he says kind of coldly. "So just go." He sits up, holding the sheet and starts walking into the kitchen. I'm still sitting on the floor, kind of shell-shocked. I'm not sure on whether I should get up, follow him into the kitchen or stay here. I stay here, in this exact position, with my feet tucked under my butt until Will comes back with a wet piece of paper towel.
"I can get it," I offer. I figure cleaning up is the least I could do.
He shakes his head. "I've got it."
"Will."
He looks up briefly. "Yeah?"
I don't know what else to say. He seems to get how torn I am, because once he's done wiping the table clean, he looks at me before he exits the room and says, "Just go. Really. Have a good time. We'll see you tomorrow."
I follow Will into the den, and he's scraping leftover food from a plate into the sink. He flicks the switch and the disposal makes a grungy noise, as it chops up and swallows down the food. I walk up to him, resting my arms on the counter. "I don't get what's going on." I say kind of boldly.
He tears off a piece of paper towel from the rack and shrugs downheartedly. "You want to go, I said you could go." he sprays cleaner on the piece of paper, like a maid on the job, and starts heading down the hall to go back to Henry's room. Instead, I tug on his arm and pull him back, because if there's one place I don't want to be having this conversation in, it's our son's bedroom. In the pit of my stomach, something forms. Something's coming next, I can feel it.
"I don't want to leave us like that," I say, sounding sappy. "I want you to say something."
"I thought you just wanted me to go along with whatever you decide?" now he's mad at me. His cheeks turn fiery red, his forehead is wrinkling and his nostrils are flaring. He's really pissed. "Isn't that what you want out of me? Isn't that all you want from me? All the fucking time?"
I hiss at him, run and shut Henry's door, then shush Will again. He looks completely unmoved, like him swearing in front of our toddler is perfectly okay. We've never done it before, and I don't want to start now; especially when he's learning his words.
"Would you keep it down?" I snap at him, in a low, well-mannered tone. "Henry doesn't have to hear us fighting."
He raises his hands, tosses the paper towel on the floor carelessly. "I'm sorry," he sighs, stroking his head in his hand. "I didn't mean to swear like that."
"It's okay." I mutter.
"No, it's not okay." he interrupts, his voice desperate to remain calm, but it's challenging, I can tell; he wants to fire back at me. "What the hell's going on, JJ?" his accent seems thicker right now, and his voice is shaking. He's either seriously frustrated or really brokenhearted. It's hard to tell which is which.
"What do you mean?" I ask, quivering. I feel like I've been put on the spot.
"You're spending all of your time with Morgan. All of your time," he juts his head up in the direction of Henry's room. "It's like we're not a part of your life anymore."
"Henry is a part of my life!" I practically scream at him, my voice sounding shaky and uneven. "I love my son more than anything."
He frowns, sighs through his nose and lets his arms fall to his side, defeated. "Then where do I fit in?" I open my mouth to speak, but words don't come out. He's already halfway across the other side of the house, sitting on the living room sofa. I sit beside him, awkwardly, like we're strangers and we're having a hard time forming small-talk.
"I didn't want this," I say under my breath. "We just grew apart."
He nods sadly. "I know this wasn't your intention." he says, also quietly, like he's almost ashamed or too bitter to say it. "It's just, JJ..." he trails off, shaking his head at the coffee table. A single white rose sits lonesomely in a thin glass vase. Despite it's thirsty texture, something tells me it's having a better day than me.
"It used to be just you and me, you know?" he says, finally catching my eye.
I don't understand. "What do you mean?" I ask; I don't say it stand-offish, I'm just honestly confused. "You mean, like before we had Henry?"
"No, no," he shakes his head, frowning at my misunderstanding. "I mean, it used to be just you and me, and our family."
I pause, waiting for the ball to drop, the world to stop spinning. He stays quiet; I stay confused. "And?" I ask.
"And," he sighs. "There is no you and me. There's a you, and there's a me, but there's no you and me together." I inhale sharply, not expecting such honesty. But above all, I wasn't expecting honesty to taste so... simple. Matter of fact, it's practically tasteless.
"You're not saying anything." he says to me, after what feels like an eternity passes before someone makes a sound. Even Henry's being remarkably quiet. No faint sound of him making fake swooshing noises as his action figure plummets through the air; no nothing.
"See, you're not saying anything," he says, as I remain perfectly quiet and untouched. "Because you're not surprised. And you don't care."
I cut him off there. "Not caring sounds harsh." I say quickly, defensively, like all of a sudden I give a damn.
"But it's the truth." he reaches forward and makes me flinch when his fingers land on my wrist. The way he's staring at me so intently as he talks to me is kind of wigging me out. He seriously reminds me of a school counselor lecturing me on the importance of not allowing the media's unrealistic views on the female body to make me insecure. "JJ, this has been a long time coming. You've had to of seen it."
No, not really. Not really much has changed, if you look at through a pair of eyes that sees the same house, the same bed, the same person and the same child day after day. It starts becoming routine, and you don't notice the little mix-ups here and there because they start to blend in after a while. But the longer I take to reply, and the longer I think it through, I see that he doesn't mean something's changed that you can see. Like he didn't buy an overpriced sports car or a new box spring mattress. He means our relationship in it's entirety. "Things have been hard lately, yeah." I find myself admitting to it shockingly. I'm usually immediately on defense.
Will sighs, like we're finally getting somewhere. What's shocking of all to me is how easy he's handling things. "Look JJ, this has been going on long before Reid's passing," he says it so quietly, like the very words will burst me into tears. Talking about Reid's death definitely makes me tear up, but not to the point where he needs to tiptoe around it. "We've been so distant. We're together just to stay together. We're not romantically connected, or emotionally. We're bound by our child and that's it." His words make me feel odd inside. They're not gutting me like they would have a year ago, but they're still so surprising. A bitter taste pools over me, because if there's one thing I cannot stand, it's change. It's inevitable, but maybe that's the scariest part of the whole thing.
It's not that breaking up with Will is actually a difficult thing to do. Technically, it's not the actual losing him that's the hard part. It's separating Holidays with Henry, and not coming home to a familiar face night after night. Not taking Henry to the park with his dad, and not sharing coffee with someone in the AM. It's the little things that I've grown accustomed to that I'm fearful of losing. It's the comfort of knowing someone's there, even if I'm hardly with him, anyways. A weird fog feels like it's hovering around us, like it's waiting for us to say it. Say it out loud, then the fog will disappear.
"You're saying this so," I try to think of the right word. "So easily."
He sighs, sits up straighter and starts fixating on his wrist watch, like suddenly he's a perfectionist and the band needs to be adjusted just so. "JJ, I really should tell you..." he covers his face with his hands and blows air out through his fingers heavily. "I've been drawing closer to someone myself."
I'm not sure how to feel. Again, I feel kind of numb. The whole situation feels oddly nonexistent. It's like when you're in the water, and you see a great big wave straight ahead, and you close your eyes, just anticipating it to crash over you, and you're waiting for it to just happen already, but you find out that the wave missed you and you're kind of disappointed in a weird way. I want myself to feel the pain now, so I can get it over with. When I don't feel anything, I'm disappointed, because I'm scared it'll hit me twice as hard later.
When I don't ask about this woman, he tells me for himself. "She's a friend of my brother's. We haven't done anything, but we've been talking lately," he starts fidgeting with his watch again. "She's even helped with Henry before, when he's had a mild tantrum."
All of these emotions I should be feeling, and the fact that I'm lacking them, is getting to me. I cradle my head in my hands, because it's all I can do. He shuts up. Eventually, his hand reaches my head and stats gently petting my hair.
"JJ, I didn't think you'd take it this hard. We're not really together anymore, Jen." I never hear him call me by my first name. It's strange to hear it. "We haven't been in months, you know that."
It's my fault Henry's going to drift away from his dad. And what if Will decides to be an ass and fights for custody of Henry? I'm almost positive the mother almost always gets the upper-hand, especially in parents without a marriage, but still. I couldn't handle that, too. "I just need to process this." I say, my voice sounding muffled.
He stops petting my hair, and takes his hand back. "Take your time," he whispers to me. "Go visit Morgan. You need to get away. Clear your head."
"And what?" I ask, turning from my hands to face him. "You'll be gone when I get home?"
"We'll figure that out then." he says.
"You've been quiet." Morgan says to me, the first sentence I can recall him saying to me since we arrived on the plane. When he drove to my house to pick me up, he said small-talk things like, Not bad weather for Thanksgiving, or You warm in that? but I've hardly said much of anything. It's not that I'm deliberately trying to be a bitch, it just seems that way. He grabs the pack of M&Ms he's been fiddling with since we sat down and finally opens them. M&Ms come streaming out, and he struggles to catch them. I laugh.
He looks my way, eyebrows shaped in confusion. "Now you laugh?" he asks, laying a blue M&M on the tip of his tongue. "Five minutes ago I pointed to a man who got chewed out by a stewardess for grabbing her ass, and you didn't make a sound." he cocks his head to the side, grinning a little. "What? Did you finally come to life?"
I shrug one shoulder. "Maybe I didn't find a man sexually assaulting a woman funny." I say hastily.
He's staring at me. Though I'm looking straight ahead, and I can't see him, only barely on the corner of my eye, I can feel his eyes meeting my face. "Whoa, whoa," I finally look his way. "I never said the part where he grabs her was funny. The loud scolding, however, was."
I try not to chuckle, because I'm in a pissy mood, and I don't want him to make me feel better, if that makes sense. If it doesn't, you're not a woman. A woman who feels extremely hormonal on this particular today. I sit back and stay quiet.
Morgan does the same. "JJ, I didn't force you to come." he finally says, his voice vibrating as the plane sways a little harshly in the air.
"I know." I say back, closing my eyes.
"If you didn't want to come-"
"I'm here, aren't I?" I hiss. He stares at me blankly. I'm bet he's sorry he asked me to tag along. He doesn't say anything else, but his eyes are filled with such disappointment, I want to look away. Instead, I lower my head to his shoulder and lay it there. His shoulder is warm, and my head manages to fit perfectly. I allow my eyes to close, and for my body to relax.
"I'm sorry," I whisper to him. "I'm sorry I'm so moody."
"It's okay." he whispers back to me, his cheek pressing against the top of my head.
I attempt to stifle a yawn. "I'm so tired." I barely say, before I'm out.
When I wake up, only fifteen minutes later, Morgan's asleep too. The side of his face is still pressed to the top of my head, and his neck is craned in a funny way I'm betting he'll have one hell of a sore neck later. But I smile. He looks so peaceful sleeping, it makes me feel peaceful. And I can't help getting this strange feeling, like this what I should see. This is what I need. This is what I need laying beside me, in the comfort and warmth of his body. I try not to fall in love with him right then and there, but it's difficult. I pick an M&M out of the bag that's peeking out and pop it into my mouth, then lower back down so I can lay my head on his shoulder again. For now, I don't have to think about anything but the vibration of the plane underneath my shoes, Morgan's body heat and steady heart beating in my ear, and the lovely thought that in not so very long from now, I'll be enjoying a Turkey dinner.
