Pressure

She wants this…

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They spend Christmas curled up together, JJ and Emily with Henry between them and trying not to jolt the many injuries JJ is littered with. Outside, a sleeting rain hammers the windows; inside, they're warm and sleepy and overtired with the excitement of the day. Henry, five-years-old and giddy with the presents he's been given, only wants to spend time with one of them in particular: a DVD collection of nature documentaries Reid had arrived with and proudly handed over. The man himself is asleep on the couch behind them, a victim to JJ pushing 'doctored' eggnog on him for the past four hours.

On the screen, the deepest part of the ocean is depicted for the entranced Henry. JJ is dozing. Emily watches them both, glad to be here, alive. Still haunted by the memories of the flames they'd barely survived, the crushing pressure of the explosion throwing her back against the car and then dragging her forward as it had folded inwards on itself and brought the entire building crashing in.

Emily thinks of this and also thinks of dying as she spends Christmas with the people she loves most.

When she opens her eyes, the DVD is finished and Henry is asleep on her lap, JJ curled on her side and breathing deeply. The room is dark.

"It's intensely inhospitable," Reid says from behind her, his voice startling.

"Hmm?"

He continues: "The Marianas Trench. You wouldn't think life could survive there and who'd want to try?"

She's tense because she can tell that he's being 'Reidy': "If this is an analogy…" she warns him, leaving the threat hanging.

"It's not." He pauses. "Okay, it is. You guys could have died, you know."

"And?"

She listens to him shift on the couch, turning gently so she doesn't wake Henry as he touches a finger to the bandage covering the burn on her arm.

"Just saying," he murmurs, "maybe stop fighting them so viciously. It's okay to change your mind. If your priorities have changed, that's okay too."

"Stop profiling me." She's bitchy, but only because he's right, fuck him. This? Christmas and eggnog and boring documentaries? Despite the pressures of her life and the things tearing them apart, despite how impossible the co-existence of winter and summer is…she wants this.

All of it.

"Stop being so easy to profile," is his sharp retort.

She hates when he's right.