"We've got a case, don't we?" Emily asked knowingly, standing in front of the open door as she waited for JJ to finish gathering her things. It was the BAU curse as Emily had named it; the curse that would only arise when it had the perfect opportunity to ruin a great moment. There were more times than she cared to count where her day or evening had been sent crashing and burning because the BAU curse had struck yet again.
JJ nodded morosely, having long ago resigned herself to the unpredictability of their job. "That was Hotch, he's calling us all in for a case in Wichita."
"We better get going, then," Emily said soundly, though there was no hiding the slight disappointment that tinged her voice as she waited patiently for JJ.
After gathering all of their things and making their way back to the office, Emily stopped just outside the entrance doors, her arms outstretched as she stopped JJ's progress as well. Her date had for the most part, gone according to plan, but the profiler wasn't quite ready to end things. Their case would undoubtedly wipe away a good portion of the joy that their date had created and Emily wasn't all that willing to give it up before she absolutely needed to.
"What's up, Em?" The blonde asked, looking from the profiler to the door and back again, unsure why the other woman had stopped their movement.
Emily opened her mouth to respond, her eyebrows slightly furrowed in thought as she stared at the woman before her .The words were on the tip of her tongue but she couldn't quite get them out.
"Em?" JJ asked again, waiting patiently for the profiler to respond.
Instead of responding, Emily's face set into what could only be described as excited determination, before she grabbed the blonde's hips and pulled her in for a bruising kiss.
Time wasn't exactly on their side seeing as how they were supposed to be coming in to work a case, but Emily hadn't put this much thought into their time together only to walk away without getting her goodnight kiss.
Technically, she would be around JJ for the duration of the case, but still. It was the principle of the matter.
Dates ended with kisses. Well, the good dates, anyhow.
And Emily was confident that their date had most assuredly been a good one.
The profiler pulled away after a few seconds, not wanting things to escalate too far. The last thing they needed was a make out session before going in to face their coworkers. It was an appealing idea but Emily had a feeling that Garcia and Morgan would know about it as soon as they walked through the doors.
Those two were surprisingly good at guessing those sorts of things.
However, as much restraint as Emily was employing, JJ was decidedly employing just as little. No sooner had Emily pulled away and taken a slightly shaky but completely satisfied breath, did JJ grab onto her and pull her back in.
It was surprising to say the least, especially since a bold and forceful Jennifer Jareau was something seldom seen, at least in a romantic sense. From what Emily had seen, JJ tended to take the passive route when it came to her beaus. Now, though, it seemed like she wasn't afraid to take charge and had a no holds barred outlook on their relationship, which Emily was completely okay with.
With the feeling of JJ's soft and plump lips pressed against Emily's, the profiler was adamantly okay with this shift in attitude. In fact, Emily would be willing to go so far as to say that JJ could repeat this action whenever she pleased, especially when it felt as amazing as it did at that moment.
Take charge JJ would never hear any complaints from Emily — not one.
Finally getting her brain to kick start again, Emily wasted no time responding to the kiss. JJ's hands gripped firmly at the nape of the profiler's neck, holding the other woman in place as she gently pushed them closer to the wall of the building, using the wall as a means of support.
The two stumbled slightly until they came into contact with the solid wall, Emily gasping as the cold bricks of the building touched her back. Stepping out of her brain and overactive thoughts and finally giving herself over to the circumstances of their situation, Emily leaned completely against the wall, her fingers burying themselves in the long blonde locks of the woman before her.
JJ's tongue traced along Emily's lips, easily sliding in when the profiler's lips immediately parted.
Throughout the duration of their kiss, neither woman could hear beyond the buzz in their ears or the quiet sounds of the other woman, but as JJ's tongue started to war with Emily's, the same shrill beeping from earlier once again pierced their self-created bubble of bliss.
Emily pulled away from the kiss, confusion written all over her face as she tried to identify what the strange sound was. "Ignore it," JJ muttered huskily, almost hungrily, as she moved her lips down to the column of Emily's neck. The blonde wasted no time peppering the pale flesh with kisses, her enthusiasm only growing as the profiler automatically tilted her head to the side to provide the blonde with better access.
JJ didn't know what had gotten into her and could only guess that her reaction at the moment was in part due to the lengths Emily had been willing to go to for their date, the little bit of rawness she had seen in the profiler when she confessed to why she had chosen that particular place, combined with the feel of Emily's lips on her own — all of it was making it hard not to devour the woman before her.
There was something about Emily, seeing this new side to her and allowing herself to get lost in whatever was going on between them — whether it was because of the bet or not proved to be irrelevant — that JJ couldn't quite ignore.
This was meant to be something fun and lighthearted but after the efforts on Emily's part, JJ couldn't quite go into this half-heartedly. She was going to give this her all and that meant giving in to the visceral reactions she had whenever Emily so much as held her hand or offered a genuine and unrestrained smile.
It was because of those visceral reactions that she found herself pinning the profiler to the wall and attacking those taunting and enticing lips.
As her lips moved on to Emily's neck, the sound of her phone ringing went unnoticed.
When the sound of voices suddenly reached their ears and began to grow steadily louder, one set of the doors to the building swinging open, the two finally broke apart. JJ took two large steps away from the profiler, her eyes wild and easily the darkest blue Emily had ever seen.
The two women attempted to steady their breath as they watched the group of agents walk out the door and into the parking lot.
"That was um…" Emily said quietly, finding that thinking was a bit difficult at the moment. Her neck was tingling where JJ had touched it and her lips felt swollen from the sheer forcefulness of their kisses.
"Yeah," JJ responded just as quietly, blinking slowly as she tried to get herself back under control, the feeling of Emily's plump lips on her own still fogging her mind.
With their hands no longer on one another and a suitable amount of distance between them, when JJ's phone rang yet again, the two women finally heard it.
"My phone," JJ said dumbly as she waved the device in the air, as if Emily didn't already know that bit of information. "Jareau," the blonde answered, her voice still sounding husky from their interrupted activities.
"Are you two about done out there?" Penelope's voice floated over the line, sounding far more amused than usual.
"What do you mean?" JJ asked slowly, looking around as if she believed Penelope would pop up out of nowhere with a camera, ready to scream 'gotcha!' at them.
"I mean are you two done making out or should I stall while you two finish up?" The tech analyst asked, her muffled laughter and obvious entertainment making the media liaison blush.
"What?" Emily asked, only able to hear JJ's side of the conversation and not quite understanding why JJ was blushing so badly.
JJ didn't respond, her blue eyes glancing around before landing on the camera that sat just above the entrance doors. She pointed her finger towards the camera, Emily's eyes automatically moving towards the object.
"We'll be right up," JJ squeaked, embarrassed at having been caught and even more embarrassed that Penelope and most likely Morgan, had seen the entire thing. "C'mon Em."
Emily allowed the blonde to tug her towards the entrance but didn't go inside until she gave a crude hand gesture to the camera and the person, or people, who happened to be watching the feed.
Walking onto the BAU floor, the two women immediately parted ways and changed their outfits.
With JJ having her own office, it meant she was afforded a bit more privacy and distance than Emily had. The moment the profiler had changed and grabbed her things from her desk, she came face to face with a smirking and overly proud Derek Morgan. "Hey, Prentiss," he drawled, his grin stretching even wider as he leaned casually against his desk, a pen twirling between his fingers.
"Morgan," Emily responded, her voice sounding just a tad gruffer than she had originally planned.
Derek, unaffected by the sudden attitude, simply continued to grin, his pen dropping on top of the desk as he began to rub his hands together in anticipation. "So, I hear you and JJ had a steamy make out session outside," he commented casually, his lecherous expression belying the innocence.
"You mean you and Garcia were spying on us like a couple of peeping toms, right?" Emily questioned, a slight edge to her voice as she leveled the man with a glare. It wasn't that she hadn't expected to get a ribbing from Morgan, because she had. There was no way he could keep his mouth shut and refrain from making any jokes but Emily was now in a piss poor mood.
Her date had been ended so much earlier than she had anticipated, add to that the fact that they had been called in on a case, plus the fact that her one glorious moment outside with JJ had been rudely interrupted by a spying and sniggering Penelope Garcia. So all-in-all, Emily wasn't in much of a great mood; sure, in a few hours when it stopped feeling like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on her, she would join in with Morgan and laugh about it, but at the moment, she was just annoyed and more than a little grumpy.
"You make us sound like perverts," Morgan said in mock offense.
"You said it, not me," Emily smarmed, easily falling into their usual routine of genial teasing.
"Hey," Derek shouted in indignation, his chin raising defiantly into the air, "Baby girl and I just like to know what's going on. If we happened to be looking at the camera footage while you and JJ just so happened to be outside necking like a pair of horny teenagers, we can't be held responsible for that." And just like that, his wounded and offended look was gone in an instant, replaced by his overconfident concupiscent look.
"Right," Emily intoned, looking at the man before her with a completely bored expression transfixed on her face. "And if you two had known where our date was, I'm sure you would have conveniently and coincidentally been hacking into that video footage too, unintentionally getting a bird's eye view of the whole thing."
"Exactly," Morgan boasted, his smile never wavering. "Now that we've cleared that up, tell me about your date. It must have been good if it ended with a steamy kiss like that," he questioned excitedly, following behind Emily like an overzealous puppy as she moved towards the meeting room.
"Why are you so interested in how my date went?" Emily asked, her curiosity at an all time high as she sat down at the conference table and stared at the burly man. "You'd think you and Garcia weren't even trying to win this bet with the way you two keep fixating on me and JJ."
As Emily looked down at her case file before her, she missed the addled look on Morgan's face and completely misread the forced and somewhat nervous chuckle that escaped him. "Me and Baby girl don't need to try as hard and you and JJ do," he said slowly, the words suddenly lacking their usual level of confidence.
Emily glanced up from the folder before her, "You don't sound like you believe that," she commented casually, narrowing her eyes at the other man. "Is there trouble in paradise already?" Emily joked, leaning forward on the desk as she tried to get a read on Morgan.
"Nah," he dismissed, waving her off as he pretended to look over his notes. "We couldn't be better. I just don't want you and JJ losing before the bet's really even started."
"You sure about that?" Emily pushed, sensing that all was not well between Morgan and Garcia.
"Absolutely," he responded with conviction, his grin returning full force in the blink of an eye. "We've actually got a date planned for Friday."
"Friday?" Emily asked, "As in this Friday?" That was only a few days to finish with everything in Wichita and Emily wasn't all that sure that they would be making it back that soon.
"Yeah," he answered plainly, "so we've gotta wrap this case up fast otherwise all my planning goes to waste."
Emily, seeing an opportunity to be the nosy one, decided to push for information on the particulars of their outing. "I'm curious what the Casanova of the BAU has planned for his first official date with Penelope. Maybe a little dining and dancing?"
"I'm not telling you Prentiss," Morgan said definitively. "If I didn't get any details on your date then you aren't getting any on mine."
"Seriously?" Emily asked incredulously, wondering why Morgan wasn't acting like his usual boastful self. Any other time and he would have been jumping at the chance to show his prowess when it came to wooing someone, especially Penelope; and now he was acting as though the whole thing was top secret. "All of your other dates, all the countless women you've hit on at the bar, I've had to hear about," Emily pointed out, "but the one date that matters, you're going to be tight lipped about it?"
"Hey, you didn't tell me about your date with JJ," he accused, easily flipping the conversation around.
"Because I never tell you about my dates," she pointed out, wondering why he was suddenly acting so wounded about not knowing every detail of her evening with JJ. "Why would I start now?"
"So when you tell me about your date, I'll tell you about mine." He offered, his brown eyes peering seriously into hers, as if he were trying to pull the information from her.
"Are you honestly that hurt by me not talking to you about this?" Emily asked, all sense of joking aside as she tried to figure out if she had inadvertently offended Morgan. It was no secret that she tended to keep her personal life to herself, and more often than not, when she needed to vent, it was to JJ. But that didn't mean she wasn't close to Morgan too, especially when they spent so much time together on the job. It hadn't occurred to her that by keeping her time with JJ to herself that maybe she was making Morgan think she didn't trust him.
But then again, he knew how she was and more often than not, he would let things like this just roll of his back. So why was this issue such a sore spot for him now?
It wasn't adding up and Emily wasn't quite sure how to handle it.
"Look Prentiss, we're partners." He said after a moment, looking to Emily as she nodded in agreement. "Which means we don't keep stuff from one another. I know this is all just a fun bet but c'mon, you don't need to act like you're on a super secret mission or something. I can see the way you look at her."
It was the strange mixture of sincerity and blunt honesty that made Emily want to recoil, her eyes feeling as though they were bulging out of her head with how wide they were. "I look at her like how I've always look at her," Emily said sternly, knowing that if she wasn't willing to discuss her date then she sure as hell wasn't about to discuss her changing feelings towards JJ.
"Please," Morgan said dismissively, leveling his patented profiler's gaze on Emily, "I may play oblivious at times but I'm not an idiot. You like her."
"I thought it was a BAU rule not to profiler one another," Emily said heatedly, her eyes narrowed into slits as she glared at the other man.
"It doesn't take a profiler to read the look on your face recently when you're around JJ," he said casually, knowing he was purposely pushing her buttons but not willing to stop. "You like her," he restated, his expression daring Emily to argue or deny it.
"She's JJ," Emily said matter-of-factly, "of course I like her. We wouldn't be friends if I didn't."
"That's not what I meant and you know it." Morgan said resolutely, his tone letting Emily know that her attempt at trying to play dumb wasn't working.
"Honesty is a two way street there Morgan," Emily threw back at him, "and it also doesn't take a profiler to know that you and Garcia have been up to something since this whole bet started."
"What we've been up to is trying to win, anything else is just your imagination." He argued right back, looking to Emily expectantly as he waited for her to admit to having feelings for their resident media liaison.
"Whatever," Emily mumbled, looking towards the doorway and hoping someone else would walk in so she could stop having this conversation with Morgan. "Just mind your own business."
"You're not fooling me Princess," he said sagely before getting up from his seat and walking out of the room, a confident gait in his step.
As he left the room, Emily sat there with a perplexed and befuddled look on her face, not quite sure how a joking inquisition into his date with Garcia had somehow evolved into him profiling her relationship with JJ.
There was also the fact that he was absolutely right — she was starting to look at JJ differently.
Morgan strolled out of the room and headed directly towards Garcia's office, a wide and accomplished smile on his face as he did so.
"Baby girl!" He shouted as he strolled through the doorway and dropped down onto one of the seats before her desk. "Who's the man?" He asked excitedly, looking to the tech analyst. "I'm the man," he answered immediately, his thumbs thrusting into his chest as he continued to boast.
"Not that I'm complaining, but why are you the man?" Garcia asked slowly but still in her usual chipper tone.
"Because I basically just got a confirmation that Emily is totally into JJ," he answered, sounding as though it should have been obvious to the tech analyst.
"Oh Sweetie," she replied gingerly, almost patronizingly, her eyes softening as she looked at him, "we already knew that."
"We did?" He asked.
Upon seeing Morgan's confused face, she resisted the urge to chuckle and give him a pat on the head, "They were just swabbing the inside of each other's throats with their tongues, I think it's safe to say things aren't just platonic anymore."
"So what does that mean for our plan?" He asked, clearly having no idea what Penelope had in store any more. Working with her had a tendency to make him feel like the brainless henchman working for the mastermind — every time he thought he was catching on to what they were doing, she would change the plans and he would end up feeling as though he were in the dark again.
"It means we're going ahead as planned. No reason to change things now," she idly commented, her fingers flying across her keyboard as her sinister smile grew. "I know I shouldn't be happy about this case, but I'm kind of excited that it's in Wichita of all places." Before Morgan could ask about that comment, Penelope stood from her seat, grabbed his arm, and pulled him up. "Now we need to go back to the conference room and get this case started."
As they prepared to leave, Morgan still feeling completely clueless about what Penelope had planned, remembered his comment to Emily. "Oh, and we have a date on Friday, so be ready."
Giving him an incredulous but pleased look, Garcia stopped walking for a moment before catching up to him. "I expect flowers," she said bossily just before walking into the conference room and putting any further plans on the back-burner.
After the debriefing, the team, minus Garcia, grabbed their things and headed towards the jet.
The ride was the same as it always was; they continued to discuss the case and came up with a plan of attack for when they finally arrived. JJ would be working with one of the police officers to set up tip lines and handle any media problems that arose while the rest of the team split into pairs and questioned the victim's families. It was the same thing they did on almost every other case, but this time, Emily was left feeling uneasy when they landed.
As soon as they stepped off the jet, there was a rather ruggedly handsome officer in uniform waiting for them. His short sandy blonde hair, the golden tan to his skin, his tall and extraordinarily fit physique, not to mention his ridiculously green eyes that seemed to be glued to and practically devouring JJ — made Emily take an immediate dislike to him.
Which was absurd seeing as how he had done nothing that would have warranted such feelings in Emily, but her dislike of him only grew when he took hurried steps forward and engulfed JJ in a tight hug. "JJ, it's so good to see you," he said gleefully, his hug lasting just a few seconds longer than strictly necessary before he pulled away, a charming smile on his face.
"It's good to see you too, Jake," JJ responded just as enthusiastically, her hand resting lightly on his muscled bicep.
It was only with the image of those two staring into one another's eyes, that Emily recognized the churning emotion in the pit of her stomach and why she was immediately put off by the man.
She had heard all about this guy from Penelope one night when they were out and while it hadn't clicked earlier when JJ had mentioned where they were going, now it was most assuredly in the forefront of her mind.
This was the officer Jake McCallister that Penelope had mooned over and spent close to thirty-five minutes dreamily describing as JJ's future husband. At the time, Emily had been nothing but amused by the whole thing, especially when the media liaison spent the whole time blushing so fiercely she looked like a tomato.
But now, seeing just how ruggedly handsome he was and seeing firsthand how perfect the two looked together, Emily could clearly identify the jealousy that was now running like wildfire through her system.
It had been awhile since she had experienced this feeling and absolutely detested it. It was also a little surprising to see just how strong it was; on the few occasions that she had been jealous, it was easily manageable, but with JJ hanging all over, what appeared to be, the most attractive man in Wichita, Kansas, it wasn't quite so easy to tamp down.
There was a loud buzzing in her ears as she watched the two interact, the light and innocent touches seeming anything but, and Emily knew she needed to get out of there soon before she let the irrational green eyed monster inside of her loose.
"Morgan, you ready to go?" Emily asked tightly, trying to keep her stormy and uncharacteristic emotions in check. She was failing miserably and couldn't help but continue to steal glances at the otherwise occupied blonde media liaison.
Morgan looked from Emily to JJ, his confused expression quickly clearing as he finally caught on to why Garcia had been so excited about the case being in this city. Stifling his laugh, he bobbed his shoulders and waved Emily towards one of the waiting SUV's. "After you."
While he didn't know much about this guy, Jake, Morgan had been there the last time he was involved in a case and knew the officer had more than a little crush on JJ. And while Emily hadn't been around for it, Morgan had no doubt that the profiler was now completely aware of the officer's feelings towards the media liaison. If the fire burning in Emily's eyes or the grinding of her teeth was anything to go by, he had no doubt that this was what Penelope had been hoping for, though he suspected even Garcia hadn't expected it to set Emily off so quickly.
As Emily walked ahead, Morgan quickly whipped out his phone and smiled widely as his fingers tapped away on the keyboard. 'Baby girl, you are a genius!' was all it said, a clear indicator to Garcia that her intended reaction from Emily had been achieved.
'This is just the beginning,' Garcia responded immediately and Morgan had no doubt that by the time the case was over, neither Emily nor JJ would know what had hit them.
They might have thrown Penelope off with their about face at the beginning, but now that she was catching on, they were going to be woefully unprepared for what the next nine days had in store. By the time the bet came to a close, those two would have been put through the ringer, but the tech analyst had no doubt that it would all be worth it in the end.