Author's Note:

Sorry about my recent absence, school is crazy, as usual, and I've been dealings with some personal stuff. My boyfriend and I broke up after two years so that's been…different. I met him the first day of my Freshman year so this is the first time I've been single in college, which should be an interesting experience. Ugh men...

Anyway enough about my life and again sorry about the lack of updates but we're getting back on schedule. However, to make up for not updating this is a longer chapter than usual.

Thanks again for your reviews, they keep me updating.

"You took a while" Emily remarked with a lopsided grin, already knowing that the blonde must have driven to her old apartment.

"Old habits" JJ mumbled as she walked into Emily's new D.C. sublet.

The view was of phenomenal, as expected, but the actual apartment was a disaster. It wasn't that it was messy by any means, it was just covered in boxes. Because of the undependable BAU hours it had turned out to be more difficult for the brunette to move than she had anticipated. As a result, the place was still a work in progress, with most of Emily's larger pieces of furniture having been sent to her mother's storage unit in Potomac after her 'death,' which meant that Emily had boxes of belongings that she couldn't unpack because she had no place to put them. Whether stacks of books looked better on the floor or in a box were the sort of decorating decisions the brunette was stuck making. Ultimately Emily thought that the boxes were the lesser of two evils. However, she was really starting to miss her hotel suite hotel.

"So where are we going to sit?" JJ asked with a smile as Emily scanned her living room, groaning as she walked to her kitchen to grab a couple of glasses and a bottle of gin. "My bed is the only piece of furniture I have set up…"

"Okay" JJ agreed. Okay drinking in bed may not have been the most ideal plan for fidelity, but they could control themselves. They were adults. JJ started walking towards Emily's room, noticing Emily's alcohol choice. "Gin?"

Emily shrugged with a small smile, "It's all I have. But I do have ice."

"Lime?"

"No" Emily admitted as JJ shook her head in disbelief.

"You are the worst hostess ever" the blonde teased as Emily faked gasped.

"Oh how will I ever sleep at night now?" She sarcastically stated, making JJ laugh as the two women walked towards Emily's bedroom. The sky was still dark outside, prompting Emily to turn on a lamp before handing JJ a glass with a few cubes of ice.

"Thanksgiving is a month away, you excited?" JJ asked, embarrassed by her futile attempt at small talk with Emily.

"No" The brunette simply answered with a laugh.

"I am."

"Well that's because you have a normal family" Emily clarified as she nudged JJ in the ribs. "My childhood Thanksgiving experiences played out like this. Dinner was catered because my mother didn't know how to make boxed mashed potatoes let alone an entire dinner. Dinner was attended by only me, my mother, and my father so that was fun. Sometimes roving grandma would show up…"

"Roving grandma?" JJ cut in with a chuckle. "What is that?"

Emily couldn't help but chuckle at the question, "Roving grandma was my mother's mother and the only grandparent still alive…"

"Besides your father's father who lived on a mountain" JJ added.

"Exactly, which is what happens when you have older parents, grandparents are hard to come by. Roving grandmother mostly spent holidays around the East Coast, but sometimes she would visit us at my mother's various postings, much to my mother's delight" Emily added sarcastically as she took another sip of her drink. "And that was my Thanksgiving. Dinner started at five, conversation was centered around politics and how I was doing in school. After telling my parents about school my mother would always say, 'surely that can't be everything Emily' and then excuse herself to catch up on some work. My father would jokingly complain about my mother working and chat with me about baseball for half an hour before excusing himself to make a quick call, never returning for the rest of the night since he too was working. And then I would just watch TV by myself for the rest of the night. So no, I'm not excited for Thanksgiving" Emily finished in a firm voice with JJ left wondering how she could still know so little about the other woman's family life after all these years. Emily opened her mouth to say something else but closed it instead, silence filing the bedroom before she spoke up in a quiet voice, "So what are you going to tell Will?"

"What do you mean?" JJ absent-mindedly asked as she leaned against Emily's headboard, pouring more alcohol into her glass.

"What do I mean?" Emily scoffed as the blonde focused on her. "Are you going to lie to him?"

"I don't know" JJ admitted with a sigh.

"But you're not going to tell him the truth?"

The younger woman took a deep breath at the question, "Probably not…I need to keep things on an even keel, and this doesn't lend itself to that."

"What do you mean? We're not doing anything wrong, right?" Emily questioned with a raised eyebrow. "Are you ever going to be, you know, truthful? Are we ever going to reach a point where lying isn't the default setting?"

"I don't know Em" JJ confessed in a defeated voice as she took a sip of her drink, wincing at the taste. "Well, I guess with you a drink is never just a drink. It's always more, and I'm okay with that. I like that. I like that we have the glimpses of the old us, but I don't know if he's okay with that."

"Us" Emily repeated with a chuckle. "JJ, I don't know if there was ever an 'us.'"

"I think there was."

"Fine" Emily relented as she turned her body to face JJ before continuing, "Fine, say there was ever an 'us,' and doing this gives you small glimpses of that, you're basically saying that you're okay with an emotional affair but not a physical one."

"Emily" JJ groaned with a small smile. Why did Emily always have to over think everything?

The brunette looked at her drink and shrugged, "I'm just trying to clarify here…I mean, you're with Will."

JJ nodded at the statement, "I am but..."

"But?"

"But most nights when I can't sleep" JJ began before briefly pausing and closing her eyes, "Most nights I still play us. It's like you're on an infinite loop in my head. So yes, maybe this is wrong and maybe I'm a deplorable person and a coward. Maybe I'm all of those things and maybe you're some of those things too, but right now, right now I just do not care." And for the first time in what seemed like forever, JJ had finally told the truth. And if Emily was honest as well, she would have to admit that this was the whole reason she had come back in the first place. "Did you love her?"

Emily bit her bottom lip at the question, contemplating how to answer, "This feels weird."

"Why? We're friends. Friends do this sort of stuff" JJ informed the nervous brunette with a smile, lightly nudging the other woman with her elbow. "You can tell me anything."

"Within reason" Emily stated in a low voice as she ran her hands through her hair. "I might have. I think I could have, loved her."

"I think you did."

"You do?" Emily questioned with a laugh as she stared down at the drink in her hand. "Why do you say that?"

JJ paused before answering the question, opting to avoid eye contact with her brunette counterpart, "Because it hurt, it hurt to see you with her because maybe I always knew she wasn't just some fling. If it was, if it wasn't love she wouldn't have mattered enough for you to say 'no' to me."

"Maybe...I remember this one time" Emily began with a chuckle as JJ felt inexplicably crushed by the admission. She had always known, but there was something so heartbreaking about hearing Emily confirm that she had loved someone else. "This one time we played Monopoly, we were really drunk, and by the way Monopoly is no fun with only two people. But anyways we did and she kept accusing me of embezzling and then threatened that if I didn't give her Boardwalk in a bailout she would divorce me."

JJ couldn't help but laugh at the story, "Divorce you?"

"Yeah, she was really drunk" Emily laughed as she continued to nurse her drink.

"So were you stealing money from the bank?"

"Of course not" Emily adamantly replied with a lopsided smirk. "It was just a loan, I was going to pay it all back."

"Says every embezzler" JJ accused as she burst into a fit of laughter, "poor Ashley."

"Yeah" The other woman nodded in agreement. As much as it pained both Emily and JJ, Emily knew that the real victims of their affair were Will and Ashley.

"Have you called her yet?" JJ asked as Emily merely shook her head 'no' in reply. "Emily you should have. She's going to be pissed that you didn't call her as soon as you got off that plane. Why didn't you?" JJ stupidly questioned, the words hanging in the air. Because as soon as she asked the question she knew the answer. She knew why Emily didn't call Ashley as soon as she landed. It was because Emily had never intended on coming home to Ashley but to someone else entirely. "Never mind" JJ covered as she rubbed her eyes, wondering if she should ask the next question of not. "Did you have to teach her too, to have, you know" JJ hinted awkwardly as Emily groaned at the uncomfortable question.

"No."

"No you're not going to tell me or no you didn't have to?"

Emily downed the rest of her drink, pouring herself another before opting to answer the question, "I didn't have to."

"Remember when, the first time I tried to…" JJ drifted off with a cringe.

"Yeah that was terrible" Emily confessed with a laugh as JJ scowled.

"You said it was good."

"Of course I said it was good, but, fuck, JJ it was a disaster" Emily laughed again as JJ pouted at the claim. "Every time you started to get better you stopped to ask if you were doing okay. It was very frustrating."

"You are such a jerk" The blonde playfully scolded as she slapped Emily on the upper arm.

"Oh come on Jayje, the idea that it's perfect the first time with a new person is mostly a myth. It takes time to figure it out. We figured it out eventually."

"Yeah" JJ agreed with a nod. "What you said yesterday, what you told the team, you never told me about any of that."

Emily nervously chewed on her lip as she slid down further down on to the bed, propping herself up by an elbow. "I didn't see how it mattered. To be honest, I don't see why it's a big deal. Plus, I already know you read my medical records in Maryland. You always were nosy" she teased, JJ seeing through what she was trying to do.

"Don't change the subject" JJ began as she took a deep breath, studying Emily's tense body. "Why are you so nervous? It's just me."

"Exactly" Emily chuckled halfheartedly.

JJ sighed, deciding the ignore the snide comment that she had no doubt earned, "I need you to know that I meant what I said…I meant what I said in Bethesda" JJ clarified as Emily rolled her eyes.

"But obviously not Paris."

"I don't want to talk about Paris…"

"And I don't either. It's pointless to me. I don't care about Paris or what you do or don't do. I don't..."

"You know what" JJ interrupted, lifting her hand to show that Emily was not to cut her off. "I am not here to argue with you about who did what and who should have done this, or the millions of things you hate about me right now…"

Emily shook her head at the remark, "I don't hate you."

"You don't?" JJ laughed bitterly, running her hands through her hair. "You can't even look at me Em. You can't talk to me. Every time we're together you recoil into yourself. You spend all your time with Morgan…"

"Because I owe it to him" Emily interjected in an annoyed tone. "He thought I was dead. You told him I was dead!"

"What was I supposed to do Emily?! Enlighten me on what I should have done?"

"I don't know!" Emily yelled as she began to pick at her fingernails. "I don't know what we should have done. I don't know. I don't know how I can fix any of this except by devoting my life to doing all this shit to make it up to everyone. Nothing is ever going to be the same with any of them. And the second I think it might be, something else comes back up that connects to Doyle. I don't even know how to be here anymore. I don't know how to be around you anymore. I don't know where we are because all you do is send fucking mixed signals. That's all you do JJ" Emily ranted as JJ nodded in agreement. "You tell me you stayed with Will and that we can be friends, you come over to my house to demand that I spend time with you and kiss me, and now you're here again. You're here again asking me to tell about how shitty my near death experience was or how alone I felt because of you. You're asking me why I didn't see her in those final moments when I should have. I feel so fucking guilty because I shouldn't have felt alone. I wasn't alone. She told me she loved me and I was thinking about you. And when I thought Doyle was going to kill me I wasn't thinking about her. I should have been thinking about her and what? What JJ? Now you expect me to tell you all of this? All these things we both know you already know. What good is that going to do me JJ?"

"I just want…"

"You just want me to be here for me?" Emily laughed as she shook her head in disbelief, her eyes clouding with tears that she refused to allow to fall. "You want to really help me? Just let this go. It's pointless to talk…"

"No" JJ firmly stated as she pinned a lock of loose hair behind Emily's ear. "Emily, I can't let this go because I know it's bothering you…"

The brunette inhaled sharply as she rubbed her temples, "The whole idea is actually hilarious to me."

"Dying?"

"No, people trying to understand death" Emily clarified as JJ put her drink down on the floor and lay down on her side to face Emily, motioning for her to go on. "Okay so Reid and I both claimed to have near death experience right? But we didn't really die. Well, we did but we're alive and it's impossible to know if what we experience was really the death experience…"

"But you did die" JJ interjected in a confused voice. It was way too late, or early, for Emily to get all philosophical on her.

"Yes, but then we lived, so how do I know that I didn't just implant memories into that moment of death?" Emily argued, confusing JJ even more. "It's possible. We don't really know what happens at death. Some doctors say something about the body releasing the chemical DMT at the time of death and they've done tests on it, but who really knows? The people they talk to during those studies are obviously alive, near-death isn't death, only death-death is death. And it's funny because everyone wants to know what happens to us when we die, but we'll never really know until we're dead because the only people who know can't tell us because they are dead."

"You're giving me a migraine. You're such as dork" JJ laughed as Emily scowled at her. "Hey Em, I've missed you."

It was a simple statement, but it meant so much to Emily. JJ has missed her, and for the first time in what felt like forever Emily felt like herself again.

"I've missed me too" the brunette softly replied as JJ smiled at her, closing her eyes as she began to drift off to sleep, JJ left wondering what it would be like to do this every night with Emily. It wasn't just the sex she missed, it was the intimacy. And in that moment she truly hated Emily, because it was Emily who walked away from her first. It was Emily who lost hope in them.

It was Emily who told her to go after Will.

4 Years Earlier

The past year between JJ and Emily had been complex, which was an understatement. JJ had started dating Will, largely because she felt she needed to combat whatever she was doing with Emily with something 'normal,' but the relationship wasn't serious. However, her and Emily also had an agreed upon arrangement, in which they would help each other in ways 'friends' would, an idea which Emily felt was the only suitable option. Strauss already hated her and the coldhearted woman would be more than giddy at the prospect of firing her for 'Sexual Misconduct.' So the ever-emotionally crippled Emily Prentiss was completely onboard with the idea, which also let JJ believe that she wasn't gay or bisexual, just that she, like everyone, needed the occasional orgasm and who else was going to give it to her?

Hotch? That'd be too weird.

Rossi? Not unless he boiled it in bleach.

Morgan? Morgan totally seemed like the guy who would have sex to "I'll Make Love to You" by Boyz II Men playing on a loop.

Garcia? What would sex with Garcia be like? It'd probably be like a Japanese game show and end with her getting a year's supply of scrapbook glitter.

And Spence? Did Spencer Reid even know how to have sex? Would he just spit random statistics throughout? Would that be his version of dirty talk. 'JJ touch yourself…oh and by the way, did you know that approximately 5 percent of 40-year-old men and between 15 to 25 percent of 65-year-old men experience erectile dysfunction?' That would be a disaster.

No, it was always going to be Emily Prentiss, and that is why they made rules to ensure that everything went smoothly. There was nothing off about that right? Friends just have casual sex with each other all the time and it never leads to any hurt feelings. That's exactly how life works, and the rules would only simplify things.

1. There was to be no sleepovers…unless they were really tired.

2. No talking about their feeling before or after sex…unless there was something really bothering them.

3. No cuddling after sex…but if they fell asleep while sharing a friendly hug that was okay.

4. No eating dinner together…unless, you know, they were hungry, because they weren't animals.

5. And most of all, no falling in love.

But it was only after a simple sentence that JJ and Emily both realized that they had broken the cardinal rule of the casual hookup.

The case in Miami was a difficult one for JJ. First, there was the issue of how it dealt with running from your sexual identity, and second, Will LaMontagne was helping on the case, which made everything inherently more complicated. Because after ten seconds JJ was convinced that Emily knew, because, fuck, Emily could always read her like a book.

And then there was Emily, who could see that JJ was drowning, struggling with who she was, trying to reconcile who she was with who she wanted to be. And what could Emily really offer the other woman besides secrets and lies? There was a reason that none of Emily's relationships, either male or female, had ever worked out. It was because in the simple of terms, Emily was not the dating type. She was the casual hookup-I don't want to hear about your day-No, I will not meet your mother type. That was who she was, it was who she had been since Doyle. And Will, maybe he was what JJ really needed. He was simple, easy, he was a good guy and Emily felt that she was none of those things. And that is why she said it.

"You should go for him" Emily simply stated as she walked up to the blonde, leaving JJ shocked by the advice, prompting her to wonder if she was just always a sexual outlet for the brunette after all. Maybe she didn't love her back like JJ had hoped and dreamed for.

"What?" JJ questioned in a quiet voice, trying to hide her emotional pain caused by the other woman.

"You'd make a cute couple."

JJ took a deep breath at the assumption, trying to reign in her emotions, trying to control her anger at the other woman, accepting the challenge to prove that Emily meant nothing to her either. "You know what?" JJ threatened as she walked away towards Will, leaving Emily to watch as the blonde told him everything she wished she could tell Emily. Telling Will everything about not wanting to run anymore, even though that speech she had rehearsed every night was meant for someone else entirely.

While Emily chatted with Morgan and Reid about the new coupling, pretending that JJ kissing someone else was irrelevant to her, Morgan picked up on something and knew that there was more to this than Emily was letting on. And from what he saw, whatever it was had probably been there for a long time.

"You should go for him."

It was a simple sentence, neither woman sure of what hurt more, hearing it or saying it.

And that is when they first started to disintegrate.

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