Note- the title comes from a Sara Bareilles song

Before I Ever Knew Better

Reid and JJ

June 2012

Her kiss tasted as sweet as the vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries on top that they had eaten after dinner that night. The feel of her soft lips pressed to his felt more like home than he had found in twenty years. Her arms wrapped tight around his neck, pulling him ever closer to her, urged him to give in to her sensual assault- to slide his fingers down till he could push away the straps of her tank top and take her right here and now on the soft grass of her backyard while her son slept inside clueless to the mess that the adults in his life were making as one got caught up in good intentions while the other drowned in grief.

"I never loved Will," that's what she whispered the night of the funeral when Spencer Reid brought JJ home. Her words were numb, devoid of any screaming emotion like guilt or rage, but a condemnation of herself all the same. "I used him."

Used him to escape her feelings for another. Used him to have a place to go on weekends and be different than usual self for that first year. Used him to be a stay-at-home father to Henry. Used him to make herself feel loved because he had adored her.

She might deny it now but JJ had love Will. Reid knew that. The ironic thing is that if she hadn't loved Will as deeply as she had then she wouldn't be kissing Reid right now.

He pulled back a breath and murmured "This is transference. You know that."

"For the love of God," she muttered in frustration, her lips already moving nearer again, "shut up and shut off that brain for a while."

Those perfect, sweet, lush lips of hers attacked him then. Begging for more. Her tongue seeking entrance to his mouth. His traitorous mouth ignoring what his mind knew was best and opening for her- desperate to feel her tongue tangle against his, her breasts press against his chest, her smell and sounds when she was making love surrounding them and giving him his first small glimpse of her like this.

So different than their hasty good night kiss at her car after their football game date years and years before. Back when he didn't know a thing about women. Didn't know she was running scared from her feelings. Didn't know she needed him to take control of them. Things would be different for them now if he knew just a sliver then of what he knows about love, her and life now.

He wishes he didn't know now though. Because it's the knowing that makes him push away the only kiss that really has ever felt perfect.

"I....can't," he told her, his tone filled with regret but with no room to give. He won't be talked into letting her use him as a surrogate for her dead husband.

Will's death came suddenly. An illness that took him after less than a week. Almost something that didn't seem possible- one of those things that happen to other people- but it was possible and it had happened to him. JJ is one huge ball of guilt now. She was out of town when he fell ill. She should have been home, she insists. She should have noticed before she left that he wasn't feeling well. She should have spent more time with him in the years they had together. She should have married him. She should have done more than just appreciate how he was a good father but appreciate how he was a good partner for her. She shouldn't have looked at him and wanted him to be someone else, to go somewhere else, to never have gotten her pregnant so that Henry's father could be someone else. But that was only how she looked at him sometimes. Other times he was just what she wanted and just who she loved. She can't remember that now though. She's too lost in her pain to recall how it really was. The good memories don't feed her guilt so she blocks them out as if they never existed at all.

Reid knew that when he started to spend all his spare time with her and Henry after the funeral that JJ would read more into it than he intended. That she would lean so hard on him she would re-write history and say she had always loved him most instead of the truth: She loved him in her own way, a way that would never end, but she also gave her heart and her body and five years to Will.

Its not that Reid doubts that JJ has strong feelings for him. He knows she does. But its not right to become lovers less than six weeks after burying Will. Not when this is more about a dead man than about them.

He won't let her take what could be there only chance to be lovers and squander it by making it another thing to feel guilty about. She will think he is pushing her away to be noble, he believes, or because he's still, deep inside, a kid who is afraid of sex and messy love affairs.

But he's pushing her away because he wants her to kiss him for him- just him- not because she's grieving and looking for a life preserver. Because if he lets her use him that way then when she is strong again she'll back away from being lovers, which would only be right because she wouldn't need that anymore to survive. She would be strong enough again to stand on her own two feet.

More than anything Reid has been trying to help JJ feel strong like that again. But not this way. Not sacrificing what should be their most beautiful moment ever shared together by letting it become just another thing to feel sick and guilty over later.

Her blue eyes burned with a light sheen of tears and shimmered with desperation. "I need you."

He took her hand. It felt small, cold, but right encompassed in his larger one. "I'm right here but I can't....Not when you would close your eyes and see Will."

She jerked her hand away, stood up, ran her hands through her long blonde hair. Paced around, shooting him dirty looks. He stood up and waited for her to relax.

Finally she cried his name, the sound so lost that it made his heart ache, "Spence!"

A few large steps and he was holding her. He stroked her hair. Later they went inside, had coffee and talked about how Henry was doing in pre-school. Reid knew that soon he would need to ease back from JJ's life outside of work. Let her see that she could make it without his everyday, every hour, every minute support.

But tonight wasn't the night to make that transition. As they sat at her kitchen table, reminders of Will still all around the house, Reid took JJ's hand and squeezed it. One day she would forgive herself for all the ways she let Will down.

After the days turned to months and maybe to years JJ might even find her lips pressed against the lips of the man who didn't know enough back when they first met to keep her but knows enough now to make sure that if he gets her back again it is for all the right reasons and that their chance is a real one that could last.

When it comes to loving JJ Spence would never accept anything less.

THE END