A/N- This is Emily, there's going to be one more chapter that I'm really excited about which I'll try to post soon. Hope you all enjoy.
13. Emily.
Emily didn't date. At least not well. It's not that she wasn't interested, rather she learned from a young age that power was important, and what better way to have power over someone than to make them care about you?
Moving around the world with her mother, Emily did what she needed to in order to be accepted wherever they went. She said the right things, found the right people- or rather the wrong people.
The first time she smoked, she was thirteen. She was living in Eastern Europe, she attended an American high school for children of ambassadors and the like, and she was already well versed in making bad decisions. It was the middle of the night (or close enough to it) and she was sitting on the roof of a building she was pretty sure was condemned with a group of other teenagers.
Like most bad decisions she made, it was because of a pretty girl. Her name was Quinn, and she had blonde hair cut severely to her jaw. She was a few years older than Emily, and she saw right through Emily's ambivalent exterior. Quinn was the real deal, the live fast die young, she had scars and tattoos and stories to go with them. Her eyes were haunted.
She pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her back pocket and shook one out, lighting it and taking an easy drag. When she caught Emily's eyes on her, she held the pack out to the brunette, "Want one?"
"Yeah." Emily breathed.
Quinn smirked, shaking another cigarette, her expression deepened when she saw that this one was upside down, "It's my lucky." She said handing it to Emily.
The younger girl pretended that she knew what that meant, accepting it and holding it awkwardly for a second before Quinn chuckled and held up the lighter.
Emily did a lot of stupid things for pretty girls.
…
Emily did a lot of stupid things even in the absence of pretty girls. She got pregnant. She dealt with it. She swore she would never not be in control like that again.
She learned to use people.
She learned to forget them.
The first person who broke her cycle was a slap in the face. It was when she was a sophomore at Georgetown, she was still working as a waitress to pretend to be independent, she was still pretending that she didn't notice her mother putting money in her bank account each month.
She was nearly at the end of her shift one night when a group came into the diner she worked at. She recognized one of them form a lecture she had been in freshman year and the rest of them appeared to be around college aged so she assumed they attended Georgetown too.
They all ordered coffee and a couple of them asked for fries, and Emily tried not to glare at them all because they were ten minutes away from closing.
Emily was a horrible waitress.
She spilled a coffee on a woman. The woman was shocked, then vaguely amused as she watched Emily's attempts to press napkins to the stain, then realized she was touching a stranger's chest, and dropping her hands with a blush.
Emily didn't get a great tip that night, but she did get the brunette's phone number. She called her and they hooked up a few days later, Emily was set to never contact her again, but the woman had other plans.
Her name was Regina Mills, and she didn't take no for an answer. She knew what she wanted and she dragged Emily along every step of the way. She taught Emily that she wasn't the only one who's past was dark and twisty, more importantly, she taught Emily that your past did not dictate your future.
They weren't together for very long, but in that time, Emily learned she couldn't keep everyone out forever.
…
Soon after Emily moved to DC to begin working for the BAU, she got injured. It wasn't anything serious, just a little banged up from chasing a perp, she had been checked over by an EMT on scene and was content to just ignore the pain with some ibuprofen. But when she woke up back in DC the following day with a large bruise covering her ribs, Garcia made her go to the hospital.
She threatened to drive Emily to the hospital to make sure she would get treated.
Emily went in of her own volition. She parked, and walked with only a slight limp into the ER, she checked in and was directed to a chair to sit in to wait. A young guy with floppy hair came by to check her out, and confirmed that she had at least one broken rib.
"I'll just page our ortho surgeon, Doctor Torres, and she'll get you checked out." The boy said, before shuffling away.
Emily nodded and sat breathing heavily.
A tall redhead came into the ER, and looked around boredly until her eyes locked on Emily. She appraised the brunette openly with a faint smirk as she watched the challenge in Emily's eyes. The woman stopped the kid with floppy hair and took the chart from his hands, looking it over quickly before sending him on his way.
She came over to stand before Emily, "So, broken ribs?"
"That's what they tell me." Emily returned flirtatiously.
This, it turned out, was not Doctor Torres but instead Doctor Addison Montgomery.
She was older than Emily, and flirted shamelessly, she was an amazing surgeon, and she understood when Emily had to leave on a whim and came back at odd hours. They dated easily in the way that they were both invested in their jobs, but hated being alone.
She was the one that picked up when JJ called to tell Emily they had a case one weekend. She had spent the night at Emily's apartment and was woken up by her girlfriend between her legs. When the phone went off, she had to do her best to keep her voice steady as she told the agent on the other end that Emily had her hands full.
…
When Emily began dating JJ, all she wanted to do was protect the younger agent. She knew it was a ridiculous thing to think about so much, and she knew that JJ could do a perfectly fine job of taking care of herself, but she couldn't help the urge to protect.
That doesn't mean that she didn't do everything in her power to try and take care of JJ. She suggested they go to the shooting range often, she makes sure that she drags JJ out with her on morning jogs, and she even gets JJ to practice hand to hand combat with her sometimes. When they play wrestle (which happens over everything from Emily hogging the remote, fights over where to order takeout from, and everything in between) Emily never just gives in and lets JJ pin her, she makes sure JJ knows how to knock out her knees, leverage her weight, and make sure Emily can't escape.
It seems to work for a while, Emily can let herself believe that she's protecting JJ. The blonde doesn't get injured in the field, she still has nightmares sometimes about dogs in old barns, but when she wakes up in Emily's arms, she always can fall back to sleep.
It seems to work for a while until a serial killer who harvests his victim's eyes says something to JJ after they catch him. He tells JJ that she has 'real pretty eyes'.
Emily thinks that everything is alright until that night. Emily is waiting in bed, trying her very best to read a Vonnegut novel while JJ is finishing getting ready for the night in the bathroom. When Emily finally loses her patience, she swings her legs over the side of the bed and pads into the bathroom.
She finds JJ staring blankly at herself in the mirror.
"JJ?" Emily asks gently.
"They're blue. They're not ringed with green, or flecked with gold or any other weird cliche, they're just blue." JJ says quietly.
Emily just waits.
"My eyes aren't anything special, there's no reason for him to have said that."
Emily steps fully into the bathroom and carefully takes JJ in her arms, letting the blonde rest her head on her shoulder while she keeps talking out her concerns, "But I guess, blue eyes is a recessive trait so they're not that common. But our kids will have a one quarter chance of having them too."
Emily just rubs JJ's back. She does not say anything about how JJ has just moved into Emily's apartment two weeks ago, she doesn't mention how they aren't married, and how they sure as hell haven't talked about kids.
Instead she leads JJ back to bed, curls up behind her, and presses a kiss to the back of her neck. She may not be able to protect JJ from everything, but she'll never stop trying.
A/N- Thanks for reading, and if you liked it, go vote for this story on the Profiler's choice awards for best Emily/JJ or best femslash story. Also drop a review if you want.
For those of you keeping track that's 3 little crossovers from 3 different shows. Quinn Fabray from Glee, Regina Mills from Once Upon a Time, and Addison Montgomery from Grey's Anatomy ;)