FIC: no place left to hide (Criminal Minds, JJ/Morgan/Prentiss, PG-13)

[astralis]

TITLE: no place left to hide
FANDOM: Criminal Minds
PAIRING: JJ/Morgan/Prentiss
RATING: PG-13. ish.
SPOILERS: Through 'Birthright', mentions Will.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Title comes from Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run'. Tag to 'Birthright', sequel to 'in the land of the living'
WARNING: Possible consent issues (within PG-13 rating).



no place left to hide


Jen was a little bit tipsy. Well, actually, she was really quite drunk. Her coffee table was covered in beer bottles and pizza boxes, and she was almost-but-not-quite sitting in Derek's lap. Emily was cross-legged on the floor in front of them holding a beer bottle in both hands, leaning back against Jen's legs.

Jen supposed that in fact they were all drunk. She'd been under the impression that Derek and Emily were going out with some of the others (she hadn't forgotten the sympathetic burn of Emily's hand on her shoulder when she'd begged off, lying through her teeth like they wouldn't notice) and then they'd turned up, perfectly sober, on her doorstep, bearing pizza and alcohol. It was quite nice of them. Jen didn't drink alone (much) and she didn't keep alcohol in the house (usually) but she'd wanted desperately, crazily to get drunk, somewhere away from Hotch's all-seeing eyes and Reid's well-meant but untimely non-sequiturs.

Which meant, basically, that she wanted to get drunk with Emily and Derek beside her. They were good drinking companions, and not least because they didn't talk about it the next day or demand to know what was wrong. They drank, they went to bed, they had sex which was more-or-less hot depending on how drunk they were, and in the morning they went about their own lives as though the disruption had never occurred.

Those were all good things.

Jen eyed another beer bottle. It was full, and therefore enticing. But she'd have to stretch to get it, and she was quite comfortable where she was, between Derek and Emily, with Derek's arm around her waist.

It was quite likely she'd had enough to drink, if such a thing were possible.

Rather than move she settled back against Derek's chest, nestling her head against the curve of his neck and shoulder. He smelled a little as though he hadn't had a shower in a day or two, which was probably quite true. She liked it, anyway: he smelt real. But that could have been the alcohol talking.

Emily dropped her bottle and it rolled to the edge of the rug. She groaned, and leaned her head back against Jen's thigh. Jen, her legs stretched out along the couch, was just close enough to stroke Emily's hair. Emily's hair was about as irresistible as the rest of Emily and Jen sometimes wondered, at inappropriate moments, what it would be like to touch that hair right now. These thoughts tended to occur in the middle of briefings, or on the plane surrounded by the rest of their team, or watching Emily interrogate a suspect. Jen usually managed to not think about the other two on the clock, but Emily's hair and Derek's arms were her weak spots.

“I think I'm drunk,” Emily said.

“I think we all are,” Jen managed, though talking had become unexpectedly difficult.

Derek kissed Jen's temple. She liked that, and wished, through her half-asleep kind of daze, that he'd keep doing it. Her hand was stroking Emily's hair of its own accord, which was quite unexpectedly soothing. “We should get you to bed,” he said.

“I'm guessing you don't want to seduce me,” Jen said. Foot, meet mouth. And she held press conferences? Right now, that seemed unlikely. She thought that that might have been another Jennifer Jareau.

“Girl, I always want to seduce you.”

Emily flailed about with one arm, which landed on Jen's leg and stayed there. “Hey!” she protested, with what sounded like as much indignation as she could muster.

“And you, gorgeous.”

“You'd better.”

“This is really weird, you know.” Jen fumbled for Emily's hand, found it, and squeezed it. While going to bed and passing out seemed like a reasonably good idea, staying here with Derek and Emily seemed a better one.

“I think we should have sex,” Emily said, squeezing back. “That's always fun.”

“I think Jen needs to go to sleep.”

“I think Jen's right here and can make up her own mind.” Jen had had a point when she started talking. “Let's have sex in the morning.” That... might have been the point. Or it might have been something about not being babied. “I can look after myself, you know.”

“You don't have to convince me of that.” Derek kissed her again which, Jen decided, made up for the unintentional insult. “You've had a tough few weeks. That's all.”

“Haven't we all?”

“Yeah, but Emily's not as cuddly as you are.”

“I resent the implication,” Emily said, sounding amused rather than irritated. She yawned. “Maybe we should all go to bed.”

“Like a slumber party,” Jen said, closing her eyes. The light was starting to hurt.

“Slumber party. Good plan.” There was a thump, the crash of a couple of beer bottles falling to the floor, and then a tug on Jen's hand. She opened one eye with a disproportionate amount of effort and discovered Emily towering over her. She'd obviously managed to stand up (well, duh, Jen's fuzzy brain protested) and was looking quite pleased about it. “Come on. Both of you. We're going to bed.”

“Boys don't do slumber parties, Emily.”

“Well, now you do.” Emily pulled on Jen's hand again, and Jen found herself stumbling to her feet. The floor rocked alarmingly and the walls seemed to shift before settling down. Well, that was disturbing.

“A slumber party,” Derek said, standing up behind Jen and putting his hands on her waist. “Are we going to giggle and talk about boys?”

“Do you want to?”

Jen listened to them tease each other as they wandered down the hall to her bedroom. She was moving on autopilot, still holding Emily's hand, Derek close behind her, and finding the floor a little unstable, as if it was never quite where she expected it to be. Bed. Bed would be good. Horizontal. Fresh cool sheets.

Sleeping off the alcohol was starting to sound like a really good idea.

She pushed her bedroom door open and led them in. Clothes. Right. Off.

Derek was taking his off. It was distracting, but Jen managed to pull herself back to the present and start undoing her jeans. She had pajamas somewhere, but the 'where' part was a mystery. She found a t-shirt for herself and one for Emily, noted that Derek was down to his boxers and looked really, really good, pulled off her shirt, struggled with the catch on her bra, succeeded in getting it off, yanked the t-shirt over her head and collapsed onto the bed.

That was better.

Emily was nudging at her and Derek was pulling at the sheets. It took Jen a few seconds to figure out what they were getting at and a longer time to actually get under the covers, with Emily's arm around her waist and Derek's hand on her hip.

She was never sure, afterwards, whether she'd fallen asleep or passed out, but whatever it was, she welcomed it.

**

Somewhere, someone's phone was ringing. It was... irritating. Jen wasn't ready to be woken up, and on either side of her Emily and Derek were stirring and stretching.

Damn it.

And it was her phone, too.

Head pounding (she'd had how many beers?), Jen extricated herself from the other two and shuffled down the bed. Something was nagging at her mind; that combined with the hangover was making her head a very uncomfortable place to be.

There were clothes all over the floor. Jen's pants were under Derek's shirt; she tossed it aside and found her phone in the pocket. She managed to answer probably a split second before it went to voicemail.

“JJ? Where are you?”

Will.

Will.

Oh, shit. She was supposed to be in New Orleans. Early flight, romantic getaway, oh God. She'd barely even thought of him these last few days and Derek and Emily were in her bed. “Will,” she said, hunting for the words that would make this right even as the reality of what she'd been doing these last few months came crashing down on her. And she'd thought she didn't compartmentalise things.

The sheets rustled. From the corner of her eye Jen could see Emily propped up on her elbows, half-asleep, hair tumbling down around her face, beautiful in Jen's old red t-shirt.

“Are you okay?” Will asked, sounding – and wasn't that just the worst of it - concerned.

“Yeah. Yeah. God, I'm sorry.”

“Where are you?”

Jen rubbed her forehead. She'd told herself over and over that the thing with Emily and Derek was just sex, that it didn't matter, that they could stop any time and it would just be... over. It had always felt like taking a step out of her everyday life, almost as though it was someone else doing those things, some other part of her that took over so that the rest of her wasn't quite responsible. “I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Will. I just.”

And there's nothing she can say to fix this, to ease her guilt or to make it better for him. She had all the words in the world, and they were all inadequate.

After all, if Will had been sleeping with someone else, let alone two other people, she couldn't have forgiven him, no matter what label either of them put on it.

Derek and Emily were still in bed, evidently trying hard not to listen, or to seem like they were listening. Well, Jen didn't need an audience for this anyway. She went out into the living room, closing the bedroom door behind her. They'd understand.

She walked over to the window, putting her back to the beer bottles and pizza boxes which were the evidence of her affair with two of her co-workers. Outside, people were rushing about on their ordinary days, their ordinary lives. She liked to watched them. It reminded her that there was such a thing as normal.

She'd thought Will could give her normal, whatever that meant.

“JJ, where are you?”

“I'm at home. Will, I am so sorry.”

“What's going on, JJ?”

Jen focused her eyes on the traffic moving on the road below. All those hundreds of people, living their own isolated lives, keeping secrets, telling lies. Was that the normal she liked to hope for? Maybe she had it, after all. “I can't do this any more.”

She hadn't intended to say that, but it felt like the only right thing she could say.

“What? This? You mean – JJ, what are you saying?”

“I'm sorry.”

There was a long, long silence. “Is there someone else?”

She could keep lying. She was good at that, apparently, but she couldn't burden herself with even one more lie. “Yes.”

“Who?”

“I can't – Will, I'm so sorry.” Some twisted part of Jen's mind wanted to say Emily Prentiss, just to hear him squirm, because apparently she wasn't done hurting him yet.

“I thought we were so good together, JJ.” He sounded confused. Hurt. Betrayed.

She didn't blame him.

“We were," she said, but it was too late. He'd hung up.

Jen dropped her phone to the floor, not caring what damage she might do to it, and leaned against the windowsill.

Oh, God.

“Jen.” There was a voice from behind her; Emily was standing in the doorway, still wearing nothing but her panties and Jen's shirt. “You okay?”

Jen swallowed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “No,” she said, only the sound of her own voice making her realise how close she was to tears.

“Will?”

“Detective LaMontagne. From New Orleans.” Another layer of horror swelled up. Derek and Emily had assumed she was single. They must have, or they wouldn't -

“I know who he is, Jen. And so does Derek.” Emily crossed the room, neatly stepping over the beer bottles on the floor. “What happened?”

“I was supposed to be in New Orleans this weekend.” Jen counted ten cars passing before she said, “We broke up.”

Emily sighed. “I'm sorry.”

Jen opened her mouth to say something, and choked on a sob instead. Aware of Emily's sympathetic gaze – and she didn't deserve that, not after all of this – she pressed a hand to her mouth, trying to hold it all in, trying to keep it all together. “Where's Derek?”

Emily took the change of subject at face value and said “In bed. I think he was worried he was going to say the wrong thing.” She shrugged. “He upset Garcia about that thing with Battle – before he shot her, I mean. He upset Garcia before the bastard shot her.”

“And you told him off?”

“We girls have got to stick together, right?” Emily slid an arm around Jen's waist and kissed her cheek, remaining there for a second, her forehead against Jen's. Jen welcomed the warmth but the not the influx of additional guilt. She didn't deserve Emily.

Still biting her lip, she nodded. “I never wanted to hurt him.”

“I know.”

A shadow fell through the doorway. Derek, having apparently given up on waiting after about ten seconds. Relentless, he called himself. He was right. “Hey, girl.”

“Jen and Will broke up,” Emily said, saving Jen from having to say it a second time.

“Damn. You okay?”

“Not really.”

It felt absurd to have the people she'd been cheating with comforting her about the end of her relationship. Determined not to wallow in self-pity (she'd brought this mess on herself, after all) Jen struggled not to just break down and cry. If she'd been alone she'd have had a long hot shower and let herself be miserable, but not now. Not in front of Emily and Derek.

Keep on keeping on. That was what she'd always done. Being a small town girl was like living in a damn fish tank: she'd learnt to keep her chin up and put on a brave face for the world to see. It had served her well, that face; served her well until everything got so heavy the facade cracked and broke. Like glass, and where had she seen glass fall like that?

At the BAU, that was where. At the BAU when she put a bullet through Jason Clark Battle's head, shattering a window in the process. The glass scattered on the carpet, and the lights overhead made it sparkle.

Jen wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and knew they could see right through her. “Let's have breakfast.”

“Jen,” Emily said, beginning a sentence that Jen couldn't bear for her to finish.

“I'm hungry. Let's have breakfast.” Jen pulled away and marched into the kitchen. She wanted to make pancakes, to have something to do with her hands and her mind. The cupboard doors squeaked as she opened them to pull out the flour and frying pan and plates. Emily and Derek were hovering behind the counter, watching her.

Derek was the only one who'd gotten around to putting clothes on, and Emily's hair was a mess, and it felt like Jen was the only one who'd noticed. That was wrong. It was all wrong. They were the profilers, not her.

She cooked from memory. She'd made these so many times before, for herself and for her family, and more than once for lovers, for Will, who'd said, “Sexy and a good cook.”

“Jen,” Derek said, in his quiet, talking-to-the-victims voice, “when Will called, you could have thrown us out of your bed and got on the next flight to New Orleans. Why didn't you?”

Oh God, she thought, profilers, no fair, and her hands shook as she measured out the flour. “I couldn't.”

“Sooner or later we're going to have to talk about this, you know,” Emily said, tapping her fingers restlessly on the counter.

“Now might not be the time,” Derek said: protecting Jen, or protecting himself?

The real world pushed ever further into Jen's nest. “I thought we were going to have sex this morning,” she said, deliberately, because Emily had broken the rules by mentioning talking, and so Jen could break them by talking about having sex while sober.

It was self-defence. Jen knew herself well enough to know that.

“That's the most romantic proposition I've ever had,” Derek said, deftly steering the conversation away from the dangerous territory Emily had exposed. “And if I said it, you'd both throw things at me.”

“Emily would probably knock you out.”

“What is this, pick on Emily day?”

“If the shoe fits,” Jen said, feeling lighter as she added the last of the ingredients to the bowl.

“Hanging out with you two really does wonders for my self-esteem,” Emily said, but at least she'd obviously followed Derek's lead and backed off. “Want a hand with anything, Jen?”

“No. Thanks.” All the same, Jen was glad to be able to put her back to them as she cooked the pancakes. She was acutely aware of their presence, of Emily's stifled yawn, of the way Derek drummed his fingers on the counter and then abruptly stopped, as if he'd realised what he was doing. She knew they were watching her, drawing conclusions they might never voice. Jen suspected that one profiler in a relationship might be one too many, let alone two.

Yet even if there was a graceful way to back out of this, she wasn't sure she wanted it.

She'd made too much. She always did, but then, Derek would probably eat the lot anyway, hangover or no hangover. She piled them onto plates as they came off the frying pan and Emily, emerging from a successful rummage through the fridge, drowned them in maple syrup. Derek was fiddling with the coffee machine. If he could get anything decent out of it, more power to him, Jen thought, and beckoned him over to join them at the table.

They ate in silence. Emily was a little pale, presumably from the beer she'd had last night, and Jen wasn't actually sure she wanted food. She ate anyway: having decreed they were having pancakes, she'd see it through to the end. Besides, it would probably help. She'd found from experience that starving herself the day after did little to ease the hangover.

Still in silence, Derek collected the plates after they'd finished eating and stacked the dishwasher. Jen thought about protesting, but lacked the energy for something so inevitably futile. If he wanted to stack the dishwasher, let him.

Emily sighed, and Jen knew that if anyone was going to push things, it would be Emily. Emily had always started it, had initiated all their sexual encounters. Oh, Jen and Derek had wanted it, right from the first, but in many ways Emily was the catalyst. She was, in the end, her mother's daughter, and like her mother Emily knew which buttons to press to get the results she wanted; the only difference was that Emily knew what she was doing, and cared about whose toes she stepped on. Emily always meant well. “How's the head?” she asked.

“Sore,” Jen admitted, as Derek slid back into his chair. “Yours?”

“Me too. Derek?”

“It's okay.”

“Lucky you.” Emily paused and looked straight at her. “Jen.”

Jen wanted to say don't, an influx of panic bearing down on her, but she couldn't bear to see the look in Emily's eyes. Emily had held her hand while Garcia was in surgery. “I'm sorry about before,” she said instead.

“Don't be,” Derek said. He probably didn't want to have this conversation any more than Jen did. She wondered if he'd leave if Emily pushed too far, and how they'd all face each other at work. Couldn't Emily see she was playing with fire?

“I didn't want you and Will to break up, you know.”

“I was cheating on him,” Jen said, speaking the bleak and bare truth, hoping that doing so would distract Emily. “I tried to convince myself I wasn't, but I was.”

It was obvious neither of them could argue with that.

“This is screwed up,” Derek said

All Jen could say was “Yeah.”

Emily didn't say anything. She bit her lip and put her head in her hands for a second, and Jen wondered if they were hurting Emily most of all. She hadn't planned for that, any more than she'd planned for any of this.

Jen was tired of hurting people. She reached out and took Emily's hand, held it the way Emily had held hers at the hospital, and hoped they'd make it through unscathed.

"We need to talk," Emily said. "We need to talk about this."

"It's just sex," Jen said, because maybe she could fool them all.

"Is it? We can't keep living our lives like this isn't happening. Like it doesn't matter, what we're doing." Emily's voice was rising. So it mattered, to Emily, like it mattered to Jen in a strange, disconnected kind of way.

"Let's just go to bed." It was like single-handedly trying to stop a speeding freight train from derailing: terrifying, painful, and futile.

"Jen - JJ - you can't keep pretending this isn't real."

"I'm not," Jen snapped, adding irrational anger to her list of today's failings. "I'm trying to pretend we're not all crazy."

"Maybe we are," Derek said quietly. He stood up. "I'm sorry." He leaned over, kissed each of them briefly on the cheek. Jen's stomach seemed to fall away from her as she tried to fight away the influx of sheer panic. This wasn't the way it was meant to be. She squeezed Emily's hand and felt Emily's grip tighten in response. "You're beautiful," he said. "Both of you."

And then he was gone. The door clicked quietly shut behind him, and emptiness spread around them, and Jen wanted to be sick. It was a struggle to breathe in, and a struggle to breathe out.

"Shit." Emily pulled her hand away from Jen's and walked over to the window. "Shit." She sounded close to tears and Jen wasn't that far behind.

"Emily -" Jen heard her own voice shatter (like the glass) as she spoke. Shit, indeed. She turned away from Emily and focused on the photos on the wall, trying to regain a little of the self-control that had begun to slide away with Will's phone call. Her world felt abnormal; colours too bright, noises too loud, feelings too sharp and raw. Jen liked pastels. Emily was the one who looked good in red.

She wiped the counter down, slowly and precisely, then put the dishwasher on, all the while willing her mind to focus on these simple practicalities of life. Emily hadn't moved or made a sound. Jen wondered if Emily was crying.

Jen wondered if she was crying, and brushed a few tears from her own cheeks with the back of her hand.

Yes.

She walked over to Emily, each footstep lasting a hundred years, and saw Emily turn at her approach. There were tears in Emily's eyes and Jen felt, obscurely, that it was her fault. If she hadn't made a date with Will for this weekend, they would have woken up peacefully and had sex, the peculiar kind of three-way sex that they'd got so good at, and nothing would have had to end.

"I can't do this, JJ."

"Can't do what?" Jen asked, obscurely terrified, trying to tell herself she didn't get what Emily was saying. After all, she'd said those words herself this morning.

"This. JJ, I can't. I'm sorry." Emily's eyes shone, dark and bright. She pushed away a tear with the palm of her hand, and rubbed her hand on her leg. Hiding the evidence?

"Don't go." Jen felt the panic rising again, threatening to overwhelm her whole world. "Emily. Stay." First Will, then Derek. She'd have nothing left to hold onto if Emily walked out of her life too.

"I'm sorry." The words came out in a gasp - this wasn't easy for Emily, either, but that was no comfort - and she bolted into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Jen stood stock-still for a minute or two and then walked over to the sofa, concentrating with every step. She picked her way through pizza boxes and beer bottles and sank down onto it, her apartment suddenly vast and empty and alien. It was as if everything she'd ever known had broken.

It wasn't meant to be like this.

Emily emerged dressed in last night's clothes. She hadn't brushed her hair (Emily - Emily who never stepped outside without looking perfect) and her shirt was wrinkled, but she seemed to have gained control of herself, as if she'd put the Agent Prentiss mask on with her clothes. "I'll see you on Monday?" she asked. There might have been a shade of hope in her voice, but Jen was too dazed to be sure.

She nodded without quite trusting herself to speak, and propped her chin on her hand and swallowed.

"I don't know what to do. I'm sorry, JJ."

And then Emily was gone too.

Time seemed not to pass as Jen sat there, crying and not crying, thinking and not thinking, trying to face the nagging feeling that she could have done something, anything, everything to make this play out differently. She felt both empty and overflowing with emotion, incapable of doing nothing, incapable of action. It was all too much.

Eventually she got up and took a shower and just stood under the water, letting it flow over her body, the endless rush of it mindless and comforting.

***

It was a long, long weekend. Jen cleaned her apartment from top to bottom just to keep her hands busy, missing meals and realising only when the headaches kicked in, swallowing Tylenol almost like sweets. She didn't go outside.

She sat up late on Sunday night, watching reruns of bad movies, knowing she wouldn't sleep if she tried. Tomorrow there'd be a stack of folders on her desk a mile high, detailing grisly crimes across the nation. They could well be in the air by lunchtime, on the way to some town or city somewhere where she'd be forced endlessly into Emily and Derek's company. She had no doubt that the rest of the team would realize something was wrong and would employ all sorts of tactful and not-so-tactful ways to get to the root of the problem. They'd mean well, and they'd be concerned, and they'd have a right to be concerned. Jen felt guilty just anticipating their reaction.

She fell asleep on the sofa and - inevitably - slept badly. She woke just after six a.m. feeling hungover, despite not having touched alcohol since Friday night. Not only that, her back was stiff and her neck ached when she moved it a certain way. Physical reminders to join the emotional ones.

Fantastic.

She spent a long time on her makeup that morning, hiding the dark circles under her eyes, preparing herself to present a polished and professional face to the world. She had no doubt that Emily was doing the same thing, which amused her for a second before her mind turned to the way Emily's breasts felt under her hands and the way Emily hated to get up in the mornings and the little noises Emily made when Derek was inside her.

Get a grip, Jareau. Jen shook her head, trying to clear it of the images. She couldn't do her job if she was going to be constantly distracted by the secrets she carried about the other two, and the secrets they carried about her. At least she could count on them to keep those secrets. None of them were vindictive. That was some slight reassurance.

She wondered what Will was doing, and why she thought more about Derek and Emily than she did about him. She supposed that at least he'd get a lot of mileage out of the cheating girlfriend thing. She couldn't grudge him that even if she could prevent it. She owed him something, after all.

***

It was always a mystery to JJ how any of them got through that week. The whole team went out to Nebraska to chase a serial arsonist; she said not a word to Derek or Emily that wasn't related to the case, nor they to her. There were moments JJ was almost sure she could feel Hotch's eye studying them. Profiling them. They weren't acting normally, and they were on edge, over-compensating, interacting with Hotch and Reid and Rossi to mask the fact they weren't talking to each other. If JJ could see it, so could everyone else.

That thought just made it worse.

She couldn't explain to herself exactly what had happened that sunny Saturday morning. They'd got a little too personal, she'd been too emotional, Emily had pushed too far, Derek's flight-or-fight response to relationships had kicked in and once Derek had gone she and Emily hadn't had a chance. What they had had been built on a foundation of three; they couldn't sustain it with only two. JJ thought almost longingly of her relationship with Will. It had been long-distance, and in some ways more off than on, but it had been easy. There was little in her life that was simple and she valued the things that were.

They arrived back at Quantico just after midday on Thursday. JJ retreated to her office, grateful for the sanctuary it provided. There had been times she'd felt she was missing something, not having a desk in the bullpen with the others; today, there was a selfish part of her that was glad Emily and Derek would be stuck with each other while she holed up in her office and distracted herself - tried to distract herself - with paperwork.

Unfortunately, her solitude wasn't to last. She'd been in there just two hours when Garcia came barreling in without knocking. "So tell me, mon amie, what's with all the tension in the BAU world?"

JJ put her pen down and turned on her best press conference face, disguising her pounding heartbeat and suddenly sweating palms. "Tension?"

"Come on, Jayj. Reid's out there desperately trying to get Emily and my man into some game of his, and they're not having a bar of it. They have a fight in Nebraska? Enquiring minds want to know."

"Ask Morgan," JJ said, lying through her teeth and hating it as another layer of crime unfolded. Garcia. Garcia, who was JJ's best friend and had a complicated relationship with Morgan, the depths of which JJ couldn't even guess at. That was betrayal, too, to be doing what they'd been doing as long as they'd been doing it without telling her. Garcia would have been hurt by the act - what could be written off as passion between two people became a conspiracy with three - and more so by the secrecy. What sort of a friend did that make her?

The blow hit JJ harder than any other in the last week.

"You okay, girl?"

"I'm fine," JJ said. Grin and bear it. She wanted to tell Garcia everything, not to hurt her but to shift the weight out of the pit of her stomach, to let someone else tell her everything was going to be okay. But she couldn't even say she'd broken up with Will, because that would require explanations, and that would require either painful lies or the more painful truth.

"You too, huh? Must have been some fight."

"Yeah." JJ rubbed her forehead for a second. "Look, I'm sorry, I've just got -" She waved her hand at the stack of manila folders on her desk.

"Yeah, yeah, of course." Garcia left as quickly as she'd come, and JJ was stuck with a pile of paperwork - that, at least, was true enough - a pounding headache and the endless, nagging guilt that clung to her, inescapable as a shadow.

She stopped at a bar on the way home. It wasn't one she'd ever been to before, and certainly not the one that had become a rendezvous point for a clandestine affair, but it was all she needed. Breaking half her mental rules in one fell swoop, she downed drink after drink and got drunk enough that the bartender practically had to pour her into a cab. It was stupid, irrational and dangerous, and the only thing she could have said in her defense was that she wasn't quite thinking straight and probably hadn't been for months.

So no excuse, really.

***

She woke with a hangover worse than she'd had in ages. Always before, drinking with the others, lust had taken over before the alcohol could do too much damage.

Well, she deserved it, anyway.

JJ forced herself out of bed as soon as her alarm went off, denying herself the extra ten minutes she usually took to lie there and hide from the world. She was going to have to go by last night's bar and pick up her car before work. No time for self-indulgence this morning, kiddo.

Emily was at her desk when JJ arrived, head down, working hard. She could well have been there all night. But JJ had watched Emily leave last night, and Emily had changed her clothes.

She didn't look up as JJ walked past.

They were in the air again that afternoon, on their way to the middle of nowhere, Missouri. It was one of those cases that seemed to come out of nowhere for the BAU, when some local PD somewhere had put two and two together and come up with five thousand and it took half a phone call for JJ to realise this was a BAU case, and it was a BAU case now.

It was a bad one. Objectively, of course, they were all bad. They saw the worst humanity had to offer, day after day after day, and none of them were immune to pain and horror. Maybe it would be accurate to say that there was bad, and there was worse, and this case was worse. Calculated torture: that was harder to cope with than a brutal rage. Five bodies, so far; young women just beginning their lives who had died in a nightmare made manifest.

For JJ and Emily and Morgan, it had always been these cases that had drawn them to an out of the way bar, to each other, to Morgan's bed. JJ knew that the way she knew her own name, and she craved it. Not the sex, so much (she liked the sex) but the comfort, the understanding, the feeling that she wasn't one person against the world. They were a team so much of the time that perhaps they'd forgotten how to function alone.

***

Missouri meant four days split between a run-down police station and an equally run-down motel, the only plus side of which was that it was half empty and no one had to share a room. The whole town was terrified; JJ knew from long experience that terror usually manifested as anger and she bore the brunt of it, as the public face of the FBI. This time was no different.

Their unsub was a brutal, organised killer who took pleasure in observing and recording the pain of his victims. He wasn't the first of his kind they'd hunted and he wouldn't be the last, but the evidence of torture still made JJ sick to her stomach. The DVDs they found, the copious notes, the basement that smelled sharply of blood, urine, faeces, vomit and decomposing flesh, and finally, the cool, calculated, charming exterior their unsub presented to the world. Bringing him in didn't inspire so much a sigh of relief as a surge of revulsion.

It was never over just because they'd caught the guy.

Emily went in alone to interrogate him, and JJ watched with the others, all too aware of Morgan at her right elbow yet unwilling to move away. Emily's back was straight, her head held high, her clothes and hair perfect. She was everything their unsub hated and feared in a woman, and everything JJ wanted.

Three hours Emily was in the room with that man, and three hours JJ stood and watched, aware only of Morgan's presence beside her. Hotch, Rossi, Reid - they were all there too, but she couldn't feel them the way she felt Morgan.

They couldn't go on this way. Never before had she been so consciously aware of them while she was working. She'd always noticed them - they were beautiful, how could she not? - but not like this. Not so that it felt like every nerve of her body was on fire.

She'd felt that way in bed, time and time again. But not at work. It was distracting, and she hated it.

It made her feel alive.

***

A few minutes before they were due to leave for the airport, JJ noticed Emily was missing. Or, rather, she admitted to herself that she knew quite well Emily had excused herself to go to the bathroom twenty minutes ago and hadn't come back. She laid a hand on Reid's shoulder, murmured that she was going to go find Emily, and wound her way through the station on the way to the bathroom.

Emily was leaning against the sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror. JJ had done that many times herself, once in a run down old house trying to chase away the dogs haunting the edges of her vision. It was a way of convincing yourself you actually were who you believed yourself to be.

JJ shut the door behind her. This room had obviously been a cursory afterthought, added on by someone surprised there had been a need for it. Like the rest of the station, it hadn't seen a can of paint or a bottle of disinfectant in years.

"Emily?" she asked, softly, all too aware that this was the first time they'd been alone since that morning in her apartment but reluctant to let Emily stay here by herself.

"I'm okay. Are we leaving?"

"Soon." JJ stood where she was, awkward in the silence, waiting for she didn't even know what.

"Okay." Emily stood up straight and turned to go, ready to pretend that she was fine, that this case hadn't got to her, that three hours in a room with him hadn't made her feel dirty and on edge. And all at once, JJ wasn't ready to let Emily walk away from her again.

"Something's bothering you," she said. Let Emily interpret that how she would.

"Not just me."

"No, I know." JJ rubbed her forehead. She was meant to be good with people, wasn't she? "We need to talk. You were right."

Emily looked away, to disguise a brief flash of emotion across her face. Her mask had broken. She could keep pretending, but JJ knew, and Emily knew JJ knew. "We can't go back to the way things were before."

"I wish we could," JJ admitted. No sense them both playing games.

"It was easy, wasn't it?"

"Too easy, maybe." Or too hard.

"Jen," Emily said, and then hesitated.

Somebody knocked on the door. JJ almost jumped - she'd somehow forgotten there was a whole world out there - and in the two seconds before the door opened Emily had put her public face back on.

Reid poked his head round the door, looking wary, as though he'd rather be anywhere but the women's bathroom. JJ couldn't blame him. "We're going," he said.

"Right. We're coming." Emily led the way out and JJ followed her, feeling, for some reason, overwhelmingly stupid. No, they couldn't go back to the way they'd been before that morning. But maybe -

Derek was looking at them.

JJ looked at the floor.

***

She went home that night, after the long plane ride and Quantico's harsh unreality and not talking to Emily and not talking to Derek, intending to take a long hot bath with a box of chocolates and a good book.

So, of course, it was logical to have a shower instead, and get dressed in something nice, and apply make-up with something more than casual attention. She'd just go out and have a drink or two. Calling a cab was sensible; she was usually aware of how much she'd had to drink and had never attempted to drive drunk, but she might as well remove the temptation.

Sure, there were plenty of bars in town, but why try one that might be bad when she knew a nice little place that made vodka and tonics just the way she liked them? The place she'd been to the night before they left for Missouri had been pretty dingy, so why risk another bad one? It wasn't too far from her place, and she knew the bartender would call her a cab if she couldn't.

Jennifer Jareau was still good at fooling herself. She kept up the pretense through the fifteen minute drive, through paying the cab fare, until she found herself standing outside the door, waiting and wondering.

Telling herself Derek and Emily weren't going to be there didn't have the desired effect (which was to convince herself that, despite what she wanted to think, this was a stunningly bad idea and she should just call a cab from her cell phone and go straight back home). She took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and walked in.

The place was busy for a week night. JJ dimly registered the people cluttering the bar, the voices, the laughter, the music: all she really saw was Emily Prentiss, sitting at a corner table, nursing a martini.

The bottom practically fell out of Jen's stomach as crazy thoughts chased each other through her head. Emily was here, and she was drinking a martini. Emily drank beer to be sociable, wine with dinner, and martinis to get drunk, and Emily only got drunk when she was miserable or preparing to sleep with two of her colleagues. They had always taken corner tables when they'd come here with Derek; they provided a modicum of privacy. And if Derek didn't show tonight (JJ would put money on him not being here) maybe JJ would take Emily home with her and they could lie to each other and forget to think.

This whole thing was really fucking unhealthy, and JJ knew it, and she couldn't stop herself.

She order a vodka and tonic at the bar and took it over to Emily's table. Emily barely looked up as JJ slid onto the seat alongside her, like a woman who'd been waiting for someone she wasn't sure she wanted to see.

JJ - no, she was Jen now, wasn't she? - took a sip of her drink. Almost mechanically she watched people dance as the music surged and rolled around them. Couples, groups: they looked so happy, so real, so alive. They looked as though they knew themselves to be a part of something bigger than they were, something called the human race.

That was the thing about this job. It made you feel both human and alien, real and false, an observer and a participant, juggling both the overwhelmingly huge picture of life with the tiny, nitty-gritty details of a hundred individual lives, none of which were your own.

That was why they needed this.

Jen and Emily finished their first drinks and started on the second, all without talking. As time passed and Derek didn't show it seemed increasingly unlikely that he would. Jen wondered if Emily would make a move on her without Derek here, if she'd be brave enough to start something, and what Emily would do if she did. Like a small child awaiting her first soccer game, she had butterflies in her stomach.

She only noticed him when he approached their table, carrying his beer, looking more uncertain than she'd ever seen Derek Morgan look in her life. Jen held her breath as he set the beer down on the table and took a seat opposite them, all in silence.

For a moment, the whole world stopped. Not one of them moved. Emily was clutching her hands together in her lap, Derek was gazing somewhere over Emily's shoulder, and Jen stared into the depths of her glass, seeing nothing, waiting.

And then she breathed again.

It was all inevitable now. They all knew what had happened before and what could happen again, but they were going to drink enough to cloud their judgement and make sex look like a really good idea. They'd have each other again, but the lies and the betrayal were going to continue to build and one day their house of cards was going to come falling down on top of them. Jen wouldn't stop it - couldn't stop it - if she tried. She drank steadily, took her turn to buy another round of drinks, and watched them from the corner of her eye.

"I don't do relationships," Derek said roughly, abruptly, maybe an hour or so later. No one had said anything in all that time, and his words sounded strange to Jen's ears.

Emily laughed, and that sounded stranger. "Do you think we don't know that?"

"This isn't a relationship," Jen added. She didn't know whether or not she wanted it to be (maybe, in the end, this would be enough), but at least she knew what this wasn't.

Derek's glass was empty. He ran a finger around the rim, gently tilting the glass to one side, before letting it drop back upright with a quiet thud. "I don't want anyone to get hurt."

"You let us worry about ourselves," Jen said. He'd worry about them, they'd worry about him, they'd all worry about each other. But at least they could pretend they weren't.

Derek hesitated a moment or two. "Fine."

"Fine," Emily said, echoing him, agreeing to a hundred and one things that none of them would ever voice. She stood up and they watched her walk over the bar, leaning casually against it as she ordered another round of drinks. No one watching her would have thought something momentous was happening. Jen merely accepted her drink when it came, and breathed again as they all went back to the slow, methodical drinking, each biding their time and waiting for another to make the first move.

An hour later, Emily's stockinged foot brushed against Jen's bare leg under the table.

Game on.