Saturday was a bright and sunny day, much to Emily’s intense relief. She hated girls’ days that fell on rainy days. This way, they could do what they wanted and the weather couldn’t stop them. She rolled over and looked at the clock, registering she had about an hour before she had to meet JJ and Penelope for brunch. She was looking forward to it. This was time where work was essentially a taboo subject, though their coworkers were fair game. She was a little nervous to get JJ’s opinion on her and Aaron’s relationship outside of the work setting where there was nothing to focus on but the personal, but she trusted JJ. Penelope was going to flip her lid.
Wandering through her morning routine, a luxury she allowed herself since she had the time, she found herself humming cheerfully. She was actually content. She was back to the job she loved, to the people she adored and it felt very, very good. She sang along to the radio as she drove to meet her blond counterparts. It felt good to have her life back. Even if the nightmares haunted her, she had Aaron’s t-shirt and the knowledge that he was simply a phone call away.
She grinned when she saw JJ already seated, enjoying the comfortably cool September air. Emily waved as she put her car in park and climbed out. “Morning.”
JJ smiled in response and waved. “Good morning.”
Emily set her purse down on the ground beside the patio chair, her smile wide. Her injury had been a downer on many of her friendships. The team built their relationships off of the time the entire time spent together and being out for five months had meant she’d missed cases, missed consults and missed events in the office. She hadn’t had much time to catch up with all of her friends and was definitely planning to use the time with Penelope and JJ to catch up.
“How are you?”
“Rested,” JJ answered. “And I’m going to spend the next twenty-four hours without murder, kidnapping or rape.”
“Hear, hear,” Emily agreed as the server poured her a cup of coffee.
“How are you doing?”
“Good,” Emily replied honestly. “My nightmares were murky last night, a nice change from vivid hell.”
JJ laughed. She knew how it went and knew Emily was still having nightmares. Their last case hadn’t helped much either. JJ had a feeling stabbing victims were going to haunt Emily for a while. “How is Hotch?”
“Spending the day with Jack, I hope,” Emily responded, perusing the menu as they waited.
“You don’t know?”
The brunette raised an eyebrow. “I’m not his keeper.”
“But you are in a relationship?”
Emily sighed. “I don’t know what to call it, honestly.”
JJ waited.
“Are we beyond that stage of ‘friends’, yes. Have we gone on a date? Yes. Have we jumped the first hurdles of fraternization? I like to think so.”
“You’ve met Jack,” JJ pointed out, cupping her hands around her coffee mug. “That’s got to be something.”
“I lived with him for five months, I was bound to meet Jack sometime,” Emily responded. “It would have been terrible if I didn’t.”
“Labels are always a problem,” JJ agreed. “Are you girlfriend and boyfriend? Are you at that stage where you can go out together without the buffer of your friends? What do you call midnight phone calls after bad cases…”
Emily laughed. “This doesn’t sound like we’re talking about me anymore, JJ.”
The blond sighed. “Maybe not. Let’s just say you’re not the only one caught between a rock and hard place.”
“You’re not even on the same team,” Emily said, knowing JJ was now referring to her seemingly hot and cold friendship-slash-not-quite-relationship with Spencer Reid. “Fraternization is different.”
“But I’m the assigned coordinator for the team,” JJ responded. “It’s still fraternization.”
Emily held up her hands. “Hey, I can’t even pass an opinion.” She leaned forward, saying in a voice ripe with conspiracy, “For all intents and purposes, I’m banging my boss.”
JJ laughed, Emily’s intended response.
Penelope came then, dropping her overly colourful bag beside Emily’s and plopping herself in the remaining chair. “What did I miss?”
“Emily’s banging the boss.”
“JJ’s getting cozy with the genius.”
Penelope blinked. “So not much. Wait, I thought you and weren’t doing the nasty yet.”
“We aren’t,” Emily agreed.
“Jayje! You know better than to get my hopes up,” Penelope whined.
“She said it!” JJ defended.
All three jumped when someone’s phone sounded. They groaned as they dug frantically through purses and bags. JJ relaxed when she realized it wasn’t her phone. Penelope’s gaze shot to Emily when it wasn’t hers either. Emily was smiling.
Tomorrow: You, me, Jack and the zoo.
“Tell me we’re good. Please, tell me that isn’t a summons.”
“It’s not,” Emily promised, unable to wipe the grin off of her face. Sounds good. Are you spending today with him?
JJ and Penelope exchanged a look. “It’s Hotch, isn’t it?” JJ asked.
Emily blushed. “So what if it is.”
“You’re like a twelve year old girl!” Penelope exclaimed. “I can’t believe this!”
“I am not a twelve-year-old girl,” Emily scoffed, promptly proving herself wrong when she immediately went for her phone at the next message.
Just what the doctor ordered.
I’m glad.
“You’re kidding, right?” JJ asked. “You’re like the girl who just got asked to the prom by the football quarterback.”
“See?” Emily said, turning to Penelope. “I’m not twelve.”
Penelope raised an eyebrow. “And being eighteen is much better?” Then she cocked her head to the side. “It would account for the whole jumping each other thing.”
“Which, I repeat, we haven’t,” Emily said.
“Yet,” JJ and Penelope said at the same time.
Emily sighed. Arguing with both of them was a lesson in futility that she’d learned many-a-time. “Is it that bad? That I’m happy?”
“Of course not,” Penelope responded, contenting herself with the menu.
“So long as you’re going into this with both eyes open,” JJ agreed.
“Meaning?”
“I don’t mean to be a party pooper,” JJ apologized. “I just think that you guys don’t realize what you’re getting into. What happens if you break up? What happens if you have a fight and it comes into the office? What happens if one of you gets distracted and we lose someone?”
“Whoa, Jayje, jumping the gun aren’t you?” Penelope asked, trying to refocus the conversation on the happy. “This is a good thing.”
Emily waved off Penelope’s defense. They were legitimate concerns from someone who worked in the field with both agents. “We know there’s no guarantees,” she said, meeting JJ’s eyes to try and reassure her at the same time. “But we wouldn’t go into this lightly. Aaron…Hotch, isn’t the type of person to just jump without knowing there’s a safety net in place. There’s a lot of thought that went into this JJ. And we were careful.”
JJ had to give them that. She had only known that there was something more between them because Emily hadn’t exactly tried to sneak back into their room in Sacramento. “So telling me…?”
“A sort of calculated risk,” Emily agreed. “I can’t talk in hypotheticals to you guys, that’s not fair. The fact that you know who it is should make things a whole lot easier. And if it makes you feel better, JJ, we talked about having to go in, guns drawn. It wasn’t that long but… I think I owe you a thank you.”
JJ smiled. She’d deliberately shuffled things so Emily and Aaron were alone in their SUV because she knew it was the first time they’d be heading into a situation with weapons and bulletproof vests. She’d been happy to see they managed it with grace and without really exposing to the world exactly what was going on between them. “And Morrow?”
Emily smirked. “I’m not sure we’re going to have a problem with her.”
“Oh please,” Penelope scoffed. “She’s like goody two shoes to the max.”
“I might suggest you give her a chance,” Emily said with a secret smile. “She may surprise you.”
“You know something,” JJ accused.
“No details,” Emily replied innocently. “But if she’s Strauss’ mole, I definitely gave her food for thought.”
“You told her a lie to see if she’s a good secret keeper?” Penelope asked. “Oh, oh, oh! You threatened her with diplomatic assassination if she didn’t cooperate.”
Emily laughed. “Nothing quite that dramatic. I gave her a choice, and ultimatum almost.”
“You gave Strauss’ bug an ultimatum?” JJ asked in confusion. “How in the hell did you manage that one?”
Emily took a deep breath. Aaron had figured out for himself that Strauss had put her on the team to find dirt on them. It was still difficult to admit, even to friends that were as genuine as JJ and Penelope. Part of her still felt like she betrayed them, even for a time. “I was her.”
“You were not,” Penelope denied.
“I was,” Emily insisted. “When I started at the BAU.”
JJ’s forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
“Strauss asked me for dirt on Aaron,” the brunette answered. “In exchange for information about the people who were ahead of me on the FBI ladder.”
Both women looked a little shell shocked. “And?”
Emily shrugged. “I learned early on it was either ambition or family.”
“And now you’re dating the guy you were supposed to find dirt on,” Penelope said shaking her head. “Isn’t the world beautiful? I told you everything happens for a reason.”
Emily wasn’t usually one for talk of fate, but she found herself blushing.
“I take it you didn’t play spy?” JJ asked almost rhetorically.
Penelope gasped, as if coming to a realization. Which she quite thoroughly had. “Oh my God!”
“What?” JJ asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You quit!”
Emily found herself blushing redder. There was more than the team at stake in her very, very short time as a spy for the department head. By that point she’d admitted to JJ and Penelope that maybe, just maybe, she had a sort of thing for their boss.
“What?” JJ asked, still confused.
“You quit instead of spilling your guts to Strauss! Girl, this is priceless.” Penelope was almost cackling at the news.
Even as JJ laughed, it made her feel much better about their relationship, in a twisted sort of way. Emily had been willing to quit for Hotch once, the same time he’d been debating the move out of the BAU. She wasn’t pessimistic enough to think that it could never work between her colleagues, but she felt much better that if it did, or if it didn’t, they’d find a way to make something work. Emily resigning for Hotch was proof of how invested she’d been, even then. And if their relationship ended in happiness for all involved, all the better.
Emily was almost skipping when she returned to her apartment later that night. She’d spent the entire day with Penelope and JJ, sharing secrets, gushing, talking about anything except dead bodies and serial killers. Her message light was blinking. 2 messages. The first one was from Aaron.
“I would have called your cell but you made it clear JJ and Garcia were important, so I thought I’d leave a message instead. Jack and I will be by around nine to head to the zoo. He’s really looking forward to it. We both are.”
Emily smiled all the way through the message. She was looking forward to it too. Not only had she been too busy to do anything remotely tourist-like for the last long while, she was looking forward to spending the day with both Aaron and Jack.
The second message made her freeze.
“Emily, it’s your mother. Thanksgiving is coming up and I need your RSVP as soon as possible. Phillip is throwing a fit.”
Emily groaned. She’d completely forgotten about her mother’s fancy Thanksgiving dinner. A night of beauty, tradition and single, rich men her mother thought appropriate for her to settle down with. Every daughter’s worst nightmare. She felt bad for Phillip too. She knew how stressed he got when his mother was trying to plan the perfect event. She picked up the phone, dialing Phillip’s direct line instead of going through her mother.
“Phillip, it’s Emily. I’ll be at Thanksgiving. Plus one.”