JJ couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t been able to sleep for a while, since she’d started fretting and fussing about things with Spence. More often than not, she dozed and so, when Emily started moaning and mumbling in her sleep the fourth night of their case, JJ heard it. And JJ worried. Those were the sounds JJ could remember Emily making when the nightmares still haunted her brunette colleague and JJ almost cursed herself and the rest of the team for not seeing it.
JJ perched on the end of Emily’s bed and shook her friend. “Em, Em, wake up. It’s a nightmare.” She almost jumped back when Emily’s eyes suddenly opened, the woman’s entire body tense. She sat up almost immediately.
“Did I wake you?”
“No,” JJ reassured. “I was already awake.”
Emily sighed, clenching her hands in the blankets at her waist.
“Want to talk about it?” JJ asked, probing gently. Of all of them, Emily was the most closed off and the least likely to share fears or weakness. She joined her friend at the headboard, both women leaning back against it.
“You can’t tell Hotch,” Emily said, voice almost completely void of expression.
JJ was surprised by that request. Hotch had been the one to help Emily through her last bout of nightmares. In fact, now that JJ thought about it, Emily had to be experiencing at least murky nightmares like this since the beginning of the case. Random stabbings were bound to bring Emily’s terrors back to the forefront and no one was more vulnerable than when they were asleep.
“Okay,” she promised anyway.
“At all, JJ. Nothing. Please.”
“I won’t,” JJ swore. “They’re that bad?”
Emily gave a mirthless chuckle. “More like they’re back.”
“They’re the same ones?”
“Variation on a theme is probably a better description.”
JJ didn’t know what to do to help, especially since Emily had made her promise not to go to Hotch. He was the only person he could think of that would be able to help Emily through it, the same way he’d helped her through it last time.
“You want to talk about it?”
Emily sighed. “Not really.”
Silence fell for a moment. “Want to go get chocolate?”
Emily smiled. “Now there’s a good idea.”
They made their way down to the front lobby, wallets in hand, intent on the vending machines they’d seen when they came in. Emily went for M&Ms, JJ a Mars bar, and both women went straight back up to the room they were sharing. They knew better than to stay in a hotel lobby late at night while they were travelling.
Once they were settled back upstairs, eating their chocolate while leaning against Emily’s headboard again, JJ spoke. “The detective seems nice.”
Emily arched an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Mmhmm.”
“She reminds me of you.”
JJ’s head snapped to her friend’s. “What?”
“Well, with the obvious exception of the hair colour, everything else about the two of you is almost the same.”
The blond picked at her wrapper, now not so sure she wanted to eat the chocolate. “Em-“
“You screwed up,” Emily said bluntly.
JJ knew her friend was tired and punchy and knew that it meant there would be no censoring of her opinion like there had been the night she’d raced to JJ’s apartment. “I know.”
“Then fix it. Obviously he’s still hung up on you.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“You’re right, it’s not. Because you screwed up big time. But that doesn’t make it impossible.”
“You’re optimistic.”
“Because you’re pessimistic. Look, Jayje, all hiding aside, I get that you’re afraid of getting hurt. I get that it’s hard to admit you may actually be falling in love with a guy and what you may have is serious enough for you to give your heart to, but it’s the most rewarding experience. You let your insecurities take hold and, well, you know what happens.”
“Yeah,” JJ agreed.
“Not only that, but this is Spencer Reid we’re talking about. You used to go to that man for everything, so we all knew it was simply a matter of time before you both dug your heads out of your butts and started a relationship. It took me by surprise when your life started revolving around Pen.”
JJ blew out a breath. “I was scared?”
“It’s not a question, it’s a statement. But you can spend the rest of your life terrified of a good thing and let it pass you by.”
“You’re just full of philosophical comments tonight.”
Emily shrugged. “The nightmares are reminding me how lucky I am, I guess. I could have seriously died that night and I would have missed out on loving Aaron. How sucky would that have been?”
That got a little chuckle out of JJ. “So it’s that easy?”
“Of course not,” Emily replied. “If it was that easy insecurities wouldn’t exist. I’m just telling you they’re normal.”
“He probably hates me.” JJ knew her friend was rolling her eyes.
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s still head over heels for you.”
“But...”
“That doesn’t mean you can spill your heart out to him and expect everything to go back to the way it was. He was hurt, JJ, probably more than you were. He didn’t want to break off the relationship and you know that as well as I do. He did for you because you seemed to need your space.”
“If you love something let it go, if it comes back, it’s meant to be.”
“Exactly. You’re going to have to give him time to trust you again.”
JJ nodded. Build trust. She had an idea of how to do that and it involved metaphorically starting from scratch. “Okay.”
Emily smiled. “Think you can sleep now?”
JJ let out a huge yawn in response. Apparently she was actually exhausted. “Apparently.”
“Good,” Emily said, nudging her back towards her own bed. “Sleep. You’ll need it.”
“So will you.”
“I’m fine on little sleep,” Emily responded with a tight smile.
JJ curled herself under the covers in the other bed, eyelids drooping. “You know, you should take your own advice.”
“Oh?”
“Mmhmm,” JJ mumbled. “Being weak is okay. It means your human.” She heard Emily’s chuckle.
“Go to sleep JJ. Tomorrow we have to catch a bad guy.”
JJ felt her eyes falling closed. Her last thought was for her friend and the knowledge that Emily probably wasn’t going to be sleeping much that night.
Penelope, much like JJ, couldn’t sleep. Which was unfortunate. Peanut needed her to sleep. She needed to sleep. She’d even gone home instead of trying to work through the insomnia. But that had been a double-edged sword. Penelope knew why she couldn’t sleep. Derek’s words were floating around in her head from the last time they’d both been cuddled under her blankets.
I want to be with you.
I don’t want to break your heart.
I don’t want you to doubt me.
Let me know when that time comes.
She couldn’t get the words to stop replaying in her head. It had given her plenty to think about over the last couple of days since they’d been away. And think she most certainly had. She knew why she didn’t believe him. She wasn’t really the type to have men as gorgeous as Derek Morgan fall for her. She had no idea if what they were doing was real, or if he was doing it for the baby.
On the other hand, it was Derek Morgan, the man she knew inside and out. She’d already met his mother and had a pretty good understanding of where Derek’s good heart came from. So why on earth was she doubting his intentions? There was absolutely no reason for her to do that, not if he really was the type of guy she knew him to be.
She sat up in bed, grabbing for her cell phone, making a mental note to let Emily and JJ know she’d finally figured out what they’d both been trying to tell her for ages. But first, there was another call she had to make.
“Hello?”
“Sorry to wake you.”
“Pen?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Why are you calling so late? You should be sleeping.”
Penelope smiled at the overprotective tone in his voice. Even upset with her he looked out for her. “I know, and I will, I just... I figured something out just now and I need to tell you.”
She heard the rustling of blankets and sheets, then a door open and close. “Okay, Baby Girl, go for it.”
“I’m sorry,” she began. “I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for you to realize that I’m not actually what you want. And I know I’ve been stupid about it. Emily and JJ have been trying to tell me, you’ve been trying to tell me, but I guess I just had to come to the conclusion on my own.”
She heard his breath catch on the other end of the phone. “Penelope?”
“I love you, Derek. I do and I want to have this baby with you. I want to fight over Peanut’s name, over the colour to paint a nursery, over which last name we’re going to give Peanut. I want to talk about what we’re going to do about living arrangements-“
“Move in with me.”
“What?” That was most definitely the last thing she’d expected. “Derek, are you-“
“I’m serious. Look, you love me, right?”
“Yeah...”
“And I love you. And I know the last thing we both want to do is shuttle Peanut back and forth between two apartments, not to mention the stress and cost of buying almost two of everything.”
She had to admit, that sounded pretty logical.
“I’ve got a few properties. We can fix one of them up into a little house, Pen. You, me and Peanut because neither of our apartments is fit for two people, let alone two of us and a baby.”
That sounded more than logical. It sounded logical, rational and fantastic. “Yes.”
“I’ll even let you design the nursery all by yourself and- What?”
“Yes,” she repeated, feeling tears come to her eyes and cursing her hormones. “Yes, let’s build a house together.”
“You won’t be doing any building,” he warned her.
Penelope laughed. “I don’t care. Yes.”
Silence fell as she sniffled.
“Now what?”
“Now I wish I wasn’t across the country and we could do something to celebrate,” he told her frankly.
Penelope groaned. “You’re going to start something you can’t finish.” The words came out before she’d thought about it. When she realized what she’d said, her entire body stiffened.
Though they’d started some sort of quasi-relationship, they had yet to make it past the innocent kissing stage. She knew that theoretically it was a pointless thing, taking their relationship slow, but she’d been so insecure that she hadn’t wanted to give up everything to him “ again “ only to have him turn around and leave her “ again. She’d even cut back on the innuendoes, not that it was difficult. When he was the one calling her he was often more concerned with her overall well-being than their usual banter.
“I’d rather finish it in person,” he said, voice a low growl.
It made Penelope shiver. “Then I suggest you hurry up and finish up the case so you can come home.”
“You better believe it Princess. I’ll be home soon and we will celebrate.”
There was no way she was going to complain about that.