“Dr Reid? Dr Reid. Spencer.”
Spencer’s head lifted slowly, his mind still groggy. Usually, he woke quickly and with full awareness, but it seemed like his mind was moving sluggishly. So it took him a few minutes to register the blue-eyed dark-haired woman at his elbow.
“Did you fall asleep here?” Becky asked.
Spencer looked around at the conference room that had become the BAU’s home base in Vegas and sighed. “I guess so.”
“You didn’t go home with your team?”
“Something isn’t right about these cases. The motive is in there somewhere.”
Becky arched an eyebrow. “So you decided to lose sleep over trying to find it?”
“We’ve been looking for it for days,” Spencer lamented, standing and heading to the boards again. He smiled at the petite woman as she handed him a mug of coffee.
She smiled back shyly, moving to stand so her small shoulder brushed his arm. “Find anything useful?”
“No,” he replied on a sigh. “There’s nothing here to give us the ‘why’.”
“Maybe there is no why.”
“There’s always a why,” Spencer replied absently. “Offenders do things for a reason, even if the reason is subconscious.” He sighed, checking his watch. “I have to go meet the team.”
“I’ll drive you,” she offered. “CSU sent a few things up to my desk last night.”
Spencer smiled at the other woman. “That would be great.”
He missed her blush.
JJ and Emily were the last ones to breakfast that morning and it was all the fault of the dark bags that had shown up under their eyes. It had taken both women just a little bit more effort to hide the obvious signs of a lack of sleep and JJ knew the last thing Emily wanted was for people to ask questions.
“Good morning,” she said, trying to be cheerful. She and Emily took the last remaining seats, Emily’s beside Hotch “ as it inevitably was “ and JJ’s between her brunette colleague and Derek.
“Morning JJ,” Derek replied, his voice cheerful and she arched an eyebrow at him. He shrugged before pouring her a cup of coffee. “We took the liberty of ordering.”
“Oh, thank you. I’m starving,” Emily said
“You’re always starving,” Derek teased.
Emily pulled an indignant face. JJ was impressed at how well she acted the part. “Not true. I’m always starving first thing in the morning.” She smiled her thanks at Hotch who had fixed her coffee for her.
Becky cleared her throat, a little put off by how casual they all were. “I have results for you guys, from CSU.”
“Better make it quick,” Emily said. “We have a no-case rule over food.”
“Dinner excepted,” JJ added. Emily’s words had made her look at the woman in a new light and she could see where Emily’s comment had come from. She’d noticed the woman sitting beside Spence the moment she’d stepped into the restaurant and she’d felt her stomach clench. So that was what jealousy felt like.
“Victim number three had a bit left in her,” Becky said, not wasting any time. “CSU took the knife tip and determined it was a four-inch knife.”
“He’s not playing games,” Derek said, folding his fingers and watching the detective intensely.
“I took the liberty of trying to find places that would sell a knife that long.”
“Let me guess,” JJ said wryly. “The list was a mile long?”
Becky smiled slightly. “You betcha. I got the phone book.”
“We’ll send the names to our tech,” Spencer said snatching the page from her fingers.
She stuck out her tongue at him slightly. “I don’t know-“
“You don’t want to,” Spencer cut her off. “What Garcia does is better left secret.”
Becky blinked. “Wow. When they called you guys All-Stars, they certainly mean it.”
The food came then and JJ let out a thankful groan. “You are my hero,” she said, squeezing Derek’s forearm.
“How did you know?” Becky asked, fishing a ten out of her purse. She’d bet that Derek’s decision would be wrong.
“JJ loves hollandaise sauce,” Spencer said absently, his eyes racing over the page as he held a piece of whole-wheat toast in the other hand.
JJ reached out and snagged it without thinking twice, dipping it in the yellow sauce. “But only if-“
“There’s enough lemon,” Spencer finished with her.
They both froze then, realizing exactly what had happened. JJ looked away, focusing her eyes on her breakfast, shifting to allow Derek access to her potatoes. They’d reverted back to the way things had been and however nice it had felt, JJ was acutely aware of how much she did have to fix. It was easy, when they were surrounded by the team, to forget that there was anything off about their relationship, that they’d even had and ended a romantic relationship. But they had, and JJ knew the only person she had to blame was herself.
Same went for the jealousy she’d felt earlier.
Emily watched the interaction as she picked through her fruit salad and Aaron’s. She’d virtually watched JJ’s eyes go green when she’d noticed the other woman present, but Emily couldn’t fault Reid in the slightest. The boy deserved some serious love and for the first time, Emily could see that the young woman put him at ease almost as well as the team did. Becky still sat outside the team dynamic, but Reid wasn’t stuttering with her. They seemed to have built a comfortable camaraderie and quickly. Emily was glad for that.
And maybe it was exactly the kick in the pants JJ needed. Emily had hoped she and Reid would have worked things out before they got to the break up stage, but apparently JJ had been a little more stubborn than Emily had originally anticipated.
She glanced up as she felt Aaron’s hand on her thigh. “What?”
“You okay?”
She swallowed and hoped it wasn’t obvious. She should have known he would be watching her, cataloguing her every move, making sure she was okay. He looked at the crime scene photos too. He’d have seen the resemblance in general case facts. “Mmhmm. Thinking.”
“About?”
“Reid.”
He chuckled softly, one ear cocked to the conversation around them. True to form, case talk had dropped off as soon as the meals had arrived. “That is a rather interesting development.”
Emily snorted. “Want to lock them away and study them?”
“No,” he told her. “I would like to know what it was about her that put him at ease though.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Maybe how much she looks like Jayje?”
“I doubt it,” Aaron replied. “If anything, I’d think he’d avoid her type.”
“If you include the fact that she’s about as opposite on the hair-colour spectrum you’d be right. Otherwise... she’s the same woman.” She went back to the fruit salads.
“You don’t know that.”
Emily flicked his fingers where they still rested over her pants. “It’s not that I’m not happy for him, okay? I am. He needs something stable to remind him that not all women are going to let insecurities take over or that all women leave him. He’s got a bad enough track record with his mother, Lila and now JJ.”
When she met his eyes again, he was looking at her critically. “What?”
“You missed a spot.”
“Huh?”
His pointer finger came out to tap the corner of her eye. “You missed a spot. That’s why you were both late.”
Emily shrugged. “JJ couldn’t sleep. We got chocolate.”
“Are you sure it was JJ that couldn’t sleep?”
Emily sighed. She didn’t want to tell him. She wanted that to be in her past, for her attack to just go away and leave her alone for good. It was why she didn’t want to tell him about the nightmares. She didn’t want to revert back into the clingy woman she’d been when she’d had them. That wasn’t Emily Prentiss and she wasn’t about to show weakness when everyone else around her seemed to need her to be strong. Well, everyone except Aaron.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said. “Stop worrying, I’m fine.”
“It would be normal to react to the crime scenes, you know,” he said almost conversationally. “And I trust that you’ll come to me if you’re having problems.”
Emily squeezed her hand with a forced smile. “You know you’re always my first call.”
He let the subject drop and she let out a mental sigh of relief. Hurdle one gone. She knew the nightmares would probably get worse before they got better and as a result, she would probably get worse before she got better, but her body was pretty used to little sleep. For the time being, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
She just hoped she could continue to keep it hidden.