Title: Everything and Nothing
By: rue-valerian
Pairing: Prentiss/JJ
Rating/Warning: R - to be safe and in the interest of full disclosure there is benign mention of Het sex, just so you know.
Spoilers: Some, for "In Heat"
A/N: I am just having so much fun with the recent turn of events, and I encourage anyone else to have fun with it too. The possibilities are endless!
A/N 2: Unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine.

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The BAU was dark, devoid of activity. The only sound in the air was the faint buzzing of one florescent ceiling light illuminating the far corner of the bull pen. She felt the tightening of the muscles in her abdomen, tightening, releasing. She leaned back in her chair, her gaze taking in the slim form confidently striding toward her. A flash of white and blue beamed at her as it advanced. Tanned forearms were swaying, brushing the fitted shirt that hugged the tight torso. As the figure approached her, rose above her, she felt the weight of strong hands clasping her shoulders; legs straddle her middle and settle on her lap. The lithe body was inching closer to an abdomen flexing, contracting, now fluttering. She sensed the warmth emanating off of the body whose arms were now reaching to encircle her, sliding around her neck. The beautiful face, still smiling, stretching forward, pressed open lips to the flaming shell of her ear.

 "Let me…" 
 

"Prentiss?!"
 
She startled at the wide grin of her colleague. His eyes twinkling under his dark brow, fixed on her. He was chuckling to himself, his hand rising to his forehead as she looked up at him.
 
"Man! Where were you woman?"
 
"What?..."
 
Morgan's brows shot upward, "Prentiss, I've been callin' your name three times now." He chuckled again, "Are you done with those notes? I won't get outta here 'til midnight if I don't get started on this report. And I gotta get outta here before six tonight. It's ball night."
 
"Ball night?"  
 
She didn't care about ball night. She knew she was caught, embarrassed at her obvious embarrassment. She was buying herself time to support her attempt to gather her composure as she struggled to stay the red hot flush racing up her neck to her ears.
 
"Yeah, basketball, you know the game. Look, whatever, I just need those notes. Okay?"
 
She managed a half-grin, ruffling through her outbox and handed a stack of papers to her colleague. "Here. Done."
 
"Thank you, Prentiss. And thank whatever or whoever let you go long enough to get my notes done!"
 
He was still laughing to himself as he walked back to his desk.
 
She was not laughing. She cursed herself. The recurring apparition, in its various locations, its varied outcomes, was interfering with her work, again. She had to stop. She knew that. Emily had acknowledged to herself that her mid-work day meanderings were going too far-- especially when others were noticing-- interfering in the bubble she had constructed for herself these past few weeks.
 
Emily was all well aware that the ever-deepening obsession with how and with whom her co-worker slept- did she hold him at night, did she cling to him, did she scream his name as he was fucking her?— had gone well beyond "too far".
 
She promised herself, for the umpteenth time, that she would stop.
 
She peered over the desks in the bullpen to her office and observed the blonde head bowed over stacks of files, oblivious to her- or anyone else. She cursed herself again. Why did she continue to harbor these fantasies over a woman who was clearly otherwise occupied?
 
Christ, I'm too old for this.
 
Throughout her adult life, Emily reasoned—with some sense of accomplishment— that she had successfully deflected a number of attractions over women that would cause her to embark on the disappointing and often painfully familiar cycle of falling for a straight girl, which therefore also meant unattainable. She was self-aware enough to recognize the attributes that could lead her down that rocky path of misery and despair. Her interests almost always centered on strong, beautiful women with a sense of humor, athletic stature, awfully sure of themselves, advanced in their profession, and most importantly, down to earth; a tantalizing diversion from the men and women she had in met in various cosmopolitan circles living all those formative years in her parents' house.
 
This particular situation, however, had decidedly eluded Emily's self-calibrated regulator.
 
She felt the red heat of embarrassment tentacle up her neck again. She quickly glanced around the room for profiling eyes that may be focused on her at that particular moment. As there were none, she shifted in her chair and continued to assess the sanity of her thinking.
 
Emily cataloged the reasons she continued to hold fast to the irritating hypothesis she had been toying with in the most private compartments of her neatly ordered mind. She had, on several occasions, caught the straight— and therefore, she reminded herself, unattainable— media liasion simply staring her way. She was convinced, after much internal evaluation, that she had seen the blonde dragging those clouded blue eyes across her lips, breasts, and, yes, her hands. She stared at her hands, Emily reassured herself, quite often.
 
And, so it was, against her better judgment, that Emily Prentiss had continued to indulge herself the, albeit ever-so-slight, possibility that this straight woman might fall on the sexual spectrum that she, sometime in her mid-twenties, had devised to explain contradictory behavior of this nature. She held fast to the foregone conclusion that almost forty years of experiential wisdom continued to verify; that all women are straight, until they are not. 
 
 
Since meeting her over a year ago, Emily had never once questioned that somewhere in her formidably guarded heart, JJ Jareau held a soft spot for her. JJ had never been anything other than attentive, caring and conscientious of her feelings, often hyper-aware of even the slightest of mood shifts that belied Emily's well-practiced consistent professional demeanor. JJ liked her, cared for her, trusted her— a fact that made Emily's shame increase twice-fold when her prurient longings revealed themselves in mid-day musings. She had to stop. She knew that.
 
If truth be told, Emily could be sure that she was quite a good friend to JJ. Wasn't she the one who had coerced the younger agent in Miami, through gentle prodding and encouragement, to put an end to the year-long charade she had wrapped in a see-through secret?
 
The only remaining enigma of the event that nagged and poked at Emily's brain following the implosion of the expose in front of everyone's eyes was one burning question she could not seem to shake. If they were such good friends, why hadn't Jennifer mentioned anything to her about Will? In the past year of their burgeoning friendship, Emily had certainly proven herself to be trustworthy. She could understand keeping it from a relentless Morgan, a fatherly Hotch, Garcia-- who could be nebbish at times-- even Reid: who had by all indications, finally shed his long-held crush on her. But in light of the shared dinners, drinks after work, conversations over coffee and the occasional Saturday run together, Emily could not understand why JJ would keep a seemingly happy piece of news a secret from her.
 
It was causing Emily further confusion to register that in the weeks following their return from Miami, JJ had become more than willing to share numerous anecdotes, humorous occurrences, and adventures in Cajun food and nightlife with her--  to Emily's stoically quiet chagrin. Indeed, if anything, JJ's attentions to her had significantly increased.
 
To Emily, however, central to her agitation since Miami was the burn that she felt every Friday afternoon when she was certain JJ was off to her weekend trysts with Will. She imagined, in numerous variations, the twist of JJ's face in ecstatic pleasure, golden hair clinging to sweat-skimmed skin, his hands roaming every inch of her toned body and both of them never desiring to leave their den of iniquity so they could start up again when the ever-returning urge struck them. It was not physically possible, in the natural world, to muster the athletiscism and endurance required to perform the sex JJ was having with Will in Emily's head-- or, for that matter, the sex JJ was having with Emily, in Emily's head.
 
Fucking Miami changed everything and nothing.
 
Emily first scanned the bullpen and looked up again at the window. Now, the media liaison's office appeared to be empty. As she uncomfortably craned her neck to more fully observe the window to determine if the blonde had indeed, left her office or merely moved to her filing cabinet, she heard the voice behind her.
 
"Looking for something? …someone?"
 
Emily sensed the flush racing up her chest with a velocity exceeded only by the red racing down her neck.
 
"Hi!" Emily smiled as wide as her state of mind could muster at the moment.
 
"Yes. You, actually."
 
JJ stepped around Emily's chair to lean on her desk.
 
"Did you need something?"
 
Emily noted that at that moment, half of JJ Jareau's ass was occupying the very space vacated by her coffee cup just a half hour ago.
 
"Um…what?"      
 
Oh, brilliant, dumbass.
 
JJ knitted her brows in a sarcastic crinkle and darted her eyes to the same direction she now pointed, toward her office window, curling her finger upright as if testing the wind.
 
"Um, you said you were looking for me?"
 
Emily detected a teasing tone in the voice of her co-worker, but quickly dismissed it, chalking it up to her libido playing tricks on her cognitive reasoning again.
 
"Yes… yes." Emily hoped JJ didn't notice her nervous chuckle. "I was wondering what you were doing for lunch."
 
"Oh sorry Em, I'm swamped. I think it's lunch at my desk today. I came out here to see if you're done with those notes?"
 
Emily attempted to feign a nonchalant response.
 
"Yes! Of course, the notes… they're done." Emily reached into her outbox for the second time in the hour and sifted though the files until she came to the one marked "JJ". She gave the form a quick once-over.
 
"I had to call the Albany PD to get this guy's name again. I was sure I spelled it wrong. Remember that weird guy? The witness who kept pulling that nasty handkerchief out of his pocket, blowing his nose in it then wiping his forehead? What a goofball!"
 
Still scanning the form, Emily was chucking heartily, recollecting their interview with the witness. She and JJ had laughed about his well-used handkerchief all the way back to the station. She registered that she was hearing no response from JJ and looked up at the other woman in curiosity.
 
JJ's gaze seemed to be swiveled to the middle-distance in a red-eye fix on Emily's hands as they held the form.
 
"Jayj? Remember that guy?"
 
"What?! JJ quickly raised her focus to meet Emily's.

"That goofy guy in Albany? ...that witness? ...with the handkerchief?"
 
"Yeah, that guy… with the gross handkerchief!" JJ chuckled through the hasty response.
 
Emily internally noted the blush in the other woman's cheeks with some surprise.
 
Okay, I saw that.   
 
JJ glanced toward her office, quickly rose from her perch on Emily's desk and snatched the forms Emily was now extending to her.
 
"Great, thanks Em, oh and… sorry about lunch… raincheck, okay?"
 
Emily nodded delivering a forced smile.
 
"Absolutely. Raincheck..."
 
JJ had by now, completed regained her composure.
 
"Good, thanks. Well, back to the grind…" JJ widened her smile while she dragged out the word "g-r-i-n-d."
 
This thoroughly irritated Emily.
 
"Yep, me too. Have fun."
 
Emily watched JJ's backside as she climbed the stairs leading up to the mezzanine before she caught herself and returned most of her attention to the files on her desk. She permitted herself one final glance in the direction of JJ Jareau as she disappeared through the doorway of her office.
 
Fucking Miami.
 
Changed everything… changed nothing. 


fin.

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