Chapter Text
It had been raining when the jet landed, that soft drizzle that turns heavy when you’re not looking. The shoulders of her jacket are soaked through just from the walk to the car, the end of her ponytail dripping down her neck.
It seems a fitting end for a case that has left JJ feeling uneasy, deflated. Now, despite the car ride over here, damp. Not quite herself.
But her key slides into the lock the way it always does, and the door creaks just right, and in the hallway, the same chaos she left three days ago remains, if a little tidier than before. The juice stain in the top right corner of the rug is still there, the scatter of toys on the table a different arrangement, but the same.
It looks and sounds and smells like home.
Slipping out of her jacket is like taking a weight off, both literally (it’s heavy with rain) and figuratively. Unzipping her boots, sat on the bottom stair, JJ considers throwing them. It would be cathartic, she thinks, the thud of them against the laminate. But the kids are asleep.
Just the thought of it makes her feel better anyway.
There’s a light on in the kitchen, and she is drawn to it like a moth, dumping her bag, her keys, her sweater on the way through. In another life, Will would be there, looking weary with a dish towel in his hands, and probably picking a fight. Or she would. Either way, a fight would happen, or it wouldn’t, and she would go to bed facing the wall. Letting Will curl up around her, arms around her waist, his breath on her skin, but her head somewhere else.
Emily looks up at the sound of her socked feet on the tile, her face lighting up in an easy smile that JJ can’t help but mimic. It grows as she takes in the scene; the dark haired child sprawled across Emily’s lap, head resting against her collarbone as she sleeps, Emily’s hand rubbing small circles into her back. She’s clutching her favourite stuffy, a book face down on the kitchen table.
“She wanted to wait up for you,” Emily whispers.
JJ kneels by them, looking down at Tessa’s part-opened mouth, the scrunch of her tiny nose, lightly tracing her cheek with her fingertip, the way she did when she was a baby. It never fails to astonish her how perfect her kids are, how beautiful. How lucky she is.
“Oh sweet girl,” she hums, breathing in deeply, letting the scent of her child’s hair linger, before looking up at her mama, “why?”
“To be the first to wish you happy birthday.”
Taken aback, JJ knows her face is a picture of puzzlement, even before the trickle of laughter leaves Emily’s lips.
“You forgot,” she says, all dimples and playfulness in her rich brown eyes. She looks so much like Tessa, JJ aches with it. “It’s tomorrow… today, technically.”
Her birthday has never been a big deal. She doesn’t remember a time between the age of 11 and 28 where she celebrated it. Hotch had once asked if there was a reason she never took it off, never acknowledged it. JJ had just shrugged her shoulders, ignored the way her heart raced at the question. There was too much to explain. After Henry, it had tentatively become a day of flowers and breakfasts in bed and handmade cards heavily sponsored by Crayola and macaroni. But only if they didn’t have a case.
Their first year together, Emily had taken her out for dinner. It had been a disaster, the restaurant slow and overpriced and with music so loud they couldn’t hear each other over it. They’d left before the entrées, grabbed pizza on the way back. Danced in the back yard, shoeless and drunk on the bottle of wine they’d snatched from the restaurant.
The second, she’d been heavily pregnant, and Emily had been out on a case. They’d more or less given up after that.
“Guess how much I love you?” JJ murmurs into Tessa’s dark, unruly curls, watching as her tiny hand unfurls, her face pinched, struggling against the hold sleep has over her. “I love you right up to the moon…”
A soft mumbling voice says, “and back?”
“And back,” JJ repeats, rubbing the frown from between Tessa’s eyebrows.
She’s asleep again even before JJ can dust a kiss over her skin.
“Happy b—”
JJ cuts Emily off with a finger against her lips, replacing it with her own. It’s a gentle, tired kind of kiss. It feels like home, too.
“Let her,” JJ whispers as they pull apart, her gaze falling back on their sleeping daughter’s face, “you can tell me another way.”