Chapter Text
Sunlight streamed into the warm bedroom as Jennifer Jareau awoke and blinked against the brightness. She yawned and stretched, her body wrapped in soft white sheets.
JJ rolled over, coming face to face with Emily Prentiss. She smiled at the sight of the woman still asleep, looking peaceful in her slumber. JJ pulled the blankets up and over her girlfriend's bare shoulder. Checking her watch, she realized that she had woken up before her alarm, and could have slept another half an hour and still had enough time to make it to Quantico with coffee and doughnuts for the team.
Despite the picture perfect moment, JJ didn’t feel well. She did normally wake up before Emily, as she was much more of a morning person, but typically she basked in the half-asleep haze to watch Emily sleep, her eyes tracing every plane of her face. After years of sharing beds with Emily because of cases, JJ had heard more than one complaint about her own sleeping habits, whether it was her incessant kicking or how she would often wake up before dawn to run before they had to go to work.
Nausea and dizziness hit her like a brick, causing her to sit up in the bed and fight back the overpowering desire to gag. JJ tossed back the blankets, leaped out of bed and ran into Emily’s ensuite bathroom.
She barely made it to the toilet in time to throw up what was left of her dinner into the bowl.
She knelt in front of it, her bare knees feeling chilled against the grey tile floor. As she sat back, collapsing into the wall, the nausea abated slightly. She let her head fall back into the wall, her breaths coming in gasps as the world spun.
JJ frowned and racked her brain for what could possibly be wrong with her. She hadn’t drank anything the night before, as the last time she felt this bad had been after drinking an entire bottle of rosé at Penelope’s a few months back.
She flushed and stood up to brush her teeth, but her dizziness hadn’t gone away. JJ swayed when she stood, clutching tightly on the counter to steady herself. Her stomach protested, warning her not to move too quickly, else she would be back in front of the toilet bowl.
The media liaison then pulled her toothbrush out of her toiletries bag and carefully brushed her teeth, working on getting the sour taste out of her mouth. She wondered whether she had eaten something bad the day before. With all the takeout they ordered, no wonder her stomach was upset.
JJ walked back into Emily’s bedroom, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She still felt off kilter, but the nausea was subsiding.
Emily had sat up in the bed, and looked at her with concern.
“Are you ok, Jayje?” she asked, her eyes bleary but still full of concern. JJ had clearly just woken her up with her activity in the bathroom.
“My stomach’s upset,” JJ explained, rubbing it slightly, her voice coming out with more of a whine to it than she had expected.
Emily frowned, patting the bed and moving over so there was space for JJ to join her in bed. JJ sat down, allowing Emily to pull her in for a hug. She leaned into her girlfriend, basking in the warmth and comfort that a simple touch offered her.
“If you’re not feeling well, why don’t you stay here?” Emily said, “We can’t have you giving the whole team the flu.”
Emily reached up to touch JJ’s forehead with the palm of her hand, checking to see if the blonde had a fever.
“I’ll be fine,” JJ said, batting Emily’s hand away from her face. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I will always worry about you, JJ.”
JJ relaxed into Emily’s embrace cuddling back up onto the bed, deciding to get whatever rest she could before her alarm. Emily’s strong arms wrapped around her, and JJ rested her head on Emily’s collarbones.
The older woman stroked JJ’s hair softly. She immediately felt better at the touch, able to focus on pushing away the nausea.
This was all still new. Them. Their relationship. Whatever JJ and Emily were. They had admitted their mutual feelings in a rush of emotion in a hotel room only a few weeks ago. Since, it has been a whirlwind of nights together, secret conversations and stolen glances across the bullpen. They were girlfriends. They had said that, so far. But, beyond that, the details of their relationship were still being established.
With a team of profilers, JJ could only guess that they had already been made, but they still weren’t making it public to the team, just yet. It was nice to have secrets, since they often knew more about JJ than she knew about herself.
Walking JJ from her comfortable, half-asleep state, Emily’s alarm blared out from the clock radio on her side of the bed, an annoying beep that came as a preset on the device.
“Time to get up.” Emily murmured into JJ’s hair, tickling her sides lightly, making JJ squeal and squirm.
“Stop!” JJ gasped, attempting to escape by wriggling around in Emily’s grasp.
She then leapt off the bed and grabbed Emily’s pillow for protection, wielding it like a weapon.
Emily followed suit, standing with a pillow in hand. The two agents were soon engaged in a pillow fight, jumping and running around the room using the soft pillows as weapons, smacking each other on the head before dancing away.
They fought back and forth across the room, each landing a few solid blows on the other, one notably hitting Emily right in the face, messing up her oh-so-perfect bangs.
JJ overcame with giggles as she leaped onto Emily, forcing her down onto the bed with her hands wrapped around the wrists of the taller girl.
They landed with an oof and JJ pinned her girlfriend by her arms, who looked up at her with a daring look in her eyes. JJ leaned down, closed the distance and kissed her gently.
Emily strained against JJ’s grip, lifting her head up to deepen the kiss. Their lips moved against each other in a comfortable and familiar motion. Emily’s tongue swept between JJ’s lips, and she opened her mouth sliding her tongue against Emily’s.
JJ let go of the other woman’s arms in favour of tangling her fingers through her dark hair, allowing Emily the freedom to hold onto JJ by the waist.
“If we didn’t have to get to work soon, I’d take you here—again—on this bed. Just like I did last night,” Emily whispered between kisses.
“ Please,” JJ gasped, desperate for Emily to keep touching her.
“JJ, it’s already seven,” Emily whined. “We have to go.”
“I’ll be quick,” she said. “I promise.”
“We’re never quick.”
JJ pulled back, sitting up on the bed, still straddling Emily. Smiling down at her, “Fine. You owe me one tonight,” JJ said.
“Deal.”
JJ stepped down onto the hardwood floor, her socked feet padding over to Emily’s closet. She chose a pair of black slacks and a beige sweater off the hook. She relaxed at the fact that between the cuddles and the pillow fight, her stomach had calmed down and her nausea was mostly abated. She could hear Emily stand up and walk up behind her.
“That’s my sweater,” Emily said.
JJ looked down at it inquisitively.
“No it isn’t,” she retorted, “I’ve had this forever. It was in my go bag and hung it up here last night.”
“I lost it forever ago.”
JJ found herself smiling at her own accidental theft. She must have had it for long enough that she thought she owned it in the first place.
“We can’t keep switching clothing,” Emily said, “We work with a bunch of highly trained profilers, they notice things like this for a living.”
“I can’t help it, I love wearing your clothes.”
Emily planted a kiss on her cheek, distracting her as she pulled her sweater out of JJ’s hands.
“Morgan noticed that I was wearing your blue shirt last week,” Emily said, “He’s close to putting the pieces together. I hate lying to him.”
“I know,” JJ sighed. “I guess I just like having something that’s just ours. For now at least.”
Emily nodded, then handed JJ another shirt— a white button-up that actually did originally belong to the blonde— to put on. JJ grinned at her, but decided she would steal Emily’s Yale sweater to sleep in that night as payback.
A few minutes later, they both left Emily’s apartment in separate cars, still attempting to maintain the façade of ‘just friends’ for the rest of the team. JJ ignored the lingering worries about her upset stomach, knowing that she’d gone to work feeling worse in the past. She once chased an unsub with a high fever and didn’t blink, she could handle an upset stomach. She had work to do.
After the sun set that day, the March rain had turned to snow. JJ watched it fall on the drive to the motel, swirling around her vision and covering the ground in a patchy blanket. They had flown to Maine that morning to investigate a string of murders of young men in the woods, and they were staying in a tiny motel off the highway.
JJ was fighting the urge to sleep in the passenger seat, as Emily drove along the dark twisty, hilly road. In the back, Spencer Reid was looking out the windows at the forest that surrounded them.
Her stomach was upset, again. A sloshing feeling that made her scrunch her nose up. The speed that the car was taking the turns quickly and the motion wasn’t helping her nausea.
She opened her eyes, almost certain she was about to vomit . She felt exhausted and worn out, despite having a relatively easy workday.
The media in the sleepy town of Ellsworth, Maine weren’t particularly demanding, as all JJ had to do was give a short statement to The Ellsworth American, which was the name of the local paper. The reporter was a relaxed guy, about thirty, with a scruffy beard and tired eyes. After a short phone call and a promise to reveal more information once the case was wrapped up, JJ was mostly done for the day.
Her normal activities of liaising with the local cops went smoothly and she ended up spending most of her time on paperwork and bouncing theories back and forth with Morgan and helping Reid with his geographical profile.
“Are you ok, JJ?” Emily asked, glancing over at her quickly before turning again to make sure that she was watching the road.
JJ placed a hand on her own forehead, trying to quell the motion sickness by the sheer willpower.
“I guess I’m still not feeling well,” JJ confessed with a groan.
“What are your symptoms?” Reid piped up from the back seat.
She wasn’t surprised that this piqued his interest. For a boy without a medical degree, he still lived up to the ‘doctor’ in front of his name.
“I threw up this morning,” JJ admitted. “It’s nothing.”
“And you’re experiencing motion sickness, now?” he asked.
“Yes, doctor,” JJ said sarcastically, still not opening her eyes.
“She doesn’t have a fever yet,” Emily offered, “She probably doesn’t have the flu.”
“And we all ate the same meals today,” Reid mused, “It’s likely not food poisoning.”
“Unless you went rogue and ate something out of the precinct’s vending machine,” Emily quipped, “Who knows how long those have been there.”
JJ shook her head, still not able to open her eyes against the sloshing of her stomach.
She had actually barely eaten anything that day, as the takeout they had ordered hadn’t sounded particularly appetising. She was just trying to make it back to the hotel without asking Emily to pull over.
“Well,” Reid continued, “You could be pregnant.”
JJ didn’t say anything as his words hit her like a brick.
“Early pregnancy symptoms include missed periods, as well as fatigue, smell sensitivity, morning sickness, food aversions, mood swings and… er- breast changes, frequent urination,” he continued. “Not to mention bloating and raised basal body temperature.”
JJ rolled her eyes in his direction, but not before an awkward silence engulfed them. Emily said nothing, waiting for JJ’s response to the suggestion.
She couldn’t be pregnant, she reasoned internally, she hadn’t had sex with a man in ages. Then, a memory flashed across her mind, reminding her that that wasn’t entirely true.
Just about a month ago, before she and Emily had gotten together, she had spent the night with William LaMontagne Jr., the New Orleans cop that she had met on a case months before.
It was February and Will had called her, asking if he could visit. JJ had said yes, because, at the time, she had all but given up on Emily. She had been certain that the profiler didn’t like her back.
She and Will had drunken, mediocre sex that evening after they left the bar. They had used a condom, obviously. There was no chance she was pregnant. Well, if she had said this out loud, she knew Reid would say there was a zero point three percent chance, or something like that.
Was her period late? She tried to do the mental math, but the mental math and her car sickness weren’t producing a satisfying answer.
JJ ran her hands through her hair nervously, laughing off Reid’s words despite her racing thoughts.
“Don’t worry,” JJ said with a laugh, “I think I would know if I were pregnant.”
Even as the words left her mouth, JJ knew she didn’t quite believe them. She did have morning sickness, fatigue and even what could be described as food aversion. She couldn’t tell if the emotions she had felt that day were the normal turmoil of working with serial murders or a symptom of something.
“Or you could be exhausted by working back to back cases and this is your body telling you to slow down,” Reid said, clearly back tracking.
“That’s probably it, Jayje,” Emily said, glancing nervously over at the blonde, who’s hand was rubbing her eyes against the glow of the street lights leading up to the motel.
“Yeah,” JJ said as they pulled into the driveway, sighing in relief as she stumbled out of the car, desperate for some solid ground to calm her stomach.
She wasn’t pregnant. She was just stressed and overworked. They had had a bulk of hard cases this winter and it was taking a toll. Nothing more.
The case progressed relatively normally. The team built the profile and was able to track down a few suspects off some suspicious elements from their internet presence.
They had narrowed it down to two men, who happened to live on opposite sides of the unsub’s comfort area. After a stake out, the team finally caught the unsub on his way to revisit the crime scene.
After a long interrogation, they had gotten a full confession.
Leaving the processing to the local brass, the team was on a flight out of Maine that night.
They were seated side by side on the jet, with the table in front of them and a fast-asleep Hotch opposite to them. His head was leaning off to the side, his arms crossed in front of his chest.
JJ curled up on her chair, her legs pulled up onto the seat, her usual blanket tossed over to Emily, as she was feeling uncomfortably hot despite the climate controlled private jet.
“What’s wrong?” Emily whispered, noticing the face JJ was making, “Still nauseous?”
“I’m just tired,” JJ said. “I think it’s hot in here.”
Emily tilted her head slightly, looking back to JJ quizzically.
“It’s not any hotter than normal, JJ,” she said. “You sure you're ok?”
“Maybe I am coming down with something,” JJ admitted. “It is the tail end of flu season.”
“Take the weekend off,” another voice joined their conversation. Hotch lifted his head up and was looking at her with concern. She guessed he wasn’t actually asleep after all, and was glad she and Emily hadn’t been whispering about other things.“We all need a break after these back-to-back cases.”
JJ nodded, knowing that she would still have her cell phone on, and that with her job, there was rarely any time off, but was happy to spend the weekend home instead of in a random hotel room.
The plane landed in Quantico late that night. It was a rainy evening, and they had to walk quickly across the tarmac under a spare umbrella that Emily had tucked away in the carry-on compartment.
Leaving the airport, once again in separate cars, JJ drove over to Emily’s, trying to clear her mind by listening to some music.
They had a system. An unspoken communication that meant that unless someone said otherwise, they would meet at Emily’s apartment once they were home. It was closer to work, not to mention much nicer than JJ’s tiny one-bedroom.
As JJ drove, Reid’s words were repeating themselves in her head. You could be pregnant. JJ bit her lip, trying to focus on the road.
Nausea she could explain away. She had food poisoning, or the flu. Same with her lack of appetite. And the fact that her period was a few days late. The fatigue was from working so hard.
But together? It painted a picture that JJ didn’t want to see. Pregnant? Off a one-night hookup that convinced her that the relationship wouldn’t go anywhere? Impossible. Improbable. Unlikely.
What if she was?
Still, JJ found herself pulling into a gas station just outside of DC. She parked next to the store, taking a deep breath in and out before working up the nerve to go in.
She hopped out of her car and wandered into the shop, blinking at the brightness of the fluorescent lights and grabbing a few snacks before coming up to the shelf on which pregnancy tests were placed. There were two options: one much more expensive than the other. Assuming that it meant it was probably better, she grabbed two of that brand, adding it to the pile of chocolate and bags of cheetos in her arms.
I’m not actually pregnant, JJ assured herself. This is just to be sure.