Genius at Work, Chapter 13/15
Jul. 7th, 2010 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madlorificGenius at Work
A "Criminal Minds" fanfiction by MadLori
Chapter 13
They ordered pizza and ate it on the patio in the warm glow of the setting sun, perching on the edge of the deck because there was no other furniture yet. Emily had the foresight to stash a six-pack in the fridge, so there was cold beer as well.
Emily sat with her back against the railing, her knees drawn up, watching him eat three-quarters of the pizza. “I swear, I don’t know where you put it. Maybe your brain burns twice as many calories as the rest of ours.”
“There’s no evidence that intelligence has any affect on the metabolism.”
“I was being facetious, Reid.”
“I know. I was being ironic.”
She shifted, crossing her legs under her. “There’s some practical stuff we ought to talk about.”
“Like what?”
“Like everything. I can’t just move my stuff in here and then go on like nothing’s changed.”
“You can’t? I mean, I know you can’t. But what, specifically, do you mean?”
“We ought to change our wills and our life insurance beneficiaries right away. Monday morning, first thing. And I’ll call my lawyer about drawing up some power of attorney documents.”
“Is it really that urgent? Once we’re married it’ll…”
“And when will that be? We haven’t even talked about a date. It could be awhile, and if one of us is killed in the line or hit by a bus or something before we have automatic rights to each other, we ought to have our bases covered. I don’t want you denied hospital visitation. I want you to be able to make decisions for me if I can’t.”
Reid put aside his plate and propped his feet on the edge of the patio step, wrapping his arms around his knees. “I don’t like to think about that.”
“I don’t like it either, but we have to. This is the business part of a permanent relationship. There’s paperwork involved in becoming official.”
Her phraseology amused him for some reason. “Is that what we’re doing? Becoming official?”
“That’s not all we’re doing. We’re becoming visible, too. Someone at the Bureau’s going to notice that we’ve both changed our addresses to the same one. And they’re sure going to notice when we both move to the same health insurance policy and become each other’s next of kin.”
He sighed. “Looks like the era of plausible deniability is over.” He looked at her. “Let’s talk to JJ about it. She might have some insight about how to handle it.”
“I think we should tell her, Morgan and Garcia first. Just them, without Hotch or Rossi.”
“Hotch knows I was planning to propose, and so does JJ.”
“It’s one thing to know you planned it and another thing to know I said yes. Once Hotch and Rossi know, they’re going to have to tell Strauss, and then…” She sighed. “But that’s a bigger discussion. We’ve got other things to work out first.”
He let himself fall back onto the patio, crossing his arms over his eyes. He knew she was right, these things had to be talked about. But it just wasn’t anyone’s fantasy about moving in with the person they loved to spend their first evening together talking about wills and health insurance. “Okay.”
“Spencer, you think I’m having tons of fun with this stuff? We might as well get it out of the way so we can enjoy this house and each other.” She harrumphed with some significance. “Especially each other.”
He let his arms fall away and looked over at her. “Are you bribing me with sex?”
“No, I’m just pointing out that the sooner we hash out all these unsexy details, the sooner we can get to the sexy ones.”
He sat up and mirrored her posture, legs crossed beneath him. “All right, I’m on board.”
“Money.”
For a moment, he was utterly confused. “You need some cash? I think I have twenty bucks in my wallet…”
“No, we have to talk about how we’re going to handle money. Do you have any ideas about that?”
“I hadn’t given it much thought.”
“I think it’s important for each of us to maintain some financial independence. What do you think?”
“That sounds logical, I guess.”
“Okay. Here’s what I propose. Each payday we deposit half our paychecks into a joint account. From that account we pay the household expenses. Utilities, cable, homeowner’s insurance, property taxes. Any joint credit cards or anything like that. The other half we keep in our individual accounts so we can pay for our own clothes and credit cards and such. We can alternate buying groceries or just use the joint account.”
Reid nodded, impressed by how much she’d already thought this out. “That sounds very logical.” It also sounded smart. He’d heard of couples having arguments over how much the wife spent on shoes or how much the husband spent on golf. If he and Emily still had their own money, it wouldn’t matter to him if she bought eighty dollar perfume or if he spent a hundred bucks at the rare book store.
“I just have one condition.”
“What?”
“I want to help pay for Bennington. I want you to pay for your mother’s care out of our joint account.”
Reid took that in for a moment. His first reaction was shame, followed by guilt, quickly overtaken by amazement that she was suggesting it. “No. I can’t let you do that.”
“Yes, you can, and you will. I should help. I want to. She’ll be my mother too, pretty soon.” She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “I’m going to be your wife, Spencer. That means a lot of things, but one thing it definitely means is that I share your burdens. I need to be sharing this responsibility with you.” She blinked hard, then picked up his hand and kissed his knuckles. “I’m going to be your wife,” she repeated, much more softly, as if she were just marveling at the concept. She pressed her cheek to his hand.
He got up and slid close to her so he could pull her against him. She tucked her face into his neck and took a couple of deep breaths. “You okay?” he whispered. Her fingers were clenching at his shirt.
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s just that every so often it hits me. We’re really doing this.” She drew back and looked up at him in the rapidly-fading light. “Enough practical talk for one evening. Let’s go upstairs and enjoy the fact that we don’t share walls with anybody.”
They made love in Emily’s bed, which felt strange and different sitting alone in the middle of their new master bedroom. There was a slight echo effect from the empty shelves and bare walls that sent back to their ears each gasp, each groan and each cry they wrested from each other.
Her body and her love were the only heaven Reid had ever believed in, and this night that heaven was his again, and would be forever, in this house that was now theirs. They moved against each other in slow, sensual ebbs and flows, washing over each other like the tide coming in, warm breath and damp skin, the cool air in the bedroom a sharp contrast to the heat of her all around him, her legs wrapped around him and her hands all over him. Her half-lidded eyes as she looked up at him, her hair spread on the pillow – everything he saw was thankfully stored away so he could savor it later when he couldn’t just reach out and touch the graceful arch of her neck as he could now, when he couldn’t bend and kiss her breasts, when he wasn’t here to worship her with his hands and his lips but only with his mind.
When her body heaved and arced off the bed as she came it was primitive, and when he spent himself inside her it felt sacred, like they were consummating something unspoken tonight. They collapsed in a heap, still twined around each other. He felt Emily’s fingers combing through the damp hair at the base of his neck, then her lips press to his throat. “Baby,” she whispered.
“Mmmm?” He was still a little nonverbal.
“How did we go so long without this?” she said, the words sibilant and breathy.
He rolled to his back, pulling her with him and drawing the covers around them. She shifted to a comfortable position, her head on his chest. “We didn’t know any better.”
She snuggled close, making adorable little growly noises, her hands playing over his chest and sides. “I love you,” she said, kissing his neck.
He smiled, sighing happily. “I love you, too.”
“I hope you’re not getting tired of hearing it.”
“Impossible.”
“Or of saying it.”
“It would take a lot more than two hundred and thirty-six times to get tired of saying it.”
She lifted her head and looked down at him. “Is that how many times you’ve said it?”
“No. It’s how many times either of us has said it, including the two we just said.”
Emily stared at him for a moment, then laughed ruefully. “You. I can’t believe you sometimes. You’ve been keeping count?”
“It’s my brain. It makes its own fun.”
“Well…two thirty seven,” she said, smiling.
He kissed her softly. “Two thirty eight.”
Reid stretched and turned his face toward the morning sunlight. It took him a moment to remember that he was in his own home, his new home, in this big empty bedroom. He turned his head and smiled, seeing Emily’s mussed hair poking out from underneath the covers.
He eased out of bed and pulled on his flannel pants and a t-shirt. Neither of them had unpacked many clothes, and suitcases and boxes were scattered about. He hated the disarray, but knew it was temporary. He glanced back at Emily, still sleeping peacefully.
Reid went down to the kitchen to start the coffee and see what he could scrape together for breakfast. He’d made sure his coffeepot had made it over from his old place and was installed on the countertop. They might not have chairs or dishes or food yet, but they had coffee.
He looked around at the kitchen while the coffee brewed, still amazed that this was his house…their house.
I’m engaged to Emily. Emily is engaged to me. Emily and I are engaged. As in, going to be married.
When will we do it? Where? How? Oh God, is Elizabeth going to want to put on some huge society spectacle? Emily won’t want that. She won’t let her mother steamroll over us, she’ll stand up for what we want.
Super. Now we just have to figure out what it is that we want.
We. We want. Not she wants, or I want, but what we want. Everything from now on will be a “we.” Our life. Our home. Our money. Our future.
He was jolted out of his thoughts by the sound of footsteps padding down the stairs. Emily shuffled into the kitchen, her face slack with lingering sleep, clutching her old, too-large pilled-up gray cardigan around her. She smiled and kept shuffling over to him. “Morning, roomie,” she muttered.
“Good morning.”
“Coffee?” she said, hopefully, peering around him at the percolator.
“Few minutes.”
She nodded and leaned against the counter, stretching as a big yawn split her face nearly in two. Reid smiled. He found her almost impossibly cute in the mornings, when she was rumpled and sleepy. She reverted to a near-childlike state of bleariness until coffee and showers had woken her all the way up and she became the competent, no-nonsense Emily he knew and loved. She angled her head into the light coming in the kitchen windows. “Mmm. Sunshine feels nice.” She turned and leaned against his chest, rubbing her face over his t-shirt. “You feel nice, too.”
He chuckled and patted the back of her head. “Half of you is still upstairs asleep, isn’t it?”
“Mmm. More like three-quarters.” She tilted her head up. “Kiss, please.”
He kissed her. She frowned, apparently displeased with the quality of the kiss. He kissed her again, more slowly and more thoroughly. She kissed back, her hands tucked between their chests. “Better?” he murmured.
She nodded. “Okay, only one-quarter of me is still upstairs asleep now. Need coffee to achieve fully waking state.”
He turned and saw that the coffeemaker was done. “Good timing, then.” He poured a cup for her and one for himself. They looked around at the near-empty house, frowning at the lack of furniture. “I guess we stand up,” he said.
Emily took a big drink, sighing. “Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand. He let her pull him to the back door and outside, then down the patio to the grassy yard. She sat down in a patch of morning sunshine, cross-legged like a kid at a campfire. He sat facing her and they sipped their coffee in silence for a few minutes.
“It is vaguely ridiculous to be having morning coffee in the backyard,” he finally said.
She shrugged. “I think it’s nice.” She was staring down at her cup, tracing one finger around the rim.
“Emily?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s on your mind?”
She looked up at him, finally. “We should just get it over with.”
“Get what over with?” he asked, although he knew exactly what she was referring to.
“The talk we have to have about work.”
He thought about playing dumb some more, but it would just be delaying the inevitable. “Maybe if we ignore it, it’ll go away,” he muttered.
She shook her head. “It won’t. Like I said last night. We’re becoming official. Which means the FBI will find out. Strauss will find out. It’s a good bet she’ll want one of us to transfer off the team.”
“Maybe she won’t.”
“Maybe not. But we need to be prepared so that if she does, we know what we’re going to do.” She took a deep breath and put her coffee cup down in the grass. “It should be me. I want to be the one who leaves the team.”
Reid looked at her face, set and resolute. “So that’s just it, huh? I don’t get a say?”
“Of course you do. I’m just telling you what I think the best decision is.”
“Why shouldn’t I be the one to transfer out? Hell, I could leave the FBI altogether. I’ve got half a dozen standing teaching offers, including the Academy. I could take a job there, at least we’d still be working in the same building.”
“No, Spencer. The team needs you.”
“The team needs you, too.”
“The team needs you more. Your skills are…unique.”
“You have special skills, too.”
She sighed. “Not like you do. My skills could be used in just about any other department. I’ve worked in other departments before, I can do it again. You’ve never worked anywhere but the BAU."
“You’re saying I couldn’t make the adjustment?”
“I’m saying there’s no reason you have to.”
“I won’t be the reason that you have to leave the team,” he said, his voice rising a little bit. “I can’t have you give up your career because of me.”
“I wouldn’t be!” she said, sounding a little exasperated. “The BAU isn’t the only career path in the Bureau.”
“But it’s the one you want. It’s the one you worked for!”
“Yes, it is. I don’t want to leave. But I want you to stay on the team more than I don’t want to leave it.”
He shook his head, his chest filling with helpless anger at the entire situation. “I hate that it’s even an issue. We’ve already been working together on the team for months while having a relationship. If it hasn’t impacted our work so far, why would it start now?”
“That isn’t the point. We need a contingency plan.”
“You leaving the team is a terrible contingency plan.”
“I agree. But it’s less terrible than the alternative.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so dead set on me staying on the team! I would leave it in a second so that you didn’t have to.”
“Great, so we’re both willing to sacrifice our position on the team so the other could stay. That’s not going to get us to a decision. We have to be objective about this. Objectively, you are less easily replaced on the team than I am.”
“That isn’t true. Where are they going to find another profiler who speaks six languages?”
“A useful skill, but one duplicated by any interpreter. Experts on everything with eidetic memories don’t just grown on trees, you know.” She put her coffee cup aside and took his hand. “You are unique in a way that I am not, sweetheart.” Reid looked up at her. She hardly ever called him that. “Look, one of us will have to go. I’d rather choose between us than have Strauss choose, wouldn’t you?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“If all things were equal we could flip a damned coin for all I care. But all things are not equal. Your abilities are more valuable and less replaceable than mine. So it should be you who stays on the team. You’d see that in a second if your emotions weren’t getting in the way.”
He shook his head. “My unique abilities, sure. Once again those abilities are hurting someone I care about.”
“Oh, no. Don’t you dare start in with the guilt. I chose this, you know. I chose you. Don’t act like you’re inflicting yourself on me. You and me and what we have – it’s the most important thing in my life.”
He nodded. “Mine, too,” he managed, in a hoarse whisper.
“It’s more important than the BAU. That’s what I do. But us – it’s part of who I am.”
“The job is part of who you are, too.”
“I know. Just like it’s part of who you are. But committing to each other – well, we knew there’d have to be compromises.”
“You shouldn’t have to be the one making the compromise.”
“I’m not. I’m compromising that I’d be the one to leave the team, and you’re compromising by letting me. It’ll suck for both of us in different ways. That’s going to have to be the price of admission.”
“What if it’s too high? It might not be today, but what about tomorrow? A year from now?”
“Then we’ll renegotiate. Nothing’s written in stone. As long as we can keep talking about it we’ll be okay.”
He gave her a wry half-smile. “You talk about my special abilities, but you’re much smarter than me, you know?”
She grinned. “Don’t you forget it.” Her smile faded a little. “So we’re agreed?”
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to. I don’t like it, either. It’s just how it is.”
He put aside his coffee cup and pulled her toward him. She scooted close and put her arms around his neck. “I still hope we don’t have to do this.”
“Hope is fine. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”
“I hate that there’s any ‘worst’ here. Isn’t this supposed to be a happy time for us?”
“It is. I am happy.” She kissed him. “In fact, I’m kind of stupid happy.”
He looked at her, a slow grin spreading. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m moving into this amazing house with a guy I’m crazy about who just gave me a really nice piece of jewelry. I might even be a little – giddy.”
“Wait a second, the calm and controlled Emily Prentiss is giddy?”
“As a schoolgirl.”
“You don’t look giddy.”
“Well, I guess this is what ‘giddy’ looks like on me.”
“Doesn’t look much different than normal. How will I tell the difference?”
“My eyebrow’s arched slightly differently.”
“Ah.” He looked up at the eyebrow in question. “I’ll have to remember that.”
A "Criminal Minds" fanfiction by MadLori
Chapter 13
They ordered pizza and ate it on the patio in the warm glow of the setting sun, perching on the edge of the deck because there was no other furniture yet. Emily had the foresight to stash a six-pack in the fridge, so there was cold beer as well.
Emily sat with her back against the railing, her knees drawn up, watching him eat three-quarters of the pizza. “I swear, I don’t know where you put it. Maybe your brain burns twice as many calories as the rest of ours.”
“There’s no evidence that intelligence has any affect on the metabolism.”
“I was being facetious, Reid.”
“I know. I was being ironic.”
She shifted, crossing her legs under her. “There’s some practical stuff we ought to talk about.”
“Like what?”
“Like everything. I can’t just move my stuff in here and then go on like nothing’s changed.”
“You can’t? I mean, I know you can’t. But what, specifically, do you mean?”
“We ought to change our wills and our life insurance beneficiaries right away. Monday morning, first thing. And I’ll call my lawyer about drawing up some power of attorney documents.”
“Is it really that urgent? Once we’re married it’ll…”
“And when will that be? We haven’t even talked about a date. It could be awhile, and if one of us is killed in the line or hit by a bus or something before we have automatic rights to each other, we ought to have our bases covered. I don’t want you denied hospital visitation. I want you to be able to make decisions for me if I can’t.”
Reid put aside his plate and propped his feet on the edge of the patio step, wrapping his arms around his knees. “I don’t like to think about that.”
“I don’t like it either, but we have to. This is the business part of a permanent relationship. There’s paperwork involved in becoming official.”
Her phraseology amused him for some reason. “Is that what we’re doing? Becoming official?”
“That’s not all we’re doing. We’re becoming visible, too. Someone at the Bureau’s going to notice that we’ve both changed our addresses to the same one. And they’re sure going to notice when we both move to the same health insurance policy and become each other’s next of kin.”
He sighed. “Looks like the era of plausible deniability is over.” He looked at her. “Let’s talk to JJ about it. She might have some insight about how to handle it.”
“I think we should tell her, Morgan and Garcia first. Just them, without Hotch or Rossi.”
“Hotch knows I was planning to propose, and so does JJ.”
“It’s one thing to know you planned it and another thing to know I said yes. Once Hotch and Rossi know, they’re going to have to tell Strauss, and then…” She sighed. “But that’s a bigger discussion. We’ve got other things to work out first.”
He let himself fall back onto the patio, crossing his arms over his eyes. He knew she was right, these things had to be talked about. But it just wasn’t anyone’s fantasy about moving in with the person they loved to spend their first evening together talking about wills and health insurance. “Okay.”
“Spencer, you think I’m having tons of fun with this stuff? We might as well get it out of the way so we can enjoy this house and each other.” She harrumphed with some significance. “Especially each other.”
He let his arms fall away and looked over at her. “Are you bribing me with sex?”
“No, I’m just pointing out that the sooner we hash out all these unsexy details, the sooner we can get to the sexy ones.”
He sat up and mirrored her posture, legs crossed beneath him. “All right, I’m on board.”
“Money.”
For a moment, he was utterly confused. “You need some cash? I think I have twenty bucks in my wallet…”
“No, we have to talk about how we’re going to handle money. Do you have any ideas about that?”
“I hadn’t given it much thought.”
“I think it’s important for each of us to maintain some financial independence. What do you think?”
“That sounds logical, I guess.”
“Okay. Here’s what I propose. Each payday we deposit half our paychecks into a joint account. From that account we pay the household expenses. Utilities, cable, homeowner’s insurance, property taxes. Any joint credit cards or anything like that. The other half we keep in our individual accounts so we can pay for our own clothes and credit cards and such. We can alternate buying groceries or just use the joint account.”
Reid nodded, impressed by how much she’d already thought this out. “That sounds very logical.” It also sounded smart. He’d heard of couples having arguments over how much the wife spent on shoes or how much the husband spent on golf. If he and Emily still had their own money, it wouldn’t matter to him if she bought eighty dollar perfume or if he spent a hundred bucks at the rare book store.
“I just have one condition.”
“What?”
“I want to help pay for Bennington. I want you to pay for your mother’s care out of our joint account.”
Reid took that in for a moment. His first reaction was shame, followed by guilt, quickly overtaken by amazement that she was suggesting it. “No. I can’t let you do that.”
“Yes, you can, and you will. I should help. I want to. She’ll be my mother too, pretty soon.” She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “I’m going to be your wife, Spencer. That means a lot of things, but one thing it definitely means is that I share your burdens. I need to be sharing this responsibility with you.” She blinked hard, then picked up his hand and kissed his knuckles. “I’m going to be your wife,” she repeated, much more softly, as if she were just marveling at the concept. She pressed her cheek to his hand.
He got up and slid close to her so he could pull her against him. She tucked her face into his neck and took a couple of deep breaths. “You okay?” he whispered. Her fingers were clenching at his shirt.
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s just that every so often it hits me. We’re really doing this.” She drew back and looked up at him in the rapidly-fading light. “Enough practical talk for one evening. Let’s go upstairs and enjoy the fact that we don’t share walls with anybody.”
They made love in Emily’s bed, which felt strange and different sitting alone in the middle of their new master bedroom. There was a slight echo effect from the empty shelves and bare walls that sent back to their ears each gasp, each groan and each cry they wrested from each other.
Her body and her love were the only heaven Reid had ever believed in, and this night that heaven was his again, and would be forever, in this house that was now theirs. They moved against each other in slow, sensual ebbs and flows, washing over each other like the tide coming in, warm breath and damp skin, the cool air in the bedroom a sharp contrast to the heat of her all around him, her legs wrapped around him and her hands all over him. Her half-lidded eyes as she looked up at him, her hair spread on the pillow – everything he saw was thankfully stored away so he could savor it later when he couldn’t just reach out and touch the graceful arch of her neck as he could now, when he couldn’t bend and kiss her breasts, when he wasn’t here to worship her with his hands and his lips but only with his mind.
When her body heaved and arced off the bed as she came it was primitive, and when he spent himself inside her it felt sacred, like they were consummating something unspoken tonight. They collapsed in a heap, still twined around each other. He felt Emily’s fingers combing through the damp hair at the base of his neck, then her lips press to his throat. “Baby,” she whispered.
“Mmmm?” He was still a little nonverbal.
“How did we go so long without this?” she said, the words sibilant and breathy.
He rolled to his back, pulling her with him and drawing the covers around them. She shifted to a comfortable position, her head on his chest. “We didn’t know any better.”
She snuggled close, making adorable little growly noises, her hands playing over his chest and sides. “I love you,” she said, kissing his neck.
He smiled, sighing happily. “I love you, too.”
“I hope you’re not getting tired of hearing it.”
“Impossible.”
“Or of saying it.”
“It would take a lot more than two hundred and thirty-six times to get tired of saying it.”
She lifted her head and looked down at him. “Is that how many times you’ve said it?”
“No. It’s how many times either of us has said it, including the two we just said.”
Emily stared at him for a moment, then laughed ruefully. “You. I can’t believe you sometimes. You’ve been keeping count?”
“It’s my brain. It makes its own fun.”
“Well…two thirty seven,” she said, smiling.
He kissed her softly. “Two thirty eight.”
Reid stretched and turned his face toward the morning sunlight. It took him a moment to remember that he was in his own home, his new home, in this big empty bedroom. He turned his head and smiled, seeing Emily’s mussed hair poking out from underneath the covers.
He eased out of bed and pulled on his flannel pants and a t-shirt. Neither of them had unpacked many clothes, and suitcases and boxes were scattered about. He hated the disarray, but knew it was temporary. He glanced back at Emily, still sleeping peacefully.
Reid went down to the kitchen to start the coffee and see what he could scrape together for breakfast. He’d made sure his coffeepot had made it over from his old place and was installed on the countertop. They might not have chairs or dishes or food yet, but they had coffee.
He looked around at the kitchen while the coffee brewed, still amazed that this was his house…their house.
I’m engaged to Emily. Emily is engaged to me. Emily and I are engaged. As in, going to be married.
When will we do it? Where? How? Oh God, is Elizabeth going to want to put on some huge society spectacle? Emily won’t want that. She won’t let her mother steamroll over us, she’ll stand up for what we want.
Super. Now we just have to figure out what it is that we want.
We. We want. Not she wants, or I want, but what we want. Everything from now on will be a “we.” Our life. Our home. Our money. Our future.
He was jolted out of his thoughts by the sound of footsteps padding down the stairs. Emily shuffled into the kitchen, her face slack with lingering sleep, clutching her old, too-large pilled-up gray cardigan around her. She smiled and kept shuffling over to him. “Morning, roomie,” she muttered.
“Good morning.”
“Coffee?” she said, hopefully, peering around him at the percolator.
“Few minutes.”
She nodded and leaned against the counter, stretching as a big yawn split her face nearly in two. Reid smiled. He found her almost impossibly cute in the mornings, when she was rumpled and sleepy. She reverted to a near-childlike state of bleariness until coffee and showers had woken her all the way up and she became the competent, no-nonsense Emily he knew and loved. She angled her head into the light coming in the kitchen windows. “Mmm. Sunshine feels nice.” She turned and leaned against his chest, rubbing her face over his t-shirt. “You feel nice, too.”
He chuckled and patted the back of her head. “Half of you is still upstairs asleep, isn’t it?”
“Mmm. More like three-quarters.” She tilted her head up. “Kiss, please.”
He kissed her. She frowned, apparently displeased with the quality of the kiss. He kissed her again, more slowly and more thoroughly. She kissed back, her hands tucked between their chests. “Better?” he murmured.
She nodded. “Okay, only one-quarter of me is still upstairs asleep now. Need coffee to achieve fully waking state.”
He turned and saw that the coffeemaker was done. “Good timing, then.” He poured a cup for her and one for himself. They looked around at the near-empty house, frowning at the lack of furniture. “I guess we stand up,” he said.
Emily took a big drink, sighing. “Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand. He let her pull him to the back door and outside, then down the patio to the grassy yard. She sat down in a patch of morning sunshine, cross-legged like a kid at a campfire. He sat facing her and they sipped their coffee in silence for a few minutes.
“It is vaguely ridiculous to be having morning coffee in the backyard,” he finally said.
She shrugged. “I think it’s nice.” She was staring down at her cup, tracing one finger around the rim.
“Emily?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s on your mind?”
She looked up at him, finally. “We should just get it over with.”
“Get what over with?” he asked, although he knew exactly what she was referring to.
“The talk we have to have about work.”
He thought about playing dumb some more, but it would just be delaying the inevitable. “Maybe if we ignore it, it’ll go away,” he muttered.
She shook her head. “It won’t. Like I said last night. We’re becoming official. Which means the FBI will find out. Strauss will find out. It’s a good bet she’ll want one of us to transfer off the team.”
“Maybe she won’t.”
“Maybe not. But we need to be prepared so that if she does, we know what we’re going to do.” She took a deep breath and put her coffee cup down in the grass. “It should be me. I want to be the one who leaves the team.”
Reid looked at her face, set and resolute. “So that’s just it, huh? I don’t get a say?”
“Of course you do. I’m just telling you what I think the best decision is.”
“Why shouldn’t I be the one to transfer out? Hell, I could leave the FBI altogether. I’ve got half a dozen standing teaching offers, including the Academy. I could take a job there, at least we’d still be working in the same building.”
“No, Spencer. The team needs you.”
“The team needs you, too.”
“The team needs you more. Your skills are…unique.”
“You have special skills, too.”
She sighed. “Not like you do. My skills could be used in just about any other department. I’ve worked in other departments before, I can do it again. You’ve never worked anywhere but the BAU."
“You’re saying I couldn’t make the adjustment?”
“I’m saying there’s no reason you have to.”
“I won’t be the reason that you have to leave the team,” he said, his voice rising a little bit. “I can’t have you give up your career because of me.”
“I wouldn’t be!” she said, sounding a little exasperated. “The BAU isn’t the only career path in the Bureau.”
“But it’s the one you want. It’s the one you worked for!”
“Yes, it is. I don’t want to leave. But I want you to stay on the team more than I don’t want to leave it.”
He shook his head, his chest filling with helpless anger at the entire situation. “I hate that it’s even an issue. We’ve already been working together on the team for months while having a relationship. If it hasn’t impacted our work so far, why would it start now?”
“That isn’t the point. We need a contingency plan.”
“You leaving the team is a terrible contingency plan.”
“I agree. But it’s less terrible than the alternative.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so dead set on me staying on the team! I would leave it in a second so that you didn’t have to.”
“Great, so we’re both willing to sacrifice our position on the team so the other could stay. That’s not going to get us to a decision. We have to be objective about this. Objectively, you are less easily replaced on the team than I am.”
“That isn’t true. Where are they going to find another profiler who speaks six languages?”
“A useful skill, but one duplicated by any interpreter. Experts on everything with eidetic memories don’t just grown on trees, you know.” She put her coffee cup aside and took his hand. “You are unique in a way that I am not, sweetheart.” Reid looked up at her. She hardly ever called him that. “Look, one of us will have to go. I’d rather choose between us than have Strauss choose, wouldn’t you?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“If all things were equal we could flip a damned coin for all I care. But all things are not equal. Your abilities are more valuable and less replaceable than mine. So it should be you who stays on the team. You’d see that in a second if your emotions weren’t getting in the way.”
He shook his head. “My unique abilities, sure. Once again those abilities are hurting someone I care about.”
“Oh, no. Don’t you dare start in with the guilt. I chose this, you know. I chose you. Don’t act like you’re inflicting yourself on me. You and me and what we have – it’s the most important thing in my life.”
He nodded. “Mine, too,” he managed, in a hoarse whisper.
“It’s more important than the BAU. That’s what I do. But us – it’s part of who I am.”
“The job is part of who you are, too.”
“I know. Just like it’s part of who you are. But committing to each other – well, we knew there’d have to be compromises.”
“You shouldn’t have to be the one making the compromise.”
“I’m not. I’m compromising that I’d be the one to leave the team, and you’re compromising by letting me. It’ll suck for both of us in different ways. That’s going to have to be the price of admission.”
“What if it’s too high? It might not be today, but what about tomorrow? A year from now?”
“Then we’ll renegotiate. Nothing’s written in stone. As long as we can keep talking about it we’ll be okay.”
He gave her a wry half-smile. “You talk about my special abilities, but you’re much smarter than me, you know?”
She grinned. “Don’t you forget it.” Her smile faded a little. “So we’re agreed?”
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to. I don’t like it, either. It’s just how it is.”
He put aside his coffee cup and pulled her toward him. She scooted close and put her arms around his neck. “I still hope we don’t have to do this.”
“Hope is fine. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”
“I hate that there’s any ‘worst’ here. Isn’t this supposed to be a happy time for us?”
“It is. I am happy.” She kissed him. “In fact, I’m kind of stupid happy.”
He looked at her, a slow grin spreading. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m moving into this amazing house with a guy I’m crazy about who just gave me a really nice piece of jewelry. I might even be a little – giddy.”
“Wait a second, the calm and controlled Emily Prentiss is giddy?”
“As a schoolgirl.”
“You don’t look giddy.”
“Well, I guess this is what ‘giddy’ looks like on me.”
“Doesn’t look much different than normal. How will I tell the difference?”
“My eyebrow’s arched slightly differently.”
“Ah.” He looked up at the eyebrow in question. “I’ll have to remember that.”
