Work Text:
Emily’s head snapped upright as soon as it hit her chest. Damnit, she had fallen asleep. Gently, so as to not wake the sleeping child in her arms, she stretched and stood. The hard wooden rungs of the rocking chair had pressed lines into her back, and she couldn’t really feel her arms, but this moment was crucial. If she couldn’t transfer Michael into his crib exactly right, he would wake back up and the process would start all over again. It had already taken an hour to get here, but luckily she managed without so much as a stir from the almost-two year-old.
God, she hurt all over. The case had taken almost a full week to solve, and now that she was officially Unit Chief, well… Emily hadn’t slept in what felt like forever. She wasn’t even aware of walking down the hall to her bedroom, but there she was, standing in the middle of it, totally zoned out until her wife was directly in front of her.
“Em? Is everything okay?” JJ asked, rubbing her hands up Emily’s arms to rest on her shoulders.
“Huh?” she snapped back into herself. “Yeah, yeah it’s good. I finally got him to sleep.”
“Looks like you fell asleep yourself, boss,” JJ laughed.
“Me? Never,” Emily feigned indignation.
JJ just hummed and raised an eyebrow. “C’mon, let’s go to bed.”
“I can’t yet. Have to finish those reports,” she dragged a hand over her face and stretched before turning back to the door, meaning to go downstairs to her office.
“No way,” JJ stepped into her path. “You have all weekend to do those. You need sleep.”
“Fine.” Emily stopped protesting. Let JJ push her towards their bed, strip off her sweatshirt and slippers, pull back the covers, lay her down. Emily was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
She would wake late the next morning, the sounds and smells of JJ making the boys pancakes drifting in. She stayed in bed, drifting in and out of wakefulness, until a storm of little feet bounded up the stairs and onto the bed, tackling her. They laughed, and tickled her, and she let them. Eventually the tangle of limbs and blonde hair moved with her to the couch, where they stayed all day, watching movie after movie. Sometime after lunch she snuck away for an hour to knock out some of the reports in her never ending stack of files, but she was back before Toy Story 3 was over.
If you had asked 15-year-old Emily Prentiss what she thought her life would turn out to be, she wouldn’t have said this. Hell, if you had asked 25-year-old Emily, she wouldn’t have said this. But here she was, with a beautiful wife, two amazing stepsons, with a hard, demanding, but wonderful job that had the best family of coworkers anyone could ask for. She had a home. She had her life. She was happy.