Work Text:
Everyone else has gone home; the bullpen is entirely dark save for her office lamp and computer screens. She’s glad it’s dark. She can disguise her little gasps between tears with taps of her pen on her desk, or not disguise it at all; it’s entirely her choice.
She can hear the ding of the elevator and knows who’s coming before he even steps off the elevator. He was the only one who’d always seen past her disguises, almost infuriatingly so. She sighs and ducks her head, scribbling notes on the report and pretending her eyes aren’t slowly glazing over with unshed tears.
“JJ?”
She ignores him and knows he’s coming closer; she can feel it.
“JJ.” One hand comes to rest on her shoulder, comfortingly warm and solid and she can’t help but lean into his touch and want to drop her head on top of it, so tired.
“Spence.” She sighs, clearing her throat after her voice comes out croaky and wrong and very much like she’s crying; she doesn’t want him to know but he already does, he knows her too well. “What’re you doing here?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He replies, and they can both hear the because I was worried about you that follows despite the fact he doesn’t speak again.
She smiles, face waxy and pale, even thought he can’t see it. “You should take melatonin.”
“Tried that.” He replies, and he’s spinning her chair and helping her up slowly, and she knows the instant she sees his face she will cry.
“NyQuil?”
“I’m not sick.”
“Warm milk?”
“JJ, really; I just couldn’t sleep.”
And she breaks in his arms, halfway standing; he grabs her arms so she doesn’t fall and she’s sobbing desperately, hands clawing at his neck, his face. She can’t get those victims - girls, they’re girls, were girls?, are girls - out of her mind, and she still hears the girl on the phone who pleads with JJ to help her, save her, and JJ had promised and then JJ was the one who found her all broken china doll sprawled on the ground.
One of his hands threads into her hair and the other arm crosses like a vice over her back and he holds her there, to him, as she shatters. He whispers little things; he knows she can’t hear them but he does it anyways. She’s making this high-pitched noise in her throat that hurts more than anything.
Somehow, someway, their lips find each other; she tastes like tears and salt and grief and upset and also like JJ, chocolate donuts and birthday cake and Spence and coffee with too much creamer. Her hands are gripping the side of his face like he’ll slip away if she doesn’t, like she’s a fire and he’s oxygen.
She’s still crying, she can’t stop, but he kisses her until she’s breathless and then some, and sets her gently on the desk so she can truly curl around him, arms around shoulders and legs around waists and desperate soft kisses and whispers of hers to please not leave and replies of his that he would never do it even if he was dying or dead.
She kisses him until she stops crying and then even afterwards, until he pulls back and she goes to apologize but he presses his forehead against her.
“Come home.” It’s not a question. She knows it.
She casts a glance at the file on her desk before the view is blocked by him.
“JJ, come home.”
He takes her home - to his, not hers, maybe someday theirs. He holds her as she cries and recovers and then even after, and they call in sick the next day so he can keep holding her.