Work Text:
For all that this Friday afternoon is its usual boring, work-wise, Emily feels oddly content, sitting at her desk, making her way through the never-ending pile of paperwork.
She glances past the frames sitting at the tip of her nose at the small person in the chair opposite hers. A smile tugs at her lips. It’s all she has to do to boost her mood when case numbers, budgets and whatnot threaten to suck all joy out of her life. With a half-day at school and their nanny away on holiday, Maud is spending the afternoon in the office with her moms, instead of at home.
Not that Emily minds her office buddy.
Where Emily is penning reports and filling out forms, Maud has carefully laid out her drawing supplies on her side of the desk. The seat that is usually reserved for agents and unit chiefs who come in to meet with Emily, currently holds Maud’s knelt form. She has been quietly working on a new masterpiece for the past fifteen minutes, the tip of her tongue sticking out in sheer concentration. A pink headband keeps her fine blond hair from falling in her face as she shifts forward, leaning even closer to the sheet of paper, drawing careful lines with the colour of her choosing.
Emily has caught little but glimpses of the artwork, but she knows Maud will show her when she’s ready.
The scratch of Emily’s pen and Maud’s pencils is the only sound for a good while, until Maud deposits her pencil back into her pencil case and pulls it closer to herself to look through her options. When she huffs for the third time whilst more furiously rummaging through her pencil case, Emily finally lays down her pen and takes off her glasses.
“What is wrong, my love?”
“I can’t get it right,” Maud mutters, not even pausing her search. The words are far from new to Emily; she likes to lovingly joke Maud is their little perfectionist. Their careful girl, who loves to colour between the lines and get everything just right, even when that can be hard, if you’re still little.
“Get what right?”
Maud sighs now, and pushes the pencil case aside to show Emily her drawing. Instead of twisting her neck and risking a pulled muscle, Emily gets up and moves around the desk. She perches her glasses back on her nose as she gets down to Maud’s level and takes a look at her drawing.
It’s a family portrait. Maud has drawn their home, along with herself and her moms. Even Sergio has a place in the line-up. A quiet contentment warms Emily from within at the sight. The drawing is well on its way, but incomplete. She figures the currently-bald figure is meant to be her, considering the yellow hair of the others.
“It’s looking pretty good already,” she comments. “What are you getting stuck on?”
Maud points to bald-Emily. “I need to draw your hair next.”
“Alright.” Emily takes a peek in Maud’s pencil case. “Will this do?” Emily holds out a pencil in a dull grey that is a decent match to her hair colour, in the same way the light yellow of drawn-JJ-and-Maud’s hair is accurate to reality.
But Maud shakes her head with a dissatisfied frown. “No.”
Emily raises a brow. “Are you sure?” She holds the pencil next to her hair. “I think it could work.” In fact, she is fairly sure the artwork on their fridge at home had included this very colour for Emily’s hair, as about every drawing Maud has made in her life so far.
Maud looks at her as if she’s obtuse and huffs in exasperation. Before becoming a mom, Emily doesn’t think she’d ever even considered how sassy kids could be. “No.”
Well, Emily gives up. “Why not?”
“Mama, your hair isn’t grey. It’s shiny, like silver.”
Oh. Emily blinks.
“Mommy said so,” Maud adds.
She remembers now.
Though most days her embrace of her grey hair feels empowering, and she gives it little thought, she still has her moments of insecurity. She is careful not to show too much of that around Maud— whilst she wants Maud to know it’s okay to feel unsure, she doesn’t want her to think appearance is a reason to feel insecure.
But decades into their friendship and relationship, JJ knows Emily better than she knows herself, sometimes, and still catches the moments of insecurity without Emily ever having to say it out loud. And JJ isn’t shy about proving her treacherous mind otherwise, brazenly telling and showing what she loves about Emily, grey hair and all. Silver has been mentioned as a reverent descriptor more than once.
And apparently Maud has caught on.
Maud purses her lips and searches through her pencil case again, as if her desired silver pencil will spontaneously appear. “I got it wrong before, but now I want to do it right.”
“You didn’t get it wrong,” Emily says. “You just had a different interpretation.”
“I think Mommy is right,” Maud says, because, well, isn’t JJ always. She looks at Emily and tilts her head, brown eyes tracing down the loose waves that have tumbled past Emily’s shoulders. “It looks more like silver than grey.”
“You think so?”
Maud smiles. “It’s very pretty.” She returns her focus to her drawing. “I hope I have silver hair when I’m a grownup.”
Emily’s heart grows three sizes, threatening to burst out of her chest. “You might,” she says, and presses a kiss to the top of Maud’s head. “And you know what?”
“What?”
“We might not have any silver pencils, but I bet Auntie Penelope has some shiny gel pens she’d be happy to lend you.”
Maud perks up. “Are you sure?”
Emily hums in confirmation. There is, after all, a reason why every FBI form now has the additional, bold and underlined, request for the recipient to fill it out with black or blue ink. “How about we go ask her?”
Maud climbs off the chair and takes hold of Emily’s hand.
“She might even have some gold pens,” Emily adds as she leads Maud to the office door.
“Gold?”
“For you and Mommy. I’m not the only one with shiny hair.” Her favourite picture on her desk of their little family jumps to mind, with bright sunlight illuminating their smiling faces and haloing JJ and Maud’s fair-haired heads.
Maud frowns, bringing a lock of her hair in front of her face to inspect it. “We have yellow hair. I don’t think I need gold.”
“No?”
“But that’s okay,” Maud tells her seriously. “You can have a different interpretation.” She stumbles over the big word, the syllables mingling out of order at first, but appears proud of herself anyway.
Emily laughs and squeezes her hand. “You’re right, lovely girl.”