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Emily loves flying.
Enjoys the engines roaring as the plane picks up speed, the brief moment of weightlessness as the wheels leave the tarmac, and wonders about the way time seems to pass differently, up in the air. It’s one of the handful of positive consequences to her upbringing, spending years being uprooted and moved to different countries with her mother’s work: she has never once been fearful about travelling on airplanes.
So, Emily loves flying.
She does not, however, like the process that leads up to taking a commercial flight.
She shuffles forward with the slow-moving queue in the airplane aisle, double checking her ticket. When the person in front of her abruptly stops, she bumps into them, earning herself a cutting look before she can even think of muttering an apology. Emily just sighs.
Somehow, this part of travelling always brings out the worst in people. Cutting in line at boarding, zero patience with fellow passengers or the airline employees and acting like it’s an affront to them when they have to step aside or briefly climb out of their seat to make space for others, like decent people would. It might have something to do with the long wait beforehand, the confined space, the limited range of motion, but either way, it’s always the part Emily is glad to get over with.
Her gaze glides across the signs above the seats, counting the row numbers. Finally, she gets to her assigned spot and she shrugs her purse off her shoulder. Travelling for work has its perks, like having all expenses paid for her and not having to worry about figuring out the planning, but it also means she wasn’t in charge of her own seat selection. And weirdly enough being sandwiched in between two strangers isn’t her first choice. At least it’s only a two-and-a-half hour flight back to DC. She’ll survive.
A guy is already conked out in the window seat, headphones on, the aisle seat occupied by a woman with a baby in her lap, both wide awake. Emily offers her a friendly smile when the woman turns to look up and finds herself briefly stunned by a set of piercing blue eyes. Her blue shirt complements them (and her muscular arms) quite well, Emily thinks somewhere far-off, before she snaps back into reality, embarrassment curling in her chest.
“Excuse me, do you mind?” She gestures to the empty middle seat.
“Oh, of course.” The woman readjusts her grip on the baby and gets up into the aisle, allowing Emily to squeeze into her seat with a quiet thanks, stuffing her purse under the seat in front of her.
The woman resettles in her seat, the other passengers continuing their shuffled queue. She watches Emily curiously for a second, brows furrowing ever so slightly as if stuck in thought, before returning her attention to the baby in her lap.
Emily cranes her neck to look across the seats. The end of the line of boarding passengers is in sight, at least. She checks her watch. Surprisingly, they still seem to be on schedule to leave when they’re supposed to.
Next to her, the baby coos. It’s almost a reflex, to look up and find him reaching out a tiny hand in greeting, big blue eyes unblinking. They’re just a shade darker than his mom’s, Emily notes. A dot of fine blond hair adorns his head, sticking straight up.
Emily grins. “Hi,” she says quietly, waving. A quick glance at the mom finds her watching the exchange with an amused smile, soft pink lips pressed together. Though Emily is usually a ‘pick up a book and avoid conversation’ type of traveller, she figures the cuteness warrants a comment. “Your kid is adorable.”
The woman’s smile grows soft. “Thank you. He’s almost six months old today.” She bounces the baby in her lap, provoking a bout of the cutest giggles. “Right, Michael?”
Michael babbles unintelligibly, still staring at Emily, tracking her every movement. He keeps his eyes locked on her all the way through the rest of the boarding process, up until a flight attendant comes by with an infant seatbelt and his mom has to resituate him on her lap to secure him properly.
Unlike Emily, Michael doesn’t appear to enjoy take-off, crying despite attempts to soothe him, until he finally accepts a pacifier from his mom. The change in pressure can’t feel great to baby ears. Once up in the air, he settles easier, back to his happy self even despite the constant noise of the engines.
Emily does take out her book then, thumbing through the pages until she finds her bookmark, but… she is a little distracted. Michael takes a special interest in her, finding a way to turn to her no matter which way his mom positions him. She ends up putting her book down to play a game of peek-a-boo with him instead, which he thoroughly enjoys, squealing brightly every time she reveals her face.
“You’re in a good mood.” The mom brushes Michael’s fine blond hair back, watching the game with that same soft smile from earlier. He kicks his legs, sticking his fist in his mouth. She looks at Emily and explains, “On the way here he spent most of the flight crying. It wasn’t even the first time I’ve taken him on an airplane, but he really wasn’t feeling it.”
“Oof,’ Emily says in sympathy. That can’t have been fun for his mom or any of the passengers.
“We survived, but I’m glad I don’t have a repeat of that on my hands today.”
Emily laughs. “I can imagine.” Michael waves a saliva-covered fist in her direction. “I’m Emily, by the way,” she supplies. It’s only polite, she figures.
“I’m JJ,” the woman answers. “And this is Michael.”
Michael squeals until they both turn their attention back to him, which appears to satisfy him greatly.
“What now?” JJ says, tickling his arm. “Did you need something?”
He really is unfairly cute. Emily has always had a soft spot for babies – really, who doesn’t? – but something about him takes the cake in the baby department. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s spent days drowning in nothing but work and research and seminars. Maybe it’s those darn big blue eyes and their expressive innocence.
(Maybe his cute mom has some influence on it, too.) (Emily can’t help it if she is attracted to people who are clearly out of reach, okay. Let her pine.)
Either way, it’s a great way to cheer her up.
Emily takes her self-appointed task as entertainer very seriously. There are quite a few more rounds of peekaboo, until JJ finds a teething toy and fabric story book in her bag that distract Michael enough to give Emily a break. She picks up her own book again, working her way through a handful of pages whilst Michael attempts to eat his.
JJ uses the distraction to fish a bottle with water out of her bag, mixing in formular and flagging down a flight attendant, who returns with it warmed up. Toys forgotten, Michael settles easily against her arm, hands wrapping around the bottle when she puts it up to his face.
As if on cue, only moments after he is done, the flight attendants come by with snacks and drinks for the other passengers.
Emily politely accepts her coffee and prepackaged muffin, helping JJ out by letting her rest her drink on Emily’s tray table. Even with his belly full, Michael is a little too interested in his mom’s wrapped muffin, grabby hands reaching out for it.
Emily tries desperately not to laugh at the struggle that ensues as she eats her own snack, washing it away with watery coffee. With Michael distracted, JJ does have the opportunity to down her own drink, but her snack remains in Michael’s death grip. She has to peel back his fingers one by one to get him to release it, and even then, he doesn’t relent, simply reaching back out for it. JJ is handling all the multitasking better than Emily ever would, but Emily can still see her struggle with the squirmy baby.
Which… Emily could solve that problem for her.
“JJ?”
JJ looks up. Michael takes the opportunity to pull the packaged muffin back from JJ’s hand and shove the plastic into his mouth in victory.
“Do you want me to…” Emily offers, holding out her hands in question.
JJ barely even hesitates once the question gets through to her, gratefully transferring a grabby Michael to Emily’s arms. The change stuns him, freezing him for just a second, before he becomes transfixes with the dark hair falling past her shoulders and tangles his hands into it. Emily laughs through the pain.
“You should be glad you’re so adorable,” she tells Michael, wincing as he pulls again. His weight feels nice in her arms, the tiny body so trusting and happy to sit with her, even for just a minute. She shifts her grip and manages to redirect his curiosity to her hands and rings instead, letting his back rest against her front, happy to let him play with the different textures, tiny hands grabbing at the shiny metal on her fingers.
“Do you have any of your own?”
Emily startles out of her thoughts, looking at JJ for clarification.
“Kids,” JJ says after swallowing her bite of muffin, nodding to Michael in her arms. “You’re good with him.”
“Oh.” The compliment rushes like warmth through her body. “No, I— I don’t have any kids. Someday, maybe.”
Hopefully. She had gotten a taste, with JTF-12, but Declan had already had a mother figure who took on that responsibility permanently with Doyle’s death. It’s still a future she wants for herself, when the timing is right. And preferably when she has a partner who she can share the experience and responsibilities with.
JJ smiles kindly. “Well, either way, you’ve had a small practice run in travelling with a baby today.”
Emily laughs. “I guess so.”
JJ crumples her muffin wrapper, stuffing it in the seat pocket. She glances at Emily, then down the aisle. “Actually, do you mind if I…” she trails off, nodding towards the back of the plane.
“Oh! Yeah, no, of course.”
JJ says her thanks, getting up from her seat and disappearing from sight. Michael, who has been hyper fixated on Emily’s rings, seems to sense his mom’s absence. He stills, looking curiously at the empty seat, before glancing back at Emily.
“She’s just headed to the bathroom,” Emily assures, though she knows it’s silly when he won’t understand. “She’ll be back in a minute.”
Michael wiggles until Emily turns him in her lap, having him face her. He pushes with his legs and Emily boosts him up against her chest. She is a little hesitant, considering his earlier interest in her hair, but he seems to have tired himself out too much for that to still be a pull. He stares at her for a long second, considering whatever it is babies consider, before slowly lowering his head to rest against her shoulder. He sighs, then, his body growing heavier, his tiny baby lashes brushing against her skin as he blinks, then blinks again, and finally closes his eyes.
Oh.
Emily swallows, and barely dares to breathe in fear of disturbing him. When JJ returns, her entire being softens at the sight. It awakens a funny feeling in Emily’s stomach.
“I think he’s making sure you can’t get rid of him,” JJ jokes lightly, settling back down into her seat.
Emily smiles. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Michael eventually wakes up a little, spotting JJ and reaching his arms out until she takes him into hers. He settles back down easily, snuggling up to his mom, and though Emily’s arms are empty and cold all of a sudden, it is such a lovely sight.
“Are you guys headed home? Or are you on your way to someplace else?” she asks JJ.
“Yeah, we’re going home,” JJ answers. One hand mindlessly rubs up and down Michael’s back, soothing him even in sleep. “We all live up in DC, but his dad is from New Orleans. We went down there for a family wedding. My other son stayed behind for a bit longer, but Michael and I are headed back home.”
“You have another kid?”
“Henry,” JJ says. A fond look crosses her face. Clearly, there is no lack of love and care in this family. “He’s seven. He’s spending a few more days in New Orleans with their dad and his partner.”
Emily tries not to glance down at Michael as she tries to make sense of his family situation. She had tried to turn off – or at least tune down – her profiler side when she first got back to the US, but that kind of curiosity and puzzling is hard to let go.
It’s enough for JJ to still notice, either way. “Michael was the result of us figuring out for sure we were both looking for something else in life,” she shares, and immediately freezes, as if surprised the words even left her mouth in the first place.
“…Got it,” Emily nods, desperately ignoring the part of her that whispers, so she might actually be single after all?
JJ winces. “Sorry. That’s definitely too much information to share with a stranger on the plane, isn’t it?”
Emily can’t help but laugh a little at JJ’s misery. “I don’t mind. Honestly, I was trying to figure out how that all fit together. If it helps, from what I hear it sounds like you still make it work, though.”
“We’re better coparents than we were partners,” JJ sighs, giving in to the oversharing, an embarrassed blush tinting her cheeks. “But that’s probably enough about me. What about you?”
“I’m heading back home from a work conference,” Emily says. She’s had her fill of workshops and seminars for the time being, and not everything was entirely relevant, but it was still useful enough to have been worth her time. With a job like hers, it’s important to keep moving with the time and stay up to date with new research.
“What is it you do?”
Emily hesitates. “I’ve mostly been offering my expertise as a child forensic interviewer,” she finally says, waiting for the wait, what’s that, followed by watching of someone confront the sad reality that her job needs to exist in the first place.
Instead what she gets is JJ perking up in her seat. “Wait, you don’t happen to work in Quantico, do you?”
“I- Yes, I do,” Emily answers, properly startled.
“I thought you looked familiar.” Her blush deepens, and Emily tilts her head in curiosity. “I must have seen you around the building sometime.”
“You work…”
“I’m a Media Liaison,” JJ says, and the pieces slot into place for Emily as she makes sense of it all. “Sixth floor?”
Emily nods slowly in realisation. “The BAU.” What are the chances?
“We’re colleagues, technically.” JJ laughs. Michael stirs on her chest. “Small world. And no wonder you’re so good with kids, with what you do.”
Michael brabbles sleepily, as if he knows they’re referring to him and Emily’s heart warms. Conversation flows freer, now that they’ve found out they’ve got such a big part of their lives in common. Though Emily thought she’d had enough of work, it’s hard to not ask questions about JJ and the BAU’s working method, when she genuinely wants to know the answers. And the same goes the other way around, with JJ picking Emily’s brain about what she took from the conference.
Even so, they do manage to eventually shift from work to outside-of-work activities, and they’re surprised to figure out they often go to the same lunch spot near the office, and frequent the same bar to wind down from whatever shit work puts them through.
“I don’t know how we never actually bumped into each other before,” Emily wonders. JJ hums. It feels shocking, but maybe it isn’t. She knows how easy it is to get absorbed in her own world, her own life, without ever going outside those bounds that JJ and her had accidentally broken through today.
Time – pun intended – flies. They effortlessly fill the space between them between them all the way up until they’re getting ready to land in DC. Michael’s sleepiness lingers, only needing a little comfort and reassurance at the sensation of the plane descending, before they’re back on the ground and taxiing to the gate.
Emily happily takes Michael in her arms one last time while JJ gets the baby carrier out of the overhead bins, before transferring him back to get secured to JJ’s front. On Emily’s insistence, she shoulders JJ’s bag along with her own purse, and they’re back to shuffling along with the queue to the front and out of the airplane with a goodbye to the flight attendants.
“That went much better than expected,” JJ comments, sidling up to Emily. Michael’s sleepy head turns to Emily and he smiles. Emily has to repress a laugh at his static hair sticking up above the baby carrier.
“I’m glad.”
“And thank you,” JJ says genuinely. “For all your help today. It definitely made my solo-parenting travelling a lot easier.”
It would probably be too much to tell JJ how these few hours on the airplane actually made her day. Or her week. It’s easy to get lost in the routine of it all, but Michael and JJ had broken through that and brought her some much needed joy and non-work inspired human interaction.
She settles on, “It was really no worry at all. It was very nice to get to know you guys a bit.”
JJ slows as they turn the corner, and takes her bag from Emily. “I’m gonna go ahead and change this guy before we’re stuck with all our luggage.”
“Oh! Of course,” Emily says. And though she knows it’s stupid, she asks anyway, “Will you be okay, with the luggage claim and everything?”
“We should be.”
They both nod, and stare, before laughing at the slight ridiculousness.
“Well,” Emily says.
“Well,” JJ says.
“That’s it, I guess.” A strange goodbye, after a strange meeting. Emily gestures vaguely ahead. “I’ll… walk on.”
JJ nods. She studies Emily’s face for a second. “Hit me up, if you ever want to make the switch to profiling,” she says with a wink. “You know where to find me. Or, well…” She casts her eyes aside briefly. “See you around, maybe?”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Emily says, half-joking, but more serious than she’d like to admit to herself. There’s just something about JJ that invites her in. Wants her to ask for more, stick around to talk and laugh beyond the airplane, beyond these airport walls.
JJ grabs Michael’s arm and watches him as she directs his hand to wave in Emily’s direction. “Say bye bye.” Michael makes a confused sound and JJ looks at Emily. “Close enough, I guess.”
Emily laughs, tightening the grip on her purse. “Bye, Michael,” she tells him, before turning to JJ. “Bye, JJ.”
They share one last look, and Emily gives a wave before reluctantly turning around and disappearing into the crowd.