From her position seated on Garcia’s twin bed, JJ could see the lights of the city streaming in the small apartment’s window. Reds and greens from traffic lights mix with the fluorescent yellow from streetlamps and adjacent flat’s own beams. The sky outside is darkening, and a glance at Garcia’s digital clock reveals it to be nearing nine at night, and they really should be getting ready to go.
JJ wants to voice this thought, but the music playing from outside nearly drowns out her own thoughts. There were parties going on left, right and centre; young people’s voices rising up from the pavement below as they gathered for the evening, to welcome in the new year. 2006.
JJ was 27 now, and yet memories of being a college junior, and drinking the night away to welcome in the millennium overflow her brain. She wonders what her college friends are doing right at this moment, and she hopes they’re all well, despite the fact that she’s never had any strong desire to contact them since graduating from Georgetown.
Her current friends more than suffice.
Garcia is leaning out of her window, waving down to a group of her neighbours who have congregated around some benches, passing a joint of something or other between them. She’s wearing some sparkly monstrosity that on anyone else would look garish, but on her looks downright sensational. The other woman oozes a confidence that JJ secretly envies, and the casual way a cigarette hangs from her open mouth only typifies that. Penelope Garcia is utterly comfortable in her body, mind, and home.
“Visit us later on, boys?” she calls down to the group below, and receives a few wolf-whistles in return, which she takes in stride. They’re obviously all friends, and JJ can imagine her baking Christmas cookies for them over the holidays and them having a spare key so they can open her window and air out her flat when she’s kept at work for long stretches of time when cases run too long, and have too much at stake.
JJ thinks that she spends far too much time wondering about other people’s lives instead of her own but can’t really bring herself to care. She’s still figuring out what her life in Quantico is going to be composed of, and if she’s being honest with herself, it slightly scares her.
“Oh! Derek!”
Blinking slightly to wake herself from her fleeting daze, JJ watches Garcia bring her pink, bedazzled phone up to her ear, flip it open, and answer Morgan’s call. She presumes he’s calling to wish her an early happy new year, as cell signals are going to be blocked to hell and back around midnight.
Garcia holds up a couple of fingers to indicate to JJ that she’ll be a few minutes on the phone and smiles apologetically. JJ waves her off, before sitting back on her hands to keep them warm. The late December air flowing in the open window along with the lights seems to swirl around her very being, capturing her in its wintery embrace, and refusing to let go.
As Garcia slips out of the main door, Elle slips back into the bedroom from the ensuite, and JJ momentarily forgets how to breathe.
Where she had before been wearing a red cotton jumper, she was now in a pink top, one that clung to her figure in all the right ways, with a diving neck-line. JJ could feel her heartbeat speed up as she allows her eyes to wander quickly over Elle’s chest, so perfectly accentuated. JJ felt her eyes dip lower, to the dark brown leather of the mini-skirt her colleague had on. The material hugged her thighs, and drew focus to her legs, long and smooth. JJ suddenly felt horrendously underdressed in her simple blue top and black work trousers.
“Hey.” She managed to gasp out, and then had to stop herself cringing at how utterly lame it sounded. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly why she was so utterly nervous around Elle right now. They see each other every day at work, even share hotel rooms sometimes when they have to double up.
“Hey yourself.” Elle teased back, obviously having noticed JJ’s doe-eyed expression. “Are you… finished getting ready?”
And JJ wanted nothing more than for the ground to open up and swallow her whole at that moment. Of course Elle would assume that she wasn’t ready, considering she looked like a runway model and JJ looked as if she were about to give a press conference on a serial arsonist.
“I am, yeah” she said, eyes lowering briefly to the floor in mild embarrassment, but shooting up again when Elle let out a bark of laughter.
“Oh, my small town girl.” Elle cooed. “You look great, you just need one more little thing.”
JJ found herself staring at the bend of the older woman’s legs as she bent down to rummage in her make-up bag, and the curve of her spine that revealed defined muscles that move with each flick of her arm.
“Aha!” she exclaimed brandishing an eyeshadow palette and promptly marching over to JJ. “Lie down.”
“What?” JJ squeaks, and sits up straighter, assuming she’s misheard over the pulse of loud music still blaring in from outside.
“Lie down.” Elle ordered, staring into her eyes, and JJ doesn’t know how she never noticed that there is a swirl of honey amongst the brown around her pupils. JJ nods slowly in understanding, and moves to lie down, but not before taking down her ponytail to allow her hair to spread out over the olive green pillow.
She could never have predicted what happened next.
With the grace of a dancer, Elle manoeuvres herself so that she’s kneeling beside JJ’s legs, before moving again to straddle her waist, legs on either side of JJ tensing as she bends down to look into her eyes.
“Stay still.”, she whispers, and JJ could hear her perfectly over the music as if Elle’s voice were the only thing in the entire world, and hey, maybe it is. It feels like it.
Except, no, it can’t be, because Elle’s hips move over her own as she adjusts her position, and sparks of electricity shoot through her veins. Elle’s hips. Elle’s hips are all that’s real.
Her voice, or her hips, or her chest, which is not possible to ignore, and JJ forces herself to look up into the other woman’s eyes instead, but that was a mistake. A furious pink blush worked its way across JJ’s pale face, and even though its near freezing outside, JJ has never felt as warm in her life.
Elle was moving then, right arm darting down to grab a brush, and soon enough her arm was moving back up, towards JJ’s eyelid. She should probably close her eyes now, JJ thinks. There were a million and one things she should probably do, but doesn’t.
If Elle minds the staring, she doesn’t broadcast it, instead narrowing her eyes in concentration as she works on JJ’s face, wavy brown hair threatening to spill over her shoulder as she bends down to reach JJ’s eyes.
Every small touch seemed to echo throughout the room, and every time Elle breathed JJ could feel it on her neck, giving her goose bumps, and making her fingers twitch. What had Elle called her? ‘My small town girl’. It wasn’t untrue, and JJ wondered what it was like growing up in Brooklyn as Elle did. Wondered how many other girls Elle straddled like this, and whether it also felt like a fire was igniting between them.
They hadn’t broken eye contact once, even as Elle finalised her work, sitting back slightly to admire what JJ knew, even without checking, was a job well done.
“There.” Elle breathed, closing the palette and relaxing slightly, still sitting on JJ’s legs.
“I-Thank you.” JJ whispered, and in a moment of boldness that she hadn’t realised she was capable of, moved to sit up so that Elle was very much sitting in her lap. The movement caused Elle’s skirt to move up slightly, and JJ could see the lacy black underwear that she wore, and her brain nearly short-circuited right there and then.
But then Elle was moving, and JJ knew that whatever happened up to now was nothing in comparison to what might come next. She dipped her neck and moved her mouth over JJ’s throat and her jawline, breathing so slowly, so softly.
“We gotta get going soon.” Elle whispered in her ear, as she pushed back a strand of golden hair. “Phone calls almost over.”
Garcia. Garcia was right outside the door, and nearly ready to go out celebrating New Years with her work friends, as they had planned. But before JJ could panic, or pull away, Elle took her face in her hands, which were warm, so warm, and so soft.
“It’s not midnight yet, but I don’t want to do this in the back of some seedy bar.”
And then Elle was leaning in.
And then Elle was kissing her.
JJ thought that if what was happening earlier was a fire being ignited, this was gasoline being poured all over it. Elle’s teeth scraped her lips, her tongue grazing JJ’s, and they fit together like jigsaw pieces, as cliché as it sounds. JJ moaned into her mouth, and she might have been embarrassed, if Elle hadn’t just snaked her hands through JJ’s hair, and deepened the kiss until JJ was certain. Certain that Elle’s lips were the only things in the whole goddamned world that existed right now; not the winter wind gushing in from the open window, nor the fluorescent lights that followed the wind, making a rainbow reflection on the floor of Garcia’s bedroom, and that cast a soft red glow over Elle’s face to match JJ’s blush.
Nothing else was real.
Except the squeak of the door hinge that announced Garcia’s return, and the speed with which Elle dismounted, changing positions so that she was leaning casually against the far wall, arms crossed over her chest, expression carefully neutral.
“Sorry! That call went on for so long, sorry, my lovelies, sorry. Now! Are we ready? Oh, JJ, lovely eyeshadow! Gorgeous lipstick! Enough chatter, let’s go!”
JJ didn’t mention that she hadn’t been wearing lipstick before.
Garcia exited the flat first, singing along to a tune that echoed in from outside. Elle went after her, stopping at the door to give JJ a wink and a grin, her Cherry-Chapstick lips curving into a smile that JJ would remember for the rest of her life.
JJ followed after her.