What Happens Next

V. Change

JJ arrived to find Rossi in the kitchen with a huge dinner splayed out on the island. Reid was asleep on the couch, under a gray blanket that looked as soft as she was sure it would feel. The television flickered blue light on his sleeping features, defining his nose and lips nicely.

"Jennifer Jareau! Welcome, ciao, how are you?" Rossi asked, excited to see another one of his former profilers, "I have prepared a light dinner for you and the boy and then you may be on your way."

"Wow," JJ breathed, "thank you!"

JJ laughed, and allowed Rossi to embrace her joyfully. Krystall emerged from the entryway and smiled at the happy reunion. 

"Should I wake him?" she asked, gesturing to the man asleep on their couch.

"Ah, leave him for another minute. We should talk," he said to JJ, the light draining from the happy reunion.

Rossi gave her a quick synopsis of the situation, explaining to her only the broad details, leaving out the children entirely, and focusing only on the help he believed Reid would need.

JJ nodded along, absorbing every detail. "We've been though this before," she reminded him, staring off at the brunette. Noticing the way his hair had curled as it dried in a messy mass around his head, "I'm the one who got him hooked in the first place."

"Now, that's not true. You know you are not responsible for the actions of those around you, especially not the bad guys. Tobias Hankel was a bad guy, and you could not have predicted he would hurt him, or that that could lead to this."

"Sometimes it feels like I should have been able to," she sighed.

Reid gasped, and groaned as he stretched. He opened his eyes, and smiled as they landed on his best friend, "JJ!" he exclaimed, excitement evident in his voice.

"Spence!" She matched his enthusiasm, and approached him quickly. He wrapped her in a hug, and she brought her arms up and around his neck excitedly. She held him close to her, forcing him to hunch over and rest his chin on her shoulder. When they finally pulled away, the weight of their situation washed over them like a bucket of ice water being dumped on a hot coal. They looked at each other, tears welling up in JJ's bright blue eyes. 

"I missed you," she whispered.

Rossi interrupted their moment with the clink of a fork on a glass and smiled, "dinner is served."

With the family of four seated around the table, Krystall rose to pour water into each of their glasses, "tonight we will be drinking water with your choice of lemon, or lime, and some sort of la-de-da pasta dish courtesy of my lovely husband David Rossi."

The group ate quickly with pleasant chatter preparing them for the send-off of their short-term guests. With full stomachs, full containers of leftovers, and hearts as full as they could be, the Rossi's walked their younger guests to the door.

"And you're sure you are okay with driving all the way back home tonight," Rossi questioned for what had to be the third time.

"Oh, yes. I'm sure. Henry is good, but he needs me back at the house by morning, trust me," JJ insisted.

"Okay, okay. Drive safe you two!" Krystall interrupted, placing a quieting hand on Rossi's arm.

"One more hug, come her you guys!" Dave wrapped all three of his family members in his arms and squeezed them tightly, "let's meet again under better circumstances?"

"Yes please," Reid chimed in, rolling the wheels on his red suitcase to indicate his preparedness to leave.

The door closed in a chorus of goodbyes, and the two friends walked casually to the car. Reid threw his luggage into the back seat, and walked around to the front, quietly buckling his seat belt and making no effort to speak. He did not want to ruin the jollity of the night with the depressing chronicles of his failures as a father and husband. 

The glass Tupperware rattled at JJ's feet, and after three long, painful minutes Reid finally spoke up and offered to relocate the dishes. He placed one on either side of the divider on the floor of the back seat, and they sighed in relief from the noise. 

JJ turned on the radio, and the two listened from the middle of some radio podcast about unsolved murders.

"I bet we could figure that one out in minutes," Reid joked toward the end of the episode.

"With our old team, we could do anything," JJ reminded. 

They laughed honestly, but their moment ended as soon as it came when the weight of their situation again settled back on their shoulders.

"This sucks JJ. I'm so sorry."

"I'm going to leave you here. Right here, on the side of this road, if you apologize one more time," JJ insisted, playfully.

"Okay, right, okay," Reid laughed.

"You know," JJ started, shifting the tone in two words, "you don't have to tell me everything. Or anything. Take you time, and you can share what you want when you're ready."

"It's not that. I want to tell you. . . I need to talk about it. I just- I don't want things to change."

"Change?" JJ questioned.

"Like right now. We were just laughing and joking and playing around and I haven't done that in years. Everything is serious. Everything is heavy, and I don't want that."

"Spence. Thats ridiculous. I just drove four and a half hours to pick you up in another state because you called me to tell me your wife wouldn't pick you up from rehab. If things were going to change, wouldn't they have changed?"

"You're right . . .Okay," Spencer breathed, preparing himself to share his story for the second time that day.