Title: Criminal Minds-Made You Look
Author:
kosmickwayRating: TEEN
Pairing: Rossi/Prentiss
A/N: For the alphabet meme prompt, B is for baby. Takes place season 4. For
zamboni12 … it’s probably not the baby story you were thinking of when you gave me the prompt, but it’s what came into my head. Hope you like it anyway.
“Oh, GROSS!” Emily stabbed at the offending image on her iPhone with one finger. “Who POSTS something like that?”
“Something like what?” Rossi asked, looking up from his laptop.
“Like THIS,” Emily said, turning the screen toward him.
Rossi blinked, peered at the image. “Is that what I think it is?”
“If what you think it is happens to be one of my best girlfriends from college giving birth to her twins, then, yes, that IS what you think it is.” Emily scrolled down the page, wincing as the pictures got more graphic. “Oh my god, WHY would she post these? National Geographic wouldn’t even post something this … this … ugh.” Emily clicked the back button to return to the email her friend Jaycee had sent. “I mean, it’s bad enough that she wrote everyone an email describing it in excruciating detail. But pictures, too?”
“What are you spazzing about?” Morgan asked, sliding into the seat across the table from Emily and passing her a can of Diet Coke.
“These.” Emily shoved the phone toward him. Morgan took one look and recoiled.
“Aw, that is WRONG. Geez, Emily, give me a head’s up next time you send something like that my way.” Morgan grimaced. “Shit, now that’s going to be in my head all day.”
Emily laughed. “Made you look.”
“JJ, you’re not going to send stuff like this to us, are you?” Morgan called down the aisle toward their pregnant media liaison.
“Stuff like what?” she asked, steadying herself on the back of Hotch’s seat as she came down the aisle.
“Birth pictures,” Morgan said, passing over the iPhone. “They’re kind of graphic, by the way,” he warned as an afterthought.
“Gee, look what I have to look forward to,” JJ said, grimacing slightly as she scanned the pictures. “They probably photoshop the ones in the pregnancy books so they don’t look as frightening … or as gory.” She handed the phone back to Emily and took the seat next to Rossi. “There will be no cameras of any kind in the delivery room, so you don’t have to worry about me sending you pictures.”
“Gosh, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want Will documenting every moment of the most excruciating physical pain of your life,” Emily remarked sarcastically.
“My sister’s friend Delia went to one of those alternative birthing centers,” Morgan put in, sipping his coffee. “They filmed the whole thing, start to finish, and then edited it together with music and captions and even a damn voice-over. And then she had all her friends over with their babies and their videos and they had a movie night!” He shook his head. “I don’t get why people are compelled to share what should be very private and personal moments with the rest of the world. People put their sex lives on the web, no matter how weird they are. They put bondage and porn out there for anyone to see!”
“We put teenage mothers on reality TV, which looks a lot like rewarding a behavior we want to discourage” Emily agreed.
“Drug interventions make for Emmy winning programming” JJ put in. “And the worse the addiction or the more likely a relapse, the more viewers tune in.”
“We treat hoarding and addictive behaviors and the people who have them like side-show freaks,” Rossi added, “taking a psychological disorder and turning it into something people can make light of and laugh at.”
“We put up status messages and location trackers on social networking sites so that everyone knows what we’re thinking, feeling, and doing all the time,” Morgan finished. “So … what’s up with that? Why are some people compelled to just spill everything in their lives to anyone willing to listen?” He pointed at Emily’s iPhone. “Case in point … giving birth, one of the most sacred and special moments for any set of parents, is suddenly something you can have a ring-side seat to.”
There was silence around the table. It wasn’t that none of them had an answer to Morgan’s hypothetical … it was that there were almost too many answers to even begin to verbalize … and none of them revealed very good things about their society.
“I think we need a new topic,” JJ said lightly. “One that has nothing to do with weighty philosophical issues … or childbirth.”
Morgan laughed. “Agreed. So how about those Redskins, JJ?”
Emily stood up to stretch, leaving Morgan and JJ talking football. She walked down the aisle toward the back of the jet, passing Hotch, who was sitting with his eyes shut and Spencer who was deep in his new eReader.
Rossi joined her a moment later.
“Bet you didn’t count on opening up that can of worms, did you?” he asked, chuckling as he reached for the coffee pot and a cup.
“Isn’t it funny how we can turn any conversation into the subject of a philosophical or psychological symposium?” Emily asked, squeezing into the galley behind Rossi and purposefully brushing against him with her hips. Without missing a beat he reached over, gave her ass a squeeze, and went back to pouring his coffee. Emily grinned and leaned against the counter, waiting for him to look at her.
“I figured early on that having kids was out of the question but now I’m guessing they’re really off the table,” Rossi said, giving her a wise-ass grin. “You should have seen your face when you opened that email.”
“How do you know what my face looked like?” Emily asked. “You were buried in your work.”
Rossi gave her an enigmatic smile. “I notice you a lot more than you think I do, Emmy.”
Emily blushed. Her relationship with Rossi was new enough that he still managed to surprise her at least once a week with some totally unexpected action or character trait. That nickname for instance-Emmy, something no one had ever called her-still managed to surprise her.
She gave him a long considering look. He allowed the scrutiny, gazing back with the same boldness.
“Maybe not all the way off the table,” she finally said. When he looked confused, she clarified. “Having kids. With you. Maybe not all the way off the table.”
“Yeah?” He smiled delightedly and reached for her hand. “Why’s that?”
“There could be worse things than carrying your child … not many that I can think of because those photos WERE pretty nasty …” She laughed when Rossi gave her a swat on the arm. “I think the trying to get knocked up part would be the best. Constant sex. Any time of the day or night.”
It was Rossi’s turn to laugh. “You don’t need to be trying to get pregnant for that to be the case.” He leaned forward and kissed her gently. “No pressure, Emmy,” he murmured. “I’m fine with kids or no kids, as long as it’s you I’m with.” He dropped her hand. “Come on. Let’s go talk football.”
END.
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