Chapter Text
She loves Emily in red, sort of thinks of it as her color. It compliments the contrast between her dark, almost black hair, and pale alabaster skin perfectly. Red lipstick looks so good on her too. Her face - her sharply angled bone structure, her long, sweeping, dark lashes framing dark, intense eyes - is striking by itself, but with red lipstick… well, JJ has more than once had to force herself to stop thinking about the feel of that lipstick on her skin, smudges of it in the tender place where her ear meets her neck.
She thinks Emily must know how good she looks in red. Whether it’s the bright crimson sweaters and blouses she wears to work, or the rich burgundy plunge-neck dress she’s slipped into for the occasional girls’ night, JJ is sure she picks them with the intention of impressing. But who? Yes, Emily is the kind of woman who knows how to practically ooze sex appeal, but she’s also incredibly awkward, and clearly not willing to believe she’s deserving of anything beyond sleazy men and serial killers - sometimes men who fall into both categories at once - eyeing her up. She blows off every actually nice seeming guy who asks her out - other agents, local detectives, even someone from the crime lab, and every time her eyebrows get that embarrassed furrow, her cheeks flushing almost as red as the dress and the stain of merlot on her lips.
Emily looks good in red, which is fortunate, when she gets smashed across the face with a plank of wood, or takes a beating to save Reid, or only narrowly dodges death by car. There’s almost always some kind of graze or barely-healed scab on her, whether it’s from a near fatal injury, a particularly unfortunate run in with Sergio and his claws, or the rip of her own teeth against the skin at the edges of her finger nails.
JJ has always hated the sight of blood - which seems a redundant thing to actively hate, especially as a person who experiences it monthly, let alone with the job she’s in- ever since walking in to find her older sister bathing in it, the metallic smell leaving a sour taste in her mouth even all these years later if she spends any time thinking about it. Emily, though, makes blood almost look good.
Emily and the colour red go hand in hand so it shouldn’t be a surprise to find her lying in a pool of it. It shouldn’t send terror down her spine and make JJ’s throat dry seeing it pour out of the wound in her side, sticky and almost the same shade as the lipstick that still stains a coffee cup on her desk. Emily, all pale skin and dark hair, and streams and streams of red - it shouldn’t come as a shock.
In Paris, she picks out a bottle of red polish - lets JJ paint the jagged remains of her fingernails. It might stop her from picking at them, Emily says. Though she’s painted her own nails hundreds of times, her hands shake, the two fingers that hold the lidded brush suddenly inelegant and clumsy. This red is a choice, practically screams I’m a Parisienne but still all JJ can see is a pool of it gathering on the ground behind Emily’s prone body, a dribble of it bubbling out of her mouth. She almost drops the bottle as she finishes up, apologising for the mess she’s made, which Emily only scoffs at.
The bottle is titled Kiss Me Red, and god JJ wishes she could.
Emily looks perfect with red tinged cheeks and a flushed chest, a thin sheen of sweat over her body. She looks perfect with tiny red crescent moons across her shoulder blades, and a dark red bruise blossoming on her pulse point, and red lips, fuzzy and swollen from long, deep kisses.
She looks perfect in red lace, too, but then JJ had already guessed that. She looks even better out of it.
But the way Emily looks best of all is when she’s holding a bouquet of red wild flowers to her nose, and the light from the street lamp outside hits the ruby on her left hand just right, and JJ is reminded that she’s hers.