[a/n: i'm surprised more people aren't writing about "Proof". yeah, the unsub bit was creepy beyond words, but i loved the end with the whole team cooking, of all things, together! it was brilliant! and it got me thinking about this short story, which involves my thoughts on what may or may not have happened afterwards. hope you enjoy. peace~]
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN CRIMINAL MINDS OR ANY COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS HERE IN.. merely cook with the ingredients sometimes...
"Are you sure you don't need a ride?", Derek asked for what seemed to Penelope like the thousandth time.
Penelope gave him a patronizing glare. "I'm a big girl, I have a driver's liscense, and my own car. I can take care of myself."
"But you had wine to drink-", Derek attempted to protest.
"Yeah, and so did you", she pointed out, cutting off his protest, and prodding him gently in his chest with her index finger. She then smirked up at him cajolingly. "Go.. I'll be fine."
Derek leaned in until he was sure no one else would be able to hear him, and then he muttered in undertone, "You know I'm always on speed dial if you change your mind?"
She grinned sheepishly and gave him a heart felt kiss on the cheek. "Go, my steamy slab of man-meat", she sighed, adjusting the lapel of his coat. "before I have Agent Rossi sautee you with some mushrooms and onions."
"I thought you were a vegetarian?", Derek posed the question, eyebrow quirked, as his baby girl steered him towards Rossi's front door.
"For you?, I'd make an exception..", she purred tantrically, earning herself a saucy Derek Morgan grin in return.
"See you later, silly girl."
"Bye", she chuckled, closing the door behind her best friend in the whole wide world.
Making sure that Derek was the last one to have left the party/cooking lesson, Penelope strayed back into David Rossi's kitchen where she found the proud italian trying to restore order to the chaos her BAU family had created.
"Geez louis..", Garcia swore softly, glancing around at the discarded wine glasses, crumpled napkins, stacks of silverware, and the verifiable mountain of cooking utensils scattered about the once spotless kitchen. "It looks like a rabid animal got up in here.."
"A rabid animal with an unnatural, pathological need to eat mounds of pasta", Rossi joked lightly, dish towel slung neatly over one shoulder, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and a newly rinsed dinner plate in his left hand, which he placed in the dishwasher next to the others. "What are you still doing here anyway?", he asked. "I thought Morgan was determined to 'drive you home'?"
Penelope chuckled at the thinly veiled innuendo. "Yeah, Well, Everyone else may be content to bail on you without so much as a fight or a how-do-you-do, but you'll have no such luck with this kitten!"
Rossi grinned wryly at the quirky technical analyst. She was too cute for her own good sometimes. "So it wasn't you who I saw herding everyone out my front door like scared cattle?", he quipped, with a raised eyebrow.
"I don't see you proving that unless you have some sort of x-ray vision and can see through kitchen walls", Penelope countered, leaning on the granite slab of Rossi's floating island counter top.
Rossi flicked his gaze from the plate he had been rinsing to where she was situated at the counter. He noticed she had unwittingly given him an unhindered view of her cleavage from the angle at which she had decided to lean, and he decided he'd have a little laugh at her expense. "Yes, All italians have x-ray vision, didn't you know?", he asked, placing the second dinner plate from his left hand into the dishwasher and then moving onto the island to pick up another, "For instance, the lacy red bra you're currently wearing is very nice", he nodded at her general chest area briefly before turning his back on her and rinsing the new plate, "Spicy, yet tasteful."
Penelope looked down at her chest and realized with mortification how he must have figured out that privet bit of information and promptly crossed her arms over herself, blushing the entire time. "Thanks", she chirped, trying to dismiss the tension that hand suddenly sprung up in her gut.
After Rossi had relished in his victory, he took pity on the poor thing and handed her a dish towel.
She glanced up at him with a question in her golden brown eyes, so he answered it.
"If you're gonna hang around for a while, you might as well make yourself useful."
Penelope took the offered dish towel hesitantly, unwilling just yet to relax again, and grabbed the nearest dinner plate, heading to the sink.
They rinsed dishes for a while until, to Rossi's great surprise, Garcia herself broke the silence.
"So...", she asked in as casual a voice as she could manage, "Do you like everything that way?"
Rossi's forehead crinkled in confusion. "Do I like everything 'what' way?", he asked.
"El dente", she answered, breaking out into a sly grin.
Rossi let out a genuine full bodied laugh, filled with so much mirth that his eyes watered slightly. It seemed the silence he had mistaken for lasting embarrassment had merely been a clever ploy on the tech kitten's part to allow herself time to think up a witty remark.
"I suppose so", he chuckled, wiping the corners of his eyes with the back of his right hand.
"So those rumours about you being a lothario are true?", she giggled.
"Hold the phone there, blondie!", Rossi barked good-naturedly. "You've been holdin' out on me! When did you start learnin' my language?"
Penelope shrugged nonchalantly. "Kevin and I were thinking about taking a trip to Rome a few years ago, so we looked up a few phrases. Nothing major."
Rossi winced in sympathy for her. "It must be hard.. him being so far away now.."
"Oh, That wasn't the hard part", Penelope chuckled, half bitter, half sarcastic. "The hard part was moving on after I dumped him."
Rossi was shocked; Why hadn't she mentioned anything before now? He wouldn't ask her why she had dumped Kevin, god knows it was none of his business, but he couldn't just stand there like an idiot and say nothing.
"Garcia.. I'm sorry. I didn't know."
Penelope shrugged again, a little less devil-may-care. "I didn't tell anyone. You were all so busy fielding new cases with barely half a team left, and Morgan was hell bent on tracking down Doyle, and what with the transfers and all- I didn't want it to be one more thing that you guys had to worry about."
"Well, are you coping okay at least?", Rossi asked, coming down after her initial confession.
Penelope gave the old profiler a warm smile. "I volunteered. I worked late. I hung out more with Morgan, and sometimes J.J. and Reid. I baked. I knitted an entire closets worth of wintry garments, and after that, I took random classes and tried out some new hobbies. I'm throwing a festival at my apartment. I did what I always do- I kept calm and I carried on."
Rossi shook his head in wonderment. "Lei brilla come la luce dal sole.."
Penelope pretended to consider his words for a moment, and then smiled. "I don't know what you said, but it sounded delightful."
"It's something my mother used to say", Rossi grinned. "and it reminds me of you.."
Penelope quirked her head in wordless interest.
"It means", Rossi translated, "'You shine like the light from the sun'."
Penelope paused for a moment as a piece of her heart had momentarily turned to goo, she then smiled shyly and blushed while placing the last dinner plate in the dishwasher. "You sure know how to flatter a girl, Agent Rossi", she chided, shaking her head.
"Well, that comes from mama too", Rossi answered matter-of-factly. "David!, You remember this'a now, eh?", Rossi shrieked, attempting to do the best impression of his mother when she had become vexed with him.
Penelope found it difficult to stifle her laughter so she could hear the speech in it's entirety.
"You'a gonna treat every girl you meet a'like a women, or you'a gonna have ta deal with'a me, si?"
"So what did you say?", Penelope asked, in a fit of giggles.
"What else?", Rossi asked in surprise as if the answer should have been obvious. "I said, 'si, mama'. She may have been five foot nothin' and I may have been eighteen, but she was a force to be reckoned with!"
Penelope roared laughing imaging a younger, scrawny italian boy Rossi with his head bent in submission to a stern itty bitty italian mother, and Rossi joined in out of sheer amusement.
"Thanks for all this", Penelope beamed after she had stopped shaking with laughter.
"For what?", Rossi asked, feigning ignorance.
"For this", Penelope gestured around the room which they were slowly returning to normal. "For welcoming us into your home. For teaching us the proper way to cook spaghetti. For giving us a reason to smile again. We really needed that."
Rossi heard an underlying admission in her words.. 'I really needed that'. "Era il mio piacere", he cooed happily.
"Ha!, Now that one I know!", Penelope smirked triumphantly, moving to the floating island counter and sweeping the crumbs and bits of meal leftovers into a nearby garbage bin, while scrubbing the granite surface with the soapy washcloth in her left hand.
"Do I want to know?", Rossi asked with an amused smirk, taking the other side of the counter.
"Probably not..", Penelope admitted sheepishly.
Rossi just shook his head, grinning from ear to ear.
They worked their way along the long counter top until they were nearly hip to hip. That's when Rossi noticed that miss thing was humming along disjointedly with his music collection under her breath.
"So, you like my music do you?", he grinned.
"Hmm?", Penelope asked, looking up at him with clear, innocent eyes. Apparently, she had lost herself in the cleaning process and hadn't even noticed she'd begun to hum, so he tried again, moving over to his sound system and gesturing.
"The music, do you like it?"
"Hmm- Oh!, Yes", she smiled pleasantly, "It's lovely. I don't usually take to 'dance-y' type music, but it seems like a natural type of dancing. Something that starts in your soul, and then spreads to the limbs. Not like popular music now-a-days. Don't get me wrong!, I love me some Gaga, but music today is so... almost vulgarly suggestive. There's no mystery. It isn't gentle. It doesn't offer you love like it's yours for the taking. It demands that you take part, wither you are willing to or not." Penelope shut her mouth abruptly; She hadn't meant to become all philosophical. How embarrassing..
"Oh", Rossi said in that special way he always had for saying the word, the corners of his mouth lifting in a small suppressed smile. "So that's why you never dance with Morgan, is it?"
Penelope laughed a little. It was no secret that every time the team went out for drinks, she would watch Derek Morgan shake it for all he was worth like a tom cat watches a juicy goldfish, but refuse to join him should he ask. "That has less to do with vulgarity as it does have to do with insecurities", she chuckled wryly.
"Say it ain't so!", Rossi gasped in feigned surprise, "The flirtiest flower-child I know is too insecure to dance? Well, we'll just have to fix that.." he now held the remote for the music player in his hand, and he pressed the number combination he knew would bring him to 'mambo italiano'. He spun in her direction when the music began to play, a smirk gracing his lips.
"Oh no", Penelope began to protest, shaking her head, but maintaining eye contact with the master chef to properly convey her sincerity. "This bambina doesn't dance. No one will ever change that. Not my tree-hugging parents-"
Rossi pranced towards her unashamedly.
"-not the complete chocolate god that is Derek Morgan-"
Rossi reached out and removed the cleaning cloths from each of her hands, smiling endearingly all the while.
"-and certainly not a smug, bull-headed- you're not even listening to me, are you?", she asked with a smile that clearly said 'you clever bastard', as he smoothly moved her to the open space of his living room and closer to the music.
"You can do this, kitten", he encouraged, "I don't believe for one second that a women with all your sass could ever be a terrible dancer."
Penelope shot him a doubtful look, but she relaxed a little none the less. "What do I have to do?"
"Not much", Rossi answered, pleased that he, not the muscle bound lug, had managed to convince the office minx to finally have a dance, "I'll lead. Just follow the bouncing italian, and don't move unless you feel it; That's important."
Penelope sighed in irritation, but complied. It took her only a few seconds to identify the rhythm , but it took her a good few minutes to work up the courage to actually start budging.
"That's it..", he reassured her softly, beginning to lead her across his living room floor, "Follow me and the feeling the music gives you and you'll be fine.."
He was a little rusty and she was very new, but the result was that they were perfectly matched. While she was learning by his example, he was revising for her benefit. He showed extreme patience, care, and confidence with her, making her feel secure by default. But, he sensed there was still something holding her back.
Penelope was thinking about a movie. This movie was called 'shall we dance'. A certain line from 'shall we dance' kept playing in her head over and over again all the while that David Rossi was trying to teach her.. 'dance is a vertical expression, of a horizontal wish..' All of her insecurities about dancing stemmed from this stupid line. What if the person she was dancing with got the wrong idea about her from the way she choose to dance? She thought she could never live with herself if that should happen. THAT'S the reason she never danced with Morgan. Dancing was dangerous.
"What's the matter?", Rossi asked, looking her in the eyes, "Something's bothering you.. What are you thinking about?"
Penelope frowned, her eyes apologetic and sad, and let go of his hands, spinning away from him and back towards the floating island counter top, where she pulled up a bar stool and sat with her head bent and her hands folded in her lap.
Rossi followed her in confusion and concern and noticed tears were streaming down her face. "What's the matter, blondie?", Rossi asked in a gentle rumble. "I thought we were having fun.."
Penelope threw her arms up in confusion and self-frustration. "I was and then..", she shook her head, angrily wiping tears from the corners of her eyes with the back of her right hand.
"And then?", Rossi prompted.
"And then", Penelope sighed, feeling completely ashamed at her lack of courage, "I started to think about what I always start to think about whenever anyone asks me to dance.."
"Which is..?"
Penelope growled at herself furiously. "I- I start to feel.. like, indecent.."
Rossi tried very, very hard not to laugh, because he knew it would only hurt her and not help the situation at all. "So.. you're worried about coming off as too.. 'appealing', and you don't want anyone getting the wrong impression from it?"
"Thank you for putting that so delicately", Penelope nodded, blushing slightly, yet trying to regain her composure.
Rossi smiled warmly, shaking his head, pulling up a stool beside hers and taking her small, soft hands in his.
She gave him a pure, quizzical stare as he looked back up into her eyes.
"Penelope.. you silly, silly kitten..", he chuckled lightly.
She started to pull away from his hold on her, but he stopped her with a gentle squeeze.
"Hear me out.. Every time I think I have you figured out, I find out something that makes me change my opinion. It astounds me that someone with such bravado and spirit, who says things to her friends that would make college students blush, someone brimming with such life, would be afraid of something so freeing as dance, but then, I think I know why now. As long as it's talk, as long as there is no action behind your words, you feel completely safe and secure. That's why you stay in your tech haven with your screens and your hotline, it's controlled and no one can see you. But when you're out in the open, you feel like everyone's watching you and analyzing everything you do. Dancing requires you to let go far more then you feel comfortable with, and it scares you. As you feel your control slipping away, your mind comes up with reasons to stop, reasons to avoid risk in order to restore the previous calm. Dance might be about sex for some people, but it doesn't have to be for you. Dancing, I've always thought, is happiness. It's burden-less. Dancing is freedom, take it. Forget fear, it's overrated."
Penelope wished she could admonish him for profiling her, but his speech had blown her away.
"So what'da ya say, peaches?", Rossi smirked kindly. "Ready to give it another go?"
[a/n: so, the movie 'shall we dance' is one of my all time favorites- i've watched it twice in the last few days -and my favorite line from that movie is "the rumba is a vertical expression of a horizontal wish. you gotta hold her, like the skin on her thigh is your reason for living.. spin her away, like your heart is being ripped from your chest.. bring her back like you're gonna have your way with her, right here on the dance floor.. and finish, like she's ruined you for life." i modified it though to suit my needs, because this story was about dance being freeing instead of sexual :) again, this was inspired by the end of "Proof", season seven, episode two. love y'all!]