Disclaimer: No own.
A/N: Because I think there should be more stories involving these two.
Chapter 1
David Rossi was one of the father's of the BAU. He'd been around since the day the first case landed on his battered secondhand desk, dragged out from the recesses of the basement. He'd been the hero, the has-been (with lots of groupies) and was back once again to create profiles and solve cases. Only, he didn't do it alone anymore. It had been an adjustment, a massive one at that, getting used to bouncing ideas from one team member to another, watching the idea coalesce into a working profile. More often than not, surprisingly, the profile turned into an arrest and yet another case solved.
The first case back, well, hadn't been his crowning achievement. He'd still been in his thinking patterns from ten years ago, and well everyone else, wasn't. He'd expected the wary looks, the guarded phrases, but the downright hostility (though it was well-hidden, to say the least) was not expected. Rossi admitted that he tried, that first case, to smooth over whatever was ruffling everyone's feathers, but no progress was truly made.
It wasn't until his first case with the ever-intimidating Dr. Reid (mentally, not physically) that he realized the reasons for the resistance from the team. Admittedly, his first reaction to Reid had not been the best. The walking dictionary had overwhelmed him, especially since he put off some sort of fangirl vibe that he was not entirely comfortable with, no matter how many times he had seen it in the groupies.
But when they sat together in that storage unit, going through page after page of fantasies that David finally realized where he had gone wrong. When Reid not only outread him, but was able to give remarkable insight to the case that would have taken him days to reach, David had to concede that skinniness aside, Reid was a very valuable member to the team.
A few cases down the road, he became closer to the team. Aaron was a familiar entity, hell he'd trained the guy. Emily was prickly, but sometimes you could get past her rough exterior to the person underneath that loved a cat named Sergio. Morgan was brash and tackle-happy, but Dave would go to hell before he kicked in another door, thank you very much. JJ was sweetness personified, but Dave knew not to step on any of her motherly instincts, lest she throw him to the ground. He wouldn't even contemplate Garcia. That woman could delete things he didn't even know existed and he was too afraid to risk it.
And Reid. Reid was like a lost puppy looking for a home. And true, he had found one at the BAU. The way all the team members doted on him and protected him showed that, but it was in his every move that he was still looking for that something. That one missing piece of his life that he couldn't quite resolve himself to.
Dave was at a loss to what it was. On some cases, it was all he could do not to walk right up to Reid and just ask him. But Reid's overt privacy prevented him. He let it go and he kept wondering on case after case. Until Vegas. Until the case that made Reid think his father was a monster.
And damn Dave to hell for it, but he intervened.
End Chapter.