Disclaimers: Not mine, folks! ABC, CBS, Jeff Davis, the Mark Gordon Co., a team of brilliant writers, and some equally brilliant actors created these characters. I'm just messing around with them.
Comments: Written for AlexandriaZ as part of the 2013 Christmas Fic Gift Exchange. The requested pairing was a Rossi/Strauss romance. The song I was assigned was Frank Sinatra's version of "I'll Be Home for Christmas," and my Christmas-y prompts were a scarf, a visit with Santa, and jingle bells on the roof. I've used all of them, although perhaps not the way she'd anticipated. I hope that she enjoys their appearances here, and that all of her holidays—and yours!—are merry and bright.
Thanks: To Daisyangel, pandorabox82, and sugarhigh9394, for organizing this exchange, and to the always incomparable Esperanta for her mad beta skillz that make me look as if, just maybe, I know what I'm doing.
Dave's Absolutely Perfect, No Screw-ups Christmas
It was Sunday afternoon, three days before Christmas, and she wasn't there.
The annual Quantico holiday bash had been—as always for such a tightly wound place—scheduled to begin at X, end at Y. The Bureau isn't big on spontaneity, so the steam tables were literally rolled in at 4:30 on the nose and would vanish just as mercilessly at 7:30. Agents with small children (like JJ) had their spouses bring the kiddies out. Agents without spouses (like Hotch) made a mad sprint home to collect them. Each adult received one, count it, one chit to be turned in at the no-cash-allowed, no intoxication tolerated, holiday bar.
Yeah. Sub-zero spontaneity levels.
David Rossi'd been tapped to play Santa Claus, in a suit designed for someone substantially bigger in all directions, and so generously padded that he looked like a big red cabbage and could barely move his arms. He felt like the Michelin Man or maybe that big marshmallow dude from Ghostbusters, and he was always no more than a snort away from sneezing from the ghost-fumes of mothballs and cleaning fluid past that clung to the costume, wig, and beard.
It would have been worth it, though, if Erin Strauss would just show up. It was the main reason he'd agreed to make nice with the kiddies in this ridiculous outfit instead of sneaking off to Hotch's office with him to knock back some serious scotch. The way he'd thought it out, he was on his way to the perfect Christmas.
After her marriage fell apart, they'd finally acted on some urges that had sent the air around them to positively crackling with unresolved sexual tension over far too many years. Dave had begun to think that Erin just might be the woman who could be, as she put it, "Mrs. Rossi the Last," as in, this one's the keeper. The others—lovely women, all of them, gentle, smart, and honorable—they'd been practice wives.
But then her husband got all pissy and suspicious. Like many controlling executives, he felt that a little something to spice up the separation was fine for him, not so fine for her. He'd suddenly become more discreet about his own love life. He'd started spending quality time with his lawyer and accountant, prime evidence that he intended, insofar as he was able, to stiff her in the settlement. Furthermore, Erin suspected that she was being followed. Walter, a top corporate attorney, was many things, some of them positive, but "vindictive bastard" was way, way up near the top of the list.
They'd backed off, tried to keep it on the serious down-low, worked on being their distant and professional best at work, and eliminated almost every connection outside of Quantico that didn't involve everybody else in the BAU.
It was killing him. He wondered sometimes if she tossed and turned and thought about him all night that way he'd started to obsess on her. He wondered whether she'd switched from pantsuits to short skirts and snug sweaters just to tease him.
Which was why being Santa had seemed such a kick ass idea. He'd tease her into sitting on Santa's lap, ask her if she was being a good girl or a naughty one, give her a little hug and maybe sneak a little pinch on her adorable bottom. Feel her giggling against him. After the Quantico party, they'd head on back to his place. Screw Walt and his idiot private eyes—it was Christmas!
He'd spent hours decorating the downstairs, especially the great room, with its enormous marble fireplace. It had five perfect trees arranged in a perfect semi-circle in front of the floor-to-ceiling leaded windows, each pane individually frosted in the lower right corner. It had his top-shelf sound system, ready to pour forth everything from novelty tunes to the classic carols. And Rat Pack. Lots and lots of Rat Pack. He'd bought a beautiful pearl gray cashmere scarf, hand crafted in Wales, for Erin. When she unfolded it, a Christmas charm bracelet would fall from among its folds, tiny carved rosettes of carnelian and jade, red and green, mounted in white gold. He'd broken out the best crystal snifters, the ones he never bothered to open usually because there were only two of them.
He envisioned dozing off on the big soft leather couch in front of a roaring fire, Dean and Frankie crooning holiday songs, his finest brandy glowing in crystal, and the flames adding color to Erin's blonde hair as she nestled against his chest.
It was to be his absolutely perfect Christmas. No hitches, no screw-ups allowed.
His plans were to have made all of it—mildew and mothballs and cleaning fluid and having to waddle around in boots three sizes too big—well worth the trouble.
But there was no Erin. They'd talked about it for a week, and she'd insisted she was coming, had even agreed to return to his place afterward. She'd formally RSVP'd for it; like a good Santa, he'd checked the list twice. He'd called her home and her cell phone to no avail, and now it was past 7:00. If she didn't show up soon, the whole Santa gig had been for nothing.
Well, almost nothing. There were a few perks.
"And a big book of cartoons for my dad," Jack told "Santa," a look of wide-eyed innocence all over his face, "because the last one he got, he snorted coffee all over his suit. That was a great Christmas present. But why wouldn't he let me look at the cartoons? I don't understand that." The boy swiveled slightly on Santa's lap and glared at his father.
Santa Claus Rossi nodded gravely. The beard, thank God, hid the fact that his own face was scarlet with stifled laughter. He'd given the book to Aaron Hotchner himself—and some of it was definitely R-rated humor. Eh, and a little X-rated.
"Well, we'll just have to talk to your daddy about that," Rossi boomed, enjoying the distinctly uncomfortable look on Hotch's face. Anderson in his elf costume snickered as he reached into Santa's bag for one of the three remaining children's gifts. He handed it to Dave, who handed it to Jack.
"Thank you, Mr. Ro—um, Santa," the boy said with a twinkle in his eye. Like his dad, he was just too sharp for his own good sometimes. As he started to slide off Rossi's lap, he hesitated and leaned close. "I think Daddy liked the boobies best," he confided softly.
That did it. Rossi gritted his teeth, struggled to hold it in, then gave up and let loose with a huge, explosive, "Ho! Ho! Ho!"
As Denise from White Collar Crime approached with her two little girls—fortunately, the last children in line—Rossi pushed his wire-rimmed spectacles up over his white wig carefully so he wouldn't knock his Santa hat askew, and wiped his eyes. As he shoved his handkerchief back into his—well, Santa's—pocket, he noticed that his phone was buzzing. He glanced at it: Erin Strauss.
Everything in him told him to stop what he was doing and take the call, but instead he made himself beam broadly at the two little girls in their matching velvet dresses. "And who are these lovely young ladies?" he boomed. "Why, at the North Pole, you'd be princesses! Maybe even snow queens!"
A few minutes later, as the guests began to file away, Rossi removed the hat, wig, and beard and reached for his phone.
She answered on the first ring, tense, eager. "Dave! Thank God!" she said. He could hear Ol' Blue Eyes warbling about how he'd be home for Christmas in the background. That, and the murmur of voices. It sounded, frankly, like a bar.
Was she drinking again?
"What's up, cara mia?" he asked. "Where are you? We missed you at the party."
"Right, the party," she said, almost absently. "That was today, wasn't it?"
"Yes, Erin," he said, aghast. How could she forget it? "We missed you. I missed you."
"I couldn't be there," that lovely, velvety warm voice told him. "Something important came up. Or went down, I suppose I could say. I need you, Dave. I'm at the Dew Drop Inn, over by St. Sebastian's Hosp—"
So she was at a bar. He tightened his grip on the phone because there was no way he could grasp at his perfect Christmas and keep it from slipping away. She'd come so far! How could she screw it up now? Why?
" I know where it is. Erin, are you—"
"I'm not drinking," she assured him. "Well, not alcohol. But I need you. It's an emergency."
"Do you need your sponsor?"
"No!" her voice was startling in its intensity. "I'm in no danger of taking a drink, Dave, but I may go mad. I need you now."
"Give me twenty-five minutes," he said.
~ o ~
It took him twenty-two.
Erin sat alone at a table by the big old-fashioned jukebox, its multicolored lights giving her champagne blonde hair a rainbow glow. Sinatra was singing "I'll Be Home for Christmas" again, bringing it to its conclusion. Erin swayed with the music, eyes shut, singing along with it, to the apparent grousing annoyance of the rest of the revelers.
"Hey, I like his take on it," Dave told them defensively. "You can't beat the Rat Pack."
Seventeen unhappy faces turned and studied him. Belatedly he realized he hadn't yet wiped the jolly-old-Santa rouge off his cheeks. He yanked out his handkerchief and scrubbed at his face self-consciously.
The song stopped. There was a series of clicks.
The song began again.
"Fawteen times!" an old guy at the bar shouted hoarsely. "Fawteen! T'row da bitch out awreddy!"
"I've been playing it for you, Dave," Erin said, and she extended her hand. "Been thinking of being home, of being with you tonight. It's given me the strength to keep on going." She turned her face toward the bartender. "Reboot it, whatever you have to do," she said. "I don't need to hear it anymore."
Sinatra gurgled to a stop and the lights on the jukebox went out as Rossi seated himself at Erin's table. She apparently hadn't been drinking. She poured ginger ale from a can over the ice in her glass. Two more crumpled cans lay on the table along with a woven plastic bowl, lined with wax paper, that seemed to have held nachos.
She wiped her fingers on a napkin and reached for Rossi's hand. An electric thrill ran up his arm. "Frank's voice was all that kept me sane for the past half hour or so," she said. "He was helping me remember you. I'm so glad you're here; I can't face this alone."
Dave glanced around the bar, wondering whether any of the patrons was a spy hired by Walt Kretschmer. "What's up, Erin?" he murmured finally.
"I need to go to St. Sebastian's Hospital," she said. "I can't do it by myself."
He felt a stab of panic, recalling Carolyn's illness, his father's illness. Recalling how they'd almost lost her to the Replicator's poison the previous year. He'd almost died himself looking at her, barely conscious in Aaron's arms.
I can't lose her now, not after all that!
"What for?" he whispered, miserable with dread and not sure he wanted to hear the answer. "Are you ill?"
Her eyes widened. "You haven't heard the news?"
He could barely breathe. "Apparently not."
Erin's fingers tightened on his. "David, Walter is dead."
Rossi's eyes widened. "What? How?"
She shook her head nervously. "I'm not completely sure," she began. "He fell, they told me, fell from the roof of a house over in Chevy Chase."
"What the hell's he doing at St. Sebastian's, then?"
"No idea," Erin replied. "I suppose whoever he was with took him there." Her jaw tightened. "I've always hated St. Sebastian's. Everything awful that's happened to us—the attacks on Penelope, on Hotch, on Reid—somehow we've always ended up there. I try not even to pass the damn place!"
Beside them, the jukebox had fluttered back to life. A young couple, holding hands, walked over to it and began to look at the selection of songs available.
"Anything but frickin' 'I'll Be Home for Christmas,'" some drunk at the bar slurred.
The couple deposited their money and made their selections.
After a quick, two-bar introduction, a chorus of children began to sing, "Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus ..."
"You don't suppose," Dave began carefully, "that he was playing Santa, do you?"
Erin gave a sudden weird hoot of laughter and ginger ale spewed from her nostrils. "Walter?" she gasped, groping for another napkin and trying to control the urge to giggle. "Walter's a total Grinch, David. He could've been Ebenezer Scrooge. If I didn't buy the presents, send out the cards, pay someone to put up the lights, nothing got done. Nothing. It was … it just some commercial thing that smart people steered clear of. A plot to drain his bank account. He told our kids straight up that there was no Santa, no North Pole, and that there would be no Christmas trees or stockings in his house. I mean, if he'd had religious reasons for it—or an objection to religion, period—I could have understood it. He would have been standing for something. But, no, it was just, 'Christmas is for chumps.'"
Rossi shook his head. "That must have made the holidays difficult."
She shrugged one shoulder. "I worked around it, made a celebration out of it. Anyway, that was done, that was over. But now I have to do the whole legal thing, collect his belongings, I think someone already identified him, but for all I know, I'll have to do that, too. I have two kids who just got home from college, and a third who's playing in a Christmas concert. I had to find my marriage license because I still use my maiden name, and it took me two hours—God, I can't do this myself, Dave."
She gazed across the cluttered little table at him, her eyes bleak. "I must sound like such a wimp, but—this is the first big family crisis I've had to face cold sober, and I could use a friendly face."
"First big family crisis?" he echoed. "You handled the Replicator just fine, sweetheart. Here he was, stalking the team, and you were stalking him. You carried that all on your own for eight months. You're made of tough stuff, bella mia, and that's one of the things I love about you. Of course I'll stand by you, proud to do it—but don't you dare think of yourself as a wimp for wanting a little moral support."
Her hand squeezed his. "You always amaze me, David."
He kissed her fingertips. Some idiot at the bar wolf-whistled.
"Come along, giovinetta bellissima," he purred. "Let's do what has to be done."
~ o ~
A tinny set of wall-mounted speakers crackled "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." One other person waited in the grim waiting room with cracked linoleum and ancient institutional-tan walls—a room that seemed not to have seen a paintbrush since the hospital's opening in 1953. The other person in the waiting room was a young woman who appeared to be about twenty. She wore glittery silver boots with five-inch heels and scarlet spandex pants. She'd poured her improbably generous bosoms into a sweater a couple sizes too small, a fuzzy white number garnished with sprigs of flannel holly, plastic berries, and the legend, "I'm too naughty for Santa!" Her platinum blonde hair looked like a collision between Dolly Parton and a blob of whipped cream.
She looked up at the two of them suspiciously as they entered—at Erin, especially—and popped her gum. "Are you Mrs. Kretschmer?"
All kinds of bells sounded in Rossi's brain, and not one of them was a jingle bell. Before Erin could admit to her identity, he whipped out his Bureau ID. "Agents Rossi and Strauss," he snapped. "Federal Bureau of Investigation."
The girl's expression morphed from suspicious to sour. "Yeah, his old lady works there," she said. "Figures y'all would want to check on it. Well, it was an accident. There wasn't any, ya know, like, foul play."
"Easy for you to say," Erin interrupted, as quick on the uptake as ever. "Your identification, please." The girl stood up and presented her driver's license sulkily.
"Is this the address where the alleged accident occurred?" Erin asked.
Rossi decided he'd just back off and let the Boss Lady do what she did best.
"Wasn't nothing illegal going on," she said. "Just a little bit of Christmas spirits, ya know?"
"Of course," Erin said smoothly. "These things happen. Would you mind describing what happened for us?"
"Sure, no prob, lady—uh, agent. It's like this. See, it's Christmas, OK? And Wally was really getting in the the ol' Christmas spirit, you know? Hey, you know why Mr. and Mrs. Claus don't have any kids? 'Cause he only comes once a year," she continued, blithely answering her own question, "and that's down the chimney!" She giggled. "That's one of Wally's, he's just such a stitch—well, he was.
"So he told me that joke, and then he said, 'Ya know, we gotta put some jingle bells up on the roof,' so when we're, like, intimate—ya know what I mean?—'so when we're doin' it, Santa'll know when I come.' Wally's got such a sense of humor, ya know? Well, he did. So we dug up some jingle bells and a big long cord, and he was gonna put the jingle bells up on the roof and run the line down the chimney to the bedroom, 'cause we got a fireplace in there, ya know?"
"I see," Erin said in that tone that to Rossi clearly said, No, I don't see at all, dear, but please keep on talking. "And then?"
"Um, that's where it gets just a little bit cray-cray," the girl said. "Wally was, ya know, up on the roof, tacking down the jingle bells, paying line down the chimney, then he started sorta, ya know, screwin' around, playing like he was humping the chimney, and I said, Wally, ya big dumb jackass, ya still got yer pants on."
"Perfectly reasonable of you," Erin Strauss said, so smoothly, so serenely, that even Rossi almost forgot that she had, as they say, a dog in this fight. Why is she behind a desk instead of wresting confessions from UNSUBs? "Please continue, dear."
"So he dropped his pants," the girl said. "And he just kept on humping the chimney, but he'd had a whole lot to drink—he can't help it, his wife's this major, big-time lush—and he lost his balance. And when he tried to, ya know, catch himself, he tripped over his pants. 'cause they were down around his ankles."
The girl began to giggle. "Sorry—sorry, so creepy to laugh about it, but he's duck-waddling backwards with his pants down around his shoes and he fell over them—" The giggle became a breathy chuckle. "And he fell, and—and I couldn't help it, 'cause his undies came on, it was so funny, and he fell, ya know, like, thud. Right down on the driveway. And it sorta took me a minute to realize I gotta stop shooting video and call nine-one-one. 'Cause I had a couple little drinkies myself, ya see. It being almost Christmas and all. But I did. And I told them to be sure to bring him here, even though it costs extra, 'cause he'd always said that the ol' bat hated the place—"
Before she could move any further into her narrative, a door opened and a man in a long white coat poked his head out into the waiting room. "For Mr. Kretschmer?" he asked in a tentative tone.
"Yes," Erin said. "Agents Strauss and Rossi, FBI." It was her turn to flash her creds.
The man—his name tag identified him as Clement Miller, Morgue Assistant—seemed a little nonplussed, but he nodded as he ushered them in. The temperature was a few degrees cooler in this new room, and the paint was in better shape. "I hope you won't mind just viewing him on the closed circuit screen," he said.
"That's unacceptable," Erin snapped instantly.
"Ah. Well." Clement Miller hesitated for a moment, frowning. "Then, ah—let me make some minor arrangements."
"Unnecessary," Erin said. "We're no strangers to sudden and violent death."
"Of course," Miller stammered. "Then, ah, right this way, please."
After the morgue assistant had turned his back in order to open the door, Rossi reached out and quickly gave Erin's fingers a squeeze, just so she'd know he was completely in her corner. Without turning her head, she returned the squeeze.
The temperature dropped alarmingly in the viewing room. Erin gathered her sweater around her more tightly. Rossi popped the collar up on his jacket.
Walter Kretschmer lay pale and still on the table with no injuries to his face or head. However, from approximately the level of his crotch a rhythmically flashing red light shone through the crisp white sheet. It was unnerving as all hell; Rossi found the whole of his attention focused on Walter's groin.
"Ah, as you can see," the morgue assistant said, "there are no remarkable exterior injuries. The autopsy'll determine whether he died in the fall, or whether he had a stroke or cardiac arrest that caused him to fall. Sorry about the light," he added. "We keep turning it off, and it keeps turning itself back on."
Before Rossi could ask what "it" was, Erin had flicked the sheet aside.
Walt Kretschmer wore nothing but a thong, and what nature had given him was stuffed into the business end of it, which was shaped like the wide-eyed and grinning snout of a reindeer. Its glowing red nose flashed on and off.
" … and I couldn't help it, 'cause his undies came on, it was so funny," the blonde bimbo had said.
Erin made a spluttering noise, averted her face, and finally gave in to gales of laughter.
All Rossi could do was look at Miller, the helpless morgue assistant, who was obviously trying not to chuckle himself, and say, solemnly, "It's been a long day."
"There's video," Miller said, his voice tight with the effort to control himself. "His, ah, lady friend got it all on video."
"I think we'd better have that," Rossi said with a sigh. "We don't want to risk having it show up online."
"Of course," Miller said. He seemed happy to have an excuse to leave the room.
~ o ~
Her head rested against his chest, but there was no fire in the fireplace. Walt had sealed it up years before while on one of his cost-cutting and energy-saving tears. An artificial tree sat in one corner, its boughs still bound with twine and packed away in plastic trash bags beside the boxes of ornaments and tinsel and a formidable tangle of potentially twinkling lights. It had been a long and trying day; Erin kept dozing off on his shoulder, then apologizing for it. Each time, he would kiss her brow and tell her, no that was fine. She was cute when she snored.
Her kids, all three of them, buzzed in and out of the living room, each of them trying to deal with the stress of losing their father before they'd had a chance to make any peace with him following his abandonment of the family—and all of this happening during the holiday season. They had questions and reminiscences, tears and recriminations. There was a lot of anger at Walter, and a lot of guilt about that anger. Some anger was directed at their mother; some of it was directed at David Rossi. For each such outburst, whether of questions, memories, or blame, Erin would sit up and listen with love and understanding. Rossi, who still remembered how painful, how dramatic, every loss was at that age—he wasn't that old, after all—listened the same way.
Erin had no liquor in the house—what had he been thinking of, planning to serve her brandy? Where was his head?—so they drank supermarket eggnog from coffee mugs until one of the kids, possibly the elder girl, mulled some cider in the kitchen, possibly to cover the aroma of the dope she'd been smoking with her boyfriend out on the patio.
From the radio, a local station broadcast a stream of carols, interspersed with ads directed at people looking to do some last minute shopping that involved cars and diamonds. Every once in a while, there was a Rat Pack song, but it was hard to hear anything through the din of the young men in the next room, Erin's son and his friends, playing video games; through the excited yapping of the two Yorkies Walter had abandoned when he left his wife and kids; and the seemingly random sounds of the younger daughter, upstairs working out her frustrations by practicing her bassoon.
There were sobs and slammed doors, sudden shrieks of hysterical laughter, and unfamiliar young persons who'd wander into the room, see them there on the couch, and then mumble, "Oops, 'scuse me." So very many phone calls from friends of the family that Erin had turned off the ringer and hidden the answering machine in another room so she could deal with it all in the morning.
Other than the warm, delicious feel of Erin reclining against him, the evening could hardly have been any further removed from his carefully laid plans. In their hour of need, Erin and her three children had absorbed him into their definition of Us. This was a real family, not a fantasy family subject to his plans and desires; real people, struggling to process their loss while they processed the presence of this new man in their midst, but not putting on brave faces for him the way they would for an outsider.
Screw-ups and hitches are natural in a real family. Real families are spontaneous and messy, prone to awkward conversations and even more awkward silences.
And that was what made it perfect.
~ end ~