Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is owned by CBS. I own nothing but my imagination.
The Crappiest Place on Earth-Chapter 1
As he stepped into his hotel room, David Rossi was greeted by the sound of his wife throwing up in the bathroom. Swallowing hard and willing his own breakfast to stay in place, he set down the tea and toast he'd gotten for her and knocked on the bathroom door.
"You okay in there, honey?" He asked, hoping she wouldn't want him to come in. Dave could deal with serial killers, dead bodies and some of the worst depravement of humanity, but he could not deal with someone being sick…he was what Morgan called a 'sympathetic puker.' Hell, he could barely deal with his own son vomiting and he was only two years old! Thankfully for him, his loving wife remembered his aversion to illness and called out, "No, I'm fine David, just give me a minute."
Sighing in relief, Dave set her light breakfast up on the small table. He had just finished when she stepped out of the bathroom. Looking shaky and green, she wobbled into the room.
"What is THAT?" She asked, eyeing the food on the table.
"That's your breakfast, Jen." Seeing her shake his head, he pushed on, "You have to eat something honey, even if it is just tea and toast."
"Dave, at this point I'm not eating food, I'm renting it. If I eat any of that, I can guarantee I'll just be seeing it ten minutes later in the toilet."
Feeling his own gag reflex kick in at her description, he cleared his throat. "Fine, but I expect to see it gone by the time I get back."
JJ nodded agreeably, he hadn't said how she should get rid of it, only that it needed to be gone. Fine, she would dump it in the trash at the end of the hallway.
Remembering that he would be leaving shortly, Dave frowned. "Are you sure you don't want me to stay here and take care of you?"
His wife shook her head and instantly regretted it as the movement only intensified the nausea, "I'll be fine here," she said firmly. "You're going on this outing, David."
"But Jen," he whined, "Disneyland? With Penelope Garcia? If San Francisco is her Mecca, then Disneyland has to be her version of heaven!"
"I know, that's why she needs someone to go with her, if only to make sure she leaves at the end of the day," JJ explained. "I don't think our Unit Chief would be amused if he had to bail our Technical Analyst out of Disney jail tonight, do you?"
"After my excursion with her in San Francisco, I swore," he continued to whine, "I fucking swore on a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue that I would never go on a trip alone with her again, especially not to a place of her choosing!"
"Well what do you want me to do, Dave? Do you want me to drag my food poisoned ass out to the happiest place on earth just so you don't have to? Is that what you want me to do? Is that really what you're asking the mother of your future children to do?" As a mother, JJ could pull a guilt trip like no one else and it worked on her husband.
"Of course not, I just don't want to fucking do this!"
"Would you rather be puking up your guts like the rest of the team? You should consider yourself lucky that you're not sick!" She told him.
"That's 'cause I wasn't dumb enough t have 'all you can eat sushi' last night," he mumbled.
The team had been called to Anaheim to investigate a serial arsonist and had been stuck in Southern California for over a week. They'd finally apprehended the unsub the previous morning and had finished the paperwork for everything by the previous evening. To thank them, a couple of the local detectives had taken the team to a local tavern for dinner and drinks. Seeing the 'all you can eat sushi' on the menu, the entire team except for himself, Garcia and Reid had decided to try it. That had been a mistake of epic proportions, since all of them became violently ill during the night and had to make trips to the emergency room. The ER doc had diagnosed them all as having food poisoning and had advised them to extend their trip to the Golden State by another couple of days.
Dave hadn't been happy upon hearing the advice from the doctor. He absolutely hated the land of fruits and nuts. He considered California to be somewhere between purgatory and hell and he'd wanted to get out of the state as fast as they could. Hell, he hadn't even wanted to come to the state in the first place. All of the experts kept saying that California was ripe for an earthquake, and he didn't want to be anywhere near the crazy place when it finally fell into the ocean.
JJ had heard her husband's mutterings and wasn't amused, "Hey, we're right on the Pacific Ocean so I thought the sushi would be fresh! How was I supposed to know it would make all of us this sick?"
"Maybe because it was being served at a BAR?" He shot back, his mood worsening as he waited for Garcia to arrive.
JJ took a calming breath, "Look Dave, if you want to bail on Penelope's first trip to Disneyland, be my guest, but I hope you like digging yourself out of a very deep electronic grave."
He sighed, "Of course I don't want to ruin-wait, did you say it's her first trip to the Magic Kingdom?" He asked, praying he'd heard wrong.
"Um, did I say that?" JJ said, not meeting his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah you did Jen. So tell me, am I really escorting Penelope Garcia on her first trip to Disneyland?"
JJ knew she couldn't lie to her husband, in large part because he was a human lie detector. "Yes David, this is her first trip."
He looked at her in horror, "Are you shitting me? On a good day she's so hyper I can barely keep up with her, but my God, she'll be twenty times worse at Disneyland! Can't Reid go with her instead?" Dave asked, recalling the other member of their team who wasn't affected by the questionable fish.
"Serisously? You want Reid to go with her? Do you have a death wish for the young genius?"
"What do you mean?" Rossi asked, trying to sound innocent. "I just thought the good doctor could use a day of fun."
His wife gave an unladylike snort, "Yeah, right! You know Penelope would kill him inside of an hour of being at the park. First he would explain the physics behind all of the rides, then he would explain why it was impossible for a mouse to talk, or for a dog to be walking upright, and then Penelope would stab him with some sort of Disney themed souvenir. There's no way I'm sending them to the park by themselves, but if you're so concerned about Reid having a good time, why don't you invite him to go with you?"
Dave shuddered at this idea; a trip to Disneyland with both Garcia and Reid? He had no doubt that he would be the dead one coming out of that scenario, and he was fairly sure he would die by his own hand. "No, no," he said quickly, as his wife picked up her cell phone. "Garcia and I will do quite nicely on our own."
JJ smiled, "Well that's good to hear, now why don't you get ready?"
"What do you mean?" Dave asked, looking down at his outfit. He was wearing his standard tailor fit blue jeans, a button down shirt and a blazer.
"What I mean is-" JJ's explanation was interrupted by an enthusiastic knock at the door.