Pairing: Rossi/Morgan
Disclaimers: I don't own Criminal Minds or any associated characters and so on.
Summary:Rossi doesn't know what exactly he's gotten himself into.
There is no remedy for love but to love more. --Henry David Thoreau
He didn't want to call it a relationship because, as three failed marriages would testify, he wasn't any good at those. Those same three marriages had left him with all sorts of not-quite-positive (bitter, really) emotions and ideas about the very word. So he wouldn't call it a relationship. And at four a.m., while the younger man slept next to him, Rossi, wondered exactly what it was he was doing with Derek Morgan.
It wasn't yet late enough for him to consider it morning, not even twilight, and he lay fully awake and still in the other man's bed, eyes on the beautiful body, its taste still faintly gracing his tongue and not really seeing it. Or "him", Rossi corrected himself. This body was not an "it", it housed the soul of someone he cared about. In his own way. Perhaps not in the traditional hearts and flowers and whispered sentiments and stolen glances way, but there was a depth to it that kept him from outright denying all emotional attachment.
But he wouldn't call it a relationship, not in that sense. It was so much more than that. But what was it? Arrangement sounded vaguely dirty and dismissive. Not at all what this…thing was. Assignation didn't carry the proper weight or permanence. He was too old for dating. What had Morgan called it the second time Rossi had showed up on his doorstep? A "booty call"? No, he wasn't so old as to miss the implications of that phrase, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He couldn't bring himself to say they were "together" either. There was an implied sweetness, near innocence, in that word that didn't fit their thing. "Seeing each other" was too old-fashioned even for him. Maybe he'd just keep calling it a "thing". When he called it anything. But Rossi didn't care for that either. It didn't have the necessary gravitas or the respect he had for Morgan.
"What was this?" he asked himself again. But then Derek moved. Not much. The younger man never moved much while he slept, something that had surprised the usually unflappable Rossi. He'd expected Derek to move constantly, even in his sleep (and that he'd entertained thoughts about the sleeping habits of the man before this started said something). But once he fell asleep, Derek Morgan barely moved.
And though this hadn't been going on long, Rossi knew that Morgan moving in his sleep, especially so suddenly, usually indicated nightmares. And he knew how to soothe the younger man back to full sleep without too much fuss. So Rossi slowly reached out a hand, speaking softly before stroking the soft skin covering Morgan's cheekbone and moving his hand along the slightly stubbled jaw before caressing strong shoulders; watched as gentle words and reassuring hands lulled the beautiful man back to sleep. As he watched Derek settle back to sleep, David admitted to himself that he may not know what to call this, but he knew what it was.