inspired by "You Love Who You Love" from Bonnie & Clyde

She never meant to fall in love with him. That first day she'd met him, all those years ago, peeking out from behind a file folder to look at him without seeing the horrors JJ had projected onto the screen, she never thought she'd even like him, a feeling that compounded itself weeks later when he yelled at her in her apartment after the shooting.

He was friends with Gideon, she'd reasoned, and Gideon thought she was stupid, so why should Rossi be any different? Truth be told, he intimidated her, scared her almost, so she put up her walls like she always did, calling him sir and doing her best to stay out of his way.

But somewhere along the line, things changed. Suddenly she was smiling around him in a way she only smiled around her friends. Time passed so quickly these days, and before she knew it she was at his house (his mansion, he insisted) making spaghetti and coming home with him for scotch and Tony Bennet.

And then he started calling her kitten, and what was left of Penelope's years-old resolution to keep her distance from David Rossi melted away. Somehow, she found herself falling in love with him in spite of herself, in spite of his bluntness and his temper and his past and his age, in spite of all the things that part of her thought should keep them apart.

"How do you think they're going to take it?" She murmured, turning in the passenger seat to look at him and fussing with her hair to keep her hands busy.

"Relax, Penelope," David said softly. He took her hands in his, smoothing his thumbs over the backs of her hands. "They're going to be happy for us." He was sure they would be. They were like family, after all. He smirked a little at that – after all, that would make this relationship incestuous! – but he was sure that the rest of the team would support his burgeoning romance with their favorite technical analyst.

"But what if they're not?" Penelope cried, her hands shaking violently in her lover's grasp.

Rossi sighed. Garcia had had worries about their relationship from the start, and while he wasn't surprised that her concerns were blooming at this particular moment, that wasn't to say that he wasn't disappointed. "Does it matter what they think, Penelope?" He finally asked.

"Yes!" she exclaimed, yanking her hands from his and gesticulating wildly. "These are my friends, my family! I need them to support my relationship!"

"What, like they were all so over the moon about Kevin Lynch?" He snapped. He wanted to regret it, and part of him did, but he also knew it needed to be said. They needed to address this, and there was no time like the present, he supposed.

Penelope stopped short at the mention of her ex-boyfriend. "W-what?" she stammered.

Rossi looked her sharply in the eye. "You and I both know that a certain Derek Morgan was none too thrilled when he found out you were dating Kevin. But you didn't care what the team thought then. Why should I be any different?" His chest ached at the thought that he wasn't good enough to deserve her fully, that she was only willing to love him conditionally.

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, searching for words and looking rather like a fish out of water.

"Why am I not good enough, Penelope? Why do you need someone else to tell you it's okay to be with me?" One tear chased another down David's face, and Penelope's breath caught in her throat. She'd never seen him cry before. What's worse, he was crying needlessly; that wasn't how she felt at all. She had to fix this.

"That's not it," she whispered, swallowing hard and looking down. She knew she had to tell him the truth, but she was so scared of ruining what they had with too many feelings too fast. "I never loved Kevin like I love you."

Rossi was quiet in the driver's seat, watching her intently but not prodding, just waiting for Penelope to say whatever she was going to say.

"When – when I realized Kevin was going to ask me to marry him, I panicked," she continued. "I loved Kevin, but I knew he wasn't my forever. You – David, you feel like my forever." Her voice trailed off as she finished, and they were both crying now. Penelope's shoulders began to shake as silence filled the SUV. Rossi was quiet, and she'd learned quickly that when Rossi was quiet, he was usually not happy at all.

"Please get out of the car," he said quietly, and Penelope would've sworn she could actually feel her heart break. It was worse than she thought. He was so mad at her, he couldn't even be in the same car with her. He was going to abandon her here in the parking lot of O'Keefe's, crying hysterically and with no idea how to explain it to the team, who were sure to be arriving any minute.

Sure enough, just as Garcia pushed shut the passenger side door, three more cars carrying the rest of the team pulled in a few spaces down. Her eyes were glued to the pavement, trying to curb her tears before anyone noticed. She heard the team approaching, talking and laughing in the exhausted but happy high that always followed a happy ending to a case. After a moment, though, they all fell silent, and she cursed herself for being so emotional. Rossi was pouting in the car, and here she was crying all alone, and she didn't know what to tell them, and –

"Penelope." David called her name gently, more gently than she'd ever heard it before, and as she looked up she realized very suddenly that she had read the situation very, very wrong. The team wasn't staring at her. They were staring at Rossi, who was not pouting in the SUV after all – he was kneeling in front of her, an open ring box in his hand and an earnest look on his face.

"I've never been very good at this," He confessed, "But Penelope Grace Garcia, you feel like my forever. Will you marry me?"