Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is owned by CBS. I own nothing but my imagination.
Anyone But You-Chapter 1
~This is NOT the next story in the 'Unconventional Family' and 'Happily Ever After' Universe...hopefully I'll begin that story sometime in August.
~This is another mini-epic that I have no business writing since I'm currently working on 'Family Ties,' but Kdzl talked to me about writing a story like this and the idea kind of stuck.
~A big thanks to Kdzl who helped me outline this story and who encouraged me to write it in the first place. Without her, I never would have started this story.
David Rossi was talking to his friend and one-time mentee when his cell phone rang. He grabbed it off of his belt, looked down at the caller id and sighed; it was his best friend who also happened to be the principal of his daughter's school.
"Hey Jimmy, what's up?" Dave asked, hoping it was a social call. It wasn't.
"Hi Davey, I wish I was calling just to chat, but I have Lucy in my office," the priest said.
Dave sighed, "What did she do this time?" Lucy was his fifteen year old daughter and while Dave loved her more than life itself, he wished he could go longer than a month without getting a phone call from her school.
"She was caught smoking in the girl's room," Jimmy told him. "Look Davey, I can't let this one go. If it was just one of her stupid little pranks, I could give her detention and be done with it, but Sister Rosa caught her and she's out for blood."
"So what happens now?" Dave asked.
"I have to suspend her for three days, not counting the rest of today," Jimmy said.
"Jesus Jimmy! Three days! What will that do to her grades?" Dave's daughter wasn't a bad student; she had a solid B average, but something like this could really hit her GPA hard.
"Well, normally when a student is suspended, they aren't able to make up any work or tests they miss, but since this is her first suspendable offense, I'll see to it that she's able to make everything up."
"Well that's something," Dave muttered. "Do you need me to pick her up?"
Jimmy nodded, forgetting his friend couldn't see him. "I'll be waiting out front with her," he told his friend. While he was the principal of Lucy's school, he was also a close friend of the family and practically an uncle to her and he wanted to have some words with her, not as her principal but as a family member who cared about her.
"Okay," Dave said. "I'll be there in about twenty minutes." He disconnected the phone and turned to his boss.
"What did she do now?" Hotch asked with a smirk.
"Smoking in the bathroom," he told him.
"Oooh, that's better than last week's Vaseline on the faculty bathroom's toilet seats," Emily said as she came up behind Hotch.
"Or last month's soap in the school's front fountain," Hotch remembered.
"Yeah, well, neither of those two pranks got her suspended for three days," Dave told them. "I've gotta go pick her up, so I'll be gone for an hour, Hotch."
"Are you going to bring her back here?" He asked and Dave nodded.
"I'm sure as hell not going to take her home where she can watch TV and go online. She's going to know that this is not a vacation," he said as he headed for the elevators.
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Twenty minutes later, Dave pulled up to the front doors of St. Catherine's Academy and found his best friend and daughter waiting for him. Jimmy wore an expression of frustration, while Lucy looked fairly indifferent to everything. He watched as Jimmy hugged her and then Lucy walked up to the SUV and got into the front seat.
"Hi dad, how's it going?" She asked as she buckled her seatbelt.
"Well let me tell you how it's going, Lucy," he said through clenched teeth. "My morning was fairly uneventful until I got a call saying my daughter was caught smoking on school grounds and was suspended for three days. After that, it kind of took a nose dive."
"Sorry," she said as she looked out the car window. She was surprised her dad even came to pick her up, he was usually so busy with work and other stuff that they barely saw each other. Even though it was just the two of them, they only ate dinner together once or twice a week, even less if he was out of town on a case. Lucy figured he'd have one of the FBI interns pick her up and take her home.
"Are you sorry for smoking, or are you sorry that you got caught?" He asked.
"I don't know…both?" She said. "Come on dad, I know I shouldn't have done it on school grounds, but who cares if I smoked? It's not a big deal."
"Dammit Lucy, your grandmother died of lung cancer less than three years ago! You saw what it did to her, how she wasted away in the end, is that really how you want to end up?"
"That's not going to happen to me," Lucy said, her feelings of teenage invincibility shining through.
"You're goddamned right it's not, because if I so much as think you've smoked again, I'll turn you over to your grandfather and let him deal with you."
Lucy paled at that threat; she loved her grandfather but she knew he would kill her if he knew she had smoked. "Okay, I get it, I won't do it again."
"Good," Dave said firmly. "And in order to drive this lesson home, not only will you be coming to the BAU with me for the next three days, you're also grounded for two weeks."
"But dad," Lucy protested, "Mom's coming to town this weekend and I'm supposed to stay with her!"
"Too bad, you should have thought of that before you lit up," he said, shaking his head.
"Come on dad, I never get to see mom, you HAVE to let me go this weekend. Please!" She begged with tears in her voice.
'Damn,' Dave thought to himself. His daughter was right, even though they had a custody agreement, Lucy's mother Angela rarely followed it. He doubted that Lucy saw her mother for more than five days total over the past year and he really didn't want to keep them apart, but what was he supposed to do? He didn't want Lucy to think that it was okay to smoke, especially on school grounds, but he also didn't want to keep her from her mother. He finally sighed and nodded his head.
"Okay," he said, "You can stay with your mother this weekend-" she squealed and hugged him as he drove. "But I'm extending your grounding so that it covers two full weekends and during those weekends, you'll write a report on the dangers of smoking. The report will be no less than 2,000 words and I don't want to see Wikipedia as the only source. At the end of the second weekend, you'll turn it in to me and if it is anything less than 'A' work, I'll extend your grounding. Got it?"
"Yes sir," she mumbled, thinking that maybe this wasn't such a sweet deal after all.
"Good," he said as he pulled into his parking space. They both got out of the car and went into the building, neither one of them very happy.