Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is owned by CBS. I own nothing but my imagination.
The Great Pumpkin Con-Chapter 1
This chapter was written in response to Kavi Leighanna and Sienna27's Novel and Short Story Titles Bonus Challenge #6
Prompt: Someone to Carve the Pumpkin
~I meant to have this written before Halloween, but real life got in the way. This takes place in my "Rossi Family World" and it's before JJ and Dave are married. It would fall between chapters 62 and 63 in 'An Unconventional Family.' Enjoy!
~I'm hoping to have chapter two posted sometime on Thursday.
~Reviews make the world a little brighter!
Dave heard his JJ and Abby giggling as they came through the front door of the cabin and it was music to his ears. Knowing they needed a girls day out, and he needed some alone time to finish his latest manuscript, the girls had gone to a nearby town to check out the local farmer's market while he stayed behind to work. From the sound of their laughter, it seemed they'd had a good time and Dave dragged himself out of the study to greet them.
When he stepped into the great room, he was surprised to find them lugging a large pumpkin into the kitchen.
"Hi dad," Abby greeted as she and JJ set the large gourd onto the kitchen island.
"Hi Pumpkin," Dave replied and Abby giggled as he used her nickname while she was standing next to an actual pumpkin. "Did you two have fun?" He asked as he gave JJ a kiss.
She nodded, "It was a lot of fun; the farmers market was Halloween themed, and a lot of the vendors were dressed in costumes. I was surprised at how large the venue was, I expected a few stalls with vegetables but it was a big farmers market."
"Me too," Abby chimed in, "But it was really cool. There were people selling baked goods and crafts and crazy knick knacks. And of course there were tons of people selling pumpkins."
"Speaking of which, we should probably carve ours so it's ready for Tuesday night," JJ suggested. Halloween fell on a Tuesday and both Jack and Abby had off from school on Wednesday for parent/teacher conferences, so Dave had invited the BAU team and Jack to the cabin for a Halloween get together. It would be nice to spend a weeknight at the cabin, since they lived in the apartment during the week, and it was something Dave hoped to make permanent through marriage fairly soon. He thought of the engagement ring sitting in his desk drawer in the study and he wondered when he would finally be able to muster up the courage to propose to the mother of his child. Part of him wanted to drop to one knee right then and there, but a larger part of him was worried about her reaction. After his screw up over the summer, he wasn't a hundred percent sure what her answer would be and he was terrified of ruining their current relationship.
He was pulled from his reverie when he saw Abby grab a large knife from the cutlery block and hand it to her mother. JJ was about to hack into the pumpkin when Dave shouted, "Stop!"
The knife clattered to the table, "What is it Dave?" JJ asked in alarm.
"You can't just cut into the pumpkin! You need to hollow it out first and then draw your design on it and then you can start carving it."
"Hollow it out?" Abby asked, her nose wrinkling in disgust, "That sounds…messy."
"Well yeah, it is, but its all part of carving a pumpkin, Pumpkin," he told her. "Haven't either one of you carved one before?"
They both simultaneously shook their blonde heads, "Mom could never see the point of wasting a perfectly good pumpkin since we lived so far out in the country and we never had any trick or treaters," JJ explained. "And dad…well, you know my father."
"But what about later, when you moved to the city?" Dave asked in dismay. How was it that neither of them had ever carved a jack o'lantern before?
"We always lived in an apartment, so there really was no use for a jack o'lantern," Abby informed him. "What were we going to do, put it out in the hallway? It would have been smashed within an hour."
Dave sighed; evidently he had to give his girls a lesson in the fine art of pumpkin carving. "Go change into something old," he instructed. "Then meet me back down here; you both are going to learn how to properly carve a pumpkin."
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Ten minutes later, JJ re-entered the kitchen and Dave shook his head when he saw her outfit. She was wearing a snug pair of jeans and one of his button down, flannel shirts. The shirt was way too big for her, but she looked great in it anyway. Following behind her mother was Abby, who was also wearing jeans and it seemed she had 'borrowed' one of his sweatshirts, and she too was drowning in it.
"Glad to see you're both willing to sacrifice my wardrobe for this," he grumbled. Ever since they started spending weekends at the cabin six months earlier, the size of his wardrobe had significantly shrunk; it seemed that both JJ and his daughter preferred his clothes to theirs when looking for something comfortable to wear. He still hadn't gotten used to seeing Abby roaming around the apartment in one of his oversize FBI t-shirts, nor could he explain why seeing JJ clad in one of his button down shirts turned him on so much. All he knew was that it was worth losing most of his wardrobe to have both of them in his life.
"Okay," he started, as the girls sat down on the stools on the opposite side of the kitchen island. "The first thing we need to do is hollow out the pumpkin." He drew a circle around the top of the gourd, complete with a little groove for a chimney, and began carving it with the knife. Once the circle was completed, he tugged on it for a minute and the top finally came off. Reaching into the pumpkin with a large serving spoon, he scooped out the 'guts' of the pumpkin and placed them in a bowl. "We'll separate out all of the seeds and toast them later on," he told them as he continued to dig.
Once he was satisfied that all of the pumpkin innards had been scraped out, the debate began on the theme of the jack o'lantern; Dave wanted to make a happy pumpkin, while JJ and Abby wanted a scary one. They finally compromised by having him carve traditional triangle eyes and a smiling, gap toothed mouth.
As he carved the face onto the pumpkin, Dave wondered, not for the first time, how he'd gotten roped into both carving the pumpkin and throwing the Halloween party. He analyzed the events that led up to his agreement of both events and he finally came to the conclusion that the two petite women sitting in front of him had somehow managed to wrap him, one of the most hard ass FBI agents in the country, around their little fingers. He grinned as he carved the goofy mouth, it was totally worth it to be with them and he would do much, much more if he had to in order to keep them happy.
Once he was finished with his carving duties, he found a small candle, lit it and placed it in the pumpkin. They all oohed and ahhed over it for a few minutes before Abby excused herself to go call one of her friends from school.
Realizing that he and his girlfriend, whom he hoped would soon be his fiancé, were alone in the room, he pulled her closer to him. "Have I mentioned how much of a turn on it is to see you dressed in my clothes? They look much sexier on you than they do on me."
JJ gave him a provocative smile, "I was going to wear a pair of your sweatpants with this," she said, pointing to the shirt she had appropriated from his closet, "But I thought that might send you over the edge."
Dave groaned, "It's sending me over the edge just thinking about it," he told her. "Tell me, are you wearing anything underneath that shirt?"
"Why don't you find out for yourself?" She asked, as she walked out of the room. He caught up with her and soon they were heading for the master bedroom. As it turned out, JJ wasn't wearing anything under his shirt.
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Two days later, the small Halloween party was in full swing and everyone seemed to be having a great time. Reid, who was dressed as a chess piece, was talking to Abby, who was dressed as a witch and they seemed to be having a somewhat heated debate about something. JJ, who was dressed as Cinderella, was talking with Garcia, who had come dressed in conservative makeup and a business suit, and Emily, who was dressed as Princess Leia from Star Wars. They seemed to be having fun, as Dave could hear peals of their laughter from across the room.
Of course everyone had complimented JJ and Abby on their jack o'lantern that sat on the porch greeting everyone as they came to the door. The two of them didn't bother correcting anyone on it; in fact, they seemed to take most of the credit for finding the large pumpkin in the first place. Never mind that Dave did all of the hard and messy work, since they'd bought the pumpkin, the credit was theirs. Dave didn't bother correcting anyone; he just chalked it up as something he needed to get used to with living with them.
Feeling a tap on his shoulder, Dave turned and found his unit chief standing behind him, holding two bottles of beer. He handed one to the older profiler and joined him in watching the group for a minute. "It was great of you to host this Dave, the team really needed to unwind tonight." The Halloween season was always a busy one for the BAU team and they had come off of back to back grisly cases.
"It was all Abby and JJ's idea, I'm just the facilitator," he told his boss as he took a large draw from the beer bottle.
"I see they also conned you into carving a pumpkin for them," Hotch said with a smile.
"Yeah, they'd never carved one before, so what was I supposed to say?" Dave asked, "I wasn't going to disappoint them, especially after they brought home that huge gourd."
"Oh Dave," Hotch said, shaking his head sadly, "They know how to carve a pumpkin, they just don't like getting messy so they foist it off on some unsuspecting soul."
"What?" Dave asked in confusion, "No, they'd never carved one before, they were just going to start hacking into it."
"They know how Dave," Hotch maintained, "Trust me, they know because I taught them, they just hate doing it. Let me guess, they pulled out the sob story of JJ's mom not wanting to waste a pumpkin and then they brought up JJ's absent father. Then they really pressured you with the puppy dog eyes, right?"
Shocked, Dave nodded, "That's exactly what they did," he said as a look of dawning came over his face, "They played me!"