Usual disclaimers: Wow, how I wish that these characters were mine, the show would be so freakin' awesome, but they're not, yada yada

This is my response to the Valentine's Day Challenge on CCOAC. Given the fact that it's being written for SussiRay, the Queen of Elegant PWP, I've opted not to embarrass myself by trying to cover the same territory. So, T for language.

It is in four short chapters and will be posted in its entirety by February 14th

My assigned pairing, Hotchner and Prentiss

My assigned song prompt: "Physical," Olivia Newton-John

My assigned plot prompts: candlelight dinner, single red rose, lace underwear

A Whole New Level of Pathetic

Chapter Two

Elevator Courage

He yanked his briefcase and freshly-replenished post-Oregon go-bag from the back of the toy-strewn minivan – yes, in his off-hours he was exactly that much of a geeky dad – and began to trudge through the parking garage at Quantico.

He had given up trying to think of anyone who would go with him to Berceuse. In fact, he wasn't sure he wanted to go himself. It would be too much like dating, and Aaron hadn't even enjoyed the dating scene when he had been in it, in those brief months between puberty and meeting Haley.

I don't actually know how to date as an adult, he realized glumly.

Soft-soled shoes sounded behind his right shoulder and he instinctively moved slightly to his left and turned. Even though the Bureau's own secure underground parking facility was one of the least likely venues for an ambush he could imagine, it was a survival habit. Everyone here did it, and nobody would think him a wimp for exercising caution.

It was Seaver, her long hair flying behind her in a ponytail, jogging along beside another equally blonde and athletic cadet. She seemed not even to have noticed Hotchner.

"I know," she was saying, "so I'm like, what a loser! You don't come weaseling around looking for a Valentine's Day date just a week before! A week! I mean, even if you didn't have a date, would you admit it?"

"Like painting a big neon sign on your back," her companion replied. "Hello, I'm a loser and I don't care who knows it."

"Yeah, like, Here I am, Little Miss Needy. Won't you give me a little attention for the night?"

"Or a pity fuck ..."

Seaver said "Ewwww," and giggled. The two made a sharp left and kept going on a jogging path of their own choosing.

He recognized that he had long since slipped hopelessly into "loser" territory when he realized that his first internal response to that exchange had been a very-Spencer-Reid-worthy, No, it wouldn't be a neon sign; it would be a fluorescent sign. You don't "paint" neon.

OK, Jess. Point taken. My social life is beyond pathetic.

Garcia and Kevin, he thought. Young and in love and with Lynch still only a part-timer at the Bureau and drowning in student loans, limited funds. He could quietly slip him the gift card to Berceuse. Maybe they could have a good time.

Solid, hard heels clicked behind him.

Again he shifted; again he turned, to see a vision in black – black hair, black clothing, black eyes, heavy black boots. Black mood sticking out all over, the slash of blood red at her mouth the only color visible.

"Emily!" he exclaimed, trying to sound pleased to see her. "I thought you were at Hoover this morning."

Her expression indicated that nothing had occurred between their phone conversation early in the morning and her appearance now to change anything at all. Even the long-stemmed red rose that she held in her fingers, swathed in white florist's tissue and bedecked with pink and red heart-shaped stickers, seemed inadequate to soften that deadly Prentiss glare.

And people say that I look grouchy; good God, if Wednesday Addams had grown up to be an assassin, she would have looked a lot like Emily...

"They rescheduled me," she all but snarled. She stabbed at the elevator button as though it were an UNSUB's midsection. Spotting the small aluminum waste container that was bolted to the wall, she folded her single red rose into fourths, gave it a violent twist, and discarded it without a backward glance. "Nice early warning, you know?"

"Hold the car!" a familiar voice panted. Aaron and Emily turned to see Kevin Lynch, tie flying and glasses sliding down his nose, sprinting for the elevator. Aaron pushed the Hold button so Kevin could catch up with them. "Oh, man," he wheezed as he entered the car. "I am running so late. Excuse me, let me catch my breath – up half the night finishing our costumes – hey, look, somebody threw away a perfectly good rose – jeez, somebody slaughtered it, choked the life right out of it ..."

"Leave it," Prentiss ordered. "It's from a creep."

Lynch pushed his glasses back up his nose. "Somebody you know?"

"Complete jerk," she confirmed. "And he doesn't understand 'No.' That's his fourth freaking rose this morning. Next twist will be to his neck. Hey, Hotch, we could get going now."

Oops.

He released the Hold button and the doors slid shut.

"Costumes?" he said conversationally to Lynch.

"Yeah, absolutely – a huge CosPlay Valentine dance at the Mayflower, we've been planning this since, oh, God, last October," Kevin explained. "All-fics, cross-genre, it's huge."

"Oh," Aaron said. It was a tough call which more discouraged him: that Kevin and Garcia already had firm plans, or that he didn't have the first clue what Lynch was talking about.

"The button?" Emily prompted sourly.

He pressed Four for them and Two for Lynch. Then he entertained a momentary image of twisting her neck.

"Ooh, ooh!" Kevin said with unquenched enthusiasm, and began to perform a discreet boogie to the elevator music. "We love that song! Get physical, physical, let's get into physical, Let me hear your body talk, your body talk ..."

"I've always wondered about that," Hotchner said, although he wasn't sure why. Or to whom, for that matter. "I've always wondered why it's supposed to be romantic to hear somebody else's tummy rumbling."

Kevin was too deeply into warbling along with Olivia Newton-John even to notice what Aaron had said.

Prentiss shot him a dangerously sweet smile – or maybe she was thinking about eviscerating him; it wasn't always easy to tell the difference. Especially recently. Something weird going on with that girl, but she had managed to resist all his best Unit Chief attempts at sounding her out. "Not romantic," she cooed. "Erotic. Like … farting in the elevator."

Hotchner turned his head and bit down hard on his lip to keep from bursting into gales of anything that could get Emily Prentiss more annoyed.

That caught Kevin's attention. "You're disgusting," he told them. "Both of you. Don't take it out on us because you don't have – you know, like, actual lives. It isn't our fault." The door slid open and he hustled out as though one of them actually had cut one in the elevator.

Hotchner wondered why it pissed him off so much that Lynch consistently referred to himself and Penelope as us, whether his more dramatic half was there or not, as though they had become some weird two-headed creature.

"God, the nerve of him," Emily said almost before the doors closed again. "Did you hear him? Implying that just because we're not, you know, skipping around singing idiotic songs that we haven't even bothered to listen to the words to, let alone analyze them, that somehow we don't have lives?"

Screw this.

Nobody had ever doubted Aaron Hotchner's courage, or his ability to turn a confrontation to his advantage.

"Well," he said, "he sure nailed me."

Two dark eyes widened. "What, you're saying that you have no life?"

He shrugged. "Not much of one. Standing around with a gift card for dinner, trying to locate somebody so desperate that they have nothing better to do on Valentine's Day evening."

She looked him up and down, frowning. "You're messing with my head."

"Nope. Do you have date?"

"I don't date anymore, Hotchner. I–" Whatever she had planned to say, she thought better of it. She looked him up and down again.

"With you?"

"No, with some other fucking random stranger at Quantico, Jesus, Prentiss–"

"What's in it for me?"

"Apart from dinner? Well – I promise not to give you any roses."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "Wow. Dinner? With prime arm candy? No roses? You are so on, mister."

He almost missed her assent as he stumbled repeatedly over three previous words.

Prime what?