The Crossing (S3E18)

Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here's what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last - Kristin O'Donnell Tubb.

Pip breezed into his office without knocking and Rossi growled at her.

She knew it annoyed him, which was why she did it, he was completely convinced of that. But he also knew she tracked the team's movements closely while they were in the office. She would know if he was on a call, or otherwise occupied with something and shouldn't be disturbed. Not that it would have stopped her if he was. Pip was the sort of person who would gleefully barge in and interrupt the Pope, even if His Holiness was busy taking a piss.

It was another of their patterns, like their arguments. He would look up from whatever he was doing in mock anger and snarl, she would snap back with something that made him laugh. That was just how they worked. How they still worked, the night after New Orleans ignored, never mentioned.

So, when Rossi growled and didn't get the reaction he expected, alarm bells started to ring. He looked up to see the cheeky smile she usually wore was absent and that Pip was fidgeting and gnawing her lip, both tells he'd learnt during the time they'd been friends that meant something wrong. This time, the gleeful, teasing spark that usually danced in her eyes was missing too, and that was what worried him the most.

"When you get back, we're going out. My treat." Pip tossed one of the case files she'd been clutching to her chest in his direction. "That's for you. No, don't read it now," she added as he started to open it. "Later. This one however…" She put the other file on his desk. "I know you writer types sell books by the inch, but when you typed up your report, you used the same paragraph three times. Looks like you cut and pasted it all over the place. Don't you read them before you submit them?"

"You sure you're not my publisher?" Rossi asked, while wondering what she meant about "getting back". Getting back from where? They hadn't caught a case as far as he was aware, and Pip would normally pass that sort of news on first, rather than going from zero to frustratingly cryptic in one breath. "You're as much of a tyrant as she is," he added ruefully, "but I will admit I got used to someone else reading my work to pick up stupid mistakes like that."

That was true, but only to a point, he was just trying re-kindle the sense of easy bickering that defined their rather odd friendship. Rossi looked down at the file. He remembered this one, it had been late, he'd been shattered and had just printed it when he'd finished, confident he'd covered everything. Apparently he had, but more than once. He glanced up at Pip, still fidgeting but no longer chewing her lower lip. Whatever was bothering her was being eased somewhat by their good-natured banter, so he was in no hurry to stop.

"Fancy adding that to your job description?" he asked, knowing it would wind her up.

"Not a chance," Pip retorted hotly, "I've got enough to do already. Just because you're famous, doesn't mean you get special treatment." The light in her eyes told a different story. It was dimmer than usual, but it was there. It was a relief to see it return, and Rossi counted this exchange as a win. "Your report, your fault, your problem. Fix it and get it back to me before you leave. Take a warm coat, it's cold in Boston," she added as an afterthought as she left. She nodded to Hotch as she passed him in the doorway.

"What was all that about?" asked Hotch as he watched Pip make her way back to her desk. "I can have a word if she's giving you too much of a hard time. She ought to apologise for speaking to you like that."

Unwilling to explain the details of his peculiar friendship with Pip, Rossi just chuckled and shook his head. "No, she had every right to give me a hard time." He waved the file in Hotch's direction. "She caught a mistake I made, if anything I owe her an apology."

"That's a relief," said Hotch. "I wasn't exactly looking forward to telling her she needed to apologise. She can be kind of intimidating," he added when Rossi raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

Rossi stroked his goatee to hide the smile. Aaron Hotchner, Unit Chief of the BAU, was afraid of a 5'4" brunette that he could probably pick up with one hand.

"I've found the easiest way to deal with her is do exactly what she wants," said Rossi. "Otherwise…" he lowered his voice for dramatic effect, "…here be dragons."

Hotch laughed in agreement and to Rossi's relief, the conversation moved onto other things. He didn't want to lie to Hotch about how close he and Pip really were, but he also wanted to keep their friendship to himself. What they shared was different from the friendships among the rest of the team, close as they were, and it would undoubtedly be misunderstood. Especially given his reputation.

Hotch's news that they were going to a terrorism seminar in Boston failed to completely surprise him after what Pip had said. At least he knew where he was going, but after his conversation with her, it was what awaited him when he got back that was on his mind. Rossi glanced down at the file she'd given him before adding it to his briefcase with his notes for the presentation. He'd read it later. He had a report to correct before he could leave.

Rossi surreptitiously read the file she'd thrown at him on the way to Boston, and then rather wished he hadn't. It was a partial investigation file of the botched op that led to Pip's shooting, made up of selected reports, newspaper cuttings and field notes from a multitude of people. Pip had basically made him an unofficial summary file of what had happened, and it had been a catalogue of errors.

She had been part of a joint taskforce with ATF working out of Chicago. Pip was a language specialist, part of a team set up to cripple the lively black-market gun trade among the gangs based there. Bad intel, rumours of a leak, and what Rossi considered a couple of real bonehead moves on the part of her boss to keep his extra-marital affair secret were only the start of a sequence of events that had led to disaster.

Four years ago, almost to the day, Pip had been part of an eight-strong field team sent to check out a disused storage site, an old warehouse in the middle of the run-down residential area of Riverdale. Some of the smaller victories they'd achieved pointed to a sophisticated network of old buildings with hidden storage areas to hide the weapons as they moved around the city - gaps between walls, underground rooms that weren't on the plans, one cache had been found suspended in the chimney of a vacant property. They were looking for more information about the types of places the gun-runners used, and far as anyone knew, the Riverdale site had once been used to store handguns, but had been long since been abandoned.

Except it hadn't been abandoned and it hadn't been used for handguns.

The team had been ambushed as they climbed from their cars, and automatic weapons fire had killed seven people before the situation was contained. Three ATF agents, a civilian bystander and her son, and two FBI agents had died almost instantly. In addition to the deaths, there were dozens of injured civilians and three seriously injured Federal Agents, one of whom had been Pip. CFD had pulled out all the stops, but one of the three wounded agents, ATF Agent Ian Collingwood, had died en route to Chicago Med. He succumbed to wounds sustained taking the last gunman down, preventing any more casualties. The man was a hero in Rossi's opinion, and his death brought the final toll to eight, not counting the shooters.

Rossi already knew Pip had spent eight months recovering, having been told she'd suffered nerve damage and couldn't work in the field again. Despite that, she'd been lucky – Pip had added a redacted summary medical report of the only other surviving agent. He'd lived, but would never walk again, the hail of bullets transecting his spine and leaving him paralysed. They were the only two left of the team that had arrived at that warehouse, unprepared, unprotected and with no idea what they were walking into.

It wasn't until he'd leafed through the entire file that Rossi realised he remembered the incident. It had been national news, the death of the young boy prompting Chicago's largest gun amnesty drive in living memory. Knowing Pip had been part of that was shocking.

He couldn't talk to her until he was in the privacy of his hotel room that evening, and Rossi knew he hadn't been subtle in avoiding Hotch's company in order to call her. It wasn't every day he turned down free scotch, and he knew Aaron would have some questions about that. But the need to speak to Pip after reading the file was overwhelming, and she'd been on his mind all day.

As if she'd been expecting him, the phone was picked up on the first ring.

"You forgot your coat," Pip said stridently. "Dopey bastard, it's still on the hook in your office. Have you any idea how fucking long I've been waiting by the phone to tell you off about that?"

Rossi grinned. "You talk to Hotch with that mouth? How'd you know it was me?"

"Caller ID is a wonderful thing," she replied smartly. "I told you to take a coat."

"Bossy woman," he replied fondly. "I have a perfectly good jacket with me, and I didn't need protecting from the elements for the short walk between my room and the seminar. It's in the same hotel."

"I know that, you've forgotten who organised your hotel and flight haven't you?"

He had, and hung his head, even though she couldn't see him. "Yeah. Sorry. I had some reading material that distracted me." He paused, and when there was no reply, he pressed on, gently. "Pip, why didn't you just tell me?"

"And say what? I can see it now," she said sarcastically. "Hi Dave, the anniversary of the death of everything I ever worked for is coming up, can I buy you dinner, because I can't bear to spend it alone?" She snorted. "Yeah, I don't think so."

Under the harshness of her voice, Rossi could hear the undertones of what she was saying. This date, this anniversary, would be the first time she'd initiated one of their evenings. Regardless of the occasion, she was just as wary as he of going too far. Of saying the wrong thing. Of ruining what they had by skating too close to that impossible line.

And that was without all the other baggage that came from being shot. Rossi at least knew what that felt like. She'd lost all but one of her team mates and her field agent status all in one afternoon, it couldn't be easy. Rossi sighed.

"Do I need to throw something at you?" he asked, trying to sound snippy. "You punched me when I did this. Twice actually, but I don't hold with hitting women. I will however, happily smother you in cushions if it'll help."

"You can try, but I'm fairly sure I was winning until you cheated last time," retorted Pip.

That was the closest they'd come to speaking aloud of what had nearly transpired between them. Again. Rossi blew off her comment with a chuckle, keen not to discuss that while he had a file open on his knee with images of the aftermath in Chicago, with bullets and blood all over the place.

"So you settled for throwing the file at me so you wouldn't have to tell me all the details."

"Something like that," Pip agreed. "More efficient all round. Better than your idea of standing in your office for an hour, waiting for me to offer to let you take me out."

Rossi wanted to say that it also meant she was avoiding talking about it, but he didn't. She knew as well as he did what she was doing. Not to mention that pointing it out would likely only earn him a profanity-ridden tirade. He smiled briefly. It might be worth it. Pip could get quite creative when properly worked up; he'd actually learned a few new phrases last time she'd really gone off at him.

He glanced down at the file and closed it, unwilling to see those pictures anymore. Perhaps it wasn't the best day to provoke her. Rossi changed the subject, knowing that was what she wanted.

"I'm going to be here another day. Some local ADA wants a consult as a favour, seeing as we're here. She wants us to prove a husband killer isn't suffering from Battered Woman syndrome."

"So you are going to need a warm coat," Pip said smugly, with a trace of relief at the switch in topic. "Can I just say, I told you so?"

"Nobody likes a smartass," he teased, glad she was back to being insulting.

"Except you, apparently. Glutton for punishment, huh?"

"So it would seem," he agreed. If spending time with her was a punishment, he'd happily take it.

"Proving a negative's always a tough one," mused Pip.

"I know, but I kind of hope we manage it." Rossi frowned. "Alexander's out for this woman's blood, there's just something about her that rubbed me the wrong way." Alexander's ruthless attitude had chilled him and her assumption that their assessment would aid her case had felt off somehow.

"Alexander?" she asked slowly. "As in Eve Alexander?"

Rossi's brows furrowed. "You know her?" he asked, surprised.

"Dave, I know pretty much everyone in every State's Attorney office across the country," sighed Pip with some exasperation, "as well as most of the rising stars in DA offices in all the major cities. It's my job to know."

"And?" He could hear there was some more to this story.

"And we've crossed paths," said Pip darkly. "I think she's a complete bitch, and I'm pretty sure the feeling is entirely mutual. She delights in prosecuting women as hard as she can to make some sort of fucking weird point about gender equality. Bullshit if you ask me, but there you are."

"I'll take that under advisement," he said, relieved in some small way that it wasn't just him that got funny vibes from Alexander. He glanced at his watch. "You headed home soon? Tell me you weren't really hanging by the phone waiting for me to call?"

"Don't flatter yourself." Pip laughed, a muted chuckle. "No, seriously, the rest of the team have picked up a stalker case in Silver Springs, I'm here for the foreseeable."

"Ok. I should be back tomorrow…" he started. Tomorrow's date was the same as the one on the file next to him.

"I'll be here," she interrupted before he could finish. "Goodnight Dave."

"Goodnight Pip," replied Rossi, but he was talking to empty air, Pip having already hung up to avoid further conversation.

Pip wasn't at her desk when he got back to the office, but her coat was still on the hook in the corner and there was a pile of files still on her chair. She hadn't left without him.

She was lurking in his office instead, keeping out of sight of the rest of the team. Her smile was too bright, the chatter too chirpy to be genuine, especially given the redness of her eyes.

They navigated their way out of the Bureau and drove to the restaurant on a flow of harmless gossip and gentle teasing. Rossi played along; right up until the customary toast over their starters caused a tear to make its way down her cheek.

"Pip?" He put his wine glass down in a hurry and shifted his chair round the tiny table so he was next to her, rather than peering over the centrepiece at her. She refused to look at him, furiously dabbing her eyes with a napkin. "Pip, talk to me."

Pip shook her head. "No," she said shortly. "Not here, not now." She sniffed deeply and nudged him with her elbow. "If you don't move, I'm going to assume your starter is undefended."

Rossi hesitated and Pip reached over the table and stole a forkful of his bruschetta. She looked at him smugly as she chewed. The effect was ruined a bit by the glassiness in her eyes, but he made no comment. Rossi moved his chair back to face his own food, somewhat reduced after her pilfering.

Dinner followed a more expected rhythm after that, but although she smiled and laughed with him as they argued, Rossi could tell Pip's heart wasn't really in it. This evening was more about the conversation they both knew was coming once they got back to her place.

With that in mind, he begged off dessert, pretending he didn't see the flash of relief on her face at the prospect of leaving earlier than usual.

Rossi tried to get her to let him make the coffee, but she pushed him back down into the sofa.

"Dave, I'm perfectly capable of making coffee in my own kitchen. Yeesh, anyone would think I'm some fragile flower about to break." She rolled her eyes at him and went to start the coffee.

Uncomfortable with admitting that he thought she was going to do exactly that, Rossi settled on the sofa listening to the sounds of her moving about in the kitchen. He caught sight of the tumblers he'd bought her, along with the bottle of single malt, now sat in pride of place on her shelf by the TV. He stood up to retrieve all three. If ever there was going to be a night when whisky was required, it was this one. He couldn't deny the slightly warm feeling he got from her obvious pleasure and enjoyment of what he had bought her. The tumblers now occupied the space Garcia's prized cat figurines had once been in, said ornaments now relegated to one of the many bookshelves. He was just sitting down again as Pip returned.

"Mind reader," she commented, nodding at the bottle in his hands. She sat down, poured herself a large shot and threw it back before taking a more measured mouthful of her coffee. "Ah, that's better."

Rossi just looked at her, concerned. "That's a horrible way to treat good alcohol. Did you even taste that?"

She shrugged in reply. "I do it every year. They say madness is repeating the same action over and over, expecting a different outcome. Every year on this date, I drink. I get blackout drunk and pass out somewhere in the hope that it will make getting through it easier." She poured herself another huge shot and threw that back too. "It doesn't work, and yet I still do it," she said bitterly, "therefore, I must be mad." Bottle and glass followed the same path once more as another large measure went down.

Rossi laid a hand on her arm when she moved to pour herself a fourth. "Slow down, Pip. Or at the very least, give me a chance to catch up."

"Do you know what I lost that day?" she asked, shaking off his hand and pouring herself another, this bigger than the last two put together. Rossi raised an eyebrow and held his hand out for the bottle. "Fine," she said, thrusting it at him.

Their coffee sat ignored on the table and Rossi realised that on some level, he should have expected that. He poured himself a sensible amount of scotch and cradled it in his hand, just looking at her. Having surrendered the bottle, Pip assumed her usual position, back to the arm of the sofa. This evening she had her knees drawn up to her chest with one arm wrapped round her shins. It was a defensive pose, and she looked a little bit like a fortress all curled up in the corner.

"That wasn't rhetorical," she said, returning his scrutiny with a flat stare.

Rossi frowned. "You want me to tell you what you lost?" He wondered if that was some form of denial.

"I want to know how much of it you don't know or haven't worked out; I'm not talking about this more than I have to."

Not denial then. Self-preservation.

"Obviously I know what's in the file since you threw it at me. I still owe you for that by the way," he said, hoping for a smile. He was disappointed. "You know, there's an unspoken moratorium on profiling fellow BAU colleagues."

She laughed briefly, a little resentfully. "Not profiling the profilers. Yeah, but my little crew aren't counted in that and you know it." She lifted her chin defiantly. "Did you ever ask the others if they knew anything about us?"

His heart sank. She was deflecting him, and he'd rather hoped she'd forgotten about that particular conversation. Rossi took a deep swallow from his tumbler to stall, knowing she'd pick up on his hesitation but unable to avoid it.

"You did, didn't you?" Pip uncurled and shuffled closer to him, close enough for a waft of her perfume to tease his senses and her hair to brush his arm. "Do tell," she said eagerly.

"There's not much to tell," Rossi said. "You might as well get your gloating out of the way," he added, resigned to telling her exactly what she already knew. "Hotch is your boss, he knew a bit about you, but little about the others. The rest of them, well…" He took another sip of his drink. Pip just kept looking at him. "No, they didn't," he finally admitted. "Morgan thought Holden was seeing the blonde girl in White Collar before he transferred."

Her laughter was more genuine this time and that eased the heavy atmosphere a little. Pip lounged back on the sofa next to him, her posture more open now, feet resting carelessly on the coffee table.

"Blondes aren't his thing, regardless of the equipment," she said with a small smile. "However, I do happen to know that she has a tall, dark, handsome brother who's in the Air Force."

Rossi chuckled. "From what I've seen, that certainly sounds more like his type. When do you get a replacement for Holden anyway? It's been months."

Pip shot him a slightly condescending look. "AST is specialised, even within the Bureau Administration. You can't just rotate in. There's a certain…skill set required, and sometimes that takes time to find. And we all have different specialities in addition to that. Mark was my logistics expert. Amber is finance, Margaret, legal. I'm weapons and languages as well as being the team leader, coordinating everything and being the major link with the rest of the Bureau."

"I didn't realise," Rossi admitted. AST were low down on everyone's priority list, and he was just as guilty of that, because he genuinely hadn't realised. Looking at it, it was obvious, in the same way the profiling team each had their own unique talent as well as their basic profiling skill. Emily had her ice-cool head and was able to be utterly dispassionate in the face of gruesome details that upset the rest of them, Reid had his knowledge of geographic profiling, amongst a million other things. Morgan could call on an ability to think like an UnSub to predict their movements, Hotch gave them his background in law. More recently, Rossi had added his own hostage negotiation experience to the mix. Each of them brought something to the table that the others didn't have, so it was only logical that their admin support was the same.

Pip hummed noncommittally and grabbed the bottle from him. "If you're just going to sit there with it, I'm claiming it," she said, draining her glass once more and starting to pour another.

Rossi took it back before she'd poured too much. "That's enough," he said firmly. "Consider it in Protective Custody for the time being." He looked at her, resigned to doing what she'd asked. "At least until I've actually had a chance to have some." He'd need it. With that in mind, when he refilled his drink, he made it a generous one. He kept hold of the bottle.

Rossi took a deep breath. "Here goes. I warned you, remember that before you hit me again." He looked sideways at her, now rolling her tumbler between her hands. "I think you lost something personal, more than just colleagues and your field agent status," he said slowly. "Something deeper." He waited for a reaction, but got nothing. That was confirmation in itself. "I don't think it was to do with the op, or the lack of arrests." He paused again, looking to see how his words had affected her. He was close, he could see that much on her face, but he hadn't won the cigar yet.

"It's more about the shooting itself," Rossi continued. "The injuries themselves, I think. I know you said it meant you couldn't work in the field again, although I don't fully understand why. From the brief glimpse I had, I thought you'd healed remarkably well."

Pip looked down at his hand resting on the sofa between them and reached over. She started drawing little circles on the back of his hand with her fingertips. It was an innocent enough gesture that nevertheless woke every nerve in Rossi's body.

"Can you feel that?" she asked.

Could he ever. Each circle was sending shivers up his spine. Rossi nodded, not willing to trust his vocal chords.

"I can't," Pip said. "It's weird, I hardly even notice anymore. Except this time of year." She stopped stroking his hand and rubbed her fingers together. "The nerve damage I mentioned? The tips of my fingers on my right hand are numb. Have been ever since I woke up in the hospital. They said it would fade, that the feeling would come back, but it never did."

Pip brought her hand up to eye level, examining her fingertips, looking for something. "They warned me I'd be forever burning or cutting myself by accident, you know, because I can't feel it. But I don't." She shot him a lopsided grin. "Did manage to staple myself to a notice board once though." She leaned over, showing him two whorls of scar tissue. "See?"

"What?" spluttered Rossi. "How?"

"I was putting up the Health & Safety poster. You know, the ones that come on thick plastic and you need those big fuck-off industrial staples to hang them anywhere?" Rossi nodded. "Well, there I was stapling it to the notice board, next thing I know, I've stapled myself to the bloody poster. How's that for irony?" She snorted. "Hurt like a bitch."

"But, I thought you said…"

Pip shook her head. "Wasn't that. I damn near dislocated my elbow trying to reach the pliers to pull the fucking staple out."

Rossi laughed briefly, but his amusement was quickly dashed with cold water as he caught the look on her face. "You're deflecting me again," he said softly. "That's twice now."

She looked away from him, expression haunted. "I couldn't pass my firearms recertification because I can't feel the trigger properly. I'm fine in a nice controlled environment like the range, provided I'm careful and shooting in a straight line. No problem, even now. But in a tactical situation?" She shook her head. "I'd be liable to shoot myself in the foot or kill the person behind me. And I never could use a handgun with my left. I'd be more use if I threw my service weapon at someone rather than shooting left-handed. So I surrendered it and took a desk assignment."

"But you stayed in the Bureau," disputed Rossi. "Most people would have taken medical retirement, gone and…"

"Written a book?" Pip deadpanned. The humour faded as quickly as it had arrived. "I lost everything that day, all over again." She shrugged. "Bureau was all I had left. By the time I came out the other side, I'd realised that actually, I was fucking good at my new job. Maybe better than I'd been at the old one."

All over again. That would get added to the growing pile of information about Pip labelled "to be examined at a later date".

"What happened, Pip? The other side of what? None of this is in the file you gave me." Of course she knew that, but Rossi could see she needed prompting. For someone who openly enjoyed ordering him into discussing things he was uncomfortable with, sometimes she needed a verbal shove to get her talking. She'd started this, given him the file. She wanted to tell him. "Tell me."

"I showed you. You saw them." It took a moment for Rossi to work out what she meant. He nodded. He remembered the scars. And the beautiful pair of breasts that had come with the view.

"Did you really see?" she asked.

He'd seen them, but that wasn't what she meant, that much was clear. Rossi frowned and shook his head. "I'm not sure what you mean."

She huffed and lay back on the sofa a little more, lifting the hem of her shirt with her free hand. She traced the wounds with a finger, pointing at each in turn, starting with the one low down on her left hip and slowly working her way up.

"This one was through and through. Very little internal damage, apart from taking a chunk off my hipbone. I walked with a limp for nearly a year and it still aches sometimes when it's cold. This one went straight through as well, took out one of my ovaries and nicked a kidney on the way. This one turned into a hail of splinters that shredded everything in their path. I lost my womb, spleen, and part of my liver." She pulled her shirt up higher, just to the level of her bra. "This one pierced a lung and was the one that should have killed me outright, never mind the internal haemorrhaging lower down. I nearly drowned in my own blood." She pulled her shirt down and undid the top two buttons to expose her shoulder. "This one broke my collarbone and stole my field career."

She turned to look at him and finally, there were tears in her eyes. Rossi never thought he'd be so pleased to see her upset. She'd compartmentalised the entire event so well that she could have been discussing the weather, and the clinical, detached way she'd talked about it had really disturbed him.

"I lost almost my entire team that day. We were like you guys, so close we were more like family. Some of us had worked together for years. My best friend, Steve, was the first to fall, I don't think he even had time to draw his weapon. Then my boss, Ade. I got hit killing one of the bastards, and I don't remember much after that." She paused to try and wipe away the tears that were falling like rain down her face. "I woke up in hospital to the news that my friends were gone, that I'd lost a baby I never knew existed and that its father had died en route to the ER. My entire life completely ruined, all in about ninety seconds of gunfire." She downed her drink and yanked the bottle out of Rossi's unresisting hand to pour another large one. "Happy birthday to me," she said bitterly, draining her glass again.

Then she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

Stunned, it took Rossi a moment to gather his wits before he pulled her into a hug. "Oh Pip, I'm so sorry."

There wasn't much else he could say. He held her as she cried, mourned for what she'd lost. He rubbed her back and kept up a litany of nonsense words of comfort until grief and alcohol finally wore her out, and she was asleep against him. He picked her up and carried her to her bed, noting she'd set out the familiar grey joggers and a blanket, as if she'd expected him to stay over. He'd planned to anyway after hearing her story, but it certainly wasn't part of their pattern. She'd known the evening would end the way it had.

He changed into the joggers once he'd got her settled in bed. The coffee went down the sink. It was a shame, he could do with a jolt of caffeine after what he'd heard, but the coffee was long cold. He'd nuke cold coffee in the office, but not an expensive blend. It felt a bit sacrilegious somehow. He washed up the whisky tumblers and the coffee mugs, along with anything else he could see, tidying up what little mess she'd left in the kitchen before going to work.

It wasn't until Rossi sat back down on her comfortable sofa that he really had time to try and process everything she'd told him. It was a lot to take in all at once. To lose all that, in one day, and on her birthday no less. There was no way to escape the yearly reminders. It was a miracle she'd even survived, let alone pass her mandatory evaluations to return to work. And there was something else too, something she hadn't touched on except in passing. "All over again" didn't refer to the loss of her parents as a child, or the loss of a foster-brother as a teenager, he was sure of that. Rossi had no idea what that meant. He could only hope she'd tell him when she was ready.

He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. She'd obviously been involved with a fellow agent, ATF Agent Collingwood by the sound of it. One of the taskforce, part of the team that had been ambushed. Her refusal of his own advances, before they'd agreed they wouldn't spoil their friendship like that, hadn't only been about adherence to the fraternisation policies. Ironically, quite a few of those were the result of his extensive dalliances in the early days of his career. She'd been on intimate terms with a co-worker before, and it had ended in the worst possible way. He couldn't blame her for keeping him at arm's length.

It wasn't until he opened his eyes that Rossi realised he'd fallen asleep sitting more or less upright on her sofa. He was on his feet in an instant, neck twanging in protest of the sudden movement as he darted towards her bedroom. He'd anticipated this, it was why he had planned to stay the night. He hadn't planned on falling asleep - he'd been sitting up with the intention of being awake when she needed him.

Pip's expression was tortured as she thrashed in her sleep, murmuring names and garbled warnings. Rossi captured her shoulders and pulled her to him, wishing he could do more to ease her pain.

"Pip! It's ok! Pip, wake up! It's ok, it's just a dream. I'm here. It's ok."

Pip awoke with a gasp and grabbed him hard enough to leave bruises by morning. "Ian!" she cried, her chest was heaving as if she'd been running. Her eyes focussed on him, confusion and disorientation clear. "Dave?" Pip let out a shaky breath and slowly eased her death grip on him.

"You were dreaming," he said gently.

She let go of his arms only to pull him closer, burying her face in his chest. Rossi wrapped his arms around her, perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed.

"Sorry," she said eventually, somewhat muffled by his shirt.

"No, don't be," he said softly, wondering if Damon had previously made her apologise for things she couldn't help, or if that particular character trait stemmed from earlier in her life. "I expected it actually. How often?"

"Often enough. More this time of year," she mumbled.

Pip was already drifting back into sleep, the adrenaline surge of the nightmare fading and leaving exhaustion in its wake. It was a cycle he was all too familiar with, although the Galen kids traumatised screams woke him less often now he'd resolved that particular mystery. Rossi lay her back down on the pillows and rearranged the tangled covers around her. He stood to leave and brushed her hair from her face, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze as he did so. It wasn't fair that one person had to bear so much, but if he could help, he would. Even if it meant occasionally sleeping awkwardly on her sofa.

Her hand reached up to grasp his. "Stay," Pip murmured sleepily.

Reflexively, Rossi glanced behind him at her bedroom doorway, and the threshold that represented the limits of their friendship. The line. Dashing into her room to wake her up from a nightmare was one thing, but sharing a bed, even innocently like she meant it, was far more…intimate than she'd allowed him. He hesitated, and Pip opened an eye to peer at him.

"Can hear you thinkin'. 'S still there. Jus' hold me."

Pip could read him like a book; she knew why he'd hesitated. Rossi marvelled to himself. Had he ever known a woman who knew him so well? None of his ex-wives or girlfriends would have been able to pick up his thoughts while half asleep, after suffering a nightmare on top of the best part of a bottle of whisky.

"Dave, please."

He couldn't deny her when she sounded so uncharacteristically vulnerable, no matter how much of a bad idea it seemed. "Sure. Whatever you need."

He climbed in the other side of the bed and settled in beside her, one arm wrapped round her waist over the covers. Pip nestled her head back so it was resting against his shoulder and hummed her approval as he tightened his grip. Rossi lay there awhile, just feeling the steady rise and fall of her breathing as she slept, enjoying how comfortable it felt to be next to her like this.

The following afternoon, he found a box of rather fine cigars on his desk.