A/n: Because I've got it ready, because I want to, because Rossi's Lil Devil asked...

Outfoxed (S5E8)

We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them - Thucydides

"Need a favour," announced Pip from his office doorway.

"Anything." Rossi's response was automatic and immediate. He'd do anything for her, legal or otherwise.

Pip shut the door. Rossi raised his eyebrows. That was unusual.

"It's more of…a favour for somebody else. Someone potentially useful to have a favour in with."

"O…k," said Rossi slowly. Now he was interested. He put down his pen and gave her his full attention. Favours like that made the world go around, much as people would try and deny it.

"You know that two-day conference I went to, about a week ago? Couple of days after you all got back from the case in LA with the so-called vampire?" Rossi nodded. "I met somebody rather…" Pip appeared to be searching for an adequate word. "Somebody interesting, shall we say."

He'd decided that he would remain just her friend, but at those words, Rossi's heart thudded once then felt like it came to a stop. His lungs froze. It had finally happened. She'd met a man. He'd made the wrong choice, left it too long…

"Happiest goth I've ever met in my life, and she wears these unbelievable platform boots," continued Pip, oblivious to his near heart failure. The feminine pronoun helped normal cardio-pulmonary service resume and Rossi could breathe again. "I've no idea how she walks in them, but she makes it look good, that's for sure. Nutty as a sack of squirrels. We got talking the first night." Pip giggled. "I held the door open for her as we left the conference centre. As soon as she got outside, she put up this black umbrella and I screamed. For a second, I swear to God, I thought she'd turned into a bat."

Rossi managed to laugh along with her, starting to feel a little silly for over-reacting.

"Once we'd sorted ourselves out, we exchanged pleasantries and went out for dinner together. I never really thought anything of it, but she ambushed me when I stopped for coffee on the way in this morning and gave me this." Pip handed him a thin file. "She works at the Navy Yard in DC as their forensic scientist and they've got a missing colleague. There's no leads and lots of lies, and she wanted someone to take a look, but...unofficially. It's delicate. She asked me, I'm asking you." Pip winked. "I'm a good person to have a favour in with."

"I'll hold you to that."

"I didn't doubt it," replied Pip with a laugh. "What do you think?"

"The Navy Yard?" mused Rossi, thinking aloud. "Their major crimes team is led by a former Marine, isn't it? Builds boats in his basement, or so I've heard."

"That's him." Pip nodded, a mischievous smirk starting to appear as she waited for him to follow the train of thought all the way to the last stop. "Do you ever wonder how he gets them out afterwards?"

"No, I hadn't, actually," said Rossi with a smile, although he would now she'd mentioned it. "Isn't he friends with that moody bald guy? The one who has an office on the eighth floor but never uses it?" Pip nodded again and Rossi paused, thinking hard. There was something else about those two. "Hang on; didn't they marry each other's ex-wives or something? Is that why this isn't coming through him?"

Pip laughed. "Not quite, but close enough. As for the why? It's a bit complicated, but let's just say this isn't coming from front line Agents for a reason."

Rossi tucked the file under some others on his desk, out of sight. "I'll have a look. Leave it with me."

"Thanks Dave. Appreciate it." Pip swept out just as news of another case in the Hamptons came in.

Looking round the crime scene was bad enough. Seeing the grief of Captain Downey, even through the office blinds, cut Rossi to the core. The Captain collapsed in Morgan's arms, then pushed him away to huddle by himself on the floor, howling with despair. Rossi had to stop watching, had to turn away. He stared blankly at the information board as he blinked the tears away.

It was one thing to risk your life serving your country. To accept the risk that your family might lose you, that you might die doing it. To lose your family instead, for them to be murdered while you were away...Rossi swallowed, willing away the thickness in his throat. To lose your kids like that...the cases with dead kids were always awful, but this was a special kind of awful that yanked at his heart.

Especially when the body count continued to rise. Another military family died while they were still flailing around with no leads. Another brave man serving his country lost his family. Another house, more bodies, more blood, more dead children.

And a lunatic in prison getting creepy fan mail apparently related to the case. As if the weird quotient for the month hadn't been reached already.

Rossi rang Pip that night from his hotel room. They didn't normally speak much while he was out on a case other than occasional work-related emails, but that night he just needed to hear her voice. Needed her to bicker with him long enough for his brain to be able to switch off so he could sleep. Sleep without seeing images from the case paraded before his unwilling eyes.

"What's wrong?" Pip never was one for the standard niceties when picking up the phone.

But then again, the fact that he'd phoned her at all was indication enough that something was wrong.

"American football is more interesting than rugby." It wasn't like he was a fan, but Pip had told him before she'd spent some time in the UK, during which she'd developed a genuine love of the British winter pastime. As well as a penchant for their speech mannerisms. Disparaging rugby seemed like the quickest and easiest way to start a disagreement.

There was a moment's silence, then a huff of understanding. With her focus firmly fixed on him, Pip didn't need telling outright: he didn't want to talk about it, he just wanted to spar with her.

"Big strong men wearing helmets and foot-thick padding? I don't think so," she replied sharply. "Game for wimps. Rugby is played by real men."

"All of whom have cauliflower ears and missing teeth as a result of not wearing helmets and padding," retorted Rossi dismissively. "There's more money involved in football," he countered. "Money always makes things more interesting."

"Ha! Says the bestselling author with plenty. Only people with money think that. Besides, so does a scoring system that isn't completely incomprehensible."

"Because rugby is much better at that," said Rossi sarcastically. "A game where the number of points you get for a kick depends on why you're kicking it."

"At least you get to watch forty minutes of the game at a time, instead of in ten-minute bursts between the adverts."

"Gives you time to go to the bar," Rossi replied, grinning now. "Or flip the burgers. The cheerleaders are better too – athletic young ladies as opposed to…what, exactly?"

"Depends what you want to see – sport, or underdressed women leaping about?"

Rossi laughed, feeling the heaviness of the case lift a little. "I'm going to assume that's a trick question and plead the fifth."

"Men!" groaned Pip, but with good humour. "You're all the same."

"I don't really look at them anymore," he admitted, then wished he could claw the words back from the phone line. He couldn't, not without that comment sounding even more like the admission it really was.

There was a beat of silence.

"I don't blame you, they all look like they need feeding," said Pip, but slowly, not fired back as her other responses had been. There was almost a question in there somewhere…but not quite. She didn't want to tread that road, was wary of encouraging him.

Or at least that what it sounded like. Reason enough not to risk baring his heart. He'd overreacted that morning. He had it under control now.

"True," agreed Rossi. "Thank you."

Pip laughed. "What for? I won."

Rossi joined in the laughter, feeling better. "I don't think so. I did."

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that," she drawled. "You don't need to thank me, Dave," said Pip seriously. "It's my job."

"What? Cheering me up?"

"Anytime you need it."

The warmth that statement generated in his chest was enough to convince Rossi he would now be able to sleep easy.

"Thank you," he said again. "Good night Pip."

"Good night Dave."

She ended up dead, their UnSub. Inevitable, probably. Such a perfect storm of circumstances, combining to produce a desperate killer. A psychopath born into the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, raised during the destruction and invasion of her adopted town of Srebrenica. She'd escaped the massacre and the mass graves that went with it, but the damage had already been done.

She'd killed three times before: Croatia, Italy and England, and now there were two American families to add to the list.

And Foyet was Karl Arnold's admiring fan, just to add to everything else. He'd known Hotch would visit The Fox in prison. Foyet was toying with Hotch, torturing him. It was both frustrating and upsetting to watch, for everyone. A ghastly reminder of the one that got away, the one they hadn't found no matter how hard they all looked. Rossi could see how rattled Hotch was under the calm façade he wore as a mask, and it scared the hell out of him. If Hotch caught Foyet without back up, there wouldn't be a trial. Foyet's death was already foretold in the steely glint in Hotch's eyes.

Rossi settled himself with a tumbler of scotch at the back of the jet as they flew home and leafed through the file Pip had given him. In his opinion, her Navy friends had been right to be concerned about their missing colleague. Rossi scribbled busily away in the margins, aware of, but not taking any notice of the interest of the rest of the team. He occasionally worked on flights home but would generally sleep, or read a book. To be working away so industriously on the plane was most unlike him, but Rossi needed the distraction. Anything to avoid thinking about the case. Or Foyet, and what he was doing to Hotch.

Fatigue crept up on him, the exhaustion washing over him in slow waves. The strain of the case, of concern over Hotch and by extension, Foyet; it all combined so that by the time they arrived back at the office, Rossi could barely keep his eyes open. In hindsight, the scotch probably hadn't been a good idea.

Pip was at her desk, so Rossi made his way over to give her the now extensively annotated Navy case file. He intended to just hand it off and then go home for some sleep.

"Here," he said wearily. "Give this to your gothic friend. Hopefully it'll help them find their missing Mossad officer."

Pip graced him with a megawatt smile. "Thanks, Dave." She tucked the file away in her bag, then looked up at him, the smile faltering round the edges a little the longer she studied him.

"Dinner?" she asked.

He wanted to say yes, but felt so bone weary that he knew he wouldn't be much company.

"Rain check?" he said reluctantly. "I'm dead on my feet."

"Take out." As ever, Pip with the compromise. "Nothing fancy, there's a new pizza delivery place Leon recommended I've been meaning to try. Consider yourself my Guinea pig. I'll make it the quickest wrap and close in history."

Rossi smiled. "Ok." Best of both worlds. Food he didn't have to cook for himself and her company.

It was good pizza in the end, although Rossi barely tasted it he was so tired. The bottle of beer Pip produced to drink with it was completely wasted on him. She herded him to bed shortly after they finished eating, shushing his half-hearted protests about not having any clean clothes for the morning. Pip had driven them home, and his go-bag had been forgotten in his dopey state – it was still in his car at the office.

"We'll talk about remedying that in the morning if you want, Dave."

He still couldn't relax fully until she joined him under the duvet, Rossi moulding himself around her, holding her close. Then sleep came, swift and merciless.

A/n: The observant among you will have already spotted my references to other series I'm a fan of. The list of interwoven stories (kinda) grows daily. Points will be awarded for those who spot all of them...Forestwytch