Hotch worked diligently at his desk with a furrowed brow. The stack of files on the to do side of his desk towered haughtily over the paltry done side and he sighed in frustration. Even arriving at the office at the ungodly hour of six a.m. hadn't done him much good in catching up on the never-ending Unit Chief paperwork. His tired eyes glanced at the clock on his desk. He groaned when he saw it was gone ten past ten. He had assured a snarling Strauss she would have everything in the to do pile on her desk by nine thirty a.m. at the latest. The headache forming behind his eyes could only be worsened by having to deal with an infamous Strauss dressing down. Speed reading the report in front of him he did not notice the shadow that fell across his open office door until that shadow coughed pointedly.

"Oh. Hey, Rossi," he greeted wearily. "I don't suppose you're here to give me a hand?"

"You don't suppose correctly," Rossi said quietly as he stalked into the room, closing the door sharply behind him. He sat down in the chair directly opposite Hotch without asking and fixed his old protégé with a strange look.

"Well, then, what can I do for you?"

Rossi's strange looked evolved into an outright glare.

"What can you do for me? Really, Aaron?"

Hotch blinked in confusion and felt another wave of tiredness dog him.

"Am I missing something?"

Pinching the bridge of his nose in a trademark sign of exasperation, the usually benevolent Italian muttered something under his breath that Hotch could only assume wasn't flattering. The Unit Chief stared blankly at the top of Rossi's greying head and racked his brains as to what the matter could be. A small part of him was brimming with irritation at the interruption and he pushed it down with considerable difficulty. The last thing he wanted to do was start the day off with an argument and so he kept his mouth shut.

"What time is it, Aaron?"

Biting back an instinctive retort that the office was literally bursting with clocks, Hotch sighed.

"It's about twenty past ten. You got somewhere you need to be?"

Rossi looked at him as if he had just spat out one of his overly fussy pasta dishes.

"No," he said in a slow tone laden with ice. "I don't have anywhere I need to be. You however, do have somewhere you need to be. Or, rather, you had somewhere you needed to be and you weren't there. So, I guess I'm just wondering why that is?"

Hotch looked at his old mentor with genuine bewilderment which only served to irritate the old Profiler even more.

"Rossi?"

"I'll give you Rossi," the namesake growled. "What time did I tell you, on numerous occasions, to have your ass in my office this morning Aaron?"

Understanding bloomed across the younger man's face as he suddenly remembered Rossi's cryptic and somewhat menacing text messages of the night before. They had completely slipped his mind as he had buried himself in his work. Shrugging his shoulders in a poor attempt at an apologetic gesture, he gestured to his laden down desk pointedly.

"I forgot. Kinda under the gun here as you can do no doubt see."

Rossi snorted derisively.

"Paperwork isn't life or death, Aaron."

Hotch felt a faint flicker of irritation lick him at the man's tone.

"Tell that to Strauss," he said shortly. "Look, I'll check in with you later. I'm busy right now. Can you organise the team for their case write ups? I probably won't have the time today… or tomorrow by the looks of it."

He glanced back towards his files in clear dismissal and so missed the look of apoplectic indignation.

"I beg your pardon?"

Hotch looked up in irritated bewilderment.

"Your confusion is confusing to me."

"Your supreme arrogance is confusing to me."

Hotch gawked in complete and utter surprise.

"My arrogance? Rossi, what the hell is going on here? What conversation do you need to have with me that is so urgent that it can't wait until I get the work that needs to be done urgently, done? I'm not arrogant, I'm busy. Why are you being so… prickly with me?"

Rossi's nostrils flared in temper.

"If you had come by my office like I damn well ordered you to then you-"

"Ordered me to?" Hotch growled in interruption, his own temper well and truly beginning to surge. "I don't know if you missed the sign on the door, Dave, but you don't order me anymore. I order you. That's sort of the way the whole chain of command thing works. I know you're a little rusty having come out of retirement, but you should surely remember that much."

As soon as the words had come tumbling out of his mouth he began to regret them but his innate obstinance refused to take them back. He watched, unaccountably troubled, as Rossi flashed a micro expression of surprised hurt before anger took its place.

"You want to play it like that, Aaron? Are you quite sure?"

Swallowing, Hotch felt shame flush his cheeks. That had been a low blow and he knew it. Forcing himself to take a firm hold on his still rippling temper he took a deep breath and shook his head. Putting his pen down and finally giving his old mentor his undivided attention, he flashed him a look of sheepish apology.

"No," he said softly. "It's not. I'm sorry, Rossi. That was… unnecessary. I'm just tired this morning and this mountain of paperwork isn't helping the situation. I shouldn't have snapped. I'm sorry."

"Unnecessary," Rossi repeated thoughtfully. "That's an interesting choice of word. I would have gone with something more accurate. Something like… disrespectful. Or, alternatively, something like petulant."

Hotch ground his teeth.

"I said I was sorry."

"You did," Rossi acceded, in that maddening tone of superior serenity he sometimes adopted. "Though it seems to me that that apology was as belated and half-hearted as your leadership skills have been of late."

Hotch stared and, in a rare occurrence for the former Lawyer, spoke less than eloquently.

"Huh?"

Rossi raised a pointed brow.

"Don't you huh me. Think about it and you will know exactly what I am talking about. You have precisely one hour to think about it and come to me with your thoughts. In my office. Like you should have been this morning. Paperwork or no paperwork I expect you in front of my desk in no less than fifty-nine minutes and… fifty-one seconds. Understand?"

The tentative grip Hotch had been keeping on his temper failed. It failed hard.

"Excuse me?" he snapped. "Dave, I have absolutely no intention of spending the next hour of my time trying to solve one of your damn riddles. If you have a problem with me then you can go ahead and spit it out. Otherwise, you can keep it to yourself and while you're at it you can keep your orders to yourself. I apologised for my tone a moment ago but the facts are what the facts are. I am not your rookie anymore. I do not answer to your beck and call. I will not be in your office in fifty-nine minutes or at any other time that does not suit me. While we're on the topic you should bear in mind that you don't get to summons me for a long-winded dressing down for some perceived slight anymore. Any concerns or queries you have about my leadership can be discussed at a scheduled meeting. You can put in a meeting request in the normal way. Thanks for dropping by."

With that, he snatched his pen angrily back up and scrawled in his signature on the file before him. Silence permeated the room, thick and heavy, for what seemed like an hour after his outburst. Rossi stared stonily at the dark head in front of him, forcing himself not to react to the harshly spoken words that he knew, despite his anger, that Hotch didn't really mean. Eventually he stood slowly and walked without comment to the door. Opening it, he felt Hotch's gaze instinctively boring into his back and turned to face his protégé with disapproval freely splattered across his face.

"I have felt many things for and about you since we met, Aaron. Some of those feelings were positive. I, have, for example been prouder of you than you could know on many occasions. Some of those feelings were negative. I have, for example, been angrier with you than you could know on many occasions. But I never thought I'd feel the emotion I am feeling for you right now…"

With that he turned to leave without another word, stopping only when Hotch's snarl caught his ears.

"And what emotion would that be?"

Rossi turned and flashed the angry Unit Chief a sad smile.

"Shame."

….

TBC