A/N: Wow, this story has gotten much longer than I thought it would be! Oh well, like anyone cares! And if it was up to me (and it pretty much is) it would just keep going on forever. But I'm not sure how long FF.net would go for that, so alas, I am forced to end my story sometime. Not right now, of course. I'm having way too much fun. And I hope you are, too! Man, I am so glad everyone decided to give this story a chance. If it weren't for you guys, stories that have such huge potential - like "Traffic Patterns" and "Mr. Gallo Goes to Washington" - would never gain the momentum to keep them going.
Before I start, I'd like to dedicate this chapter to either Jamie or Jessie - whichever of the two was kind enough to leave the longest, most encouraging review I've ever received. I certainly have never been anyone's writing disciple before, much less been dubbed a "writing goddess". Your review was definitely the worst thing you could've done for my ego, but I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciated it. Okay, anyway, on with chapter twelve.
Disclaimer: 'Just Shoot Me' and all its characters belong to NBC and Steven Levitan. So, sadly, I do not own Finch. Maybe one day... No, not even then.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Ciao
a 'Just Shoot Me' fanfiction
by Wakizashi
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Monday, 10:07 A.M.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Good morning, Nina," said Finch cheerfully, stirring his coffee as he saw Nina Van Horn heading toward the kitchenette. "How was your weekend?"
Nina blinked rapidly, as if attempting to dissolve her obvious hangover. "Good *morning*? God, what time is it?" she exclaimed in disbelief, checking her wristwatch and rolling her eyes. "Finch, if I ever show up for work this early, I want you to take those pills in my purse, dump them all in some vodka, and force it down my throat."
"Hah, it's a deal," he replied, taking a long swallow from his mug. As he set it on the counter and opened the refrigerator door(on the first try! Booya, grandma!), whistling the entire time, Nina watched him suspiciously. After a short perusal of its contents, he took a cup of cherry yogurt and shut the door with his hip.
"What are you so jolly about?" she asked, her hands fisted on her narrow hips.
Grabbing a spoon from the drawer, Finch shrugged and peeled the lid off of the yogurt cup. "Do I have to have a reason to be in a good mood?"
Before he could protest, she grabbed his mug and downed the rest of the coffee in less than two seconds. "Well," she said, setting it down again, "unless George Lucas, Cindy Crawford, and Spider-man show up right now to tell me they all played 'Dungeons & Dragons' at your apartment last night, I'm afraid I'll need an explanation."
"Hey." He pointed at her. "Wolverine could kick Spidey's nerdy ass. And anyway," he added, licking the yogurt lid, "I don't need to be surrounded by celebrities to have a good time. Unlike some people."
Nina glared at him. "Why, you little gerbil. I'll have you know that I wasn't present at one solitary, star-studded event this weekend. In fact, if Billy Idol hadn't been down with strep throat, I wouldn't have left my apartment at all."
Finch nodded. "You bring him soup?" he asked around a mouthful of yogurt.
"Scotch." She stared at him for a moment, then suddenly smiled in realization. "Hold on, I know why you're in such a good mood. You were with Maya all weekend!" She nodded triumphantly, as though she had discovered the perfect energy source. Annoyed, the blonde pulled out the coffee pot, pointedly ignoring Nina's smug look. Refilling his mug, he walked past her across the bull pen to his desk. To his great irritation, she followed him. "Aha! Your refusal to answer me proves I'm right."
He rolled his eyes. "And if you accused a monk who had taken a vow of silence of stealing your purse? That would make you right?"
Blinking in confusion, she obviously decided to avoid that topic. "Well, are you going to tell me what happened or aren't you?" she demanded. "Come on, Finch, let me in on all the juicy stuff."
"Nina," he said exasperatedly, "There is no 'juicy stuff' to let you in on. And if there was, I highly doubt that I would suffer from a lapse in sanity long enough to tell you about it."
"So nothing happened?" She scoffed. "Boo! I thought you had the hots for Maya! Some Casa Blanca you are."
*We're less than six feet away from Jack's door, and Nina loses control of the volume of her voice,* he thought, wincing. "I believe the term you're looking for is 'Casanova'," he replied, bending down to put some papers in his file drawer. "And will you keep it down? Jack's already lost all respect for me. I certainly don't need you digging my grave for me."
As he closed the drawer and straightened again, he looked up in surprise to see Nina smiling apologetically. "I'm sorry, Finch. I don't mean to make you feel bad. To tell you the truth, when I found out Maya and Elliott had started dating, the first thing I thought was, why not you?"
Finch stared at her in disbelief. When he finally found his voice, he managed to get out a hoarse "Really?"
"Really! I mean, I've known you for over ten years, and Elliott even longer than that. You think I haven't noticed what a horrible date Elliott is?" The corner of her lips curved in a small smirk. "I've seen that man come into this office with three different women in one week. Now you can't tell me I don't know which of you is a better match for Maya."
His throat constricted, stunned by the woman's unexpected sensitivity. How could a woman who had tried to feed a bagel to her carnivorous plant be so in-tune with the workings of her place of employment? "Thanks, Nina," he said softly. "That means a lot to me."
Smiling gently, she walked around the front of his desk and pulled him into a hug. Finch used to feel uncomfortable hugging women who were taller than him, but he decided that there were far too many of them out there to bother nursing a bruised ego about it. Now he returned Nina's embrace tightly, grateful to have her as a friend despite her numerous idiosyncrasies.
"You and Maya have something special," she whispered. "Jack will understand. Don't let anything stop you."
Finch sighed and rested his head on her shoulder. "Maybe," he murmured.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
It was hard for Finch to keep from thinking about Maya Gallo when she walked by his desk every five minutes. Just when he would succeed in concentrating on his work, she would emerge from her office and stride past him through the door to her father's office, with her perfect hair and her sweet smile. *This whole 'just friends' thing is getting to be a pain in the ass,* he thought sullenly.
The telephone rang, giving him a start. He picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. "Jack Gallo's office, can I help you?"
"Hi, Uncle Dennis!" squealed a childish voice on the other end.
He grinned. "Hannah, how's my girl? Hey, why aren't you in school? You aren't skipping already, are you?"
"I never skip," she replied, giggling. "It's a teacher's in... in-service day, so we get to stay home. Is Daddy busy?"
"Mmm, not at the moment," he said, checking Jack's appointment schedule. "What do you want to talk to him for? Are you all of a sudden too good to talk to me?"
Hannah laughed again. "No... But can I talk to him anyway?"
Finch let out an exaggerated sigh. "I suppose I can work something out for you. But I'd better see you here next 'Take Your Kid to Work' day, or you'll never hear the end of it. Deal?"
"Deal!"
"Okay, I'm going to put you on hold, Dollface." He pressed the 'hold' button and hung up the receiver. Opening the door to Jack's office, he leaned inside. "Jack, your charming daughter is on line one."
Maya, who was seated at the chair in front of her father's desk, twisted around at Finch's entrance with a slight blush. Concealing it, she grinned at the mention of her little sister. "Hannah's on the phone? Tell her I said hi, Dad."
"Sure." Jack picked up the phone and smiled. "Hi, Hannah-bear! Maya's here, and she says hello. ...Yes, Dennis is right. You should come to the office sometime." He put his hand over the speaker and gestured to Maya. "The rough draft looks fine, just have the final copy on my desk by Wednesday."
She nodded and rose from the chair. Seeing his cue to leave, Finch turned to walk back to his desk, but he wasn't able to escape in time.
"Dennis, wait!" He stopped and faced Maya, who had closed Jack's door and was holding three glossy sheets of paper. *So it's still Dennis, is it?* he thought, wondering why she hadn't gone back to calling him what everyone else did... besides "weasel". "Which of these borders do you think would work best with my article?"
He blinked. "Oh, um..." Taking the sample pages from her, he scrutinized each of them. "The green one's kind of cool, but since it's going to be in the fall issue, I'd say the orange would be the best one to use."
Maya smiled as he handed the pages back to her. "That's exactly what I was thinking. Thanks, Dennis!" With a brief pat on his shoulder, she strode across the bull pen to her office.
Letting out the breath he had been holding, Finch slumped over his desk, resting his chin on his arms. How was it that Maya was so good at pretending that nothing was different between them? She had ceased to address him by his last name, but other than that, they were nothing more than friends and co-workers. Was their eventful weekend together that forgettable to her?
He felt a finger jab him hard on the top of his head. Looking up irritably, he saw Elliott DiMauro standing on the other side of his desk. He didn't look especially like the Good Humor Man. "Hello, Smelliott," said Finch, taking a swallow of his now luke-warm coffee. "How'd your casual-wear shoot go?"
"You slept with her," Elliott said bluntly.
Finch nearly dropped his coffee mug along with his jaw. "What!? Who?"
"Maya, that's who."
Blinking at him in disbelief, Finch felt a sudden fury burning inside him. Did everyone think he was that shallow? "You know, you are one paranoid dude, you know that?" he shot back angrily, remembering to lower his voice. "And what if - just a hypothetical question here - I *had* slept with her? What would you do then?"
"Don't mess with me, Finch," Elliott snarled. "If you did anything to her, I'll rip out your intestines, tie them to a speedboat, and we'll go waterskiing. How about that?"
He couldn't even believe what he was hearing. Elliott DiMauro had a different woman every week; a different, flawless supermodel who, more often than not, learned all she knew about biology from a placemat at Red Lobster. Why was he so obsessive about Maya? He didn't love her, Finch knew that much. She was like a possession to him, and if he couldn't have her, he wasn't going to let anyone else.
Managing to form an expression of both disdain and pity, Finch shook his head at him. "Do you even know how crazy you sound? You lost Maya, Elliott. And it was your fault you lost her." He ignored his deathglare and continued. "You want to know something? I wouldn't have slept with her even if she begged me." To his own surprise, he actually meant it.
Elliott, however, was not convinced. "You think I actually believe you?"
"No. No, I'm sure you don't believe me. But that doesn't matter." He set his mug down on the desk and stared up at Elliott. "Maya is my friend. Maya is my *best* friend. And she means too much to me to jeopardize our relationship with something as pointless and potentially destroying as sex."
And of course, the photographer didn't let *that* slip by him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he asked, folding his arms.
"You know exactly what it means," Finch said scornfully. "I really feel sorry for you, Elliott. Your life is filled with nothing but material things. All these stick-thin, empty-headed models you go out with... They're just toys. You play with them until you're tired of them." He looked across the bull pen at Maya, who was sitting on the edge of a desk and chatting with one of the workers from maintenance. "But Maya isn't one of your toys. She's a strong, amazing, compassionate woman with real feelings and real vulnerabilities. And maybe you don't realize it, but if you keep treating her like a toy, eventually she's going to break."
Elliott nodded, as if it all made sense to him now. "So what you're saying is, you're in love with her."
For a full minute, neither men spoke. Finch was sick of denying what he had felt in his heart for years, and he stared at Elliott with an almost tired expression. In turn, Elliott stared back, daring Finch to admit what he must have already suspected long ago, but only until now had the courage to ask.
Finally Finch nodded, never breaking eye contact with the photographer. "Yes, Elliott. That's what I'm saying."
"Okay." His expression unreadable, he spun on his heel and began walking toward Maya. A million equally disastrous ways that Elliott could humiliate him raced through Finch's head as he hurried after him. As Maya turned to face them, her ex-boyfriend cleared his throat and announced in a voice loud enough for the entire office to hear: "Hey Maya, Finch is in love with you."
"Oh, my God," said Finch in a strangled voice.
The room spun as Elliott repeated his statement to Maya and the other baffled employees. Too shocked to think of anything to say in reply, Finch leaned on the edge of the nearest desk for support. His brain almost failed to register what was happening. For once, he didn't have a witty comeback or insult to stack the cards in his favor again. He was too busy reeling from what had been irreversibly done to him to even find his voice.
He was powerless.
As if from miles away, he heard one of his co-workers laugh. "Wait, wait. *Finch*? Finch loves *Maya*!?" A chorus of laughter erupted around him, and another voice joined in. "Oh, come on! He *does* know his chances are like, one in eighty-five billion, right?" More laughter. "Jeez, Finch, you need to start dating women at your own level. I bet there's a nice girl in backwoods Kentucky who's just waiting for you." The laughter wouldn't stop.
Suddenly, through the endless ridicule, Finch heard Maya's voice. Maya's voice was saying things that... that weren't very nice. "Shut up! Shut up, all of you! Get a life already and stop insulting people to make you feel big, you bunch of freaks!"
Surprised, he looked up and saw Maya glaring furiously at everyone; especially Elliott. "What the hell is wrong with you, Elliott?" she demanded, her fists planted on her hips. "Are you that selfish and inconsiderate that you would humiliate one of your best friends in public? And the rest of you!" She spun on the others like an angry cat. "Just what is so damn funny about the idea of Dennis Finch being in love with me? Do you think he's not good enough for me? Is that it?"
That was certainly what Finch had always thought. So why was she defending him?
Her eyes brimming with unshed tears, Maya turned to him and took his hand in one of hers, covering it with the other. "He's better than all of you, I can tell you that much," she said, addressing the group while looking at him. "He's kind and sensitive and thoughtful, and he would never do to any of you what you just did to him." She swallowed. "And that's why I love him."
A collective gasp resounded through the office. Elliott took an involuntary step back, and the most profound silence filled the room. His heart beating wildly, Finch looked down at Maya's hands, then up into her face. Her expressive brown eyes could never lie, and in them he saw the truth of what she had said. "I love you, Dennis," she repeated softly.
Those four words could never have meant as much as they did to him if they had been spoken by anyone else. His limbs feeling like lead, he raised his free hand and brushed his fingers against her cheek. "I love you, too."
Heedless of the people staring incredulously at them, Finch held his hand to the back of Maya's head and pulled her gently forward until her lips met his. There was nothing particularly fiery or passionate about their kiss, but it held an immeasurable degree of tenderness in it. He felt her dainty fingertips caress the back of his hand, and as they both pulled away, she smiled the most loving smile he had ever seen.
"Ahem." His eyes wide, Finch recognized the voice behind him and slowly turned to face its source. Jack Gallo stood in the doorway of his office. "Dennis. Maya. My office. Now."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
A/N: So there it is. There you have it. The big confrontation between Finch and Elliott had to come sometime. I feel I could have written it better than I did, but maybe I just don't put enough faith in my abilities as a writer. Most authors are probably the same way. So was the wait worth it? I hope so. I wanted to make this chapter "The Big One", if you will, and with any luck I succeeded. But I also wanted to really make Nina shine. She's severely underrated in some fanfictions, and that kind of upsets me. She's just as much a part of the show as the others, and she deserves some credit. The phone call from Hannah, too, wasn't really space-filler. Sometimes I forget that Maya has a little sister, and being a kid sister myself, I know what's involved with all that. And plus I really wish they'd have her on the show someday.
So anyway, write your reviews before you leave, and I'll be grateful. Oh, and I apologize for the cliffhanger. That was unworthy of me.
-Wakizashi
tricksparrow@hotmail.com
Before I start, I'd like to dedicate this chapter to either Jamie or Jessie - whichever of the two was kind enough to leave the longest, most encouraging review I've ever received. I certainly have never been anyone's writing disciple before, much less been dubbed a "writing goddess". Your review was definitely the worst thing you could've done for my ego, but I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciated it. Okay, anyway, on with chapter twelve.
Disclaimer: 'Just Shoot Me' and all its characters belong to NBC and Steven Levitan. So, sadly, I do not own Finch. Maybe one day... No, not even then.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Ciao
a 'Just Shoot Me' fanfiction
by Wakizashi
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Monday, 10:07 A.M.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Good morning, Nina," said Finch cheerfully, stirring his coffee as he saw Nina Van Horn heading toward the kitchenette. "How was your weekend?"
Nina blinked rapidly, as if attempting to dissolve her obvious hangover. "Good *morning*? God, what time is it?" she exclaimed in disbelief, checking her wristwatch and rolling her eyes. "Finch, if I ever show up for work this early, I want you to take those pills in my purse, dump them all in some vodka, and force it down my throat."
"Hah, it's a deal," he replied, taking a long swallow from his mug. As he set it on the counter and opened the refrigerator door(on the first try! Booya, grandma!), whistling the entire time, Nina watched him suspiciously. After a short perusal of its contents, he took a cup of cherry yogurt and shut the door with his hip.
"What are you so jolly about?" she asked, her hands fisted on her narrow hips.
Grabbing a spoon from the drawer, Finch shrugged and peeled the lid off of the yogurt cup. "Do I have to have a reason to be in a good mood?"
Before he could protest, she grabbed his mug and downed the rest of the coffee in less than two seconds. "Well," she said, setting it down again, "unless George Lucas, Cindy Crawford, and Spider-man show up right now to tell me they all played 'Dungeons & Dragons' at your apartment last night, I'm afraid I'll need an explanation."
"Hey." He pointed at her. "Wolverine could kick Spidey's nerdy ass. And anyway," he added, licking the yogurt lid, "I don't need to be surrounded by celebrities to have a good time. Unlike some people."
Nina glared at him. "Why, you little gerbil. I'll have you know that I wasn't present at one solitary, star-studded event this weekend. In fact, if Billy Idol hadn't been down with strep throat, I wouldn't have left my apartment at all."
Finch nodded. "You bring him soup?" he asked around a mouthful of yogurt.
"Scotch." She stared at him for a moment, then suddenly smiled in realization. "Hold on, I know why you're in such a good mood. You were with Maya all weekend!" She nodded triumphantly, as though she had discovered the perfect energy source. Annoyed, the blonde pulled out the coffee pot, pointedly ignoring Nina's smug look. Refilling his mug, he walked past her across the bull pen to his desk. To his great irritation, she followed him. "Aha! Your refusal to answer me proves I'm right."
He rolled his eyes. "And if you accused a monk who had taken a vow of silence of stealing your purse? That would make you right?"
Blinking in confusion, she obviously decided to avoid that topic. "Well, are you going to tell me what happened or aren't you?" she demanded. "Come on, Finch, let me in on all the juicy stuff."
"Nina," he said exasperatedly, "There is no 'juicy stuff' to let you in on. And if there was, I highly doubt that I would suffer from a lapse in sanity long enough to tell you about it."
"So nothing happened?" She scoffed. "Boo! I thought you had the hots for Maya! Some Casa Blanca you are."
*We're less than six feet away from Jack's door, and Nina loses control of the volume of her voice,* he thought, wincing. "I believe the term you're looking for is 'Casanova'," he replied, bending down to put some papers in his file drawer. "And will you keep it down? Jack's already lost all respect for me. I certainly don't need you digging my grave for me."
As he closed the drawer and straightened again, he looked up in surprise to see Nina smiling apologetically. "I'm sorry, Finch. I don't mean to make you feel bad. To tell you the truth, when I found out Maya and Elliott had started dating, the first thing I thought was, why not you?"
Finch stared at her in disbelief. When he finally found his voice, he managed to get out a hoarse "Really?"
"Really! I mean, I've known you for over ten years, and Elliott even longer than that. You think I haven't noticed what a horrible date Elliott is?" The corner of her lips curved in a small smirk. "I've seen that man come into this office with three different women in one week. Now you can't tell me I don't know which of you is a better match for Maya."
His throat constricted, stunned by the woman's unexpected sensitivity. How could a woman who had tried to feed a bagel to her carnivorous plant be so in-tune with the workings of her place of employment? "Thanks, Nina," he said softly. "That means a lot to me."
Smiling gently, she walked around the front of his desk and pulled him into a hug. Finch used to feel uncomfortable hugging women who were taller than him, but he decided that there were far too many of them out there to bother nursing a bruised ego about it. Now he returned Nina's embrace tightly, grateful to have her as a friend despite her numerous idiosyncrasies.
"You and Maya have something special," she whispered. "Jack will understand. Don't let anything stop you."
Finch sighed and rested his head on her shoulder. "Maybe," he murmured.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
It was hard for Finch to keep from thinking about Maya Gallo when she walked by his desk every five minutes. Just when he would succeed in concentrating on his work, she would emerge from her office and stride past him through the door to her father's office, with her perfect hair and her sweet smile. *This whole 'just friends' thing is getting to be a pain in the ass,* he thought sullenly.
The telephone rang, giving him a start. He picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. "Jack Gallo's office, can I help you?"
"Hi, Uncle Dennis!" squealed a childish voice on the other end.
He grinned. "Hannah, how's my girl? Hey, why aren't you in school? You aren't skipping already, are you?"
"I never skip," she replied, giggling. "It's a teacher's in... in-service day, so we get to stay home. Is Daddy busy?"
"Mmm, not at the moment," he said, checking Jack's appointment schedule. "What do you want to talk to him for? Are you all of a sudden too good to talk to me?"
Hannah laughed again. "No... But can I talk to him anyway?"
Finch let out an exaggerated sigh. "I suppose I can work something out for you. But I'd better see you here next 'Take Your Kid to Work' day, or you'll never hear the end of it. Deal?"
"Deal!"
"Okay, I'm going to put you on hold, Dollface." He pressed the 'hold' button and hung up the receiver. Opening the door to Jack's office, he leaned inside. "Jack, your charming daughter is on line one."
Maya, who was seated at the chair in front of her father's desk, twisted around at Finch's entrance with a slight blush. Concealing it, she grinned at the mention of her little sister. "Hannah's on the phone? Tell her I said hi, Dad."
"Sure." Jack picked up the phone and smiled. "Hi, Hannah-bear! Maya's here, and she says hello. ...Yes, Dennis is right. You should come to the office sometime." He put his hand over the speaker and gestured to Maya. "The rough draft looks fine, just have the final copy on my desk by Wednesday."
She nodded and rose from the chair. Seeing his cue to leave, Finch turned to walk back to his desk, but he wasn't able to escape in time.
"Dennis, wait!" He stopped and faced Maya, who had closed Jack's door and was holding three glossy sheets of paper. *So it's still Dennis, is it?* he thought, wondering why she hadn't gone back to calling him what everyone else did... besides "weasel". "Which of these borders do you think would work best with my article?"
He blinked. "Oh, um..." Taking the sample pages from her, he scrutinized each of them. "The green one's kind of cool, but since it's going to be in the fall issue, I'd say the orange would be the best one to use."
Maya smiled as he handed the pages back to her. "That's exactly what I was thinking. Thanks, Dennis!" With a brief pat on his shoulder, she strode across the bull pen to her office.
Letting out the breath he had been holding, Finch slumped over his desk, resting his chin on his arms. How was it that Maya was so good at pretending that nothing was different between them? She had ceased to address him by his last name, but other than that, they were nothing more than friends and co-workers. Was their eventful weekend together that forgettable to her?
He felt a finger jab him hard on the top of his head. Looking up irritably, he saw Elliott DiMauro standing on the other side of his desk. He didn't look especially like the Good Humor Man. "Hello, Smelliott," said Finch, taking a swallow of his now luke-warm coffee. "How'd your casual-wear shoot go?"
"You slept with her," Elliott said bluntly.
Finch nearly dropped his coffee mug along with his jaw. "What!? Who?"
"Maya, that's who."
Blinking at him in disbelief, Finch felt a sudden fury burning inside him. Did everyone think he was that shallow? "You know, you are one paranoid dude, you know that?" he shot back angrily, remembering to lower his voice. "And what if - just a hypothetical question here - I *had* slept with her? What would you do then?"
"Don't mess with me, Finch," Elliott snarled. "If you did anything to her, I'll rip out your intestines, tie them to a speedboat, and we'll go waterskiing. How about that?"
He couldn't even believe what he was hearing. Elliott DiMauro had a different woman every week; a different, flawless supermodel who, more often than not, learned all she knew about biology from a placemat at Red Lobster. Why was he so obsessive about Maya? He didn't love her, Finch knew that much. She was like a possession to him, and if he couldn't have her, he wasn't going to let anyone else.
Managing to form an expression of both disdain and pity, Finch shook his head at him. "Do you even know how crazy you sound? You lost Maya, Elliott. And it was your fault you lost her." He ignored his deathglare and continued. "You want to know something? I wouldn't have slept with her even if she begged me." To his own surprise, he actually meant it.
Elliott, however, was not convinced. "You think I actually believe you?"
"No. No, I'm sure you don't believe me. But that doesn't matter." He set his mug down on the desk and stared up at Elliott. "Maya is my friend. Maya is my *best* friend. And she means too much to me to jeopardize our relationship with something as pointless and potentially destroying as sex."
And of course, the photographer didn't let *that* slip by him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he asked, folding his arms.
"You know exactly what it means," Finch said scornfully. "I really feel sorry for you, Elliott. Your life is filled with nothing but material things. All these stick-thin, empty-headed models you go out with... They're just toys. You play with them until you're tired of them." He looked across the bull pen at Maya, who was sitting on the edge of a desk and chatting with one of the workers from maintenance. "But Maya isn't one of your toys. She's a strong, amazing, compassionate woman with real feelings and real vulnerabilities. And maybe you don't realize it, but if you keep treating her like a toy, eventually she's going to break."
Elliott nodded, as if it all made sense to him now. "So what you're saying is, you're in love with her."
For a full minute, neither men spoke. Finch was sick of denying what he had felt in his heart for years, and he stared at Elliott with an almost tired expression. In turn, Elliott stared back, daring Finch to admit what he must have already suspected long ago, but only until now had the courage to ask.
Finally Finch nodded, never breaking eye contact with the photographer. "Yes, Elliott. That's what I'm saying."
"Okay." His expression unreadable, he spun on his heel and began walking toward Maya. A million equally disastrous ways that Elliott could humiliate him raced through Finch's head as he hurried after him. As Maya turned to face them, her ex-boyfriend cleared his throat and announced in a voice loud enough for the entire office to hear: "Hey Maya, Finch is in love with you."
"Oh, my God," said Finch in a strangled voice.
The room spun as Elliott repeated his statement to Maya and the other baffled employees. Too shocked to think of anything to say in reply, Finch leaned on the edge of the nearest desk for support. His brain almost failed to register what was happening. For once, he didn't have a witty comeback or insult to stack the cards in his favor again. He was too busy reeling from what had been irreversibly done to him to even find his voice.
He was powerless.
As if from miles away, he heard one of his co-workers laugh. "Wait, wait. *Finch*? Finch loves *Maya*!?" A chorus of laughter erupted around him, and another voice joined in. "Oh, come on! He *does* know his chances are like, one in eighty-five billion, right?" More laughter. "Jeez, Finch, you need to start dating women at your own level. I bet there's a nice girl in backwoods Kentucky who's just waiting for you." The laughter wouldn't stop.
Suddenly, through the endless ridicule, Finch heard Maya's voice. Maya's voice was saying things that... that weren't very nice. "Shut up! Shut up, all of you! Get a life already and stop insulting people to make you feel big, you bunch of freaks!"
Surprised, he looked up and saw Maya glaring furiously at everyone; especially Elliott. "What the hell is wrong with you, Elliott?" she demanded, her fists planted on her hips. "Are you that selfish and inconsiderate that you would humiliate one of your best friends in public? And the rest of you!" She spun on the others like an angry cat. "Just what is so damn funny about the idea of Dennis Finch being in love with me? Do you think he's not good enough for me? Is that it?"
That was certainly what Finch had always thought. So why was she defending him?
Her eyes brimming with unshed tears, Maya turned to him and took his hand in one of hers, covering it with the other. "He's better than all of you, I can tell you that much," she said, addressing the group while looking at him. "He's kind and sensitive and thoughtful, and he would never do to any of you what you just did to him." She swallowed. "And that's why I love him."
A collective gasp resounded through the office. Elliott took an involuntary step back, and the most profound silence filled the room. His heart beating wildly, Finch looked down at Maya's hands, then up into her face. Her expressive brown eyes could never lie, and in them he saw the truth of what she had said. "I love you, Dennis," she repeated softly.
Those four words could never have meant as much as they did to him if they had been spoken by anyone else. His limbs feeling like lead, he raised his free hand and brushed his fingers against her cheek. "I love you, too."
Heedless of the people staring incredulously at them, Finch held his hand to the back of Maya's head and pulled her gently forward until her lips met his. There was nothing particularly fiery or passionate about their kiss, but it held an immeasurable degree of tenderness in it. He felt her dainty fingertips caress the back of his hand, and as they both pulled away, she smiled the most loving smile he had ever seen.
"Ahem." His eyes wide, Finch recognized the voice behind him and slowly turned to face its source. Jack Gallo stood in the doorway of his office. "Dennis. Maya. My office. Now."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
A/N: So there it is. There you have it. The big confrontation between Finch and Elliott had to come sometime. I feel I could have written it better than I did, but maybe I just don't put enough faith in my abilities as a writer. Most authors are probably the same way. So was the wait worth it? I hope so. I wanted to make this chapter "The Big One", if you will, and with any luck I succeeded. But I also wanted to really make Nina shine. She's severely underrated in some fanfictions, and that kind of upsets me. She's just as much a part of the show as the others, and she deserves some credit. The phone call from Hannah, too, wasn't really space-filler. Sometimes I forget that Maya has a little sister, and being a kid sister myself, I know what's involved with all that. And plus I really wish they'd have her on the show someday.
So anyway, write your reviews before you leave, and I'll be grateful. Oh, and I apologize for the cliffhanger. That was unworthy of me.
-Wakizashi
tricksparrow@hotmail.com