The next case that they were on was promising to be another weird one, but that was par for the course with his team, Aaron knew. He had chosen this case from the requests for help, as he felt like it needed their immediate attention, but he still wondered if he had made the right choice. It was so much easier to allow Erin to cull and curate their requests, since he didn't have to face the agonizing decision of if he had chosen wisely. And that thought led to the next one – perhaps that agony was what had resulted in her problem.

Aaron shook his head, trying to clear his wool gathering as he picked up his tablet. He was supposed to be on a date with Beth the next evening, but that was looking like an impossibility, as they were nowhere near ready to close the case. He wanted to do something for her, to let her know that he was thinking of her, and decided that the best way to do that was to send a bouquet of flowers, and so he looked up a local florist and began to scroll through their options. The only problem was, every time that he stopped on an arrangement that caught his eye, his first thought wasn't on his girlfriend, but on Erin and how the bouquet in question might brighten up the gloom of her room.

Hearing movement in the room, he glanced up to see that Dave had returned, carrying his travel mug. "Hey, did you find some decent coffee?" he asked as Dave took a seat across from him at the small table.

"I wish, but this is just Starbucks coffee. At least it was fast, and the front desk clerk gave me a good tip on where to get better coffee in the morning, so I'll head out and grab that for the team before heading to the precinct."

"Uh huh," he answered absently as he stopped on an elegant display. While it might look nice in Beth's apartment, he knew that it would look equally good in Erin's spartan bedroom at the facility, lending it the grace that he knew she desired in her life.

"Those are some nice flowers. Thinking of getting some for Beth?"

Looking up suddenly, Aaron found his best friend giving him an almost smarmy look. Before he could control his reaction, he shook his head before looking down at his tablet once more. "I have someone else in mind for this, but I don't know if she'd receive them well, or not. She's in a rough place, and I want to cheer her up, but it would be walking a fine line between good manners and respect."

"You want to send flowers to a woman who isn't your partner?"

He was taken aback by the almost disgusted way that his friend said those words, since he hadn't thought that Dave would have that strong a reaction. Pushing aside the tablet, he stared down Dave, trying to get a read on his emotional state, and the reason why he might react like that. "Yes, and why would you have a problem with that? I sent flowers to JJ after Henry was born, I sent them to Garcia after her play, and I don't really see anything wrong with that."

"You weren't married to Haley at the time of either of those events."

"I feel like I never divorced her, even though I signed the paperwork, like she wanted. I don't think I would have ever started looking at another woman, if she hadn't told me that I needed to move on for Jack's sake. But even so, why do you have an issue with the idea of my sending flowers to another woman while seeing Beth?"

Dave shook his head a little as he leaned back in his chair, still regarding Aaron with a bit of disappointment. "If you want the relationship to last, you don't even think about another woman. I didn't have to worry about that with Carolyn, we just understood that we were committed to each other. After James died, though, and we drifted apart, it was different. I really picked up that lothario reputation in an effort to drown my grief. And then I met Hayden, and we started seriously seeing each other, and I tried to commit myself fully. Until I sent Carolyn a bouquet of flowers on what would have been our anniversary. I knew that she had been going through a rough patch, and I wanted to somehow brighten her day, but Hayden didn't see it that way. She was jealous and upset, and so I had to do everything in my power to make things right between us once more, and I never sent another bouquet of flowers to a woman when I was seeing another."

Aaron shook his head. "I'm sorry that your thoughtfulness towards your ex-wife was received so poorly by Hayden, but you were in the right to remember and honor Carolyn that way. I feel like we should reach out to our friends and acquaintances that are going through a rough time without being worried about the constraints of improper etiquette. And I say that as the son of a mother who was the epitome of social graces and beat them into Sean and myself from an early age."

Dave shook his head a little before reaching up to scratch his forehead in frustration. "I guess that we'll just have to agree to disagree in this situation. Who are you thinking about sending flowers to, anyway?"

"Strauss."

He watched as Dave's eyes widened almost comically, and Aaron took a deep breath as he waited for his friend to lambast him. Even he wasn't certain why he was considering sending Erin flowers, after all. "Are you insane? Have the unsubs finally gotten to you, and driven you around the bend? After everything that woman has done to your team over the years, you want to show her kindness when you are in a perfectly good relationship with Beth, and shouldn't want to do anything that would fuck that up?"

He shrugged a little as he thought about the thoroughly defeated look on Erin's face that evening he'd taken her belongings to the rehabilitation center. It was as if he had been the one to break something in her that shouldn't have been broken, and he had started to feel like it was his duty to see that she was able to come back from the precipice that she had found herself teetering on. "I don't think that I'll screw things up with Beth by giving Strauss a single moment of kindness. We all need someone to reach out to us at times, and let them know that they're being thought of. It's not like I'm going to send her romantic gifts in an effort to get her to be kinder to our team. It just seemed like she was going through something during that case in Florida, and I just wanted to do something kind."

"Fine, it's your funeral."

Aaron nodded as he slipped the tablet back in front of him, turning it on and staring at the arrangement once more. In his heart, he knew that he was making the right decision to send Erin something, after that discussion that he and Dave had shared. He knew that he would never reveal Erin's predicament to anyone else, since she was just as private as he was when it came to her personal life, so he hoped that Dave wouldn't needle him for more information in the future, because it would be difficult to lie to the man again, seeing as how he had managed to read his body language when it had come to Emily. It would be better to say nothing, then to run into the possibility that Dave figured out everything that was going on with Strauss. After all, he had to hope that the woman would do the same for him, if their roles were reversed. Adding the arrangement to the cart, he scrolled through his phone to find the facility's address before inputting it when prompted and then purchasing the flowers, making certain to keep the delivery anonymous, as he knew that Erin was likely to just throw the arrangement away if she knew who they were from. He only hoped that the small gesture would be enough to brighten her day when it arrived.