Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
Confucius
"What exactly do you want me to do about this, Aaron?" Dave asked, hunched over, leaning towards the Unit Chief's desk. The team had been home from Summerville Academy for less than an hour. Dave had his keys in his hand, heading straight for his car when Hotch summoned him. So he sat in the Unit Chief's office, his foot bouncing in anticipation. He couldn't wait to go home.
"The way I see it, she has two options." Hotch said, keeping his voice low. "We can ship her off-"
"Where?" Dave asked, recovering quickly he tried again. "Where would we 'ship her off?" The prospect of not having a bureaucratic banshee hovering over the team, was almost too good to pass up.
"Don't sound so eager, Dave. EAP found an available bed. Morgan will help her get checked in privately."
"Yeah," Dave snorted, "Good luck. Strauss would almost prefer Gitmo." The Bureau's regulated inpatient rehab facility was as bare-bones as you could get. The theory was, any agent with a problem could work it out quick, fast and in a hurry. Rehab and addiction were not an excuse for a vacation.
"Well we have to do something, Dave. She compromised an investigation, it's clear she's been hiding her drinking for a lot longer than I thought. Derek's with her now, trying to convince her to go-"
"I don't understand why you called me." Dave said, there was no love lost between him and Strauss. They tolerated each other on a good day and he would be lying if he didn't admit to having a drink after interacting with her for longer than ten minutes at a time.
"She might take you seriously," Hotch offered. "Contrary to what most of us believe, she listens when you speak."
"Ha!" Dave barked a laugh, "Erin only listens to me long enough to criticize me." There was only so much ball-busting he could take, without getting paid.
Hotch took a deep breath, Dave was missing the bigger picture. "Either way this goes, I'm going to be up to my ears in paperwork without her here at least part of the time." Hotch said, the picture of authority.
"You can't be serious-" Dave tried to argue. "I can't be the guy for this."
Hotch shook his head, "you're going to have to be. She trusts you."
"She hates me!" Rossi corrected, "there's no way she's drying out at my house." No, Sir. No way, no how. David Rossi wasn't playing nursemaid while the section chief detoxed. "Nope. Sorry, Hotch." Dave stood up to leave.
Hotch's baritone voice stopped him, "You walk out that door and you're leading the unit-" Hotch threatened. "I'll have you promoted tomorrow."
"I'd wander into traffic first," Dave bit back. "I'm not doing this."
Hotch shrugged and said nothing else. The silence said everything.
Dave sighed, resigned to his fate. "Is this an order, Aaron?"
"If it has to be." Hotch said sternly. "I'd like to see you both get your heads out of your asses and learn to get along for longer than 10 minutes."
With his hand resting on the doorknob, he asked,"Do I get a raise if I can boost it to 15?"
The Unit Chief rolled his eyes, "Get out of here, Dave." He growled.
"Yes, Sir." Dave said, not bothering to hide his disdain.
As an afterthought, Hotch added, "remember, Dave you catch more flies with honey than vinegar."
Like a man sent to the gallows, Dave trudged his way to Strauss's office. He stopped in front of the door, hesitating. He could hear her yelling at Derek, but he couldn't tell what was being said.
He heard something hit the wall, took a deep breath and plowed inside.
"What the hell!" Derek yelled. Rubbing the back of his head, the coffee cup narrowly missed him.
"Get out, Agent Morgan!" Strauss yelled "If I wanted it to hit you, it would have!" She shrieked, "get the hell out of here."
Dave put his hand on Derek's shoulder, "never leave a man behind. I got this, Derek."
"Both of you, get out!" Erin ordered, but her words fell on deaf ears.
"Listen here, Elvira," Dave growled, stepping further into the room. "Hotch sent me up here to throw water on you. You should be thanking Derek and Hotch for keeping you in line. If I had caught you, I would have had your ass out on the pavement before the plane landed."
"You wouldn't dare!" Erin spat, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'll have your badge!" She threatened. Her eyes were wild, she knew she was caught; but she wasn't going to let him know.
"Try me." He shot her down with a glare. "You might be better off to sit down and listen."
"What do you want, David?"
"Would you believe it if I said I wanted to help you?" He asked.
"Not in the slightest." She spat, with her hands on her hips. There was no way he was willing to help her and no possible way she would say yes.
"Good," He held out his hand. "At least we're on the same page. The way I see it, I can let you go with Derek tonight. You can detox on the floor of a rehab center that looks more like a jail than a hospital. Or, you can go home with me and wait it out."
She rolled her eyes and stomped her foot. "Do I have a choice here?"
"We can pretend like you do. Now, get your stuff and let's go."
Dave sat their go-bags in the laundry room, the ride back to his house was spent in silence. It wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't bad. Somehow, they both knew what was going to happen.
"Make yourself at home," he offered. Pulling up a chair at the breakfast table. "I don't know about you, but I'm famished." He ducked into the freezer and pulled out a quart of soup.
"Chicken soup, huh?" She deadpanned. Watching him run the container under scalding water.
"This is for your benefit." He reminded her, pouring the soup into a pot. "It mops up easily."
She scrunched her face in disgust, "I'm going to hold you to that."
"So, how long's it been since your last drink?" Dave asked, flipping on the stove. "I don't care." He said harshly, "but we need a timeline so we know what to expect." It didn't matter to him if she pickled her liver 3 times a week, but she was jeopardizing the BAU. The organization he spent his lifetime building. Her stupidity wasn't going to bring it down. The only way he could keep things neutral between them was to be nice.
She checked her watch, "About six hours."
"So, you drank before we left Summerville?"
"Look, I'm not proud of it." She said, holding up her hands in surrender. "I never wanted to be the person who brought a flask on the plane and drank in the bathroom to get through the day."
Dave shook his head, "if you would have waited until the case was over, you could have held onto your stash."
"I have a drinking problem, Rossi. It doesn't work that way." She snarled at him.
"You're an alcoholic, Erin. No need to pretty it up by downplaying the significance of that word. An alcohol problem is when you don't have the right wine to serve with dinner. Alcoholism is when you are so drunk that you can't function unless you are sauced off your rocker."
"Look Rossi, I don't have to sit here and listen to you criticize me."
"I am not criticizing you, I'm telling you some hard truths And that is exactly what you are going to do, sit there and listen." As he spoke each damning sentence Dave moved closer and closer to Erin, until he was right up in her face. "That's your problem Erin, everybody is afraid to tell you when you're wrong. You think you can get away with anything you choose to do. Well I'm not scared of you, so you are going to get the truth from me, straight, no chaser. And you ought to be grateful because maybe you will kick this alcohol demon once and for all. Who knows, Morgan and Hotch might have just saved your miserable life. Cause let me tell you the road you are on, will throw you in a living hell before you can blink an eye. What would have happened if you had driven drunk and killed somebody? What if you were behind the wheel three sheets to the wind, with your kids in the car and something happened to one of them. Do you think you could live with that, Erin? Do you think you could forgive yourself?"
"Stop!"
He ignored her and kept on going. "Let me tell you, that is something that never goes away, even after you've served your prison sentence. Trust me, I should Know, I've chased down enough unsubs whose minds split from reality for that very reason, driving them to kill in a desperate attempt to undue what they did and bring their kid back. Is that what you want for your life? Is it Erin? You have to make a choice and you have to do it now-"
"David, that's enough!" She leapt to her feet, arms crossed over her chest. She wanted him to hurt, to make him feel one iota of her pain. "Do you think you're telling me anything I haven't thought about a million times! I had it under control," she said through a clenched jaw.
Rossi's laughter reverberated around the room before he looked at her and shook his head saying, "That's what they all say, Strauss. Every alcoholic thinks they have it under control, that they can stop anytime they want, right up until it is too late and they have either killed someone, been arrested for DUI or killed themselves." He went to the kitchen and took a bowl from the cabinet, filled it with soup and sat it down roughly in front of her. "Eat." He commanded, a spoon clattered on the ancient oak dining table. Erin could tell, by the time it was all over she would have preferred the rehab center.