For: failegaidin

Words: 1,491 words

Genre: Romance

Pairings/Characters: Rossi/Prentiss

Summary: It ended up taking more than a little self-assurance and three false trips through the bullpen.

Author's Notes: At this point in the writing process, I hit the wall. With five stories already completed and all done within a week, I basically couldn't make myself write a sentence for two weeks afterward. For this story, my notebook looks more like pages full of pen scribbles, cross-outs, and sticky notes than a work in progress.

04.

Dave Rossi stood at the head of his desk with his fingers tapping their anxiety out across its surface. Three times he'd walked through the bullpen today, each time in an effort to gather his nerve, but for nothing. Each time, he ended up walking right past the woman in question and into the bathroom. The others were starting to notice. Reid, upon watching Dave pass by three times, had offered him advice on how to get rid of a UTI.

None of this made sense. Back in the old days, he bent a woman backwards over the arm of his apartment sofa. Once, he brought three women home from a conference in eastern Arlington, then cooked breakfast shirtless for them the morning after. There was never an awkward moment, no hesitation or doubt. He was David fucking Rossi. Attraction was natural, and anxiety was normal, too, even if he wasn't accustomed to experiencing it. What he didn't understand through this process was why he felt like such a coward.

He told himself that maybe "different" was a good thing this time. Though he hated to admit it, Emily Prentiss was well worth the stress of effortful pursuit. She was the best thing to ever stride into his life—in a pair of high-heeled boots, no less—and actually stay there. The result was simply that he couldn't keep his frazzled nerves bound together long enough to ask her on a date. Dinner, or a movie. Hell, they could go for a walk and he wouldn't mind, as long as it was just the pair of them together, without a case hanging over their heads.

It ended up taking more than a little self-assurance and three false trips through the bullpen. The first time Dave tried, he walked face-first into a heated discussion between Emily and JJ. Much to his horror, he learned that JJ had been lobbying for Emily to call that sniper guy… whatever his name was. He mentally promised himself that he would check his notebook for a name later on. He should know his enemies.

"I don't understand why you don't just call him," JJ insisted.

"Because I don't like him," came the adamant refusal.

"Who says you have to like him? He's a hot sharp-shooter who'd love to buy you a free meal, amongst other things."

Dave watched the two women stare at one another—JJ insistent, Emily mildly annoyed—and began to think that he'd walked into a trap. JJ rounded on him the moment he tried to back away, demanding his opinion on the matter because he had "some relevant experience". Dave managed to escape unscathed, but as he made his hasty retreat to the bathroom, he distinctly heard Emily mutter to JJ, "I sort of like… older men."

If he'd had any sort of guts, he would have turned around. But he didn't.

The second time, Dave lingered in his office after hours on a Thursday night. Generally speaking, Emily used Thursdays as "catch up" nights so she didn't have to stay late on the weekend, and he planned to intercept her at the door. He did catch her, just outside the elevator as she was fastening the last buttons on her winter pea coat. Dave called her name from the swinging glass door. To his surprise (and mild dismay), Emily jumped. As her hands flew up to wipe at her face, he realized with a plummeting stomach that she was crying.

"Emily—?"

"Heading out?" she cut in, in a voice almost without waver.

Dave stepped tentatively forward to meet her. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah." Emily nodded and wiped the corners of her eyes, as if keeping him from seeing the tears—keeping them from falling—meant that they weren't really there. "It was a tough case."

Again, Rossi found himself lost for words. An hour of Sudoku later and it still wasn't time to confront his nagging feelings. This time, he walked her to her car and told her to take it easy for the night. Then he stood in the snow-dusted parking lot with his frozen hands crammed into his pockets, blinking snowflakes out of his eyes until her car disappeared. And the next Monday, she greeted him with a smile that nobody else could quite understand. Dave waited, and hoped.

The third time, Dave actually managed to approach her desk and take a seat without having to make a pseudo trip past her desk and into the bathroom. However, the moment he opened his mouth to ask if she had any plans, JJ appeared—seemingly out of thin air, at least to the man whose tunnel vision had yet to acknowledge anything but Emily (she was wearing red again. He loved it when she wore red).

"How'd it go?" JJ asked over the rim of her coffee mug, clearly enthused.

Emily's expression said enough, but she still felt to need to add the response, "Shitty. Honestly, I didn't think it could get any worse until he tried to walk me to my car."

"Are you serious?"

"Completely."

Dave escaped from that conversation so fast that Emily didn't even have time to acknowledge that he'd sat down in the first place. He didn't care. Some conversations are just too dangerous for men to enter willingly.

The next day, the team went in to work extra early to help Hotch mop up the paperwork after the latest case. Dave found Emily by the coffee machine. Her hair was swept up off her shoulders in a makeshift bun, her frame drooped under the weight of little sleep. Dave watched for a few moments while she fed scoop after scoop of coffee ground into the coffee maker, deemed that she was trying to see how many scoops she could actually fit in there, and chuckled.

"You're going to have a heart attack if you drink that much caffeine," he quipped, and succeeded in making Emily jump for what felt like the hundredth time this week.

She cast a glance back at him over her shoulder, no stranger to the tired eyes that met her gaze.

"Good," she replied. "I'd drink it all myself, but Reid would kill me if I didn't let him have at least a little bit. Grab a cup and join the party—Morgan's already with JJ and Hotch in the office."

"Long night?" said Dave, taking the mug when she passed it to him.

"More like 'short night', considering that it's four in the morning."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence as Emily continued to tinker with the machine. The office was almost never this quiet. In the evening, housekeeping vacuumed and blasted music on the overhead sound system. During the day they were swamped with paper and people, unable to find a moment of peace even in the most secluded of spaces. Here, at his ungodly hour, there wasn't another person around because the sun wasn't even up yet; most didn't shuffle in until well after seven, and maintenance was on the first floor at the moment. It was just Dave and Emily alone in the dim break room, in complete silence save for the gurgling coffee pot. Emily looked at him before smiling down into her still-empty coffee mug, running one finger along its brim. Dave's chest tightened at the sudden realization that he finally, after so many failed attempts, had her all to himself. They were groggy-eyed, scruffy, and probably short-tempered, but they were alone. It was perfect.

Dave braced himself one last time, flexed his fingers by his sides as if it were his first time, and opened his mouth to—

"Do you wanna grab something to eat sometime?" asked Emily.

His breath escaped him. Mouth ajar, dumbfounded, he stared back for a solid three seconds before he even realized that she'd just beat him at the dating game.

Evidently taking his non-answer as a "no", Emily quickly added, "Look, no pressure. I'm just sick of dining out with dishonest men, is all."

He could have kissed her for that comment. He almost did, but for all of his love of drama queenery, he found that he respected Emily and this relationship more than his ego. So instead, he shook his head to reset his reeling brain, straightened up, and said, "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight? If we can stay awake until then, I mean."

Emily's eyebrows contracted in confusion and he wanted to laugh. She'd spun him in circles for weeks without realizing what she'd done, and that was okay. But she was not—not—going to steal the reward of hearing her accept his invitation. Not after all his failed efforts.

He thought she was going to challenge his turnaround proposal, or ask why he'd over-asked her question. Instead, all Dave felt was a sheer thrill as Emily Prentiss replied, smiling, "Pick the place and I'm all yours."

x

Fin.