Spoilers: Post episode for 5X03

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds, I am making no profit from the writing of this fic.

The amazing smacky30 betaed but I messed with it after, so, all mistakes are mine. Also, thanks to alicat713 for being such a wonderful cheerleader and supporter.

The light bulb in the refrigerator is flickering intermittently.

The unpredictable and stuttering off…on…off reminds her of cheap neon. She knows she needs to tighten or replace the bulb, but she'd had one break in her hand once, and she finds herself reluctant to repeat the experience. Eight stitches across the top of her palm and as far as she remembers it's the only non-job related scar she has. The light flickers again as she stares into the recesses, debating between a beer or opening the lone bottle of wine. She's in the mood for the wine, but she couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't finish the whole bottle by herself. It was a birthday gift from her father, a rather nice Reisling, and she doesn't want to waste it.

The cool air from the refrigerator's interior feels good against her skin even though she knows she's wasting energy. Still, it's a peaceful moment standing there, so she just sinks into it and decides she'll make another donation to Green Peace to make up for it. She figures learning the coworker she's quietly and hopelessly pining for is pining for a dead woman is worth a moment of comfort, a moment of peace, despite global warming.

Emily's still trying to reconcile herself to the beer when the doorbell rings, followed by a sharp knock. The pattern lets her know who is at her door without a look through the peephole. But, out of habit, and years of caution, she looks anyway. The distorted visage of Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi is, indeed, on the other side of her door as she suspected.

He looks tired and a little sad, and she finds herself biting her lip. It's been a rough couple of months and this last case, well guilt on top of history doesn't make a hard case any easier, as she well knows. That's probably how she got here; she found herself looking at him with new eyes when he went so far with her to stop Father Silvano. He'd propped her up and covered her ass the whole time. In the seven months since Matthew's death she and Rossi have found an easy camaraderie on the job and friendship outside of it. Since Hotch's attack they've been more like partners, leaning on each other to keep the team together and help hold Hotch up.

Now, it was time to return the favor. Well, she doesn't know how much propping up he needs, but he probably does need someone to listen. She owes him that. More than that, she wants to be there for him. It's going to hurt she thinks as her teeth sink a little deeper into her lip. Listening to him talk about the woman he loved, probably still loves, is going to hurt. Part of it is her own unrequited feelings, and another is knowing he's hurting and there's nothing she can do to take the pain away. Nothing but listen and offer any comfort she can.

On the other side of the door Rossi shifts and looks directly at the peephole as if to say "What are you waiting for, Prentiss?" and she quickly twists the deadbolt and removes the chain, swinging the door open.

He doesn't speak as he enters and her eyebrows climb as she rebolts the door. For all that he's an arrogant asshole when he's focused on achieving a goal; his manners are impeccable in all other situations. Since the night he'd left Hotch's hospital room and shown up at her door to hash the day over and brainstorm about catching Foyet, he'd at least asked for permission to come in or apologized for showing up unannounced.

Still, the last two days have been hard on him, so, she doesn't give him any grief. She's a little relieved to see him; actually she figured with Hotch acting far more…Hotch-like this time around, maybe their behind the scenes, support and run interference meetings were no longer necessary. She's grown accustomed to the bell ring followed by the knock, sharing take-out, working on Hotch's paperwork at her breakfast bar and talking until all hours. And, yeah, as much as it's going to suck listening to him talk about Emma Schuller, how bad would it be if he didn't think he could talk to her?

"JJ doing okay?" His voice reminds her he's here now and she needs her legendary compartmentalization skills because he needs a friend tonight. But he's not looking at her, he's studying the books in the shelves in her alcove.

"Yeah." She leans against her kitchen counter and watches his dark head tilt as he reads the titles and authors: Vonnegut, Faulkner, Adams, Asimov, O'Connor, Dunne, Bradbury, Shinn, Kingsolver, Herbert, McCaffrey, McCarthy, LeGuin, Carter, McCullough, Rossi. They're the same ones that have been there every other time he's been here. "She went straight to Potomac and got her blood drawn. They gave her a prescription and want her to retest in three months, The judge's blood will be tested, of course."

He nods without turning, hands on his hips beneath his sport coat. "Did Will come get her?"

"He met us at the hospital." Emily spares a wistful smile for the memory of JJ's family huddled together in comfort and gratitude. "Once she got her hands on Henry I knew she'd be fine."

"You did good." He glances over his shoulder, briefly, not meeting her eyes, then turns back to his perusal of her small library. "With JJ. Today. You took care of her, offered her the support she needed."

She shrugs; it's not that she doesn't like compliments and recognition, but her overwhelming feeling tonight is one of concern. For him. "It's what we do."

"No, Emily." Finally, he turns back to face her and she really can see how very tired he is. There are bags under his eyes and the lines on his face appear to have multiplied in the last forty-eight hours. "It's what you did and you did it well. This whole time? The last six weeks? You've done amazing work. You've been acting as a leader."

She gives a derisive snort. "May I remind you that's not what you said at first?" The afternoon at the hospital he had been pissed and hadn't hesitated to rip her a new one standing in the waiting room while Haley and Jack were in with Hotch. His first visit here had actually been as much to apologize as it was to talk about moving forward.

"I was an ass." He frowns at her a little fiercely. "I am an ass. But this isn't about me. I just…you're doing a good job, Emily. You're helping lead and taking care of this team. I wasn't sure if anyone had articulated that to you."

Her brow quirks. "Has anyone said the same to you?"

Shaking his head, he lets his hands fall away from his hips. "I'm a senior agent, what I've done is procedure. What you're doing? Leadership."

He's exhausted, she thinks. She wants to wrap her arms around him, run her fingers through his hair, tell him everything will be all right.

Professional camaraderie, friendship, she reminds herself. Lightly, she touches the sleeve of his jacket, "I was just trying to choose between a bottle of wine or a beer. What's your vote?"

He gives her a slow, one sided smile. "Deflect much?"

Quite maturely sticking her tongue out at him, she repeats, "Beer or wine?"

"Wine." He crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the breakfast bar. "But if I have more than a glass I'll probably end up passed out on your sofa again."

Emily pulls the Reisling out of the fridge. "Mi sofá es su sofá."

He rotates his shoulders, then his neck; there's a cracking noise that makes her wince as she locates her corkscrew. "Lately, it's more like your sofa is my bed."

Making a face, she shakes her head. A few nights he's crashed on her sofa and one Friday night they'd both fallen asleep there. Emily had awakened sometime just before dawn, to find herself sandwiched between the sofa back and the solid weight of David Rossi, his arm carelessly flung over her hip. She'd lain there in the dark, absorbing his warmth, breathing in the woodsy, slightly musky scent of him. The sharp and tender yearning that hit her in the middle of her chest had surprised her. She knew, had known for a long time, she was physically attracted to him. But this feeling was more than physical desire. It was desire for impossible things…his face relaxed in sleep, lazy weekend mornings in bed sharing the newspaper and the blankets, someone to cook for, waking to the weight of his forearm over her hip.

She'd extracted herself as carefully and quietly as she could, stealing upstairs to her cold bed to stare at the ceiling until the sun shone through the windows and she could hear him moving downstairs. Trying to act normally that day had been a challenge, and he'd asked her later if she was all right. But she'd merely pleaded allergies and started on another stack of Hotch's paperwork, changing the subject to the unit chief's return to work.

Setting the point in the center of the cork, she tamps down the memory and just nods. "It's been a long few weeks."

He grunts an assent, watching her twist and pull the cork out of the bottle. Emily wonders if he knows just how intense being under his scrutiny is. Setting the cork aside, she turns and slides two glasses out of the rack and sets them on the counter. When she turns around to grab the bottle of wine he's standing right beside her and she nearly comes out of her skin.

She half expects him to laugh at her but his face is too serious, too intent on hers and she feels her eyes widen when he slowly raises his hand and lays it gently against her face. His thumb strokes slowly across her cheekbone and he's looking at her face but not into her eyes. She sees him swallow and his voice, when he speaks, is rough and raspy as though it's too much to say her name, as though those three syllables would break him but he has to say them anyway. "Emily."

Then his lips are touching hers, just a simple press and she forgets to be astonished and instead absorbs the warmth of his skin, the tickle of his moustache, the lingering taste of the afternoon's coffee. His hand moves with exquisite slowness down her cheek, slipping around her neck, gliding between her hair and her skin to cup the back of her head. "Emily," he breathes when he moves away, but not far, pressing his lips to the corner of her mouth, her cheek, her temple.

It takes a minute for her to shake herself out of the sheer outrageous joy of being kissed by David Rossi. "Dave." She feels his other arm going around her, pulling her close, and it's all she can do not to moan at the solid feel of him against her.

"Dave," she tries again, "I know you need a friend right now."

"No," he rubs his cheek against hers. "No, I don't need a friend." Pulling back, he looks into her eyes and the dark intensity of his gaze hits her hard in the center of her chest. "I need you, Emily."

"Dave," she hates how wispy and needy her voice sounds. She hates that no matter how hard she's trying to protect her heart and their friendship, she wants to wrap her arms around him and make him forget Emma Schuller ever existed.

Gently, she slides herself from his arms, moving into the living room, trying desperately to put some distance between them. Pulling in a rather desperate breath, she turns, unsurprised to find he's followed her. "I can't…"

"I know what you think." Dave's hands slide up her arms until he's grasping her shoulders. "You think this is about Emma."

"God, Dave, how can you say it's not?" Emily's heart is thumping so hard the beat is nearly as loud in her ears as their voices.

"This is about only one woman." His hands slip down over her back and she shivers under his touch. "This is about Emily Prentiss."

A host of words and phrases tumble through her brain as his lips catch hers again in a slow, seductive kiss: reckless, mistake, ill advised, regret, insanity, foolish, catastrophic, heart breaking. Somehow, without breaking the kiss he pulls her down on the sofa onto his lap and those words and phrases are followed by others: breathless, bliss, alive, delicious, worth it. And as one kiss melds into another and the slow glide of his hands across her back set off tiny shockwaves in her nerve endings, she decides words and phrases and thoughts are far too overrated.

His tongue teases along the seam of her lips and she instinctively opens her mouth to him as she gives in and rakes her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. He lets out a low, slow moan into her mouth as she teases her tongue against his. The kiss feels like an entity of its own: a living, breathing thing as it snakes between them, twining around them both, wrapping them together.

Her whole body warms under his hands and mouth and she whimpers when he moves from her mouth and kisses his way down the length of her neck. Overwhelmed with sensation, she's aware of several things: her breasts feel heavy, her nipples are hard and she doesn't want him to stop. It's probably a mistake and she just doesn't care anymore; he smells so good, he tastes so good, he feels so good she can't think of anything else here in this moment.

Fingers stroking and scratching through his hair, she has to struggle not to just collapse into it passively, allowing herself to be molded under his hands, his lips. So, when his mouth moves back up to hers she sets her hands on either side of his face and kisses him for all she's worth, giving and taking at the same time, sinking into every sensation: the prickle of his beard against her face, the rasp of his stubble under her hands, the firm pressure of his lips, the moist warmth of his mouth. She presses herself as close against him as she can, gratified when he groans her name and pulls her closer.

There's a sort of magnetic heat rising up off of both of them, radiating through their clothing, drawing each other closer and closer. His hands slip under her shirt and stroke against her lower back and Emily hisses and he groans at the contact of skin on skin and then they're kissing again.

She wants to feel his skin but the concept of how to unbutton his shirt is more than she can puzzle out at the moment, so she simply grasps handfuls of material and tugs, pulling the crisp cotton free of his jeans. The shirt bunches around her wrists as her hands finally come up against his warm, warm skin. His muscles tighten under her fingers and when he sucks in a breath he's sucking in her breath, they're that close.

"Emily," he rumbles against her mouth, still kissing her.

"Dave," she purrs back and deepens the kiss.

The hand not currently driving her to madness with its whisper like strokes across her lower back comes up and cups her cheek as he draws away from her mouth, leaning his forehead against hers. They're both breathing hard and the air around them feels as though it's filled with the thrum of their mingled heartbeats. There's heat and she feels flushed and she's kind of in love with the way things seem a little filmy, a little hazy…Diaphanous, she thinks, a word she learned from romance novels when she was a young teenager. Before John Cooley and his hot breath on her neck and his sticky semen mixing with the blood between her thighs. Before romance became a myth.

Here, now, with Rossi, in this moment, forehead to forehead, she feels as though she's seeing the world through some sort of gossamer filter of physical desire and unattainable longing. And the way his thumb strokes across her lower lip she thinks maybe, just maybe, romance isn't a myth after all.

He closes his eyes. "This isn't…" Shaking his head, he opens his eyes again. "I didn't mean for this to happen." Instantly, she stiffens and attempts to draw away, cursing herself and myths and romance and diaphanous anything before he repositions his arms around her, pulling her closer than she was before. Shaking his head, he tucks her neatly against him as though it's a long standing habit to do so before he says, "No. No. Not so fast. That's not the way I meant that." His arms tighten until she settles. "I wanted to talk to you before I moved any further, but I needed…wanted to get your attention. I got carried away." She snorts and she's not sure if he shakes her ever so slightly or if she's trembling, but then he kisses her temple and she relaxes as much as her hyper-vigilant wariness will allow. "I'm trying not to fuck this up, Prentiss. I need you to have a little patience here and help me out."

Her eyebrows climb far into her forehead but she refrains from any comments on the irony of David Rossi asking anyone for patience. "I'm listening."

In the quiet that follows she hears the hum of the refrigerator and thinks, idly, about the open bottle of wine on her countertop and the flickering light bulb, then wonders, a little less idly, if David Rossi is going to break her heart.

When he finally speaks, she has to admit she's never heard him speak so haltingly. "I gave Hotch a pep talk today, tried to remind him about life outside of the FBI, a life after Foyet."

There's something soft, something vulnerable about the man in front of her and she feels her chest contract a little and her guarded heart allows her to speak softly, almost tenderly. "How did that go?"

His lip quirks into a crooked smile. "About as well as can be expected. I don't know that he heard me." The look he gives her is open and unwavering and makes her stomach flutter. "But I heard me."

"Emma…" his voice is heavy and a little sad, "Emma always thought we could be happy together, but it was never the right place or the right time. I want to say there was always something keeping us apart, but the truth of the matter is, I never tried hard enough to be with her. I loved her, but, I don't think I loved her enough to choose to be happy with her. I confused the job with happiness."

Gently, he takes her face in his hands. "I'm not going to make that mistake again, I'm not going to pass up an opportunity to be happy, Emily, not for the job, not for anything. I don't want to think of you twenty or thirty years from now and wonder what might have been." He presses a kiss to the tip of her nose. "I want to think about you in twenty years and be able to reach across the sofa and touch you. I want to think about what is." His lips touch hers briefly. "Just give me a chance to get there."

She feels a little like she felt when Benjamin Cyrus had kicked her in the solar plexus…stunned, paralyzed, struggling to breathe. But there's no pain; there is, instead, something sweet and bright blossoming in the middle of her chest. Even processing as fast as she's able, she still feels the slight tension beginning to creep into Rossi's frame as he waits for her to speak and she just wants to laugh that he could be worried at all.

Her smile is tremulous as she pulls back to look at him, but her voice is full of certainty and sass. "I don't know, Dave. I was just planning on using you for your body."

One eyebrow goes up and his hands tighten on her back. "We can start there." Deliberately, he rubs his goatee against her neck and she wriggles against him, squealing.

"Stop! Stop! You'll give me beard burn."

His smile is dangerously lascivious. "You're going to have to get used to it."

Dizzy. Breathless. She feels breathless and dizzy and giddy as he tilts his head and brings his lips to hers again.

This kiss is gentle, a soft exploration. And it's also a promise. They stay like that for what feels like seconds and hours at the same time, trading kiss after kiss, touch after touch, the passion building again in a sweet and silky fire until finally, she slides off his lap and links their fingers, walking backwards, pulling him toward the stairs, never taking her eyes off of his.

Pausing at the bottom of the staircase, he wraps his arms around her and just stands there holding her quietly for a moment. "Emily…" His voice is thick and she can hear the hope and fear in the way he says her name. Everything she feels is in his voice.

Her hands hold the back of his head. "I know, Dave."

His dark eyes study her, his look intense and earnest. The hand resting against her hip squeezes slightly as he leans down to kiss her. "I hope you do, Emily."

Tenderly, Emily smiles at him and whispers against his mouth, "Come to bed, David."