Quietly Making Noise

Spoilers all the way through Season 4 including To Hell…and Back 4X25

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

smacky30 is simply awesome. The end.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. –Anais Nin

It’s almost nine o’clock when JJ shows up again in a pair of worn grey sweat pants and a soft pink shirt with her go bag slung over her shoulder. Emily smiles at her. “You’re early.”

“Henry went down easier than I thought and there’s hardly any traffic. Weird for a summer Saturday, you know?” She drops her bag next to the recliner and smirks at him.

“Somebody want to tell me what’s going on?” In the grand scheme of things, the day hasn’t been too bad, certainly nowhere near as bad as it could have been, but he’s beat and had sort of been hoping Emily would be ready to go to sleep soon. He’s pretty sure he’ll be able to sleep much better tonight.

“All due respect, sir, you’re being kicked out.” JJ looks inordinately pleased with herself.

“The hell I am,” he snorts.

“’Fraid so. Henry’s home with his dad, already asleep, he’s never going to even know I’m gone.” She crosses her arms over her chest and leans against the wall looking smug. “Emily and I are going to have an all girl slumber party and you are not invited.”

Now he understands what the exchange in the hall had been about. Emily looks amused at JJ handling him so lightly and he sort of feels like he’s been played.

“Dave,” Emily’s voice is soft, but firm. “Go home. Have a drink.” She waves carelessly. “Have a bottle. Get some sleep. You’ll have plenty of time to be my nursemaid after I get out of here tomorrow.”

He wants to argue; he certainly doesn’t want to leave. As long as he’s here, he can think about Emily and how to take care of her, not about what all of this means to him. But then he thinks maybe Emily needs this, needs someone that’s not him to talk to. She hasn’t shown any inclination to talk about either the pregnancy or the loss of it; he’s not sure if she doesn’t want to, maybe isn’t ready to or if she thinks he doesn’t want to hear her grief. He can’t figure out what’s going on in her head and at least part of that is probably because he doesn’t know what’s going on in his own. So, yeah, having someone besides him around might be good for her.

Still, he’s not terribly gracious about it as he gathers his things, but it’s mostly for show, because it would be entirely out of character for him to be gracious when he’s been told what to do. JJ is just short of laughing and Emily looks at him fondly, prompting him to kiss her full on the mouth right under JJ’s very surprised nose. “Sleep well.”

She blushes but runs her thumb over his lips. “You, too.”

He spears JJ with a look. “Speak with you outside for a minute?”

When they’re standing in the hall, he pinches the bridge of his nose. “You’ll call me if anything changes?”

“Of course.” The look she gives him is franker than he would like. “You look awful.” He winces, but she keeps going. “This going to be hard enough with just her recovering. You don’t need to wear yourself out, too. When this really hits her…” She stops and starts again. “Take tonight and get some rest without having to think about anyone else. Go to the grocery store, put fresh sheets on the bed, whatever. But you need to take some time.”

“I know.” His nod is slow, but he knows she’s right; doesn’t mean he has to like it. “Thank you, JJ.” He wonders if he sounds as defeated as he feels.

Whether he does or not, JJ must sense he needs something and her voice is thoughtful when she speaks again. “I know it’s none of my business, but you and Emily? It makes a lot of sense.”

He’s not exactly sure what that means, but he’s oddly touched. “Yeah?”

Touching his arm, she grins. “Yeah.”

“Call me…”

“If anything changes, yeah, got it.” Nodding, she makes shooing motions with her hands. “Now, go.”

Narrowing his eyes at her, he grumbles. “When did you get so bossy?”

“I always have been.” She rolls her eyes. “Some profiler you are. Go.”

He takes himself down the hall and out to the parking lot. Once he gets to the SUV he can’t remember what life outside that hospital room is like and he has an overwhelming urge to go back inside. But he doesn’t; he starts the engine and dials Jimmy’s number instead.

Jimmy and Emily like each other. They’ve had Jimmy over to the house for dinner several times and he and Emily have bonded over giving Dave hell. There’s an easy friendship between the two and Dave sort of knew he was in deep when he got so much satisfaction over the two of them getting along so well. Emily wanted to thank the priest for his help with solving the mystery of Matthew Benton’s death and Jimmy, for his part, had not been surprised when the first dinner invitation was issued. “Called that one before I ever set eyes on her.”

He answers the phone on the second ring and starts to give Dave grief over not returning his call on Friday, but Dave stops him before he gets wound up. “Emily had to have emergency surgery yesterday,” he pulls in a shuddering breath. “She was pregnant.”

“Was pregnant? Oh, Dave.” There’s a slight pause before he continues. “Is she okay?” There’s no mistaking the concern in his voice. Rossi hands his parking ticket and a twenty dollar bill to the lot attendant.

Dave isn’t sure how to answer that. “She’s…yeah…physically. I mean, it was surgery, so she’s not running any marathons, but they say she’ll be fine.” He exits when the mechanical arm rises.

Jimmy has never been afraid to ask the hard questions. “What about emotionally?”

He sighs and flips on his turn signal. “Jury’s still out.”

“What about you?” The priest’s voice is kind and knowing.

Rossi laughs, entirely without humor. “The jury is even further out.”

Jimmy makes a sympathetic noise. “Where are you?”

“On my way to you.” Moving his head from side to side, he grimaces when his neck cracks audibly.

“Should I put on the coffee or get out the Scotch?”

Rossi snorts. “I am not drinking that cheap crap you call Scotch. Be out front in fifteen minutes. I’m buying.”

They go to a quiet bar not far from Jimmy’s church. They’ve been there before. It’s upscale and a little quieter than the average Saturday night bar. The bartender and waitresses know Jimmy and they remember Rossi; he buys the premium brands and he’s a good tipper. They put them in a booth in the back and take their order immediately.

Dave stares at the glass when it’s put down in front of him and he wonders if he really wants the drink. He’s bone tired and wrung out. The last thing he needs to cap this weekend off is a DUI or, worse, passing out at the wheel and killing somebody. Idly, he turns the glass in a circle on the dark wood of the table and tells Jimmy about the past thirty-six hours.

He’s not sure if it’s a personality trait or something Jimmy learned from thirty years in the priesthood, but he’s a hell of a good listener. He asks a few questions, but mainly just listens while he sips his own drink. And Dave’s enough of a listener himself to understand he is revealing far more than the events of the past two days, but he finds he doesn’t care, he needs to get it out.

When Rossi ends with JJ chasing him out of the hospital, Jimmy opens his hands in a questioning gesture. “What are you going to do?”

Dave looks into his untouched glass and shrugs. “Take her home tomorrow, take some time off work, make sure she’s okay.”

Jimmy makes a “bullshit” face at him, but doesn’t speak as the waitress approaches. He orders another Talisker and Dave orders a cup of coffee which surprises the waitress but makes Jimmy smirk.

The waitress moves away and Jimmy taps the table. “What you need to do, Davey, is marry that girl and give her some babies.”

Rossi glowers at him. “You’re a priest. It’s in the rules you have to say that.” The Scotch is suddenly looking better and Jimmy is not letting him off the hook by filling in the silence. He probably sounds more frustrated than he means to when he answers. “You know I’m not cut out to be a father.”

“I don’t know anything of the kind.” Rossi snorts and Jimmy salutes him with his glass. “But let’s say for a minute, just for arguments sake, it’s true and David Rossi is not cut out to be a father. Are you going to let her go so she can find somebody who is?”

His face tightens and he knows his look could probably cut steel. “It’s not that simple.”

Jimmy shrugs. “Isn’t it? Do you think Dr. Reid’s information is wrong? This won’t impact her fertility? That the older she gets the harder it will be to conceive? Emily’s what? Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?”

Rossi is not sure whether he wants to punch the wall or his friend’s face but he definitely wants to punch something. He thinks the feel of the skin over his knuckles splitting from an impact into something hard would be a nice distraction at the moment. The waitress puts down Jimmy’s drink and attempts to smile at Dave but he continues to glare so she places his coffee in front of him, then hurries away.

“Those numbers are kind of narrow, don’t you think, Dave?” Sometimes those hard questions Jimmy’s not afraid of asking are a little harder than Rossi wants to face.

“This was a mistake,” he mutters, reaching for his wallet.

Jimmy shakes his head. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, Dave.”

The hell of it is, Jimmy’s not wrong, both about what Dave knows and the reality of the situation. He drops his wallet on the table and tries to think if there’s a word in the English language that could possibly describe now fucking exhausted he is. “I can’t be a father. I’m too old.”

The other man looks at him with something close to amusement on his face. “Think about who you’re talking to and try again.”

Dave shakes his head at himself. He’d forgotten; Jimmy’s mother had been his father’s third wife. He’d been born when his dad was in his early sixties. The priest actually had two nephews older than he was. “I’m too selfish.” He picks up the coffee cup and takes a drink, immediately grimacing at the taste. They might have great Scotch here but their coffee was shit.

Jimmy nods. “That’s probably close to the truth. Or I would have said so a year or so ago. But you’re not as selfish as you seem to think you are.” He takes a taste from his glass and the silence stretches out between them filled in by the noise of the other patrons’ laughter and quiet conversation. Finally, Jimmy looks at him with something like curiosity. “Tell me something? If this had been one of the ninety-nine times in a hundred, instead of the one fluke and Emily was pregnant right now, how would you feel?”

The answer is somewhere in the jumble of emotions inside his chest, Rossi knows, but he’s damned if he can get down to it. There’s another stretch of quiet between them, but this time his thoughts fill it. He asks himself what he would feel while Jimmy just waits patiently, making the silence safe, if not comfortable, until Dave is ready to talk. “I don’t know. From the second I found out about it, it wasn’t…” He swallows and shrugs. “I haven’t thought about it in those terms; there was never the reality of a full term pregnancy to consider.” He doesn’t meet Jimmy’s gaze as he remembers those moments Friday afternoon, not just the fear for Emily, but the feeling of sadness and regret.

Jimmy shakes his head, sadly, and Rossi thinks, somewhat sourly and unfairly, guilt is another thing he’s gotten good at as a priest. “If you have to lie to me, that’s one thing, Davey, but don’t lie to yourself.”

Dave blows out a frustrated, gusty sigh. “It wouldn’t matter how I felt. I would have done the right thing.”

“I know you would have.” The look on his face is pretty damn close to smug and Dave decides the next time he’s not so god damn tired he’s going to kick Jimmy Davison’s ass. The priest leans forward. “So, do the right thing now. Either let her go or get ready to become a father.”

He starts to say he doesn’t even know for sure if Emily wants to have children, but he does know; he’s always known. His anger is gone suddenly and he just wants to sleep. “Tell me why we’re friends again?”

Jimmy laughs. “I can’t remember.” He shakes his head. “Either way, Davey, you gotta do the right thing.”

TBC…

Diventare Chapter 6