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okimargarvez · 6 years

Text

BAD TIMING

Original title: Cattivo tempismo.

Prompt: fluff, fear of love.

Warning: post 13x5.

Genre: comedy, romantic, angst, friendship.

Characters: Penelope Garcia, Luke Alvez, JJ, Derek Morgan, O.C. (Luke’s mom).

Pairing: Garvez.

Note: oneshot 12 in Garvez collection.

Legend: 💏😘👓🎈.

Song mentioned: Difendimi per sempre, Tiziano Ferro.

MY OTHER GARVEZ STORIES

This story is dedicated to my sister of delirium @theshamelessmanatee

BAD TIMING

He has been waiting for this moment for a century or so. The ability to replicate what had already happened months ago, going beyond. And it's (was) all sadly perfect.

It's shabby, indeed, really sad that he needed to find out that Penelope's date was ended with a gunshot, to decide to find the courage to face his feelings and finally ask her out.

Technically he hadn't asked her anything yet. But he had prepared everything else.

Flowers. It took a whole day to decide first whether to buy flowers or if such a gesture would be interpreted in negative; he remembered Garcia's words perfectly when she admitted to practicing non-violence in her food choices, but he didn't know if this concept was true for plants as well. So, he had opted for a circumspectly collection of information. Starting from JJ. He had simply asked her if Will had given her flowers often, before they married, if it had been a gesture woman would have appreciated nowadays or if it had become a retro romance. The blonde of course had looked at him strangely, but the man was quick to explain that one of his cousin was in a very bad mood and he just wanted to help her. He was not sure that Agent Jaerau had been bought his story.

Then he had done the same thing with his mother. He had called her and had asked her more or less a similar question. But the old woman had been much more alert and straightforward than her colleague. -Ninito, if you want some advice to ask a date with a girl, tell me clearly! Don't make fun of your mother, don’t treat me like I were a stupid and naive lady!- so, Luke found himself with a more serious problem to solve, to apologize to his mother and regain her love. And there had been no better way than to admit everything.

-Ok. There's a woman, I've already told you about her...- she had interrupted him almost immediately.

-Penelope.- she had simply limited to saying. If he could have looked at her, he would probably have looked at her like an alien creature. But he had had to make do with a strangled cry, followed by a prolonged silence. -Son?- the other had asked.

-When you have taking a profiling course? How do you know it's about...- he was almost afraid to say the name of the computer technician -...Penelope?- his mother had let herself go to a short, liberating laugh.

-Ninito, you came out of my belly! Don't forget it.- if his father had still alive, he would surely blush. Despite the Catholicism in which she was born and grew up, and in which she believed deeply, Adriana was a woman capable of pungent and witty jokes, to go beyond a simple morality and didn't have trouble saying what she thought. Never, not even at her child. -I certainly don't need to take a course to psychoanalyze you. It's the colleague of which you told me about most. And it's not just a question of quantity, but also of quality. You should listen to yourself, really, I'm not kidding, you should try. You should really hear yourself talking about her, her skills that made you solve a case brilliantly, you should be able to hear your enthusiasm when you told me about the moment she met Roxy "the smile she did... the whole world was absorbed from that smile", your words. Or when you told me that you tried to console her and bought her that anti-stress puppet, or... - hearing a different point of view, of a person who was completely extraneous because too distant, had given a decisive shock to agent Alvez.

-Ok, enough, enough. I get your drift.- Adriana had laughed again.

-You deal with bombs, serial killer every day and a sweet blonde makes you shake like a schoolboy on his first day of school?- she had slightly teased him, as only a parent is authorized to do. -You're exactly like your father.- and this was certainly not the first time she told him.

-So, how Dad did get married to you?- or that Luke asked her this question.

-I had to make the first move, you know very well. Now, gather all your courage and try. Which woman could resist my child's charm? I still want so many beautiful nephews and I feel I have never been so close to realize the dream... please, don't ruin everything.- while he listening to the voice of the woman, he had noticed out of the corner of his eye a great movement. It was Roxy who wanted to go out for a walk.

-Well, mom, now I have to go. My girlfriend claims me.- he had distinctly heard Adriana's snort.

-Look that mine wasn't a suggestion, but an order.- a last attempt.

This time he had been the first to laugh. -I know. I love you, don't go to sleep too late!- while the old woman closed the call he had managed to hear her still mumble something like "Look if at my age I have to be treated like I was the daughter”.

His mother's words had bounced in his head for a long time. He had finally decided that the flowers would be a good choice. After all, JJ also confirmed that women still liked that kind of attention. So, weeks passed, from that telephone conversation, and several occasions presented themselves before him.

The first was undoubtedly the time when Garcia decided to change his nickname, from Newbie to "Cool Hand Luke", provoking in him a tumult of emotions; first because he had asked himself the reason for this nickname, she had had no way to find out if his hands had a classic hot temperature or the opposite, then he had visualized clear immediately the image of his own hands that passed form her shoulders and back in other areas... But next to him was JJ, who had looked at him and she had also asked "What did you do to her?" after the bespectacled blonde had greeted them with yet another ambiguous joke "I'm the genie in genealogie, just rub my lamp".

He could go to her, after the case was over. And finally ask her out. But he had backed up. Any excuse was good not to take that fateful step. The terror (not fear) to receive a no was louder than any good perspective would open with a yes.

When, however, Luke sees Garcia almost running away, during the exposure of the case of the cannibal of Bridgewater, he understands that this time the situation is different. There is something serious behind a similar output. He stays perhaps longer than the others staring at the spot where she disappeared. But he turns in time to hear the explanation given by their leader.

The words come to him broken, confused, as if his ears refuse to accept this fact.

A man (call him that) had shot to Garcia while, ten years ago, they had worked to this case.

His first thought is precisely about the timing. Ten years earlier, when I still didn't know her. When I don't even know she existed. And where was he, what was he doing while she tinged with red the steps to her apartment building? JJ was in fact the one responsible for adding details. The name, for example, but this doesn't ring a bell; his profession: ranger, policeman with a several medals. Ranger, like him. He could have known him, talked with him, had lunch at his table, became his friend... not. It's not an acceptable prospect. It makes him too human, and this it can't be said of someone that had made a similar crime.

How someone can do harm, physical, moral, of any kind, to a creature as Penelope Garcia?

This is the big question that arises him, but also for the colleagues that are equally ignorant of the facts, that Luke however can't perceive. The only echo are those words, fragments of sentences. Until he fails to recover himself enough to ask for something in his turn.

-Where is he now?- in a damned prison, he hopes her answers. With his connections it would take very little to get an interview. At least this way he could put the question directly to the person concerned.

But JJ deprives him of this comfort. -He's dead.- he is partly angry that he was deprived of that privilege, partly relieved to know that it's no longer a threat for her.

From his mouth come out a -Good.- that could very well says a damned soul that Dante meets in his pilgrimage to Hell. How much darkness in his soul, just barely visible. Cullen, the sorrow caused to Phil and by extension to him, confusing flashbacks of the war and the same number of flash-forward about what he could have been if he hadn't adopted Roxy. He still turns again to look toward the door, but Penelope doesn't reappear. He would raise happy, sending the case to the hell, because he can't concentrate. He would do it and he wouldn't caring of what others may think of him, because it counts only that she's okay. This is love, not just love, but those with capital letter. He would be willing to cancel himself for her, and this isn't necessarily a good thing. However, he remains there, in his place.

But even when, on the plane, the angelic face of the blonde not appears on the screen and in its place, peeps an equally attractive woman, with the wheat-colored hair too, Luke decides that it's time to do something.

He would willingly remain in place of JJ. But she is the best friend of Garcia, is the one who shot Battle and sent him to his reward, she was there when it all happened, knows everything. It was the best choice leaving her at Quantico. At the same time, he can't look the other way when, gathered in the police station room, Emily call the computer technician and the expert in communications in the press answers. Rossi asks how Penelope is and the other beat around the bush, then say she is recovering, but slowly.

Luke passes the first night in Bridgewater buying a flower pot, booking it for date to be determined and a puppet heart-shaped, without any written above, but soft (as he imagines her curves are), a pillow that she could embrace in moments of sadness, and that would make her think of him.

During the second night he elaborates the strategy how to dress. He asks Jenny to prepare a white shirt and dark blue pants, along with the most elegant shoes and serious that he possesses, which he didn't use at a funeral. He also asked her to take care of Roxy a bit 'longer. The lady agrees, but first he must reveal her the reason for all this movement, including those strange parcels he received. And Luke has to put up with the enthusiastic cries of his neighbor, who is a prelude to those of his mother, when she'll knows that he finally decided.

Everything is so perfect, in the mind of Luke Alvez, when he crosses the threshold dressed like a man, if he would look in the mirror, wouldn't recognize in himself. Yet he isn't only the ranger with boots and sports jackets. He can be even more, he can also be the one that makes the hurt heart of Garcia beats, he must be.

Outside it's raining, just little, just what its needed to give a certain atmosphere to hugs and cuddles on the couch, with a blanket to hide the bodies and movements.

He doesn't think about anything, while the elevator headed up floor by floor up to them. He doesn't think anything or at least he strives very much, while he walks throw to his fate, he tries not to feel like a condemned man who goes to meet the gallows. This isn't about court Penelope to take her to bed, the issue it's much more serious. His only objective must be to make her smile again. Make her understand that not all men are like that bastard who dared to take advantage of her. That wasn't her fault, because surely, she thinks it, that nothing justifies what he did.

He doesn't want to repeat the sentences he will tell her, the way he wants to start out. But eventually he succumbs and finds himself moving his lips without making a sound, mentally testing the part. In the noise of his thoughts, however, something new sneaks up, which he doesn't immediately recognize. A feminine, silvery, unmistakable laugh. Penelope is laughing out loud. He tries to find the source, then hears that other to make her echo, masculine. He looks up at the chiefs' offices and takes the stairs until he reaches the door, ajar, of the ex-office of Agent Derek Morgan. And he sees them, in there, sitting on the leather sofa, close, hands intertwined and eyes shining. He hears him showing his son's video, Hank, calling her "Aunt Penelope". He feels the happiness and the emotion of the woman.

And certainly, he would stay there indefinitely, dazed, until they would discover him by going out. But JJ arrives to stop hypnosis. Only when she pronounces his name the man realize that he has tears in his eyes, that he is one step away from crying.

It was all so fucking perfect. He was ready, this time he wouldn't back out, he would have done it. He was, he was; implies a past time, bygone, and no longer recoverable, changeable.

-Luke, are you okay?- the woman looks at him, she notices the droplets on the sides of his dark eyes, the mouth slightly ajar and the look lost in the void of her colleague. Just as she had noticed the interest in her friend, from the beginning, since the remote control passed after some trick of dexterity, perhaps even earlier. JJ knows perfectly well that Luke is deeply interested in Penelope, perhaps even in love. She certainly doesn't need confirmation. And because she is the one that has called Morgan, she understands that something serious has happened, that Luke is in crisis and who knows if it will be possible to solve.

He doesn't even seem to see her, he brushes her with his eyes. He is panicked. -I .. I have to... Roxy needs me.- and how it would happen in a movie, he flees. Less than ten seconds later, Garcia and her dark chocolate come out happily, arm in arm. Both immediately notice the upheaval, which has now passed on JJ's shoulders.

-Hey, blondie, what's that face?- in the beginning Derek tries to seems ironic, but the concern is revealed in his tone.

-Nothing, nothing...- she can't convince him, but however he has to take the plane, Savannah and his baby are waiting for him, so the man greets her and leaves them alone.

-JJ...- Garcia certainly doesn't intend to surrender. She has nothing better to do than to torment her poor friend. -OhMyGod.- she pronounces everything attacked, as in her best moments of anxiety. -Don't tell me that... it's about the children?- she asks first. -Or did something happen to Will?- she can't imagine what could upset JJ outside of her family.

-No. They're fine.- the other woman feels guilty for making her worry. She has just emerged from a much more serious trauma; her emotional balance is still very fragile. So, at least, their manuals teach. -It's not about me.- she adds.

Penelope opens her eyes protected by lenses and a colorful frame. -And what concerns?- the tone of voice is lower and flickering. She is afraid of what she already knows.

-You.- she swallows. -And Luke.- hearing the name of Newbie on the lips of her best friend, in a context that not certainly regards the work, cases to be solved, it's a strange experience for the computer technician. It makes her think of him as a well-rounded, real man.

-Alvez? What's he got to do with me?- she be careful to call him by surname, to keep her distance, although lately they were become a little 'closer, or for the less she has granted a bit' of truce to him. However, she blushes anyway.

-What do you really think about him, Penelope?- is the serious tone, the stern look and devoid of any kind of irony or mischievousness, and the use of her proper name, alarm the shapely woman. Why she is asking her a question like this right now? Did something happen to Newbie? No, they would have warned her in this case. There would be also the others, at this moment they would be heading towards the hospital and... Why the hell do I feel a pang in my heart at the thought that something bad could happen to him? The excuse that she loves everyone isn't enough for her, each as a member of her family. He is different, he was always being a thing apart. -I mean- JJ resumes when she understands that the other isn't going to reopen her mouth. - Do you like him?- she gets this straight, this time.

-But...!- she puts her hands to the face, in a very theatrical way. -What treacherous question!- she hides behind those exaggerated gestures, tries to protect her soul, to preserve for herself that feeling that she believed unripe, that she thought was a crush and instead she discovered in an instant is much more serious. -I have just got back from a shock, and you...- the other woman shakes her head, there is no more time for these farces, these little games.

-Garcia, please.- she limits herself to saying. And it's more enough than a thousand reproaches.

-Ok. I... I don't know.- she admits sincerely and her friend believes her. She reads the sincerity, the loss, the hope and the terror in her eyes, all mixed together. -Why are you asking me?- it's her turn to ask a question.

-He was out here.- she responds very frankly, ignoring Penelope's pupils widening as she listens to her explanation. -With a vase of flowers and a package, maybe a pillow, shaped like a heart.- she so easily can imagine this, all too easily, imagine those objects in his hands and for a moment she lost herself in trivial issues such as Which he had held in the right hand and what with the left? Then she recovers.

-What?!- there must be some other logical explanation to justify such a gesture. She can't afford to consider that hypothesis. It's the only one which she rejects a priori. But still she decides to test it, bringing it out from her world of anxieties in the real one. -You think he wanted to ask me out?- JJ can't take it and burst out laughing in her face, just a chuckle, but sufficiently strong.

-I don't think it.- she gives her that look, the one that she reserves her from Kevin's times. -I know it!- she almost screams.

-But... but... it makes no sense.- Penelope stutters. -Why then he went away?- she has denied so many times, but it took only a glimmer of hope and already she has agreed it.

-He saw you with Morgan.- her friend reveals, last surprise. Even the final piece falls into place. She can't imagine Alvez jealous of her best friend... or yes? The only time those two stalwart men had shared the room, for less than five minutes, returns in her mind. When Scratch had sent a false message to Derek, hacking her (her!) telephone. He had looked at them with that wry smile, that made her always ask what flavor could have those lips so cheeky.

-Oh, damnit.- JJ nods sympathetically. But staying here and talk to her, to summarize everything, not help anything. She glances, and they already have agreed. -I'm going.-

He didn't cry at the end, he there was very close to gone, but hasn't dropped even a tear. Not that he was held himself in the name of some stupid stereotype, that real men don't cry. Simply he had the lump in his throat there in front of the office of Morgan, in front of the woman he loved, whose happiness had been returned by another and not by him. And along the road from the elevator to his home, the river was reduced to a trickle, just a few drops when he had finally closed the door.

Roxy, the breath of his dog was doing him to sleep. The television, never used much in this house, it enters in his head with a phrase, a series of phrases that seem written especially for him. A sing, impersonated by an Italian singer, famous in Latin America, which is certainly not a case that his mother and to his imaginary cousin, he likes to think, liked him so much.

...for those who know how to respect the time and prefer to feel bad, they don't need drugs and can speak... and recognize himself in the mirror to many seem indifferent, I recognize the dignity to those who can feel sometimes nothing...

He doesn't believe exists in the world someone who feels more nullity of him right now. Because in the end it was fair to have gone like that. Derek is better than him, He knows Garcia a lot longer, knows how to make her smile even calling her. He's not on him level.

He snuggles closer to Roxy, who moans in protest. He hugs her and dreams Penelope.

At one point the dream must be get out of hand, because he feels her heartbeat getting louder and louder, or was it his? He strives to remember the last thing he "lived" before he opened his eyes and finally succeeds: the computer technician was showing him the scar testified the gunshot she wound received, without any mention erotic implications. She allowed him to lay his hand to feel her pulse...

But what he hears it's not a heart, someone is knocking at the door.

The man walks, still dazed, uncertain. He looks through the peephole and almost faints. On the threshold of his house there is the creature of his dream.

-Hey.- she tells him as soon as Luke opens the door.

-Garcia.- he hopes to call her by name makes this less personal. Obviously, it doesn't work. He rolls his eyes, blinks his eyelids several times. No, she is always there, watching him, probably she thinks him is the idiot he is.

-I can come inside?- the tone of the woman is very sweet, mild and delicate, like it was rarely when she talks to him. The man moves away, watching her cross the threshold, and come to his mind a stupid thing, that should not concern with this situation. Vampires must ask permission to enter the house of their victims. But Garcia isn't a creature of the night, despite the pale skin... although, dressed as Dracul wife, she would be so beautiful...

-Yes, yes, sorry.- the phrase comes out with a slight delay. After all, being late is his specialty. Penelope looks around, of course she notices the aspect not lived-in feel of the home, yet she knows that Luke lived here for almost two years, there is hardly an identifying sign, only the things of Roxy, including the well-known stuff she had donated for her in the time. They are the only signs of disorder, for the rest feels like they are in a barracks. And then she notices them. A jar of flowers, balanced precariously on the edge of the table, and a heart shaped object, exactly as JJ had described them. He follows her gaze up to those things, which now appear to him as evidence, the substance of his failure. He would have to throw them in the trash, but he couldn't. He purchased them, even before he had choice them, thinking about her. He can’t get rid of it so easily as he would like.

-You had a date, with some nice girl.- the phrase she says doesn't seem a question and maybe it's not. She doesn't sound even ironic, sarcastic at times bordering on the bad, like when she told him to tell Roxy to warn her when she came in her senses, breaking up with Luke. Instead, it sounds genuine, clear. Her eyes don't seem to judge him.

-Yes... no.- the super special agent no longer in training answers stammering. -She is a beautiful girl, definitely- the only moment when he smiles -but I didn't have a date. I still had to ask her.- she isn't profiler, although she has repeatedly touted that she was profiler "by association"; but she doesn't need that skill to notice the use of a past tense, that indicating the disillusionment to have another chance.

-Why didn't you, then?- they move in two way. For those who don't know anything, she might seem like a friend, a colleague nosey who just wants to get a little 'gossip for the next day, to sauce the next day's work ahead of them spicy. But the girl whose Luke is talking is the one that he has in front of the nose, and Penelope has to repeat it herself several times, not to be jealous of herself. -What mad woman might not accept your invitation?- is the first step, the first attempt on her part to expose herself, feeling that the situation isn't balanced. She knows what she feels for him, but the man didn't, and he doesn't even know that she know... What a mess!

-I know one, and she is more than enough - Luke says bitterly. She would slap herself, for making him feel bad, but she didn't it in purpose, she didn't know...

-Oh, this bad girl broke your heart?- if she had the opportunity to observe herself from the outside, to practice the estrangement so loved by Bertold Brecht, she would laugh at herself. It's so strange perhaps she thinks herself crazy, and now in the beautiful words she thinks herself as an asshole. But she feels such, and so it's right that she describes herself in this term. She must let him know that she knows. But how big can ingenuity of a lover be?

-I think she doesn't knows how I feel about her.- he defends her promptly. Good guy to the end. She wanted to ignore it, but now can't. -She always makes everything so hard...- Penelope bites her lip, restraining herself not to stop him, now that he seems ready to open up and break the game. -... and it's for this reason that all I do is think of her... - better than JJ is right, because she wouldn't bear to discover that the unfortunate one who has turned him in this way is another woman, the one who cooked him up good. The intensity of the male gaze makes her think that maybe he has finally understood. His look literally perforates her. It's extremely sexy and serious.

-Maybe she behaves this way because she is afraid of hurt herself..-- she falters, speaking of herself in the third person. She tightens the arms to her body and does exactly that she has described. She is surprised that Roxy hasn't yet arrived to greet her. But perhaps those who seem to her hours are nothing more than few minutes and maybe that dog is so smart that she understood that this is a time that she and her master must live alone.

-I'm scared, too.- Luke bluntly admits. -But... - she makes him shut up while her voice overlapping his.

-Why you didn't ask her a date? - now the two know they are referring to her. But the play must go on again for a while.

-I wanted to comfort her, make her understand that in order to make her smile I would be willing to do anything. Although I don't know if I'm worthy to make her happy. I was able to snatch her a smile only once, when she met Roxy.- hearing appoint herself the dog raises her head, but lowers it when understanding that it's not yet time to take action. -But the only thing I can promise is that I always will do everything at best to make her happy, every day to paint a smile on her face.- the man ends his confession. That is worth almost more of an "I love you" or, considering their dialogue on a double wire, "I love her."

-So... - it's all she can say a heavily dazed Penelope.

-There was already another. I have been anticipated. I arrived late, I was on borrowed time...- now he sounds ironic and bad, to himself. -He is married and there isn't any kind of romance between them- almost more strange is to hear him describe Morgan -but I'll never live up to a such feeling.- he seemed to have partially approached, now, with the latter phrase, he is totally away, even giving her shoulders, unable to meet the woman's eyes, after he stripped in front of her, not understanding why she came to his house, why she did this theater of speech in the third person.

-Maybe you should leave her a chance to judge?- Penelope's voice caresses his shoulders, is balm for his bleeding heart, pepper simultaneously, which teases him in another way. -Prove yourself, my handsome SSA.- just an adjective, eight letters, one word. Handsome.

Luke turns around and his hands end up on the woman's face, those of Penelope do the same thing, their lips come together without anyone of them ask who was be the first to begin.

Something similar is what Penelope tells him, about an hour later, while dozing on his chest, on that same couch where less than an hour before he was maudlin from himself. -It doesn't matter being first, but getting.- Luke's hand strokes her hair, the other arm rests limply on her side. Roxy is at the bottom of their feet and seems to be asking them if they would be more comfortable on the bed. But neither of them wants to get up, even separated for only a moment, though the reconnection would be immediate.

And then they remain there, suspended in an instant without time.

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#garvez #penelope garcia #luke alvez #luke x penelope #penelope x luke #alvez x garcia #garcia x alvez #criminal minds #cm #13x05

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