counting stars | criminal minds [discontinued]

1 6 | D A T E

"oh my god, there's two of them"

Everyone on the team decided to eat their lunch in the briefing room. They had had some dark cases recently and thought casually catching up might make their day seem a little better. Florence had stepped out of the room for a few minutes to take a call while Morgan went into detail about something funny that happened the last time he was at a club. Before he could get to the part where drinks started being thrown, Florence stormed back into the room.

She looked distressed all of the sudden and her eyes landed on Hotch.

"Why'd you have to go and break my nose, Hotchner!" she exclaimed angrily. Everyone sat back, shocked as she glared at him. "It's not that hard to kick a freaking soccer ball anywhere but someone's face. I'm so mad at you. Ugh!"

Florence stood there for half a second before storming off again. Clearly, she wasn't planning on coming back. The team looked at Hotch, whose mouth was slightly open.

"I thought she forgave you for that," Garcia said.

"Yeah. Where was that anger last week?" Morgan asked.

"I... don't know what that was," Hotch said. He prepared to stand and go after her, but Prentiss stopped him.

"Uh, maybe I should go check on her," she said, getting up. "She seems like she doesn't want to talk with you."

They watched as Prentiss followed after Florence. She found her in the women's bathroom glaring angrily at her face in the mirror — or more specifically, her nose. It looked better than it had a week and a half ago. She still had the splint and bandages on the outside of her nose. The swelling was completely gone, and the bruising had begun to turn green and yellow instead of dark purple. It was a definite improvement, but clearly, Florence was upset.

"Hey, Ren," Prentiss said softly. "You wanna tell me what that was all about."

"No," she muttered, frowning. "It's nothing."

"Okay. We were just surprised. I thought that you weren't angry about him breaking your nose," she said, joining her side. "It was an accident."

Florence sighed and rolled her eyes. "I know it was an accident."

"What's wrong then? Because even though you don't say it out loud, we all know Hotch is your favorite and you're his. Everything was fine until you took that call."

"It — it's stupid. Forget it. I'll go apologize."

Prentiss grabbed her shoulder to stop her from leaving. "Florence."

After a few moments, Florence groaned and leaned her head against the wall, giving in. "That was Reggie. He was asking me out on... a date. This Saturday he's picking me up at seven."

Prentiss did her best to hide her grin as she nodded in understanding. "And you don't want to show up with your nose looking like that."

"It - it really is stupid. It's just, I've never actually been on a date before and I really like him. When you hear about perfect first dates, there usually aren't broken noses involved," she mumbled, slightly embarrassed.