Title: Know It All
By: Ykari
Pairing: gen
Rating: G
Summary: Started out as a Rossi character study, turned into an exploration of how Garcia connects with all of the characters. There's no actual plot here, just Garcia musing.

***

If someone asked who on the team was the biggest know-it-all, most people would answer "Reid." But Garcia knew people didn't ask silly questions like that and honestly, there were some topics that Reid simply didn't know anything about at all. People, for instance. Garcia knew people. Oh sure, Reid knew what made them tick, why they did the things they did, but he doesn't know anything about them.

Reid could probably tell you exactly why everyone on the team was on the team at all. That is to say, why they wanted to be part of the BAU, not what they were good at although he knew that too. But it was Garcia who could tell you their favorite colors (Emily loved red while Hotch favored darker blues), what kind of cars they drove (JJ brought a boring black Nissan Altima to work but Garcia knew about the motorcycle she had in her garage), when their birthdays were (Reid's birthday was June 8th, Kevin's was the 23rd of October), and whether or not they had pets (Garcia took care of Morgan's golden retriever, Cloony, when he was away on a case and Rossi had an African Gray parrot named Schooner who had been known to curse vehemently when he had company over). Sure, it wasn't exactly blackmail material, but Garcia wasn't the blackmailing type anyway. She just liked making conversation and people were more apt to open up about big things if she started talking about something small.

Garcia knew that Emily had the biggest crush on Morgan when she started at the BAU, but she's gotten over it and has moved on to that cute Irish guy named Charlie who worked downstairs.

Garcia knew that JJ grew up in a devoutly Christian town and that while she's still a believer, Georgia was like a nuclear warhead to her faith and she hasn't worn a cross since.

Garcia knew that Hotch took a trip to New York once a month to eat dinner at the restaurant his brother worked at. He'd never taken Haley there because she never liked Sean much and the feeling was pretty mutual. Sean's was actually pleased about the divorce although he was tactful enough not to come right out and tell his brother that. His only concern was what was going to happen to Jack. And Garcia could have answered that one, but she knew Hotch never would.

Garcia knew that while Rossi certainly appreciated the curves of the women he worked with, he had never stopped himself from checking out Reid as well. Not that Reid noticed, because he's always been so very blind to those sorts of things. One of the few things Garcia didn't know was how Reid would respond to that since, even drunk, getting him to talk about sex and relationships was like pulling teeth or herding cats or any other analogies that meant something irritatingly difficult. Still, Reid struck her as being the last person on earth to actually care about something as silly as gender.

Morgan noticed the looks though, and he's all but snarled at Rossi every time he catches it. Morgan's been getting more over protective about his team mates ever since Georgia, and the whole Battle incident only served to reinforce it. For instance, Morgan can't sleep at night if he doesn't call her to check and make sure she's okay, and while this was cute for a week or so, it stopped being cute when he started forgetting about the whole time zone thing and accidently called her at 2 in the morning when he was in Los Angeles for the comic-book-artist-on-a-psychotic-break case. Garcia hadn't been too happy with him.

Of course, Garcia hadn't been happy at all during that case since she'd been a big fan of Johnny McHale's work. So was Reid, come to think of it. Comic books were the biggest thing Reid and Garcia had to bond over because although they were both clearly nerds, they were completely different kinds of nerds. To be fair, they were different kinds of comic book nerds too. Reid was a DC/Vertigo fan and Garcia had been raised on Marvel. They traded tastes though, he lent her his Fables anthology and she gave him her hardcover editions of Runaways and they teased each other over who would win a fight between Batman and Iron Man (Garcia knew it was Iron Man, no question, but Reid didn't seem willing to admit defeat yet).

But while Garcia geeked out with Reid over comics, she geeked out with her girls over something completely different. Video games. JJ, Garcia, and Emily had played many a drunken round of Guitar Hero in Emily's apartment and it never got old. They had also recently gone to a local arcade and challenged 3 teenage boys to a contest (they might have been slightly drunk at the time). Garcia had poor aim, but she tagged along just to watch the expression on the kids faces when two grown women schooled them in Area 51 and jumped to the top of the high scores list. Then she dragged them over to the Dance Dance Revolution machine and they humiliated themselves for awhile because they were all terrible at it normally and alcohol doesn't really help one's coordination. The boys seemed amused though and took the opportunity to regain a bit of dignity by beating them soundly on just about any song the girls selected. It had been a great bonding experience, even if they had lost.

Garcia didn't really bond with Hotch. She'd like to, but he wasn't the bonding type unless it was with his son. She respected him and adored him as much as anyone else on the team, but Hotch just wasn't the kind of guy you could play video games with or talk comics (although she vaguely wonders if he likes Captain America) or chat aimlessly about anything and everything. Still, she's had a few conversations with him at the bar before he downed too much liquor. Hotch wasn't a talkative drunk or even a particularly friendly drunk. He was a quiet one and actually stopped talking entirely after awhile, like he was afraid he'd start slurring his words. It was aggravating sometimes, but he'd at least nod or shake his head if asked a question so she had just learned to only ask questions that had a yes or no answer.

And despite being new, Garcia knew plenty of things about Rossi. In fact, she knew more about Rossi than she did about Hotch. David Rossi was different from the rest of the team. He didn't need alcohol for a conversation and in fact, didn't shut up under normal circumstances. And his favorite topic of conversation was himself. It'd be irritating, but a profiler who genuinely had no problems with opening up and just talking about his life was a novelty and Garcia hoped he would never change. She supposed that eventually she'd grow tired of it, but for now she enjoyed talking with him about the pizza parlor his daughter runs and she should stop in some time because it's really great pizza, and how his son came back from college one year and taught Schooner to cheer for the Jets instead of the Giants and damned if he can't get the bird to stop it, and stories about his semi-crazy ex-girlfriend who didn't believe in marriage despite giving him twins and it was just as well because they aren't together anymore, and the odd jobs he had before he decided he wanted to work for the FBI and they were pretty damn odd jobs. And nobody seemed to expect it of him, but Rossi could listen too. He didn't mind hearing tales of Garcia's hacker days even if he didn't quite understand them because the poor man was so technologically illiterate that it was amazing he could work his cell phone. And Garcia knew that if he'd just stop latching on to things like a pit bull with lock jaw, he'd probably be a pretty popular guy around the office.

But he was such a pit bull. Gideon used to fear not being able to do his job due to his own failings. But Rossi had full confidence in himself (arguably, he had entirely too much) and instead he feared not being able to do his job because there just wasn't enough information to do it. He hated not knowing and he fought tooth and nail to get the knowledge he wanted. Garcia knew. She'd been on the receiving end of it. She wanted to hate him for it, but she had never hated easily and she knew deep down that Rossi was only trying to find the person who hurt her. He just wasn't being very tactful about it. By all accounts, he was just as tactless in the field. Granted, he seemed to get results with it, but Gideon had too usually. Elle had still ended up shot and Reid had nearly died.

Garcia knew all too well, it was the rare fuck up that people remembered, not all the times you had won. And all she could do was hope that David Rossi wasn't just Jason Gideon with a beard, and pray that there were no Fisher Kings or Franks or Tobias Henkels left in the world. She did more than hope and pray of course, because that was nice but entirely useless when it came right down to it and Garcia hated being useless. Garcia protected her team even if she knew it wasn't always appreciated by the higher ups (Garcia hadn't actually stopped encrypting the files on her team mates, nobody had said anything yet) and she tried to help them when something was wrong (Garcia knew Rossi had been pretty angry about it, but damned if she'd let him stroll off to Indianapolis to hunt down murderers from 20 years ago by himself) and most importantly, she loved every single one of them. She loved Reid's utter obliviousness to anything that wasn't a statistic or fact, loved the pleasure that JJ and Emily took in acting like children, loved Morgan's mile-wide over protective streak, loved Hotch's perpetually calm presence, and loved Rossi, even when he was being an absolute pit bull.

Because Garcia knew, you had to love your family.