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Derek groans, throwing his head back and gripping his headboard with one hand, the other coming up to stroke Penelope’s thigh as she rocks her hips forward and back.
“Baby,” he pants out, squeezing her leg and pumping his hips up, so close to the edge and knowing it won’t take much now to tip him over.
“That’s it, big boy,” Penelope coos, and it should probably be cheesy, but it sounds like pure gold coming out of her lips, washing over Derek and making his stomach clench in the most pleasant way. “Show me how good you feel. Come on, now. I know you’re close. Come on.”
She runs one hand along his chest, the other coming up so she can brush her thumb over his lip, and that’s all she wrote — Derek is gone , rolling his hips up and coming hard, panting out harshly while both hands land on Penelope’s hip to guide her slowing movements.
“Holy shit,” Derek murmurs, just like he does every time they do this, because it never gets old. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a sex goddess?”
“Anyone other than you?” Penelope smirks as she carefully dismounts from her position above him. She grabs her dress from the floor and slips it over her head, and when her face reappears, she’s smiling wickedly. “The answer is, unsurprisingly, a resounding yes.”
Derek laughs, grabbing her bra from the edge of the mattress and whipping it in her direction. “Get out of my hair, woman,” he chuckles, pointing a threatening finger at her as she grabs her panties off the floor. “And do not make a bald joke at my expense!”
“Wouldn’t dream of it!” she trills, waving a hand at him over her shoulder as she flounces off to the bathroom.
Laughing again, Derek flops backwards onto the bed and covers his hands with his eyes. He should move, he knows; he should get rid of the condom, get his clothes on, probably even take a shower to wash away the scent of Penelope’s flowery perfume.
But he lets himself bask a minute longer as he hears the sink begin to run, bask in the floral air and the heavy-limbed afterglow of good sex and the fantasy that one day this could be his not to borrow, but to keep.
It can’t last, though. Penelope has barely even had time to wash up and run a brush through her hair before she’s storming back into the bedroom, murder in her eyes.
“So much for a relaxing long weekend,” she gripes, brandishing her cell phone like a brick she’d like to throw through JJ’s window. “We’re back on.”
“C’est la vie,” Derek sighs, sitting up and making no effort to cover himself up. He’s not immune to the way Penelope’s eyes scan over his body, and all he has to do is raise his eyebrows to get her riled up in that silly, saucy way he loves.
“Do not sit there looking like that when I just told you we have to get back to work!” she snaps, pointing at him with all the fury of a snarling Chihuahua.
“Or what?” Derek can’t help his grin, especially when it just makes Penelope seethe harder.
“Or else I’ll bite you, and we do not have time for a round two!”
She storms out of the bedroom, the back of her skirt tucked up into her stockings, leaving Derek laughing and falling out of bed to catch up to her before she storms too far.
“It’s going to get harder to hide this, you know,” Penelope murmurs as they approach the elevator together, standing a respectable distance apart even as they squeeze inside together.
“Hide what?” Derek tries, but he feels his good mood flicker dimly as she levels him with a don’t try me stare from underneath her purple rhinestone frames.
“I can only fake hot water heater trouble so many weeks in a row before people either offer to put me up in a Hilton or realize something fishy is going on!” Her voice is pitched low, and when Derek leans in to hear her better, she swats at him until he backs up. “Don’t get so close!”
“Baby girl, you know everyone already thinks we’re sleeping together or something. It’s going to look weirder if you act like we’re not.”
Penelope opens her mouth, but snaps it shut as Emily slips into the elevator beside them.
“Evening,” she says, moving to one side of the box to leave room for Derek and Penelope to stay next to each other. “What’d you two crazy kids get up to in the…oh, roughly three hours since we’ve seen each other?”
Derek smiles down at his feet, feeling Penelope’s panicked gaze burning into the side of his head and doing absolutely nothing to ease her stress.
“I had a hot date,” he says finally as the elevator dings and slides its doors open. “But unfortunately it was cut a little shorter than I would have liked. What about you, Garcia?”
He leaves her gaping like a fish out of water, Emily following close behind to press him for details as he strolls ahead of them to the conference room.
***
The thing is, they’re not together. Not officially. Not in any way that really counts.
It started the way things like this always happen — during a too-late night that turned to morning, over a bottle of tequila and too many shared lime slices to count. Add in one breakup on Penelope’s end, one string of failed dates on Derek’s, and the pity party was in full swing by the time Garcia threw her head back over the arm of the couch and groaned.
“Why is this so hard for us?” she demanded, dangerously flailing the arm holding the tequila bottle. “Are we not immensely attractive people with big, beautiful hearts and even bigger, more beautiful derrieres?”
“Amen!” Derek had snorted in response, clinking a shot glass against the bottle in Penelope’s hand, wincing in sympathy as she swigged directly, no salt, no chaser.
“We deserve good relationships,” she declared, barely wincing at the burn of Patrón. “And good sex. And arm candy to show off. We — we’re good people, Derek. We deserve a lot.”
“You sure do, baby girl,” he had murmured, reaching a hand up to tuck a stray curl behind her ear.
She had sat up at that, her fingers curling around his wrist as she frowned at him thoughtfully. She was a little bleary-eyed from the hour and the drinks, her glasses abandoned at some point in the evening, but she squinted at him and focused enough to solemnly say, “Why don’t we just do it with each other?”
“Do what?” he spluttered, wiping his mouth and laughing before he caught the stern glimmer in her eye. “Girl, what are you talking about?”
“Us,” she said, meaningfully, tugging on his arm like he should get it by now. “We’re hot people! We deserve good sex! You’re my best friend on this entire big blue marble we call a home planet! Why don’t we enjoy some good sex together until our sad-sack dry spells are over?”
Derek knew the swoop in his stomach wasn’t from the alcohol. He bided his time, tipping the salt shaker over into his palm and shaking the grains around like they’d show him his fortune, if only he looked hard enough.
“It’s not a bad idea,” he had said slowly, knowing even as he said it he might as well be signing his death warrant. Like there was any hope of sleeping with Penelope Garcia without either ruining the friendship he held most sacred, or showing his ass and accidentally confessing his real feelings for her.
But before he could hedge the idea further, she leaned in close, held his hand up to her own mouth and slowly licked off the salt before taking another sip of tequila straight from the bottle.
“What’d’ya say, sport?” she’d murmured, and just like that Derek Morgan was a goner.
***
This new case is brutal in every sense of the word — an unsolved string of child killings in a meth-soaked strip of the Bible Belt. Derek doesn’t miss the way Penelope’s lip quivers as she flicks through the crime scene photos, one after the other, on the conference room screen before excusing herself the very first chance she gets.
“It never gets easier, does it?” she sighs a few moments later.
She’s in her own office now; she must have heard and recognized Derek’s approaching footsteps, not even turning from the screen as he steps up behind her and squeezes her shoulders.
“We’re not all built like you, baby girl,” he murmurs, dropping his chin to the top of her head. “Some of us get thick skin after all these years.”
“Yeah, yeah, and I’m about as thin-skinned and squishy as a peeled marshmallow,” she mutters. She tips her head back against Derek’s chest. “Teach me to be more like you, ye of thick skin and washboard abs?”
Chuckling, Derek tugs on Penelope’s earlobe until she slaps his hand away. “Never,” he vows. “You’re one in a million and I’m not teaching you to be anything but yourself. Not that you’d listen to me if I tried, anyway.”
“Are you suggesting that I don’t play well with others, Mr. Morgan?”
The coy tone in her voice is closer to their typical teasing banter, but with the memory of her grinding on top of him just a few hours ago, it carries a whole different layer of meaning that sets his teeth on edge. He runs his forefinger over the back collar of her shirt, just brushing the line of skin between her blouse and her hairline.
“Oh, I’d say you’re an excellent team player, Ms. Garcia, if you ask me.”
He grins at the goosebumps that bloom over her skin before he flicks her gently on the neck.
“Gotta fly, mama. Leave a light on for me?”
“Always, sugar.” She finally spins in her seat and turns the full force of her smile on Derek as he backs out the door, eyes on her until he has to turn away.
It’s not the ugliest batch of crime scenes they’ve ever encountered. But it’s bad, and it’s children , and it’s altogether too close to home. It takes everything in Derek not to spit in the unsub’s face when they finally catch the son of a bitch. Seeing him smack his head on the patrol car as he’s shoved into the backseat is little consolation.
Their flight is delayed due to the shitty weather that’s been lingering all through the day, and the turbulent ride home does nothing to improve Derek’s mood. It’s late by the time they land and disembark, but he still knows exactly where he’s going, even if he should just stumble home to his apartment for a shower and his bed.
He sends Penelope a quick text message, and by some miracle she’s still awake. She answers the door before he even has time to knock.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she whispers, collapsing into his arms and pulling him into her apartment.
“Baby girl, you knew we were all safe when we called you from the plane,” he chuckles, nuzzling into the top of her head and smelling her sweet, strawberry-scented conditioner.
“Okay! There’s still the whole flight home, and the drive over here, and you never know what maniacs are on the road at this hour of night! I can still be relieved that you’re home safe, so sue me for being sensitive about it all!”
Derek laughs again, shoving down the feelings that start bubbling up at the sound of Penelope saying he’s home.
“Forgive me for being insensitive, then,” he murmurs, his lips still pressed to her hair as he quiets, settling into silence for a moment before shaking himself out. “Sorry. It’s been, uh…it’s been a pretty rough day.”
“Yeah?”
Derek squeezes his eyes shut and nods. “Yeah. It was bad.”
“Bad bad?” she asks softly, gathering his hands and walking herself backward so she can pull him deeper into her apartment, toward her bedroom.
He nods as she toys with the hem of his T-shirt. “Pretty bad,” he admits, and then all at once without warning he breaks — his face crumples, his eyes turn immediately and mortifyingly damp, and his next breath is a ragged and desperate thing. “Goddamnit,” he whispers, tugging a hand away from Garcia so he can run it over his face. Try to hide.
“Whoa, hey,” Penelope whispers, touching his wrist gently and giving him no room to shy away. “Derek,” she says quietly, moving his hands away from his face. She doesn’t tell him it’s okay or that he’s safe now, no reason to shake the way he is. She gets it, even better than she lets on sometimes.
She just whispers his name again, pulling him down to sit on her bed beside her before maneuvering them to lie down side by side. She tucks his head against her chest, squeezing one of his hands in her own while her other tracks a slow and steady path up and down his back.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps into her shirt, his voice wretched, but she doesn’t say anything more than what it says when she pulls her blankets over them: Stay here with me.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes again, hiding into the soft, warm, sweet-smelling safety that is Penelope Garcia, as she takes danger into her own hands this time, as she cuddles close to the ticking time-bomb that is one shattering Derek Morgan.
She doesn’t tell him he doesn’t have to apologize. She doesn’t shush him or tell him he’s safe. But she does press a kiss to the crown of his head and keep her hands solid and steady against his body, even though it does nothing to halt his trembling or his desperate gasps.
It takes Derek a moment when he wakes to wonder why he’s inhaling a mouthful of curls, but then he blinks and sees the golden crown of Penelope’s head pillowed on his chest, their positions somehow reversed through the night, and he remembers.
He flushes hotly, angry at how easily he’d let the case get to him, mortified at how easily he’d come undone at just the kind touch of Garcia’s hand. It’s not fair to do this to her when she already struggles so much just to let them go each time they board the jet. If she thinks this is how every case leaves him, lurching and unmoored and pitiful, she’d never let him leave.
No, worse, he knows, is that she’d never try to stop him from going, but she’d be waiting in knots the whole time he was away. And she’d be here ready to pick up his splintered pieces every time he returned.
The entire thought is made worse by the voice that itches through Derek’s brain to remind him, You could have that. To point out to him that Penelope is used to being the woman who waits, and she has already seen Derek face death head on and come out the other side calling her name.
She would know what she’s signing up for, his own mind taunts him. He shakes his head to clear that mess away.
It’s true. But it’s also true that he still thinks about New York more than he probably should, knowing that underneath her joke about being too mad to talk to him, her voice had shaken with genuine fear, and anguish, and it’s not fair to put her through that every time he goes to work, for God’s sake.
And that’s just what Penelope puts up with being his friend. There’s no telling if she’d even want him more than that, or if their relationship sticks to the dictionary pages of physical and platonic without ever reaching the Rs for romantic, or even real.
Nah, scratch that last one, he thinks to himself fondly as Penelope starts to stir, her hands scratching over his chest as she nuzzles into his shoulder. There’s nothing more real than this.
“Hey, baby girl,” he whispers, enjoying the rush of color to her face as she tips her head up and squints blearily at him. “Sleep okay?”
“Mmm, I had a surprisingly firm teddy bear to keep me company,” she replies, coyly stroking a hand over his abs before giggling as he swats her away. “But I’m more concerned with how that bear ended up sleeping. Or if he stayed asleep long at all.”
Derek can’t help the way his lips turn up into a smile, even against all his efforts to stay neutral. Scratching a hand through her hair like she’s a goldendoodle, he answers honestly, “I had the best sleep I’ve had in a while. And I have you to thank for it.”
“Oh, mon amis, no thanks needed,” Garcia begins as Derek shifts, but she cuts herself off when, instead of climbing out of bed, Derek throws back the blankets and slides toward her legs.
“I don’t think you understand what I have in mind to show my appreciation.” Derek smirks, stroking his hands up Penelope’s thighs and toying with the waist of her pajama pants. “If the lady would be so kind as to indulge in my request.”
“Oh, Derek,” Garcia tries again, her voice more fluttery than it had been a moment before, “you don’t have to…”
“But if I want to?”
Garcia swallows, her eyes seeking out something she must not find in Derek’s own expression, because eventually she nods and drops her head back to the pillow. “As you wish,” she murmurs.
Derek grins, sliding her pants and underwear down her legs in one smooth motion before gently spreading her thighs apart. They’ve never done this, because for all of Penelope’s sex-goddess prowess, for all the times she’s made Derek come undone, she usually ends things before he can return the favor. She waves him away with excuses of I’ll get it myself or trust me, Sugar Bear, you’ve done enough.
But now she’s in front of him, and it’s his chance to show her what she means to him – not just last night, not just their little arrangement, but how much he truly centers his life around her like she’s the goddamn sun.
So he takes his time, kissing his way up one thigh and then the other until she’s tensed tight as a bowstring, back arching just so in an effort to get him closer to where he needs to be.
“What’sa matter, baby?” Mock innocence dances over his face before he grins, smoothing his hands over her thighs to the crease of her body.
“You know what,” she pants back, out of breath but still too cautious for his own liking, her hands at her side and eyes trained on the ceiling like she’s afraid to meet his eye.
Derek simply can’t have that.
So he dives ahead, licking a slow, soft line up the hot, wet center of her, pressing his lips to her clit and mouthing there wetly until Penelope lets out a sound that might best be classified as a squeak.
“What was that, mama?”
“Nothing!” Garcia flicks Derek’s ear, which is entirely unsexy and somehow, through his laughter, only makes Derek want her more. “Keep going!”
“As you wish,” Derek mimics, kissing back at the soft heat of her most sensitive area, tonguing up and down her slit before wiggling inside just to hear her gasp. He tongue-fucks her like that for a moment, his thumbs stroking up and down her lips before spreading them open ever so gently and pressing in as close as he can. His chin is getting wet from how turned on she’s getting. It’s driving him insane to know that this time, he alone is the cause.
“Derek,” Penelope whispers. One hand lands on the back of his neck, not urging him forward, just feeling him. The other grips the shoulder of his T-shirt tight.
“I got you, baby,” he whispers, confident he can give her what she needs — and if not, he might damn well just die trying, because nothing is more important to him in this moment than letting her know.
Letting her know what, exactly, he’s a little unclear on, but he thinks it’s coming across pretty well, regardless.
All the tension leaves Garcia’s body as he strokes a thumb across her slit, edging it inside before slipping it out to stroke her with his index finger, touching her soft enough to tickle just to watch how she reacts. And she comes apart for him, this hurricane of a woman puddling beneath him in a trusting swirl of calm. She doesn’t say much beyond his name, but her breathing picks up and she sighs and whimpers as if on cue, hinting to Derek what he’s doing right and what he should keep doing to push her to the edge.
“Baby,” he whispers, fingering her gently and turning his tongue soft and pliant against her clit.
She moans at this, her thumb stroking the side of his neck, so he licks at her again, steady and gentle against her clit as he works a second finger inside her, stroking softly and focusing on what movements cause what sound.
He’s in no rush, and he hopes she can tell that he’d happily do this for hours, whether it gets her off or not. If she wants him to go down on her until the sun goes out and the world ices over, he’d be happy to stay right here until everything went dark.
“Derek,” she says suddenly as his licks become looser, sloppier, and oh, that sounds promising, he thinks, so he redoubles his efforts as the tension returns to her legs.
“Derek,” she repeats, her voice not quite panicked , but close, a little softer than urgency but not far from begging.
Desperate, he realizes, and knows that she’s close.
He brushes his fingers together inside her, stroking, and presses his mouth as close as he can get, unable to help the slick sounds of his tongue as he edges her closer, closer to her release. She gasps, and he moans, unashamed at just how good it feels to get her this close. He’s hard, has been for God only knows how long at this point, but that’s a dim, distant thought to him now. That’s an observation, not a need. The only thing requiring his attention right now is exactly what he’s doing, making sure he doesn’t change his speed or the pressure of his tongue until he’s sure she’s tipped over the edge.
And when it finally happens, oh, he wishes he had about a dozen extra hands — a pair to hold a video camera, a pair to work his own cock over so he could finish with her in sync, maybe a few pairs to touch the rest of her body (squeeze her ass, grope her breasts, pinch her nipples, brush a gentle hand through her hair as it all comes to life in front of him).
Her breath picks up in speed and volume: sweet little gasping sounds until she shudders out a moan, a surprised-sounding Oh! before a low, contented “Derek…” follows behind. Her grip on his body tightens, her stomach tenses, her hips lift just a little closer to his mouth, her mouth drops open and her eyes squeeze shut, and all around him, he can feel the tremors of her legs and the very core of her, an unambiguous sign that he did good, that he worked for it and he got it and she felt damn good as a result of it.
It’s possibly the best moment of Derek Morgan’s entire life.
“Derek,” she whispers again after a moment, as he pauses his kitten-licks and finally, regretfully pulls his mouth away from her. He drags the back of his hand over his chin and looks up, grinning, a smart-ass comment already forming behind his mouth.
But he pauses when he sees the wet, clumping blink of her eyelashes, scrambling up the bed until he can see her face to face.
“Baby girl?” he murmurs, stroking a thumb beneath her eye to catch a falling tear. “Are you okay? What did I do, what’s wrong?”
Blinking harshly, Penelope shakes her head and laughs, a tremulous little sound.
“What you did was rock my world, you little chocolate sex god,” she laughs, and he can’t help but match her at their ridiculous little joke. “I’m fine, Morgan. Tears are the body’s way of releasing endorphins, or something.”
She swipes the heel of her hand across her eye and sits up, thanking him for his service before excusing herself to the bathroom to clean up.
Despite her reassurances, Derek sits and stews over the brewing thought that he’d just fucked something up, though hell if he could even begin to guess at what that something was.
***
“Hey Derek!”
He barely registers Emily’s voice over the thundering bass beat echoing against his skull. He’s getting a tension headache, he thinks, downing his beer and wondering which would be more effective at providing relief, a Tylenol or another lager.
“Earth to Morgan,” Emily calls again, flicking a peanut shell in his direction.
He dodges it, shoots her a disgusted look, and snaps, “What?”
His foul mood doesn’t steer her away, unfortunately; if anything, it only serves to egg her on even more. She leans across the table conspiratorially.
“Unclench,” she says, a wicked glint in her eye. “Before that vein in your forehead explodes.”
“What are you talking about?” he mutters, moving to rise and reaching for the wallet in his back pocket. He can’t remember if he opened a tab earlier, or if all drinks so far have been on Rossi, but he’s ready to pay whatever he has to to dip out of this conversation as fast as he can.
Emily Prentiss, however, is not easily dissuaded. She follows him to the bar.
“What is it,” she says casually, as if he hadn’t just tried to blow her off, “is it the painfully vapid Top 40s remixes they insist on playing tonight? Or is it the fact that you’re paying twice as much as I am for a watered-down vodka cocktail because you don’t have a rack as nice as mine?”
“I’m drinking beer,” Morgan answers dryly, refusing to give in and crack a smile.
“Oh, you’re right! My mistake. In that case, could it be the fact that a cute, blue-haired goth girl is putting the moves on our lovely technical analyst right in the middle of the dance floor?”
“Her hair’s purple,” Morgan spits out as he accepts his beer from the bartender. Rossi has started a tab, thank God; Morgan drops a five on the counter as a tip and mentally reminds himself to thank the guy at team brunch tomorrow.
If he makes it there, that is. He’s a few more than a few drinks in.
He’s so focused on acting nonchalant that he doesn’t realize his mistake until Emily punches his arm, none too gently.
“I knew it!” she crows. “You’re jealous! You’ve got a crush on Penelope!”
“Oh, a crush, huh, Prentiss?” he echoes, draining half his beer in one gulp. “What are we, first graders? Am I gonna pull her pigtails out there on the dance floor next?”
“Oh, please, as if you two don’t do enough pigtail pulling as it is. Come on, Derek, don’t act like we can’t tell.”
His hands flex around the glass as he pushes off the bar and makes his way back to the hightop the gang had claimed as theirs earlier in the night. “Can’t tell what?”
“Can’t tell that you two obviously have feelings for each other!”
Morgan sets his beer down with so much ire behind the movement that half the drink would’ve sloshed out onto the table if the glass had still been full.
“Is that what you think?” he forces out, a grin that feels more like a grimace stretching across his face. “That we have feelings for each other? Is that what it looks like, Prentiss?”
He gestures to the dance floor, where a handsy (and, yes, unfortunately very cute) purple-haired goth girl has looped her arms around Penelope’s neck, swaying her hips in time with Garcia’s as a remix of Britney Spears’s “Toxic” blares across the dance floor.
“She looks anything but interested in what’s going on over here,” he hears himself saying, unable to tear his eyes away from the scene across the room. Penelope throws her head back and laughs, tightening her arms around the goth girl’s waist to pull her in tighter as the song slows to a raunchy, striptease-style beat. “She’s barely said two words to me all night.”
“Okay,” Emily says impatiently, tossing her hair out of her face. “And? Did you even ask her once to dance the whole time she was sitting here with us?”
To be fair, no, he hadn’t.
But that’s not entirely his fault.
Ever since Derek last spent the night at Garcia’s, since he delivered what he had assumed was an earth-shattering orgasm, he’d gotten nothing but radio silence from his best girl. Even at work, she’d been civil but distant, downright cold compared to the way their banter usually plays out.
“She’s not interested,” is all he says, flatly. “Whatever you thought was going on, get it out of your head. She’s never been interested in me that way.”
Emily sighs, disgruntled. This time, she pulls the straw out of her empty vodka soda cup and flicks it at Morgan instead of a peanut shell.
“The hell is wrong with you, woman?”
“Spence,” Emily says suddenly, ignoring Derek in favor of turning to Reid, who’d been comfortably bobbing his head to the music and sipping on a Shirley Temple. “Tell me I’m not going crazy here. Is there anything weird going on between Morgan and Garcia?”
“Weirder than usual, you mean?”
Morgan groans and drops his head into his hands. “Et tu, Pretty Boy?”
Emily cackles beside him as Reid shrugs and tries to backtrack. “I’m just saying, usually you two have a ton of chemistry together! Your typical banter errs on the side of flirtatious in its most mild form; some days you’re downright… dirty talking in the break lounge! I don’t know why you want me to ignore what’s so blatantly there!”
He shrugs helplessly as Emily wipes a tear from her eye, still cracking herself up as Hotch returns from his smoke break and slips into the seat beside Reid.
“What did I miss?” he asks, the ghost of a smile quirking up the corner of his mouth.
“Nothing,” Morgan snaps, while Emily crows, “Spencer just read Morgan to filth!”
“I didn’t mean anything by it!” Reid raises his hands placatingly. His eyes are wide, innocent, but there’s a flicker of a grin threatening to burst out of him.
Son of a bitch, he knows what he’s doing, Morgan thinks grumpily.
“Besides,” Spencer continues, “you didn’t let me finish! I was going to say despite how you two usually behave around the office, you’ve been surprisingly terse around each other lately. It’s almost like you’re trying not to flirt with each other, which…well, like I said, considering your water cooler talk basically doubles as phone sex…”
“Okay, thank you, Spencer!” Morgan says loudly, draining the rest of his beer and shooting an apologetic grimace toward Hotch. “No need to get too in the weeds on the details here — ”
“Morgan,” Hotch says evenly, “he’s not saying anything that isn’t common knowledge.”
This time, Reid joins Prentiss in her raucous laughter, and Morgan shakes his head, zipping up his jacket and ignoring the way Emily boos at him for it.
“You know what?” he says decisively. “This has been lovely, but I’ve got to get home and, uh, organize my sock drawer. Or maybe file my taxes early. Or do almost anything except finish this conversation.”
He heads toward the door, backtracking only to drop a couple of twenties on the hightop and tell everyone their next round is on him as long as they don’t tell Rossi.
He then makes his way to the exit, trying not to look toward Garcia on the dance floor, trying to ignore the sting of feeling like she wants anybody else’s hands on her except his.
***
Morgan knows he’s getting desperate when he considers going to church.
He knows he wouldn’t be the first desperate man to cross the threshold and drop to his knees, but his prayer might just be the weirdest one: Dear whoever’s up there listening, I gave the woman I love either the worst orgasm known to womankind, or an orgasm so earth-shatteringly brilliant she can’t even look me in the eye anymore. Either way, a little clarity would be much appreciated.
But he knows if he ever really did find himself in a cathedral again, he’d lose the nerve to ask for what he really wants, which is a lot closer to Please, please don’t let me lose her, please.
He’s been so close to losing her — once, twice, three times now. Gunshot wound, nameless men and women hitting on her, one too many arguments (lovers’ spats, the rest of the BAU calls them when they’re between Derek and Garcia). Any more near-misses and he’ll start losing count.
But as agitating as it is to face her silence every day at work, nothing is worse than the skin-itching feeling he gets when he thinks about actually walking back into a church and asking for the one thing he knows he can’t bear to lose.
He recognizes there must be something to the fact that Penelope is the only person on this earth that can make him pray — recognizes that maybe she’s the closest thing to proof of God he’s found so far in this life.
He tries not to think about it too hard as he gets into his car after work one Friday, heading downtown to run a few errands before driving toward Garcia’s apartment complex.
She doesn’t buzz him in right away, but she does eventually let him up.
“I really wish you’d let me get that cute pink gun I wanted,” she mutters as she opens the door, which startles him into a laugh.
“Really, woman? You give me the silent treatment at work for weeks and the first thing you say to me is you wish you had something to shoot me with?”
“Well, you said I needed something to take care of unwanted intruders, so…”
Morgan tries to laugh off the sting of that one. “Yeah, well, I got you that rhinestone can of pepper spray, so you shouldn’t even be complaining.”
He gently pushes past her into her apartment, dropping a handful of shopping bags onto a coffee table before rubbing his hands together. He looks at her pointedly.
“Well?”
“Well what?” Garcia asks, closing and locking her door before making her way toward the couch. She’s adorable, he can’t help but think as she eyes up the packages. She’s got her hair up in two buns on either side of her head, and her sweater has smiling, dancing strawberries all over it, and there is no woman alive that makes him feel the way Penelope Garcia does.
Even if, like right now, that feeling is close to terror. There’s definitely a good feeling lingering under that top note, too.
“So,” Morgan breathes in deeply before picking up the first bag. “I was passing the liquor store on my way home, so I stopped and got you that good tequila you like. The one you only treat yourself to on pay day.”
“Be still, my beating heart,” Garcia says, and it’s a little dry, but there’s a smirk starting to creep onto her face as Derek hands her the bottle with a flourish and reaches for the next bag.
“But, I couldn’t give you tequila without getting you some salt and limes, too. So, here we are.” He gives the bag a little shake before dropping it back on the table and picking up a small, delicate-looking pink and gold bag. “But you know the food store with the good produce is right next to that bakery you like, so…”
“You didn’t.” Garcia puts the tequila on the table and makes grabby hands for the bag, which Derek teasingly holds back with a finger wag.
“Ah-ah, not yet, not until I know I got the right flavor macarons for…” He trails off, swallows my best girl before it slips out.
But Garcia is already starting to smile for real now, like she sensed the pet name’s near-return, like she knows how soon they’ll be back to their old selves if he keeps this up.
“There better be a coconut, a raspberry, a chocolate, a chocolate peanut butter, and…”
“And nobody’s favorite flavor, lavender.” Derek wrinkles his nose theatrically, soaking up the snort Garcia lets out as she takes the bag from his outstretched hands. “The soapiest of all dessert flavors.”
“Oh, just because you’re not a man of taste and culture, Derek Morgan…”
“That’s why I got myself some cookies n’ cream macarons too. You know I’m not fancy enough for your weird French shit.”
Garcia rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling as she gives his arm a gentle punch and leads him over to the couch. “So, what are we doing here? Tequila shots, macarons, and reruns of the Golden Girls?”
“It’s like you read my mind,” he says with a grin, falling onto the couch beside her and, hopefully, falling back into something that feels like normalcy.
But a few tequila shots, a handful of Golden Girls episodes, and way too many macarons later, everything doesn’t quite feel right just yet. Like they’re still a little off-kilter.
“Baby girl,” Derek says quietly, shifting to look more fully at Garcia, who’s leaning against the other arm of the couch. “Something’s still not right here.”
To her credit, she doesn’t even pretend to think he’s talking about whatever predicament Blanche has gotten herself into this episode. “What do you mean?”
“What did I do wrong to make you pull away?”
Flushing immediately, Garcia sighs and pulls her gaze away from the TV, to the macaron crumbs in her lap. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Bullshit,” he says immediately. “You know things got weird as soon as —”
“Don’t —”
“I thought you wanted —”
“I did!”
Garcia turns to fully face him on the couch, throwing up her hands and letting out a frustrated growl. “Jesus, Derek, of course I wanted that! All those times we — I liked hooking up with you, okay, I loved it, in fact. But God, what was I supposed to do with the fact that you could make me feel like that? It freaked me out, okay! I just — I needed some time away.”
“Make you feel like what?”
“Fucking — worshipped, okay?” Garcia scoffs and huffs her bangs out of her eyes. “God, as if you’d ever — it was a lot, okay? It was too much and I couldn’t let myself…get used to that. Alright? I didn’t want it to go that far because I never wanted to feel something that good and know it wasn’t mine to keep.”
Morgan feels his heart sink, frowning as his confusion gives way to — inexplicably, to anger.
“Who’s to say it wasn’t yours to keep?”
“Oh, get real, Derek —”
“Why are you the one that decides that?”
Garcia shakes her head, brushes crumbs off her lap and starts to gather the rinds of the limes they’d sucked on throughout the evening. “You should probably go, Morgan, it’s getting late —”
Feeling petulant, feeling like a scolded child, Derek grabs the lime rinds out of her hands and tosses them onto the table. “Don’t kick me out,” he snaps, aiming for solid but landing much closer to scared. “Don’t ice me out again, kid. I’m not doing this for another six weeks.”
Penelope glares at him for a second, like she’s about to argue, then sighs and sinks back against the couch.
Morgan takes a breath, though it doesn’t help to ease the mounting anger he’s still feeling. “If I did something you didn’t like, Garcia, that’s — I’m sorry, okay? But if you tried to ice me out because you felt something you thought I couldn’t give you back…baby, please, you gotta know if I could I’d give you everything.”
He hears Penelope’s sharp intake of breath. He slides along the couch until he’s right next to her, close enough to brush a loose strand of hair from her eyes and tuck it behind her ear as gently as he can.
He finds himself touching her like she’s made of crystal, like she’s precious — because she is, and God help whatever poor soul ever made her doubt that a guy as paper thin as Derek Morgan couldn’t see that.
“I’m sorry I let us get so far into this whole arrangement without being honest with you, sweetheart,” he murmurs, tipping her chin until she’s looking him in the eyes again. “Because I don’t ever want to give you less than the world, Penelope Garcia. It’s what you deserve.”
“God.” Penelope laughs shakily, blinking up at the ceiling before turning back to face him head on. “Don’t sweet talk me too much, Derek Morgan, or you’ll give a girl the wrong idea.”
He knows what his role is here. He’ll say something flirty, call her baby girl, she’ll answer in her own cheeky style and they’ll be right back to where they were before.
But he can’t go back to that anymore.
“You’re getting the exact idea I want you to get,” he says instead, leaning in to brush his lips to her temple. “And in case that isn’t clear, let me say it in no uncertain terms: I am in love with you, Penelope.”
Against his lips, he can feel her shaking her head.
“Oh, my sweet prince, I can’t ever let you…” She breaks off and swallows heavily. “If I let myself believe you could possibly love me back, and then you take it away…if you break my heart like that, I’ll just never recover. I’ll never be okay again.”
Sliding an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in close, pressing the gentlest kiss he can manage to the side of her head, Derek murmurs a truth he should’ve said out loud months ago: “Baby girl, I couldn’t stop loving you even if I tried.”
***
Morgan hears the agitated whispers as he nears the coffee machine at work on Monday. “Well, what are we supposed to do? Lock them in a broom closet until they sort their shit out?”
“It’s probably unethical, but an isolating environment would at least burst the bubble of tension that’s been growing for the past few weeks. Given no other option, they’d be forced to confront the issues they’ve been trying to ignore.”
“And what, end up fighting or fucking in the broom closet before work?”
“Either way, at least it’d clear the air for them.”
“Maybe we should just host another workplace harassment seminar?”
“Oh, no, if I have to sit through one more slideshow of their text chain to each other…”
Morgan clears his throat theatrically, grinning at the guilty looks on the face of each member of his team as they make room for him to pour himself some coffee.
“I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you,” he says casually, leaning against the counter and taking a slow sip of coffee. “Penelope and I are together now, officially. As I’m sure you’ll all be horrified to know.”
The tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in his shoulders drops as his team – his friends – burst into cheers and congratulations around him. Claps on his back and squeals and shouts of “Finally!” swirl around him as he smiles, big and bold and real for the first time in too long.
“So where is she, anyway?” Rossi asks eventually.
“Yeah,” Prentiss jumps in, “no more rides to work now that it’s official?”
Derek takes another sip of coffee and feels his grin widen. “Oh, she’s coming in late today. I figured she should sleep in this morning — she had a long night last night.”
Smirking as the coos of congratulations are replaced by groans of disgust (“Oh, too much information, Morgan!”), Derek heads back to his desk, feeling an unfamiliar type of happiness he knows he wants to hold on to for a long, long time.