JJ had heard about Derek’s journey over to Pen’s the previous night and had full intention of squeezing any and all information out of the blond before Emily could get to her. It went without saying that Emily had the advantage on details from Derek, so JJ would take her skills where she could get them. And her skill was the uncanny ability to get any information out of Penelope Garcia.
The blond seemed surprisingly subdued as she sat at her computer screens. JJ recognized the diagnostic and update programs running on her various screens and breathed out a sigh of relief. “Morning.”
Penelope smiled briefly as she turned back to JJ. “Hey Jayje.”
The younger blond took the rolling chair from the corner and plopped into it. “What’s up?”
Penleope sighed. She did love to gush. “I had the most awesome dream last night.”
“Really?” JJ vaguely wondered what dream could be better than actually having Derek in her apartment the previous night, talking about their child, but figured she’d let Pen have her moment.
“Mmhmm. It was glorious. The man of my dreams in my apartment, talking about Peanut… He even said he wanted to keep the baby and take me out for dinner tonight.”
JJ arched an eyebrow. “Uh, Pen?”
“What?”
“You do know Derek actually went to your apartment last night, right? He left from here and went straight to your place.”
Penelope blinked owlishly. “What?”
“I don’t think it was a dream.”
“But it... It has to be.”
“Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, apparently,” JJ commented wryly. “What happened?”
“Um... Well, he wants to be a part of Peanut’s life.”
JJ resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course he did. “Well that’s good.”
Penelope closed her eyes. She’d been floating around in a sort of depression because she believed her previous night had been nothing but a dream. It was taking her brain a few minutes to catch up to the idea that she might actually be living that dream.
“Pen?”
“You’re sure it wasn’t a dream?” Penelope asked, vulnerability loud in her voice. “It feels to good to be anything but.”
“Oh, honey,” JJ lamented, leaning forward and wrapping her friend in a hug. “It was real.”
“It was? Then...”
“Tell me all about it,” the younger blond requested. “From the beginning.”
So JJ sat and listened with rapt attention as Penelope detailed her conversation from the previous night. Her voice spoke of the awe and surprise at being reassured what she’d experienced most certainly had not been a figment of Pen’s over-active imagination. JJ was almost green with envy at Derek’s swavely romantic side.
“Why would you even want to think that was a dream?” she asked when Penelope finished her story. “Everything you want is right there for the taking!”
Penelope sighed. “I don’t want him to wine and dine me out of a twisted obligation to Peanut.”
“Just because he wants to be a part of his child’s life doesn’t mean everything else becomes a responsibility,” JJ argued softly. “Maybe he does actually want to be with you.”
“Jayje, think of who you’re talking about here. This is the high school jock, the hottie every girl lusts after. I’m not exactly the prom queen.”
JJ blew out a breath trying to figure out how to best explain to Penelope she was someone special. Then, it came to her. “Maybe you’re better off to talk to Spence about this.”
“Honey, our Boy Wonder is many spectacular things. A love guru is not one of them,” the other woman scoffed.
“But he feels like the school freak getting the prom queen,” JJ answered.
That was good logic and Pen knew it. “Jayje...”
“You have no reason to not go after what you want,” the media guru said slowly, softly. “We aren’t in high school. The stereotypes don’t apply.”
“He can do better.”
“Better is a relative term.” She waited for a response from her friend and pushed on when none was forthcoming. “Look at it from his side too.”
“You’ve seen the kinds of girls he dates,” Penelope said.
JJ rolled her eyes. “He goes on dates with them. There has never been anything long term there.”
“So why am I different?”
Because you damn well should be, JJ thought to herself. “You know more about him than anyone in the world.”
“Not because I asked him about it. I had to hack into his sealed juvie record.”
“It solved the case.”
“Now you’re just looking for a reason to make it too good to be true,” JJ snapped. She sighed, deflating almost instantly. “What have you got to lose to believe, just for five minutes, that he might actually want you?”
“Everything,” Penelope answered.
“Promise me something,” JJ ordered.
“What?”
“You’ll go into your date tonight with an open mind. I don’t care if you have to convince yourself that it’s not Derek Morgan just… let yourself consider the possibilities.” JJ knew there was no way Pen could deny her that much, especially when she pulled out that slightly dejected voice. Sometimes, one had to manipulate ones they loved for their own good.
Sure enough, Penelope sighed. “Okay. I promise to be open-minded tonight.”
“You’ll see,” JJ said, jumping up and heading for the door. “It’ll turn out better than you think.”
Emily, on the other hand, had turned her attention to Derek the minute he walked through the bullpen doors. She knew she had information he wanted and she’d be more than willing to give it up for fair trade. She was dying to know what had gone on between Derek and Penelope the previous night. Of course, she’d have an outlet in Penelope, who she fully intended to interrogate should this conversation with Derek not work out to her benefit.
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
Emily shrugged. “But you will.”
“You seem so confident.”
“I’m going to find out either way. Wouldn’t you rather tell me your side?” Emily looked at him innocently, profiling him as she did so. He looked pleased, but frustrated. “You want to tell me.”
He shrugged, feigning nonchalance. He did want to tell her, but more because he wanted someone’s opinion rather to than someone to talk to. Emily was an excellent choice. She had Penelope’s opinion as well as her own.
“You know,” she said, making a show of glancing in her coffee mug. “I could use some coffee. And breakfast. I skipped today.” She wrinkled her nose. “Come down with me?”
She seriously acted more like his sister than his colleague more often than not. He didn’t mind. It just cemented the family mentality within the team. “Sure. I could use something myself.”
“You shouldn’t skip breakfast,” she scolded playfully, grabbing her wallet out of her desk drawer. They made their way out of the bullpen to the elevator. Emily managed to wait until they were descending before turning to him expectantly.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“Um… the beginning,” she said, her tone implying it should have been obvious.
“She scared the crap out of me. It… it just came out.”
Emily cocked her head to the side. “Understandable.”
“What?”
“Think about it,” Emily replied with a shrug. “You left her alone the morning after and that was a huge blow to her trust. You’ve got to cut her a little bit of slack.”
“But it’s my child.”
“It is. And she told you, so the fact that it took her six months should be water under the bridge. What did you tell her?”
“First I asked her if I was the last to know…”
“Idiot.”
He ignored her. “We had to talk. She suggested later. I wanted then.”
“Logically.”
“We went back to her place and talked about it.”
Emily huffed out a breath as she got off the elevator and led the way to the cafeteria. “You would make a terrible girl.”
“Thank God I’m not one then,” he responded wryly.
“What did you talk about? Are you going to be a part of Peanut’s life?”
“Of course I am,” he said, his tone almost offended by the question.
She held up her hands in surrender. “What else?”
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” he said. Their conversation paused in the line, even though it was short. Occupational hazard to keep their private lives completely out of the Bureau. Or they tried, anyway. With the little clique the women had developed it was difficult to keep things private. But Derek trusted all three women so he wasn’t sure he was too concerned. He was confused for a split second when Emily headed for the tables spread about the room. “You want to sit?”
“I want to finish our conversation,” Emily returned. “The minute we go back upstairs this finishes and I haven’t gotten half of the information out of you that I want.”
Derek groaned, but slid into the almost isolated back booth. Emily was like a dog with a bone when she wanted to be and it seemed like she wasn’t going to give up this particular topic anytime soon.
And Emily seriously had no intention of doing so. There was so much work involved in keeping her friends’ love lives in tact that she needed as many details as possible. Especially when dealing with the insecurity-driven Penelope Garcia. “So you have a lot to talk about. Like what?”
“Place to live, for one thing. I think we’re both agreed on not wanting to shuttle the kid back and forth to Mom and Pops’ houses. That’s not fair to the kid.”
Emily nodded her agreement as she tore off a piece of the muffin she’d purchased. She’d eaten breakfast with Aaron earlier, a fact she was sure Derek knew, but she liked to keep her hands busy. “Anything decided?”
“No, postponed. It was enough to try and realize she was pregnant without having to worry about the details. Along with where you’re going to live there’s the issue of daycare when Pen comes back to work and where Peanut is going to stay while we’re on cases…What about you and Hotch?” He caught the split-second deer-in-the-headlights look. It had been a rather fast change of topic.
“What about us?”
“Well, you’ve been together how long?”
Emily blushed. “Eighteen months, next month.”
“Hotch isn’t one to play serious. When are you guys stepping up?”
“We’re not talking about me,” she scolded. “We’re talking about you. That couldn’t have been the extent of the night.”
“No,” he agreed. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it. This was the part of the night that had almost torn his heart from his chest at the pain he’d known he put her though. Self-preservation was a terrible thing when coupled with someone else’s well-being.
“Did you talk about that night?”Emily pressed, understanding his discomfort.
“Long story short, yeah.”
“Ah, airing insecurities is never fun,” she commiserated, sliding her muffin more to the center of the table. Banana was his favourite.
Derek started picking at the muffin too. “We agreed that doing the obligation thing was useless,” he said, understanding Emily would pick up on the nuances of the conversation. It had briefly crossed his mind, marrying Penelope because she was pregnant, but more specifically because it was an excellent chance to bind her to him rather than out of obligation for Peanut. He hadn’t thought about whether she’d see it that way or not.
“Smart choice. Too much stress.”
He nodded his agreement. “I told her she was going to go on a date with me tonight.” The pleasure was obvious in Emily’s eyes and on her face.
“Really?”
Derek simply nodded.
“That’s awesome!”
“She didn’t seem to think so.”
“Pen often doesn’t know what’s good for her, don’t worry about it. She’ll come around.”
He huffed out a breath. “I don’t understand where all of the uncertainty is coming from,” he admitted allowing his frustration to get the better of him.
“She’s been the invisible computer geek all of her life, give her some time to adjust to someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
“Your perceived and totally wrong faults aside, you’re that jock that she could never have. You’re the guy who just doesn’t date the slightly nerdy tech goddess that hides behind computer screens,” Emily tried to explain.
“I don’t see her like that.”
“I know that,” Emily agreed. “She doesn’t. Just to add another insecurity to that list of yours.”
Derek chuckled. “We make quite the pair, don’t we?”
“It certainly is a relationship of insecurities,” she agreed. “We all have things we don’t like about ourselves, but remember, Pen was there for the case in Chicago. She knows a lot about you, not because she’s looked it up herself but because she had to so she could help save you. Yet you both insist on causing problems for the rest of your loving family that would love it if you would just deal with everything already and start dating. No sense wasting time arguing on whether or not you’re attracted to each other.
“But that’s not the way Pen sees it. She sees herself as someone no one would want. She’s sure she’d going to end up with some average or less than attractive man and people who are as hot as you “I’m pretty sure I’m paraphrasing her there “ would and shouldn’t look twice at her.”
“That’s stupid.”
Emily laughed. “For you maybe. But you have your own insecurities about it that I could probably dispel with the same argument.”
Derek sighed. As per usual, Emily made excellent points, both about himself and about Penelope. “So?”
“So what?”
Derek tapped his fingers against his thigh. It was difficult for him to ask for help when it came to dating, but this was Penelope. All of the rules changed with Penelope. “What should I do?”
Emily arched an eyebrow at him. “You’ve already asked her on a date so you go on the date and see what happens.”
“Em… This is…”
“She can’t eat or smell chocolate,” Emily said, catching on to what he was trying to ask and saving him the perceived weakness of telling her. “She gets really self conscious when someone comments on an eating habit that seems particularly weird or off. And please, dear God, don’t let her eat tomatoes or celery. She says she’s fine, but they don’t settle in her stomach. But Peanut doesn’t usually give her much trouble. She’s had a pretty easy six months with the pregnancy.”
“I’m glad,” Derek admitted honestly. “Other than that…”
“She’s fine,” Emily nodded. “She’s actually a pretty good judge of her own abilities. There’s just a few things she doesn’t watch herself on.” She blew out a breath and tossed a piece of muffin at him. “You know her. She’s a simple girl.”
“Yeah right,” Derek said dryly, tossing crumbs at his colleague. “Pen’s anything but simple.”