Derek Morgan was confused.
It didn’t happen often. As one of the members of the top behavioural analysis teams in the country, there wasn’t much that confused Derek Morgan. But the daffodil did. It was driving him crazy, just sitting there, on Emily Prentiss’ desk. No card, no identification as to who would be the sender, nothing but a single daffodil, meticulously set across the workspace of her desk.
And Emily wasn’t even in yet.
It was probably the latter that frustrated him more than the former. To the team’s knowledge “ and yes, he’d checked with every single one of them “ Emily didn’t have as much as an admirer, let alone someone who would send her flowers. He’d wracked his brain, trying to come up with a reason as to why there would be a bright yellow daffodil sitting happily on her desk and had come up completely empty handed. The only way he could think of finding out what the daffodil meant was to ask Emily herself.
If she’d just get her royal behind into work. And, as if he’d wished it, in she came. Derek didn’t even give her time to set her purse down. He accosted her just inside the doors of the BAU. “Who sent it?”
Emily looked up at him, startled and caught off guard. “Who sent what?”
“Nuh uh, you know exactly what I’m talking about?” Derek countered.
“I do not,” Emily rolled her eyes. “I just got here.”
He had to give her that. He dogged her path to her desk, running smack into her back when she stopped dead. He knew she’d spotted the flower. He watched as a contented smile blossomed over her face. He knew it! “Who sent it?”
“Why does it matter?” Emily countered, gently picking up the flower and absently setting down the bags she was carrying. It was such a sweet gesture on his part, really, if done with a lack of thought. He must have known she would get interrogated.
Suddenly, her head snapped up. Why that little… he’d done this on purpose, left her favourite flower on her desk for the world to see before she’d even gotten into the office. People walked through their bullpen all the time, though Emily never really knew or understood why. She’d been hit on by those agents that walked through their bullpen. He’d done it to show that she had someone, even if the daffodil wasn’t as obvious as a rose. She was going to have words with him about subtly later.
Derek Morgan watched all of this with absolute delight, exchanging a knowing look with Reid as he did so. It wasn’t often Emily had her walls down low enough for the team to look in, as it was with the rest of their little family. It wasn’t safe for the private things to be read when you didn’t want them to be. But there were those five minutes when each of them first walked through the doors of the BAU, where their entire worlds could be understood in a glance, just before the walls went up and the job became the focus once again.
“Who sent it?” Derek asked again, pulling Emily from her thoughts.
“None of your business,” she said briskly, reaching into her desk drawer for one of the many bottles of water she kept there. The daffodil now had a home beside her computer screen, both visible and partially hidden. She looked up at Derek and groaned. While she enjoyed the sibling-like relationship they had, she disliked how very close their friendship was to actual siblings.
“Oh! She’s here!”
Yup, he was dead. There was nothing else to say but that. He knew her colleagues, knew that there was no way a flower was going to say simple and inconspicuous on her desk. In fact, he’d probably deliberately placed it right there for the entire world to see. And now Penelope Garcia had her hooks in the topic.
“Who’s the lucky guy?”
“C’mon guys, really,” Emily almost begged. This was something she didn’t want to discuss and definitely not in front of the team.
“Not a chance, Em. You’ve obviously been hiding this from us girls and it’s payback time,” Penelope crowed gleefully. The blond had wondered if there wasn’t something Emily wasn’t saying those girls’ nights they had. It was in the way she conducted herself around other guys and though she flirted and danced, she never ever took one home. Sometimes Penelope was the most perceptive person in the entirety of the world, and other times, she was absolutely clueless as to what was going on. Emily had a man. Even better, Emily was trying to keep that man a well-hidden secret. And it had worked.
Up until the daffodil.
“Look, it’s a flower. It’s not even a rose. You guys are just reading what you want,” Emily defended.
Penelope and Derek exchanged an even wider grin. She was inadvertently playing right into their hands. Either that, or she had completely forgotten that she was standing in the middle of the Behavioural Analysis Unit of the FBI with the great minds she worked with every day.
“Defending yourself isn’t helping your cause,” Penelope almost sang in gleeful observation.
Emily closed her eyes, trying to gain control over her annoyance. It was a simple flower. Ha, who was she kidding? It was more than a simple flower. It was a declaration of possession and a sweet one at that. He could have been much more obvious, she knew, but that didn’t stop her from being frustrated at the absolute chaos he’d now created. How was she supposed to do damage control on this one without telling the team? And she knew that hadn’t been his intent in the slightest. They’d discussed telling the team, getting it out in the open so there wasn’t any issue, but then Emily had pointed out how much easier it would be to explain it to them if they had a past of keeping it out of their jobs. If the team knew that they’d been dating for months before the team put two and two together, they’d have a better leg to stand on.
And they’d been surprisingly and extremely good at it. For profilers, the team was missing something huge and it made both of them feel so much better about the whole thing in the long run. After all, now that they could show their relationship wouldn’t mean special privileges on the job or the problems of Protectiveness stepping on Independence’s toes, they were stronger for it.
But they hadn’t agreed it was time to share the news just yet. They’d only been on six or seven cases since their relationship began “ the jury was up in the air as to whether that first case counted or not “ and still, neither was comfortable with trying to explain things to the team. They knew the friendship had been growing, but none of them, it seemed, knew that the relationship had truly formed.
“Did we solve the mystery of the daffodil?”
Emily groaned out loud this time, dropping to her chair. He was going to be the death of her, she knew it. How was she supposed to fend off the entire team? Derek was relatively easy to throw off the scent. Penelope was much harder, but add JJ to the mix and she was so screwed. She was going to have to think up no less than a miracle to get out of it with his secret identity still in tact.
“Fine, there’s a guy. Happy?”
“Not even close, sugarplum,” Penelope replied with a gleam in her eyes. “We’re going to need a name.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Protective much?” JJ inquired with a teasing raise of her eyebrow. “It’s just a name. Unless you’re not supposed to be dating him.”
“Would I be dating him if it wasn’t allowed?” Not an affirmation or a denial, just a little bit of a bone to throw them. Usually, she was a stickler for the rules. This was a big one she knew she was breaking. But even the FBI couldn’t stop instantaneous attraction and building emotional ties.
“And what does Hotch think about this?”
Her crush on Hotch was well-known through the ladies of the team and JJ and Penelope had teased her enough that she was sure Derek had caught on. Reid was all too often lost in his own little world of genius and Rossi off in his own little world of self-importance. She was glad the girls weren’t insane enough to say something while Hotch was within earshot.
“He thinks his team should get back to work.”
Okay, maybe he wouldn’t be as dead as she’d originally intended. If he was going to save her from the interrogation, she’d have to cut back her wrath just that little bit. It wouldn’t be fair to throttle her saviour after all. The thankful smile she sent him was brief and she had to try and hide the way her breath caught in her throat. It always happened when she caught sight of him looking intimidating in his dark FBI-standard-issue suit.
“Perfect timing Hotch,” JJ said with a smile. “I’ve got a case for us.”
“Conference room, ten minutes.” Then he was back in his office.
Emily pulled out her phone with a sigh.
“Date to cancel?”
Oh, if only Derek knew how much of an out he’d just given her. Emily put on her best regretful face. “Something like that,” she answered, her fingers moving over the keys for a text message.
Derek grinned. “Who knows, maybe you’ll get another flower for your troubles.”
Emily smiled secretively as the message sent. “You know, maybe I will.”
--
You’re still in trouble.
He knew he would be, but he couldn’t hold himself in any longer. He was sick of the parade of people who came in here with the guise of doing some menial job to stop and chat with her. It annoyed him even more when they were male agents. Of course, he knew that not only was she taken, but she’d admitted to him herself that dating him was breaking her self-imposed rule of never dating another agent.
He knew the flower would be perfect. A touch of sweetness for her because daffodils were her favourite, and a message to the men that she wasn’t exactly on the market. There was a bit of twisted nature in him, the imp that told him to leave it on her desk, in plain view. He’d weight the pros and cons of her interrogation by the team against the message it would send to the rest of the bureau when word got around. The message won out over her annoyance of an interrogation.
Have you lost your mind?
He smiled at the next message. Not in the slightest. Matthews from CSA stopped by yesterday to drop off a DNA file.
He saw her shoulders shake and knew she’d caught on. She’d mentioned to him over the phone the previous night that he’d dropped it off when she’d already had a copy sent to her via inter-office mail. She and the CSA chief were long-standing friends through Ambassador Prentiss, a link she sometimes exploited, and the results had been in her hot little hand before they were officially released.
The one I already had. You couldn’t find another way?
Suggestions? What was he supposed to do? Toss her over her desk and kiss her senseless to prove a point? Not a chance. He wanted ten cases while dating under their belts before they readdressed letting the team in on the secret. Not to mention the repercussions of fraternization. And her leaving the BAU was not something they wanted to talk about. He’d considered doing it, but she was more open with her exultations of how much the team needed him. She’d probably resent him more for doing it. They’d have to talk about it, if they ended up telling the team.
He figured telling the team was like the icing on the cake, the broadcasting to the world that they were together. They had it all planned out. Subtle things, that they both knew the team would catch onto. Instead of restraining themselves from the casual touches of couples, they’d let the restraint go, a move he was most definitely looking forward to. The very personal teasing would become more and more frequent until finally, Derek or Penelope would just flat out ask.
Point made.
He’d thought so too. He checked his watch. Just in time for them to hit the conference room and see what JJ had for them. Four more after this and he’d talk to her again about letting the team know. He was kind of looking forward to it. They were all waiting for him, seated around the table, Derek tossing a ball across the table to Emily to occupy them while they waited.
He sighed as he caught her eye. Just four more. Four more and they wouldn’t have to be the best-kept secret anymore. He was looking forward to that.