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Penelope Garcia was angry. No, scratch that, she was furious. She had never felt so betrayed, especially not by Derek Morgan. She was also a little disappointed in him. She’d expected better behaviour from him, thought he was a better man. Apparently, she was wrong.
“Good morning, sweet cheeks!” Derek said cheerfully as Penelope walked into the bullpen.
She swept past him with her nose in the air, ignoring him. Derek watched her go, a confused look on his face.
“Penelope? Baby girl?” he called after her
“Do not talk to me!” she hissed, whirling around to face him and point a perfectly manicured finger in his face. “Especially not with that name! You have lost that right!”
With that, she turned her back on Derek and continued on to the kitchen, where she greeted Spencer with her usual smile and made her coffee while merrily chatting away with him.
—-------
Emily, JJ, and Spencer gathered around Derek’s desk, watching in amusement while Derek sat with his head in his hands, bemoaning his situation.
“Navigating Bad Mood Penelope is an extreme sport. How am I supposed to know what I’ve done if she won’t tell me?” he asked desperately.
“Did you sleep with her and never call her again?” Emily asked with a smirk, only half joking
Derek shot her a filthy look and his middle finger, not bothering with a verbal answer. Emily one-upped him by giving him both middle fingers.
“Did you question her knowledge, or her research methods? That’s a sure-fire way to upset me.” Spencer suggested.
“No! She knows I love and respect her genius.”
“Maybe you said something and she took it the wrong way?” JJ said, ever the sensible one of the group, “You just need to talk to her.”
“That’s all good and well JJ, but I’m not getting a very warm reception from her today. She probably wouldn’t give me an answer.” Derek pointed out. He paused for a minute, then added hopefully, “She’s not mad at you guys though. Maybe you could try for me?”
He was met with three horrified looks and rapidly shaking heads. Nobody liked prodding at an angry Garcia. They all knew she had the ability to destroy their lives with three taps at her keyboard, and she was petty enough to actually do it.
“Please?” Derek pleaded with an exaggerated pout.
He was met with three sighs and reluctantly nodding heads.
—----------
Spencer was up first. He spent ten minutes standing outside the door to Garcia’s office, too afraid to knock. Eventually, he found the courage to knock and enter.
“Hello!” he said nervously, internally cringing at how loud and high-pitched his voice had come out
“Hello?” Penelope said back, looking at him strangely, “Is everything okay, sweetness?”
Spencer sat down on the chair that Penelope pushed towards him and started nervously twisting his hands as he debated the best way to broach the subject. Penelope waited patiently, knowing that rushing a nervous Spencer was the quickest way to cause him to make up an excuse and run away to hide from her. Spencer eventually realised that his brains had failed him in inventing an amazingly subtle way to get the answer he needed, and decided to simply ask outright.
“Penelope, Derek wants to know why you’re mad at him but he’s scared to ask you himself so he sent me to find out instead.” he burst out.
Garcia paused for a minute while her brain caught up with what he had said. When it did, her face lost its gentle smile and she started scowling at him instead.
“Scared of me, is he? You tell that man that he better be scared of me! Better yet, tell him to be a man and face me himself instead of sending you in to do his dirty work! He knows what he did!” she ranted, getting progressively louder as she went on. Spencer didn’t wait to hear the rest, turning and running from the room in fright as she continued behind him.
—---------------
JJ handed Spencer a cup of coffee and rubbed his back soothingly as he sat in his desk chair, rocking back and forth. His eyes were wide, face pale, and he hadn’t said a word since returning from Penelope’s office. He wrapped his fingers around the hot mug and slowly looked up to meet JJ’s eyes. Derek and Emily stood a bit behind her, watching him expectantly, waiting for him to speak.
“Spencer?” JJ asked gently, “What happened?”
“She’s very very angry.” he whispered, “Derek should consider witness protection. It may be the only safe option for him.”
Derek’s face blanched in horror.
“What did she say, kid? Did she tell you why she’s so mad?” he asked
Spencer repeated verbatim what Garcia had said to him, and started rocking again. JJ shushed him quietly while continuing to rub his back. Derek looked terrified.
“It’s okay Spencer, you’re okay, she’s not mad at you, you were just in the vicinity. Don’t worry yourself.” JJ said calmly.
Spencer only whimpered in response.
—---------------
JJ decided to try next. Maybe the whole situation needed a woman’s touch, she thought. And who was more sensible than JJ? She couldn’t see a way that this could go wrong. Carrying a coffee in Penelope’s favourite unicorn mug, and a coffee for herself in her other hand, JJ tapped on the door with her foot and nudged it open.
“You haven’t been out of the office all morning, I figured you were overdue on a fresh coffee.” JJ said, setting the two mugs down on sparkly coasters.
“How blessed am I to have such a wonderful friend!” Penelope replied dramatically, gesturing for JJ to sit down.
“How are you, Pen? You seemed a little, ah, upset this morning.”
Penelope’s face dropped and she picked up her coffee for a long drink to avoid answering while she pondered what to say. The whole situation had upset her more than she cared to admit, but she didn’t think she was ready to talk about it without crying yet, and she had managed to wing her eyeliner perfectly on the first try this morning. She was not about to ruin that with tears.
“I guess you could say he kind of, I don’t know, cheated on me? In public? In front of everyone, including me?” she said eventually, trying to find a vague way to phrase it.
“He … cheated on you?” JJ asked uncertainly, “Penelope, you two aren’t dating are you? I thought your banter was just for fun?”
“You can cheat on someone platonically you know, it hurts just as much.” Penelope sniffed, feeling her eyes well up. If she didn’t get JJ out now so that she could recover emotionally with cat videos, her eyeliner would be smudged beyond repair. “I have so much work to do JJ, I’m sorry, maybe come back another time and we can have a nice chat and you can show me pictures of my beautiful godson and that southern belle husband of yours!”
With that, Penelope stood and ushered JJ to the door. JJ followed, totally baffled by the turn the conversation had taken.
—---------------------------
“So I got an answer, but I don’t think it really clears anything up.” JJ said, perched on the edge of Derek’s desk. Emily perked up, and even Spencer seemed recovered enough from his ordeal to be interested.
“Well what did she say?” Derek asked impatiently “Don’t keep us waiting, woman!”
JJ raised her eyebrows at him and stared him down, until he mumbled an apology. With a graceful nod and smile, she continued.
“She said you cheated on her platonically, in public, in front of everyone including her. Any idea what that means?”
Derek stared at her, brow furrowed, noiselessly opening and closing his mouth as he thought. Unable to find any words, he shrugged his shoulders helplessly and dropped his head to his desk with a bang.
“Ow.” he said, voice muffled.
—------------------
Last up was Emily. If Derek was being honest, he wasn’t holding out any hope for Prentiss to be the one to fix the situation. She was much better known for making delicate situations a thousand times worse. Sometimes she even did it on purpose, just to entertain herself. Little did Derek know that that was exactly her plan.
“Hey sexy lady, I hear you’ve got beef with Morgan and I want in. I’m always down to dunk on him.” she said, marching into Garcia’s office and sitting down without invitation.
Penelope looked around in surprise, then saw that it was Emily and relaxed.
“You’re not here to try and find out what he did so you can report back to him?” she asked sceptically.
“Oh, he thinks I am, but I absolutely am not. I’m here to roast that peacock of a man with you." Emily declared happily, “I’ll even start if you want!”
Penelope nodded, curious to see where this conversation was going.
“Well, I’ll start off soft to give us somewhere to go. Here’s my best Derek Morgan impression.” Emily rolled her shoulders and got into character. She flexed her biceps and lowered her voice and said “I’m Derek Morgan and my only personality traits are having big muscles and kicking down doors.” Then she kissed each bicep with a grunt.
Penelope laughed delightedly. Emily looked very pleased with herself.
—----------------
Two hours later, they were still at it.
“Did you know that he doesn’t even like the colour pink? He just pretends to because he knows it makes me happy!”
“What kind of name is Clooney for a dog? Oh I’m Derek Morgan and I’m going to name my dog after George Clooney! Don’t be a coward, that soft boy deserved a much cuter name!”
“He’s not even a good dancer, he just wiggles his hips around. It’s like he doesn’t know how to use his arms!”
“His driving makes me fear for my life, and I’ve actually had to fake my own death before! And they say women are bad drivers!”
“One time he kicked down my office door because I didn’t answer when he knocked. I wasn’t even in my office, I’d gone down to the archives to find some files for Hotch! The new door just isn’t the same as the old one.”
“Remember that time he shot that rifle inside the car while I was right next to him? I swear I’ve been half deaf ever since. He’s paying my medical bills when an eardrum replacement finally becomes a thing!”
They were interrupted by a knock at the door, which was a shame as they could easily have continued for a lot longer. The door opened and Hotch stuck his head round.
“Come in, Sir!” Penelope said brightly.
“I should have known I’d find you here, Prentiss. You’re both hard at work I see.” Hotch said, coming fully into the room.
“Garcia was just helping me with … something.” Emily said, waving her hand dismissively.
“We’ve got a case. We’ll brief and it’ll be wheels up in about an hour.”
Penelope and Emily nodded and got to their feet. Hotch let Emily through the door but put out a hand to stop Garcia before she could go through.
“There’s obviously something going on between you and Morgan. I don’t need to hear what it is, but I do need to know that it won’t affect the case. We’ve got three bodies and the clock is ticking down to the fourth. We can’t afford to waste any time.”
Penelope nodded in understanding, reassuring him that she could be professional.
She was very wrong.
—-------------------
Everyone was gathered around the round table, and there was a noticeable tension in the air. Garcia was openly scowling at Morgan across the table, Reid was sitting as far away as possible from Garcia, looking terrified, and Prentiss was flicking Morgan’s earlobes while he tried (and failed) to smack her hands away, simultaneously desperately pouting and batting his eyelids at Garcia in an attempt to garner forgiveness. When Garcia started to audibly growl, Hotch decided something had to be done once and for all.
“Right, this has to stop now. I’m giving us ten minutes to air our feelings like the mature adults we are all supposed to be, then we will be getting on with our jobs! Understood?”
Everyone nodded.
“Who wants to start?”
Pandemonium followed. Hotch really should have seen it coming.
—------------------------
“Penelope terrified me this morning! Look, I’m still shaking!”
“She’s mad at me and I have no idea why because she refuses to tell me! How am I supposed to know what I’ve done if she won’t even tell me!”
“JJ tried to bribe me into spilling my feelings with coffee!”
“ Derek’s earlobes are just there, I can’t be blamed, they’re practically begging to be flicked!”
“Good lord, we work with a bunch of schoolchildren.” Rossi muttered to Hotch.
“Penelope called Will a southern belle! He’s not a woman, Garcia!”
“Seriously look, I’m still shaking! Although that may be all the coffee JJ gave me in an attempt to help me recover from my trauma this morning.”
“Yeah, well Derek called Emily his baby girl and everyone heard it!”
The last one had the room going silent as everyone turned to stare at Penelope in disbelief.
“And we’ve finally gotten to the root of the problem.” Hotch sighed in relief
“Is that what this is all about?” asked Derek, “I’ve never called Emily that, why on earth would I? She’s a savage!”
Emily pinched Derek’s earlobe in between two fingers until he apologised.
“You did! Yesterday, we all heard you!” Penelope insisted, “You and Emily were talking and I heard you laugh and call her baby girl! She looked grossed out, which is why I’m not mad at her, but then Reid burst into the bullpen with his barbershop quartet and started singing a song about it! What a way to rub it in my face!”
Again, everyone went silent as they processed what they heard.
“Garcia … I don’t have a barbershop quartet.” Spencer said tentatively.
It was Penelope’s turn to pause as she processed this. After a moment she nodded thoughtfully.
“That’s right, you don’t.”
After another moment of silence where everyone else shared bewildered looks with one another, Penelope hummed to herself.
“Oh well, it must have been a dream! Sorry guys!”
With that, her metaphorical rain cloud disappeared. She blew Derek a kiss, which he caught gratefully, winked at him, and gestured for JJ to start the briefing.