A Delicate Flower
Summary: Derek learns that even bad-ass profilers aren't allowed to stick their noses into the private lives of their colleagues.
Notes: Entry for "The Flowers Challenge" over at CCOAC. I chose Penelope Garcia and hibiscus and got Derek Morgan assigned. Set in Season 8 (canon), but the frat rules are out of order. Morgan/Garcia friendship, Garcia/? (surprise).
Disclaimer: Mine? *checking all cupboards and hidden corners* Nope, they're not mine. I'm not even close to that. Otherwise we would have heard about the renewal a long time ago, Emily would still be on the team, and the following story would be turned into a script.
Prologue
"Curiosity Killed The Cat"
Curious.
He just was curious.
Curiosity, in the first place, isn't a bad thing at all. No, it's one of those things that keep us going, broadens our horizon and teaches us about things we knew next to nothing before. But every once in a while, curiosity is a bitch and can get us into hot water faster than we can say "help" or our own name. And now it seemed that SSA Derek Morgan, profiler with the BAU in Quantico, was the last "victim" of this curiosity.
Let's rewind: It all started with a string of strange deliveries. Sure, working at the BAU bullpen came with witnessing the strangest things between Heaven and Hell, probably beyond that. And it wasn't the deliveries themselves that made Derek curious, it was their destination. The delivery guy always went straight to the office aka "lair" of one Penelope Garcia, Technical Analyst Extraordinaire and Derek's best friend here at the BAU. Okay, for the first few days, Derek didn't think too much about it. Pen was entitled to have a life outside the job, and with her passion for theatre, that wasn't that unlikely to happen every now and then.
But then, the delivery guy (who was, by the way, the same one every time) came to the BAU almost every day, at least every day the team was in. That was the moment Derek's interest in the strange deliveries got piqued. Even when he got home, he couldn't stop himself from thinking about it. What was in the boxes? He had noticed that the parcels had almost always the same shape. It couldn't be anything computer-related, those things came in all sizes and on top of that, the elite team of the BAU was equipped with state-of-the-art computers, tablets and other technical devices. Another question that the deliveries raised were: Who sent the parcels? Whenever he tried to talk to Pen about her personal life, she either evaded his question or she side-tracked him with another topic. So Derek assumed that "Baby Girl" was either happy with her current status (which was single, as far as he knew, after the whole Kevin Lynch disaster) or she was seeing someone and she was keeping the relationship a secret. Nonetheless, Derek decided to make it a personal "case" and do some investigation. Penelope needn't to know about that. Piece of cake for a seasoned profiler, right?