She was terrified of what this could do to not only their work relationship, but also that of their friendship. Reality required her to regret it, yet she could not. He did, didn't he? Response to TV Prompt, Damages, Do You Regret What We Did. One Shot.

Regretful Reality

Penelope Garcia was flirty, sensual, and at times quite carnal, but she had never truly been the one-night-stand type of woman as she preferred affection and commitment to prelude sex. Last night had changed that fact into a falsity; she had had her third one-night-stand. The first had been out of grief, confusion, and a nibble of rebellion at the cusp of womanhood. Her second, long after the first, still meant much more to her than the stereotypical one-night-stand. The third which was this one, meant as much to her as the second, but reality required her to regret it, yet she could not.

She turned from the curled position on her left side to lay flat on her back to stare at the ceiling, the sepia (caramel) colored rumpled bed sheets sliding against her naked flesh felt strange, which had made the overlooked reality, at last, emerge. She had become a notch on someone's bedpost or because she was still lying naked on a king sized hotel room bed; it would be more apt for her to think that she had become a notch on someone's belt. No, not just any man's belt, but a man that she knew, respected, and deeply cared for, yet all of that was undermined by the fact that she was his subordinate and he her boss.

She blinked back blurry tears of shame and inhaled a crackled breath bordering on panic. She sat up abruptly as she tightly, with her left hand, held the sheet against her. She bit her bottom lip and tried to remember what happened to her purple bedazzled eyeglasses, but she kept coming up with flashes of what had occurred and the sensations felt last night. She cringed as she realized how eager and aggressive she had been. Splotches of red immediately formed upon her cheeks. She had to find her eyeglasses in order to find her clothes. She had to figure out a way to do this, and leave the large condominium without having an awkward and mortifying moment with Hotch. That thought immediately fleeted when she felt his presence in the room. He had not made a sound, but she knew he was there and he knew that she knew.

Her chest heaved as she took a silent startled breath, which bordered on panic. She could not do this. She was not strong enough. She was not courageous enough. She was terrified of what this could do to not only their work relationship, but also that of their friendship. Why was she stupid enough to cross that bold italicized doubled line? How could they have gone from boss-subordinate close friends to now one-time star-crossed lovers? What made him distort his tightly kept personal and business lives? Sure, they had been friends for several years, and grown much closer in the last couple, but their friendship did not have the ammunition to sever his career and incarcerate her. This new development could possibly have enough ammunition to tarnish the team. They both recognized the unfortunate prediction, which explained why neither had yet verbally acknowledged the other's presence.

She began the attempt to breathe regularly when two slight beeps shrieked throughout the heavily silent room. She did not need to hear those tiny beeps to know that he had left. Neither, did she feel violated or angered, that he had chosen the route to retreat rather than advance into something unknown. Moreover, she did want him to vocalize the obvious conclusion that he regretted what had occurred between them, because reality had required her to regret it too, but she would not.