A special thanks goes to my beta LottyCharl!
I didn't set this story somewhere in the time, just around 3 years after Prentiss joined the team, at least.
Morgan and Prentiss are in a mall doing some shopping (actually, Emily is doing shopping while Derek is just following her around and complaining) when Morgan meets an old friend of his, causing in Prentiss feelings she never felt before...
I do not own Criminal Minds in any possible way; if I did, things would have been a little bit different by now - I'm referring to Morgan and Prentiss being together, was it understandable?! Hehe
Enjoy!
The trouble with jealousy
"Em, I'm tired, can we go home now?" Morgan said, following Prentiss around the mall, sounding like a 4-year-old boy.
"Oh, poor baby!" she teased him "C'mon, we've been here for barely an hour..."
"Wait, have we only been here an hour? Really?"
"Yup, an hour and 12 minutes to be precise. Look on the bright side, I just need to find a present for your mother and we'll be done so we can go home."
"For real?" he looked at her a little doubtfully "In this case I might have the perfect idea in my mind, but to do that we should get home..."
"I like the idea." she played along, kissing him seductively "But first I'd like to give her something that doesn't remind her I had sex with her son."
"Babe, she wants grand-kids, I guess she knows we should have sex to have them..."
"Honey, are you trying to make me change my mind? It won't take long, I promise."
"Fine, but do not complain if my performance won't live up to your expectations."
"Baby, once you were able to go on several rounds all night after a long case on the other side of the country; if you can't stand a couple hours of shopping now, let me tell you: you're getting older. And you're younger than me..." she kissed him better before taking the distance to enter a shop nearby.
Derek couldn't help but smile looking at her walking away.
He smiled thinking about how lucky he was to have Emily in his life, the life she changed the moment they met.
He was still deep into his thoughts when he heard someone saying his name in the crowd.
"That's strange, I think I see Derek Morgan but it's impossible because he hates shopping malls..."
"Greenaway?" the man said surprised "What a pleasant surprise."
"It's nice to see you, too." Elle said hugging him "So you changed your mind about malls, huh?" she asked pointing at all the shopping bags he had in his hands.
"Not really, these are my girlfriend's."
"Wait, can you repeat that? Because of the confusion I seem to have heard you talking about a girlfriend..."
"Very funny, Elle. I'm glad to know you didn't lose your sense of humor. What are you doing here, by the way?"
"Oh, I came here with my husband to have dinner and then watch a movie."
"Husband?"
"Yep, I'm married." she told him showing him the wedding ring "It's almost 5 years now. I've met him a few months after I moved back to New York and now I'm in DC again because my husband opened a new agency here."
By the time she finished her story, a man joined them.
"Derek, he's the man I was telling you about, Ryan Rodriguez. Ryan, this is one of my former colleagues from the FBI.".
The two men began to exchange the first pleasantries when Greenaway interrupted them:
"Are we going to see who this girlfriend is or what?"
"She just went into that shop, I don't think it will take long before she comes out... And there she is. Em!" he called out "Em, princess, come over. There's someone I'd like to introduce you. This is Elle Greenaway, the agent who was in the BAU..."
"Before I joined." Prentiss concluded the sentence for her boyfriend.
"So you're a profiler too?" Elle asked.
"Yep."
"She arrived a couple of weeks after you left." Morgan explained, starting a conversation between the four of them.
"Look," Ryan spoke "Elle and I were about to go to have dinner on the top floor; would you like to join us?"
"What a nice idea. You can also come to the cinema, if you want to." Greenaway added.
"We might stay for dinner, but we have other plans for later on. What do you say, babe?"
"Yeah, it's fine, I guess." Emily agreed, whispering when the other couple turned around "I thought you were tired..."
"Yep, but I can stay a little longer. After all we have to eat." Morgan spoke, taking her by the hand to follow the other two.
The four of them decided to eat in a fast food restaurant while having a small chat.
"Okay, Emily, I have to ask: what did you do to this guy to make him change so much?" Elle wondered.
"Why does everyone ask me this question?" the other woman smiled shyly "Actually I have no idea...maybe you should ask him what he saw in me."
"What can I say? She's the one. Usually people say that when you're ready to change you can feel it; I understood it the moment I met her. I've been way too lucky to have her in my life, I won't do anything to make her change her mind." he replied kissing his girlfriend's cheek.
After a few minutes of silence, it was Greenaway the one who started talking again:
"Hey Derek, do you remember that case in Louisiana, when we had to go to that stip club to interrogate the colleagues of that missing stripper?"
"Uhm, yes I do. Why?"
"Well, Emily, there was a girl who gave him her cell number written on her thong." Elle said, making Emily laugh, almost choking on her soda.
"Always better than that serial killer who kept writing love letters even after we arrested him." Morgan teased her.
"What can I say, I had a sort of agreement with bad guys back then. Sorry, Ryan." Elle said with a smirk, missing their old back and forth jokes.
"After all, you were just his kind of girl..." Derek kept kidding.
"Sure, to be the victim number 6!".
The two former colleagues kept remembering funny stories from when they were partner in the BAU, keeping the cheerful atmosphere high.
"Thanks Derek, I'm learning about sides of my wife I never knew about before." Ryan said in laughter.
"Yeah, right. But Morgan, if he asks me for a divorce you're gonna pay the bills for the lawyer!"
"In this case you force me to talk about what happened in Jamaica..."
"Why? What happened there?" Prentiss inquired curious, hearing about that story for the first time.
"Em, do you remember when I told you about my old friend who had a tourist village in Jamaica?"
"The one who sold it because of a crime that happened there, right?"
"Exactly. Well, that crime involves her." Derek kept telling Emily "I mean, she didn't do anything, she had only been framed by an UnSub."
"Only? The police entered in my room in the middle of the night to arrest me..." Greenaway explained her side of the story.
Half an hour later, the two couples parted with the promise of seeing each other again. While Elle and her husband headed for the cinema, Morgan and Prentiss left the mall to go back home.
Once the two Agents arrived at the house they moved in to 3 months before, they arranged the purchases and then they moved to their bedroom to get ready to go to bed to read or watch a movie.
Emily has been extremely silent since they left the shopping centre and it did not go unnoticed in Derek's eyes.
"Baby, is everything alright?" he asked.
"Yes, why?"
"You've barely spoken since we got back..."
"Sorry, I was thinking."
"About what, if I may ask?"
"Nothing really, I was just thinking that you seemed to have quite a strong connection with Elle."
"Yeah, she was my partner in the field just like you were...and still are."
"I better stay in the team a little longer before you decide to move on your new partner." the brunette commented sarcastically.
"Em, you aren't comparing what has always been between us to my friendship with Greenaway, are you?"
"I don't know. I mean, both Reid and the girls told me you were good friends, and I realize that you have a past before me, I just see some similarities that seem pretty strange to me."
"Okay, maybe something in the friendship I had with Elle might remind you of our relationship in the beginning, but we moved on from there. Look at us, we're living together!" the man said taking her hand.
"I get that, I totally do, but you see, even the fact that you call her Elle makes me feel strange."
"Em, that's her name..." he said, matter of factly.
"I know, but you called me by my last name for ages."
"Yeah, but if this counts as a justification, you need your spaces and invading them requires calm, just like for me."
"I'm sorry, I don't know what got to me."
"Hey, it's okay," he spoke, hugging her "it can happen. It's normal to be jealous, especially knowing my past."
"I'm not jealous." the woman admonished him.
"Okay, whatever. Are you feeling better now?"
"Sort of... There's just one more thing."
"What's it, princess?"
"About that vacation in Jamaica..."
"What?"
"You never asked me to come on vacation with you."
"Baby, we had a week of vacation together like 4 months ago and we're going to spend a long weekend with my family in 10 days."
"That's now. I was talking about before we started dating."
"Okay, just so you know, I had invited also Reid and JJ on that vacation, but by chance Greenaway was the only one who accepted. And then, I asked her to come because I knew that there would be nothing but friendship between us. Have you any idea how many times I would have liked to ask you to come somewhere with me when we were just friends? I was too afraid you would have said 'no', though..."
"Well, you should have. I would have accepted." she winked, kissing him before going back to getting ready for bed.
"Glad to know it. Thinking about it, I could have done something like when I asked you out for our first date."
"You mean when you asked me out without saying it was a date?" she asked, appearing at the bathroom door.
"It took me more than 2 years to ask you out alone, what did you expect?"
"That's true, plus I didn't mind it at all."
"Oh, I almost forgot, there's one more thing." Morgan said, as if something popped up in his mind.
"Which is?"
"I never asked Greenaway to marry me."
"You never asked me either..." Prentiss corrected him from the bathroom, loud enough to be heard by him.
"You sure?"
Emily, curious for his statement, deposited the body cream to get out of the room, but turning around, she saw Derek leaned against the bathroom's door with an opened red velvet box in his hand.
"B-babe?" she stammered in surprise "When did you..."
"Remember at the mall when we were in the bookshop and I had to go to the toilet?"
"Yeah, but you were only away for less than 5 minutes."
"What can I say, I had a pretty clear idea. I thought about putting the ring in a book by Vonnegut and making the proposal over the weekend with my family, but I cannot think about a better time than this...plus, you would never forgive me for ruining a book!"
"I would have forgiven you for that."
"Does it mean yes?"
"You aren't asking because of my jealousy moment?"
"So it was jealousy now?" he smiled.
"Can you just answer the question?"
"Em, I bought the ring even before meeting Elle. I just anticipated the moment to be in a few days. I wanted to buy you the ring last week, but then we were called out for a case...and also, I save my mom from having a heart attack."
"Are you sure she won't have one when we tell her we are getting married?"
"We are?!" he asked confirmation.
"You already changed your mind?" the brunette joked, trying to stop the tears from falling, failing miserably "Yes, I will marry you."
"I love you so much!" Derek said kissing her wife to be, sweeping away all her fears. _
I hope I pictured/wrote Elle correctly.
I also hope you liked it! If you want, you can leave a review - constructive criticism is accepted.
Thanks