Emily walked beside Derek through the parking lot, their cars parked near each other at Quantico.
"You want to go out for a drink?" he asked.
"I'm so not up for a crowd tonight."
"Come over to my place. I can make us a drink and we can play cards or watch a movie or whatever." said Morgan.
Emily grinned. "You want to supply me with alcohol and get the description of that 'Sin to Win' weekend, don't you?"
Morgan laughed and shrugged his shoulders, "Whatever."
"Surrrrre. OK, drinks at your place. I'll see you there."
They sat in amicable silence, broken up by short conversations about work, on opposite ends of his couch, playing gin rummy and drinking scotch on the rocks.
They were well into their second drink when Derek finally asked, "Ok, Prentiss. Spill. What's a 'Sin to Win' weekend?"
She laughed and shook her head at him. "I'm impressed you held out this long before asking again. I'm actually not totally certain. My hairdresser goes with some friends and she talked me into joining them. Pretty sad when even your hairdresser takes pity on you for clearly not having a social life. The weekend sounds like a bunch of debauchery, casual hook-ups and alcohol from what I can gather. I'm not entirely sorry I missed it."
"I don't know. Debauchery and casual hook-ups sound fun." he asked with a smile on his face.
"Not to me. I was going to play blackjack." she said with a totally straight face.
Derek laughed, and then sobered when he realized she was serious. "Oh," he said, giving her knee a friendly pat, "you're serious. Sorry for laughing."
Emily shrugged, "Don't worry about it. I was going for the gambling and to actually be going somewhere doing something other than work. The big descriptors for that weekend are really not my thing."
"What do you mean?"
Emily wondered if this was a wise conversation to have at all. But he was her friend. They'd recently started hanging out more, and while he shared a lot of things about himself, she was typically more reserved. She was a little buzzed. She considered him for a moment more before speaking. "Because I don't do casual sex. I've tried. Believe me, with this job, there are some nights when I could think of nothing better than to use sex to forget a bad case. But it's just not enjoyable for me without trust and when you combine trust and sex, you quickly end up with a relationship. And if there's one thing I don't do even more than casual sex, it's relationships, at least not at this point in my career. I couldn't even imagine trying to balance that."
Morgan blinked at her slowly a couple of times. His face read disbelief. But then he winked at her and easily said, "It could work if there was someone you trusted who also wasn't interested in a relationship."
Emily, initially stunned, laughed a second later and raised her eyebrows at him, "I think that's quite enough scotch for you, Morgan."
"I'm not drunk, and I wasn't really joking," he said seriously.
'Oh,' thought Emily. She let out a deep breath, "That would be a supremely bad idea. First of all, if anyone found out at work, I'm not sure whether Hotch would be able to transfer one of us fast enough before he had an aneurysm. Secondly, your seriousness makes me think you've thought about this before and I'm not sure that correlates to a casual sex agreement."
"You haven't thought about this before?" he asked.
Emily clammed up, unwilling to answer. She moved her legs off the couch and pushed her feet back into her shoes. As she stood, she said, "I should go."
Derek stood as well and followed her to the door. "You shouldn't drive."
With her back to him and one hand on his front door knob, she nodded. "I'll get a cab."
"I'll wait with you until the cab gets here. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. It really could be casual, Emily. I'm not up for a relationship anymore than you are."
She didn't open the door. Instead, she turned to face him. But when she saw his face, she was at a loss for words.
"I have an idea," he said, "I could kiss you. Maybe it will be so weird that we'll both look at each other and laugh. Or maybe it won't. Let's see."
She stared at him for what felt like an eternity, but in reality was only a couple of seconds, before nodding once.
Both of his hands rose. One landed on her neck and the other wrapped itself around her head, winding his fingers in her hair, so his thumb still rested gently on her cheek. When his lips touched hers, there was nothing weird about it. At all. In fact, Emily felt like she might spontaneously burn up in flames or faint. She didn't know which would happen first, and was surprised when neither did. Instead she moved her hands so they were touching his waist and she opened her mouth slightly, moaning when their tongues touched for the first time.
A minute later, when Derek released her mouth, when they were both gasping for breath and his lips trailed a gentle path from her cheek down to her neck, she breathed out, "This is such a bad idea."
"It probably is," he mumbled against her skin.
"But we're not going to stop?" she breathlessly asked as his mouth and tongue worked their way across her collar bone.
"Nope," he whispered.
After that, his hands reached under her shirt and hers reached under his. Emily stopped thinking about what a terribly reckless idea this was and just concentrated on how he felt. And then the clothing flew off in what felt like an instant. And his lips were everywhere, and when he sank to his knees and wrapped one hand around her upper left thigh while the other took her right leg and draped it over his shoulder, when his tongue touched her, she wondered why the fuck they'd waited so long to do this. She'd never felt so free in her entire life. She'd never done this with anyone she trusted so much. She realized she was still leaning against his front door, that her right hand was on his head, but her left was clutching the door knob, using it to keep herself standing. She felt a little ridiculous at how wanton she was being. And how passive. Emily Prentiss didn't do passive.
She moved her leg off his shoulder and pushed his head away from her, sinking to her knees in front of him. And they kissed again and wrapped their arms around each other and she thought, 'there is nothing casual about this,' but she decided she could pretend, that they could make this casual if they were careful.
She saw Morgan reach for his pants and pull out his wallet, fumbling to find a condom. Though that wasn't strictly necessary, since she was certain he was careful all of the time, and she had and IUD, she thought, 'Good. Casual. A condom will keep this a bit less intimate.'
And then she looked down as he rolled the condom on, and she gave something of herself away. "Um. It's kind of been a long time for me, so don't go crazy at first, okay?"
He gave her a sweet, understanding grin and nodded. "Got it."
He grabbed her waist and turned them easily, laying her gently down so she was on her back on the throw rug in his living room. She caught his eyes a few times as he rained kisses over her breasts and nipples and face and she had to close her eyes from what she saw there. This wasn't casual no matter what they were pretending it was. She only hoped she wasn't giving herself away about how she felt, because if she did that, their careers, their friendship, everything...it could all be over.
He entered her so slowly, giving her body time to adjust to him. And when he was completely in, he placed his mouth next to her ear and whispered, "OK?"
She nodded and he started moving, slow at first, but quickly picking up the pace. And Emily felt like she was both dying a slow death and going frantically insane at the same time. She bit her lip. She didn't want to make too much noise, didn't want him to know everything he was making her feel. His lips were on her neck and her arms were wrapped around him and it didn't take long before she felt like she was going to explode.
The inner war between remaining impassive and giving herself away waged on for about thirty seconds and the latter Emily won. She wrapped her legs around him. She whispered, "Harder."
Morgan slammed into her and less than a minute after that, they were both moaning and sighing their releases together. He collapsed on top of her and she kept her arms around him. He laughed quietly in her ear and she laughed as well. It had been amazing. And if one is being casual, laughter is an appropriate response rather than declarations of love and awe.
A few seconds later, he rolled off her and laid on his back next to her. They didn't touch. They laughed quietly. They talked about rules, about how they could keep doing this in a casual way. Condoms always because it felt like a barrier to closeness, a couple of times a month at most, no discussion about it otherwise, no strings attached, they could both see whomever they wanted to see if they wanted to, no sleepovers.
The agreement was cemented in a brief kiss and that was the end of the discussion.
And Emily added her own rule to the the list that she didn't share with him and he didn't seem to notice or care about: During the course of that evening, she never called him Derek, only Morgan. And that worked for her. It was a verbal barrier to real feelings.
They both knew they were playing with fire. They privately acknowledged that. They both thought they could handle it.