Chapter Ten

Author: greeneyedconstellations
Story: The night Emily gets no sleep at all

19th July 2019

A lot happened in the past two weeks. Last week the caseworker gave Hotch and Emily the foster and adoption licenses.

They would have a meeting with the agency next week to start their home study and therefore had to get all the needed documents and information from all over the place, filling out questionnaires as well.

Most of the time after work the couple spends looking for the documents or filling out the papers. The more time passed the more Jack felt left out and although he didn't say anything Emily could feel how his demeanor changed towards them. You could call that motherly instinct and it hurt Emily that they were doing that.

On Tuesday Emily proceeded to talk to Aaron about this situation.

"Aaron, we need to take a break. We should spend more time with Jack as well," she said.

Aaron proposed to go to the Kings Dominion theme park as they had a lot of attractions for children of Jack's age.

After agreeing he talked to Strauss the next day and Strauss proposed that the team would have the day off and go together, as they had to work on Independence Day.

Packing up they met up on Friday morning at Dunking Donut. Everyone packing a snack on the go they left. The kids were excited. Emily Aaron and Jack had a talk the day prior and talked about what was happening and that they still love him very much and he would always stay their son.

Whilst driving there Emily decided to go into the back with Jack to play or read. After a while, he fell asleep and Emily began to search a fanfiction.

For this night she wanted something fun and with the team. Going through various Titles and summaries she stumbled over one. It was about a night in a motel and herself getting no sleep.

A quick glance over at Jack she saw that he still was asleep.

Concentrating on the text she began to read.

He was a delicious blonde cherub that she was starry-eyed over, but Emily Prentiss was currently cursing the days Henry Lamontagne was conceived, born, and had promptly taken over his mother's life.

With JJ on maternity leave, Emily had been subjected to sharing a hotel room with Morgan. And at the moment, his loud, largely unintelligible sleep-talking made her curse Henry to the highest heavens with a string of indecorous expletives.

HAHA, yeah. As JJ was on maternity leave, she did curse these dates going on a case. But Henry still was adorable. But she hated sharing the room with Morgan, he was the worst sleep talker of all times.

Emily pulled the pillow from behind her head and smothered her face into the cotton material. "Morgaaaaaaaan, for the love of god!" she groaned.

In the next bed over, the dark-skinned agent slept deeply, hardly aware he was slowly torturing his teammate to death. At first, she tried to ignore it, but it was entirely impossible.

It actually would have been funny if it weren't so horrid.

She hated it when he sleeps talked. On these occasions, she always ran on little to no sleep. Which had gotten her in a dangerous situation more than once. But since the marriage, she was half lucky to be with Hotch.

The team was holed up in Mesa, Arizona after wrapping up a case earlier that evening. Hotch decided that rather than fly through the night, they would rest, and head back to Quantico the following morning.

And thus began Prentiss's misery.

So really, if she thought about it, and thought about it she did, both Hotch and Reid were on her shit list. Hotch for granting their pilot a good night's sleep and Reid, who usually roomed with Morgan, for not insisting on the importance of earplugs.

They never were in Mesa, Arizona yes but in another town. That was one of the cases where she had to share a room with him and then was almost kidnapped by the killer.

Emily told herself his incessant sleep talking would have to stop eventually, right? Until she was to be graced with that hour of cessation, she resorted to counting to 100 in each of the six languages she knew.

First came Arabic, then Russian, she inserted English into the fray then, then Spanish, followed by Italian, and completed her little diversionary game with French.

By the time she got to cent, French for 100, she was drowsy enough to attempt to close her eyes.

It was eight minutes of blissful silence before Morgan started up again, this time with a giggle and a shriek and a muffled string of syllables.

That's what she could do best, counting to a hundred in 6 different languages. It helped her to relax and to keep it cool. But she felt like it would be getting worse.

She scrolled a little bit down to read further as a tapping distracted her.

"Mommy, I have to pee." He said and she wasn't surprised. A two hours drive was almost never without a break.

"Baby, we need to take a break. Jack has to go to the toilet." She said and he agreed to look into the rearview mirror for just a few short seconds.

They were in three cars.

The Hotchner family with Reid and in the second car were The LaMontagne family with Derek and Garcia. In the last car were Rossi, Strauss, and Dashiell, as well as all the bags.

"Reid, can you give the others a call. We will take the next exit in…2 Miles." Hotch said as they passed by a sign for the next Stop.

2 Miles later there only was half an hour drive left but with a little Child, you can never know when it is too late.

Stopping right after one another they stepped out. Henry went with Will and Dashiell while Hotch went with Jack. The women including Reid and Morgan went inside the little café to buy drinks.

They waited outside for the others to come out again and soon enough they were on the road again.

Arriving at nine a.m. they bought their tickets and the park wouldn't be open for another half hour, so they decided to go to. the hotel rooms they will be occupying for the night.

Everyone was exhausted after almost eight hours of walking and going on rides. The kids and their parents or aunt and uncles also had a lot of fun. At seven pm they ate dinner and by eight all kids were asleep.

Luckily the team got one of the three group rooms, which had one living room alike a room, and around it two bathrooms and four bedrooms.

In the first bedroom, Morgan and Garcia share a bed and Reid got one bed to himself. JJ, Will, and Henry occupied room two. Room three was reserved for Strauss, Rossi, and her son Dashiell. Last but not least Emily, Jack, and Hotch slept in room four.

Bringing the kids to bed and preparing drinks they met outside in the living room again. Seating themselves on the couches or armchairs they talked about various things. About how JJ's pregnancy was going and how the adoption process was.

At around nine Reid asked for the fanfiction Emily searched.

"Ready to go. It's a team-centered fanfiction. It indeed is funny but it has a lot of true parts.

Emily flung herself off the bed with a growl. She shuffled to the bathroom to search for something, anything, to stick in her ears. She didn't care if that something were razor blades. She nearly wept when she discovered the hotel-issued cotton balls perched in a porcelain bowl on the sink.

Balling them up and shoving them into her ears, she found Morgan's chattering was stifled only slightly. She didn't care. Slightly was better than nothing.

She fell, quite literally, into bed and prayed and begged and bargained with a higher power for sleep. She swore she'd stop stealing Morgan's muffin off his desk every morning. She swore she'd call her mother when she got home. She swore she'd never again give Garcia's phone number to a stranger at the bar. She swore she'd actually smile at Strauss the next time she came into the bullpen.

She swore...

The next time she opened her eyes, she was greeted with the glaring display of 3:21am on the bedside clock and a horrifyingly…lecherous moan coming from Morgan's lips.

"Morgan, you really are a sleeptalker and it always keeps me awake. It's so annoying. But let's continue." Emily whined.

Her eyes went wide as she yanked the cotton from her ears.

Oh no…oh no. Is he…?

"Prentiss, mmm. Right there, princess."

Oh HELL no.

Emily bolted from their shared room without a second thought, shoeless, braless, and keyless. There was a limit to how much she'd endure. Morgan having an…erotically charged dream about her and letting her know it?

Limit reached.

"This really was a limit. Once after the case down in Florida, you had a sexy dream about Garcia. Let's just say I didn't sleep the night and still had some kind of nightmares." She said and everyone had to laugh.

Only Morgan was stone cold. Not funny at all.

"The last part sadly is one of the truest.

She knocked on the door directly across the hall, three short, tight raps. Moments later, a bleary eyed Reid opened the door, a bewildered expression plastered across his face.

"Emily?"

"You're on my shit list, Reid." She shot daggers with her glare. "Let me sleep here."

"What?" Reid was baffled. "But there's…there's no space. Rossi's asleep in one bed, and I'm in the other."

Emily ran her fingers through her ebony ponytail, mere seconds from stomping her foot like a petulant child in the throes of a temper tantrum. "I don't friggin care, Reid. You usually bunk with Morgan, and you neglected to tell me that he talks in his sleep.

"Not quite this one but it does come quite close."

"Is there a problem?" Ever their curt, stoic bossman.

"Oh, Hotch, oh thank God." Emily clapped her hands together and traipsed down the hallway towards him. Reid closed his door as she took her crazy elsewhere. "Did you know Morgan sleep talks? I haven't slept more than two hours, and I've tried everything, and I'm so tired, and he's having an inappropriate dream, and –"

Hotch held up his hand. "I get it. You can sleep in my extra bed."

He ushered her into his room and slid back into his unmade bed without another word. She'd remember, surely with horror, that she was wearing only a flimsy tank top and shorts and he was in boxers and a tee in the harsh, exposed light of morning.

For now, however, she slid into the crisp sheets of the second bed and sent up a quiet apology to baby Henry for cursing his existence several hours before.

"Hey, Hotch?" She wanted to thank him, but the resounding silence that greeted her was a godsend in reality. She'd thank him in the morning when they woke up.

Emily was somewhere in that wonderful, hazy place between waking and sleep, counting sheep as she did, when a thunderous snore ripped from Hotch's nose.

She sat up ramrod straight.

Oh fuck.

"As much as I love you, love. The first time we shared a bed I didn't sleep well. But snoring is easier to adapt to a sleeptalker. But sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night hearing you snoring." Emily said, everyone, laughing.

Afterward, they talked about the story and how much they liked it. The mix of comedy and seriousness was put to the point perfectly.

At eleven pm every adult fell onto the bed being asleep in minutes, bracing themselves for the next day.

Next: Time for the Home Study