OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: I don't own Criminal Minds, or any of its associated characters, plots, scripts or episodes.

AN: Suffering from writer's block. So you get this, which has nothing to do with anything!

"Sweetcheeks?" Penelope Garcia looked at the unrequited love of her life over the footboard of the, surprisingly comfortable, hotel bed. Derek Morgan turned from where he was constructing a bed roll from the extra blankets from the wardrobe, giving her a grin as he took in the full splendour of her oversized pink plaid PJs.

"What's up Baby Girl?" The endearment rolled off his tongue as it always did. Pen loved Kevin, she really did but there was a part of her that was always going to lust after the man in front of her. She was prepared to take a lot from him to keep their friendship going, including the mocking of her nightwear. There was one thing she wanted to know though.

"Why wouldn't you share a room with Reid?" Quite how adamant he'd been about this had shocked the three women in the party. Reid had seemed to take it in his stride and was currently across the hall sharing a room with Rossi so that Hotch got a room to himself, the two older agents somehow coming to an agreement between themselves with no input from the others. The room arrangements had worked out for everyone BUT Morgan who was letting misplaced gallantry keep him sleeping on the floor.

The agent looked shocked at the question and seemed to be considering which explanation would get him into the least amount of trouble. He took a moment but finally looked to have settled in an explanation he was prepared to offer up to the goddess of all knowing benevolence. It's veracity could be evaluated after it was told.

"Penelope." This wasn't good. They only ever used Penelope and Derek when something was too serious to joke about. "If I tell you this, it stays in this room. No snide little comments to Reid. No pokey little jokes at me. What you learn in ass-backwards Alaska stays here. Do we have a deal?" She could only nod. If giving her word meant that much to him how could she do anything else?

"Thanksgiving, two years ago," Morgan looked down at the makeshift bed as if trying to find the words. "The one after… the one after Chicago." Pen immediately felt guilty at bringing up such a sore subject to her friend. She reached over to switch off the lamps to lower the light levels, leaving only the light spilling from the bathroom, to give him a small measure of privacy. Climbing into the bed she shuffled down until she could no longer see him. This was as confessional as she could make it and she was sorry she'd started in on the path when Derek didn't have the opportunity to escape and there wasn't a bottle of vodka to take off the edge.

"When I went back that November I took Reid with me. My mom had mentioned, several times, that I should feel free to bring him along when I went to visit. Somehow he'd managed to make a good impression at the same time as accusing me of murder." Morgan laughed at the remembered anecdote Prentiss had shared with the team to Reid's intense embarrassment.

"Thanksgiving at my Mom's is this huge affair. It isn't just me, my Mom and sisters; it's aunts, uncles and cousins. There is so much food that there's no need for anyone to cook anything for the rest of the weekend. The addition of one skinny FBI agent wouldn't even make a dint. So I didn't call and tell her that I was bringing him along. That was my first mistake.

"My second was not telling Reid just how cold it Chicago could be. I mean it was Reid; this is the guy who spouts traffic flow statistics, you'd have thought he'd have read the average monthly temperatures for the major US cities.

"So I'd bought the ticket, without telling him, when I heard that he planned to spend the weekend holed up in his apartment reading. Just turning up on the Wednesday morning to tell him he was coming with me and that he needed to pack.

"We flew up straight from work and turned up on my Mom's doorstep. The look on her face when she saw the two of us nearly sent Reid chasing the cab that had just set us down. That set my mom off into a mad panic and she breezed straight past me to drag him into the house, leaving me to carry both sets of bags in her wake."

Penny had no idea where this story was going. It was no secret that Derek's Mom and sisters had taken to Reid during Derek's incarceration, so it wasn't surprising that that she taken Reid appearing unannounced in her stride, even at a family holiday.

"When we got inside it became obvious why she'd looked shocked. I hadn't told her that I was bringing Reid but I also hadn't told her that I was going to make it." Derek sounded embarrassed at his own bad manners. "There was a house full. Aunts and Uncles I hadn't seen since I was a kid were there and all of them were staying. I managed to talk to my Mom in the kitchen while Des had Reid cornered; we were OK to stay, she wasn't going to send us out to try to find a hotel, but were both going to have stay in my old room."

Penny sat up to get a look at her friend. This was starting to get closer to the issue.

"With the time zone change and the flights, on top of the day in the office, neither of us was really up for socialising that evening and went to crash not long after we'd arrived. My room at my Mom's was fitted out with a King when I was eighteen and went to college, which was great when I'd come home as it gave me space to stretch out when I came home that no dorm room could match but it does mean there isn't much floor space, and I could hardly ask Reid to grab a sleeping bag on the floor and I wasn't going to do it."

She almost laughed out loud. The reason Derek didn't want to share a room with Reid was that they'd shared a bed in the past? How twitchy a bed mate did that make Reid if Derek didn't want to share space now?

"My room has always been on the cold side, which has never been a problem for me. Then again I've got more on my bones than Reid does. Five minutes in the room and Reid's shivering, he's stood there in a thin t-shirt because our boy genius didn't have the sense to bring a sweatshirt. So I grab my old high school football shirt from the closet and pull it over his head before pushing him towards the bed.

"I swear, Garcia, that when I grabbed the shirt I didn't think twice about it. It was just another layer to keep him warm. He drowned in it, looked so adorable that I threated to get a camera to take a photo for you."

"You could have used the camera on your phone." That was a picture she wanted to see, and for a second thought about e-mailing Fran to see if there was any evidence from the weekend that she would be prepared to share.

"I could. But I had the entire weekend to get through and didn't need Reid pouting whenever he looked at me. Anyway, he got one side of the bed, I got the other. It was past midnight DC time by then and I fell asleep pretty quickly."

Derek paused in his recitation. "You know how Reid doesn't touch people?" The entire office knew this. It wasn't so much that he avoided touching people it just never seemed to come up. There was always something in his hands or some furniture in the way. "It's a lie. The man is an octopus. I woke up the next morning wrapped in one Spencer Reid.

Penelope grinned. This was the real juice of the story, the real reason he didn't want to share a room.

"It took me five minutes to extricate myself. Every time I unpeeled an arm it was back before I'd got out. I ended up being chased out of my own bed and falling on the floor to get out from under him." That was too much for her and she couldn't help but laugh out loud at the image of a sleeping Spencer manoeuvring Derek out of bed to appropriate the warm spot.

"Anyway." Derek waited while she fought to contain her amusement. "Reid got to sleep in while I went to spend time with the family. Thanksgiving was great. Lots of good food, lots of good conversation, my Mom desperately trying to feed Reid up. I swear he ate more that day then he normally did in a week.

"You know how turkey contains some chemical that makes you sleep? Well we all move to sit around to talk and doze but not Reid. He's in the kitchen helping clean up and knocking back the coffee like it's about to be outlawed. My Mom eventually cut him off telling him if he drank any more he'd not be able to sleep that night. Reid though is caffeine powered, cutting him off at eight when is body's telling him it's nine? No surprises that within the hour he was excusing himself to go sleep.

"I stay up talking and when I do go up he's curled up in a ball on one side of the bed, back in my football jersey, shivering in his sleep. He looked so young all I could do was slip in behind him and tuck the covers in as tight as I could around the two of us.

"I have no idea who we ended up the following morning, as when I woke up he was already awake and gone. That was his big mistake. I got to sleep in and Reid got dragged around the stores on black Friday!" Pen could tell that he was shaking his head at the thought of Reid at the mercy of his mother and sisters.

"So that meant he was exhausted again that evening and I had to rescue him from Sarah and Des who had him pinned to sofa asking him questions about what we did and who I was dating."

"They asked Reid about your dating habits? They thought he was going to be up to speed on your love life? Even then?"

"He knew enough to get me into trouble, listing every one night stand I'd had over the previous three months. I ended up dragging him upstairs to get him away from them.

"That night we actually talked about his lack of body fat and how it was sensible to share body heat so Reid got to be warm and I got to sleep without being disturbed by his shivering. How it was sensible to curl up together."

Sensible, yes that was the word Penny would use to describe her two best boys spooning in Derek's bed, under his mother's roof. Derek may be the hot shot profiler but, even though he was telling the story, he'd apparently missed the fact that his family had accepted Derek's date with open arms when he was taken to officially meet the family. "So you shared a bed with Reid with no problems, so why the refusal to share the room now?" She just about managed to refrain from asking if Reid had pointed out that sharing body heat generally worked best when all concerned were naked.

"Baby girl, he snuggles. Not content with just loosely lying down next to each other he snuggles. There wasn't an inch of space between us and, my god, it felt right; like holding my first serious girlfriend right. He's lying there in my shirt with his hair tickling my nose and all I want to do is pull him closer still. I felt unclean. This was my straight friend and I wanted to do to him what…

"I just wanted to get away from him but couldn't make myself move. Not that night, not the next night. The only thing I could do was get up before him so he wouldn't know and avoid being in the same situation again.

"I've had to watch him flirt with that barmaid; seen all the looks that he gets, which he's totally oblivious to and do nothing. God it's hard but I won't let anyone hurt him without going through me first. That's why I didn't want to share a room with him. And why you can never tell him."

The room fell silent, Derek lost in his memories and Penny to thoughts of how she could get her two friends together. Finally she could only offer up one thing.

"Derek. I promise I won't say anything. But I think you should."