24a/n: A far cry from my usual work...we're drifting into the humor genre for this one. This is based on the following prompt I found on an old CM forum: when rooming with another member of the team on a case, your character discovers they have an annoying habit.
In this case, Emily rooms with Morgan and discovers he talks in his sleep. A lot.
I had a lot of fun writing this one, so I hope you enjoy reading it just as much. Please share with me your thoughts!
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.
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.
"Mmmmmsaadjglfurgh," he chattered away like a monkey, oblivious to the waking world.
She pulled the pillow from her face and sat up with a start. She tossed her legs over the bed and stalked over to a sleeping Morgan, legitimately considering how many years of prison time she'd receive if she smothered him to death on the basis of self-preservation.
A glance at his bedside clock told her it was 1:38am and that she had had two glorious hours of sleep before Morgan's bizarre cry of "Toooootsie, come here precious muffin," roused her from her precious slumber.
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.
Emily retreated back towards her own bed and plopped unceremoniously on top of the covers.
"Tootsie, why you gotta….?" Morgan started with another string of gibberish.
Who the hell was Tootsie?
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.
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.
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.
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. Therefore, it's only fair that you give up your bed."
She could see the young genius was trying to process her attempt at logic, but given the late hour, and the nonsensical pattern to her words, he was having a tough time.
"Reid," she raised her voice ever so slightly. "I swear to god."
Their voices must have been louder than both realized because several feet down the hall, a second door swung open and Hotch popped his head out, looking equally as confused and equally as exhausted.
"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.