A/N: My muse disappeared and then reappeared right before I was going to bed last night...I had to write it before I could sleep lol! Probably the first time that's happened in a long while! 4am is faaaar too early (or late :P) to be letting my muse run free, but this time it paid off, although it ended up nowhere near as cheesy as the movie that inspired it's rehab :P
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds...although man I wish I did!
It had been four months and 13 days that I held my tongue, that I had tried to keep my – some would call it perverse - jealousy under wraps and off of his radar. As each day passed, as the number of times he mentioned her grew, and as the familiarity and intimacy of these mentions increased I felt my control slipping. Felt the mask begin to crack. And as I sat here remembering all the feelings that had welled up in me over that time I knew that the day that it cracked completely was nearer than I had ever wanted it to be.
I had never thought I would be the jealous type, and realistically I have nothing to be jealous of. They are just friends, he stresses and I believe him. Why wouldn't I? I mean, we are best friends after all. Have been for 8 years now. Best friends, nothing more, nothing less. I know him backwards and forwards, as well as he knows me. While she hardly knows him, even now she's still learning that he doesn't drink tea unless its flavoured, although he wouldn't admit that; he takes his coffee black and with sugar, dark and sweet just like him; that when he's down all he needs is a hug and a friend to talk to; and that there are things in his past, horrific things that no child should ever have had to endure and that although they were utterly unfair things to have happened, they have made him the wonderful man he is today.
Maybe that is the issue I have with her, with this new friend of his. (Well part of it anyway – the other part I am not allowing my heart to dwell on at this moment in time, the possible loss of my best friend is too much to deal with on its own never mind the loss of the one man I have loved to the moon and back.) The issue I will let my heart and my mind dwell on is one that some would say is silly. And maybe it is, but right now it is there, it is in my head and I cannot budge it. My worry is that our friendship, our bond has lost its special quality, and therefore appeal to him and sometimes when I lay awake I can't help the tears that fall when I think of what we were and what we could be. Has our banter become boring to him? Has our flirting become mere comments he flings back to appease me? Has he lost in interest?
These questions had never entered my mind before, they hadn't even made it to germination, and yet here they are, racking up like balls in a billiards set up, waiting for the figurative 'white ball' to knock them apart, knock them into chaos. They are causing me to doubt the one relationship that has never wavered, the one relationship that has continued to grow with every passing day and has begun to make me doubt the permanency of it. As he learned more about this new woman, about the woman as lovely as her name suggested – Carmen Bowville – my fears and my perverse jealousy grew.
My fear that he enjoyed the discovery of new people, of new hidden talents and personalities behind the walls people put up, was the driving force behind my feelings. Was our relationship too comfortable? Did he feel that there was nothing new to learn? And that this new woman and all her unknown hobbies, secrets and habits were more interesting than boring old me?
Was I being replaced?
That was it. That question hit the proverbial nail on the head. It was the one that had been nagging at my mind and my heart and was slowly pushing and pulling at the cracks on the mask I was trying to keep on. I love him, as a colleague, as a friend, as a best friend, as more than that. I couldn't afford to lose him. My parents had died when I was 18, I lost them. My brothers never tried to find me once I went underground and never tried to contact me since, I had lost them. I didn't think I could handle the loss of the closest thing I had to family; my best friend that I had always wished to be more than that.
I knew I was jealous of this woman coming in and 'taking Derek away' from me in the wishful romantic side of me. That I could not deny, there was no use in trying to. But I had been content with him as my best friend for years now, had resigned myself to the fact that was all we would be. I had accepted it. What had never occurred to me was that someone could replace me in his eyes as his best friend. And Carmen was beginning to look like she could do just that.
As the mentions became more frequent and the information about her shared became more personal I couldn't help the pang in my chest growing. I was no longer as interesting to him. His eyes never got that same intensity when listening to me as they used to, there was a glazed quality sometimes, as if he was merely humouring me. And it hurt more than I could say, more than I would say, much more considering I would never say a word. As much as I wanted to it wasn't my place, I had no right. Derek deserved to be happy. Who was I to butt my nose in where it did not belong because I was jealous. Jealous that someone else could help take his troubles away as I had for so long now, jealous that someone could help him get through the cases and his paperwork where I had been the one to do that before. I was jealous of all the little things, the silly things, and all the way up to the bigger things. Nothing I did could shake this feeling.
It was a perverse sort of jealousy because we still hung out, we still spoke freely, we were still very much friends and I was glad he felt he could to talk to me about anything, that was always a big part of our friendship. But it still stung each time he mentioned her name, every time he shared a story of them. And what was worse was that she was lovely, as lovely as her name suggested and I couldn't hate her for that. Why did she have to be so nice? It wasn't fair.
I worried that one of these days the mask was going to crack too far, far enough for the friend and profiler in him to realise that something was wrong, to realise that I am not wholly happy with the situation. I have gotten extremely good at hiding things that I really do not want people to find, and not just in code either; going underground had helped me learn ways to bury emotions as well. I do not want that day to come when the mask slips too far, because I could not begrudge him any happiness, I would not either. My Chocolate God of Thunder deserves every happiness that would come his way. I would never make him choose, me or her, friendship or more. Because there's a part of me that is scared that I would lose, and, there's also a part that wouldn't be able to live with myself if I won. I would never deliver that kind of ultimatum. Not when its sole reason was my perverse jealousy over a man that surely can have more than one strong bonded friendship in his life. I just had to try and remember that.
I could put it partly down to PMS-ing and partly down to having a bad day, after just finishing off an even worse case. Whatever the reason, emotions were running high that day and when he came into my office and said those words that I had grown so used to hearing after the last four months – "Carmen said" – I snapped. It was the first time I had ever snapped at him quite so harshly face-to-face, or at all for that matter.
"Just what the blooming heck did your precious Carmen say now then, eh?!" I almost snarled before I even had a chance to take in his slightly lowered posture and his twisting hands. If I had taken a second to notice these tell-tale traits, I would have realised that my best friend was nervous and maybe then I would have realised that it was something big he was about to tell me. After all, Derek Morgan was very rarely nervous, whether being faced with the Ice Queen herself or staring down the barrel of a gun he never wavered for a second. And yet here he was in my office, nervous as I had only seen him once before – when he first came to see me after the abuse came out – and I was too blinded by my jealousy to notice.