Longed For Someone To Hold
A Penelope Garcia/Derek Morgan Multi-Chaptered Fan Fiction
Chapter One
October 2011
Penelope Garcia loved the smell of fall, because it signified that Halloween was approaching. As a little girl, she loved Halloween, but it was not until she became a teenager that it had become her favorite holiday. Halloween was the one day out of the year that people did not stare at or make fun of her. She had always had a unique fashion sense that many people did not understand, even before her decent into the Goth scene, after a drunk driver had killed her parents.
She sighed as she remembered the injustice of what had happened to her parents. The sting of their absence was no longer as pronounced as it had been, but it still hurt and would forever would. She was brought out of her melancholy thoughts when she heard her best friend call out to her. She looked up from her position under the large oak tree in the courtyard of her apartment complex and brightly smiled at the man who had been her best friend for the past eight years.
"Baby girl, you ready?" He asked as he stepped off the sidewalk unto the grass to walk toward her and the large oak tree.
"The question, my dear," She responded playfully as she smoothed the lines of her dress. "Is whether you'll ever be ready to handle this gorgeous Goddess?"
His stride shortly paused before he grinned and closed the small distance between them. As he took off his designer sunglasses and placed them upon his head, he retorted. "Oh baby girl, you always look beautiful, but today you look fucking sexy."
He gently grabbed her left wrist and intertwined their fingers. Her breath hitched and her eyes dilated. His grin widened and his eyes sparkled. He gingerly tugged her toward him and she landed with a gasp against him. The hand that held hers tightened his grip as his other hand found a home on her right hip. He caressed her hip through the fabric and bit his bottom lip. She placed her free hand on one of his biceps. He groaned as he felt the swells of her breasts press against his chest. As he spoke, his voice dropped decibels with each word he spoke seductively. "I'll handle whatever you want, whenever you want, however as long you want, and as many times as you want."
She almost forgot to breath, but when she felt his hand on her rounded backside, she choked on the shaky breath that she had been attempting to inhale. She trailed her hand up his bicep, his shoulder, up his neck, over his ear lobe, down his jawline, then to the back of his neck. His jaw clenched and unclenched as she trailed her hand up his bicep, around his shoulder, up his neck, over his ear lobe, down his jawline, before trailing back up the taut jawline and settling around the back side of his neck. He slowly lowered his head toward hers and although she did stop breathing, she went to help bridge the space between them. Her lips were an inch away from their destination when the ringing of his cell phone broke the spell that they had cast upon one another. He let go of her hand to answer the phone and she hastily stepped several steps backward.
"Morgan." He gruffly answered the phone as he gave Penelope an odd look not understanding her desire to get away from him so fast.
The odd and concerned looks that he gave her made her turn away from him and she blinked back shameful tears. She had forgotten herself and had gotten too deep into their playful banter. Over the years, she had found herself doing that exact thing more frequently, but not to the point where she had physically offered herself to him. She had stepped over the only boundary that stood between them, an unspoken and invisible boundary that screamed never to kiss, because kissing lead to sex and from her experience sex ruined any relationship whether romantic, or friendship. She cherished her friendship with him more than everything including her love and desire for him.
As Derek listened to the caller, he swallowed and watched Penelope fidget a half of a yard away from him. Did the idea of him kissing her repulse her so thoroughly that she did not want to stand near him? He had thought that she had wanted it, but had she been participating in their banter and had he interpreted it wrong. He shook his head as if to clear his mind and he concluded that she could not have faked her reaction to him. She wanted him, hell, she had told him years ago that she wanted him, but he now felt as if something was keeping her from letting herself have him and he wanted her to let him have her.
"What?" He asked the caller. "Oh, yeah, I'm at Penelope's now." There was a pause for him to listen to the caller's response. "Old man, you need to watch it." There was another pause before Derek said in an irritated tone that was on the borderline of anger. "Goodbye."
He stared at Penelope's back for a minute before he walked toward her and threaded his left arm through her right. She slightly jumped, but she did not pull away. He looked at her concerned and his mouth formed a thin line when he realized that he had made her cry, but she had dried them in the attempt to hide them from him.
"Baby girl," He sighed in a mixture of concern for her and disappointment for his self. "Are we okay?"
She blinked and a solitary tear slid down her cheek, which the pad of his right thumb quickly wiped away.
He caressed her cheek just under her right eye and tried to apologize for her discomfort, but she interrupted him before he could finish. "Penelope, I'm."
"No, you don't have anything to apologize about." She interrupted him; because she did not want to him apologize, because if he were to do so, it just might kill her emotionally. "We just got caught up in a heated moment. No worries, my wonderful chocolate friend." The word pierced both of their hearts, but Penelope continued onward trying to ignore the pain of loving someone who could never her the way that she loved him. "Already forgotten."
Already forgotten? He would never forget it as long as he breathed yet he decided that he would pretend to try. He swallowed and forced a smile, but felt the need to tell her how he felt about her. "I love you no matter what."
She blinked again, but fortunately, for her she was able to control her tears. She knew that he loved her as she was his best friend, but why could he not love her as she did him? She forced herself to smile and playfully replied. "I love you too."
Hope had made his heart swell and his smile almost genuine, because the way she had told him that she loved him, he detected something more, but when she continued, he chalked it up for him wanting to hear what he thought he heard.
"You're my best friend, Derek. I don't know what I would do without you." Penelope had added, because she had felt that she had almost revealed her true feelings to him and she felt that if she had it would be a disaster to their bond of friendship.
His heart was breaking, because he was in love with her and she had just told him that she loved him, because he was her best friend, but he plastered a playful grin across his face to hide the pain. She felt him pull away emotionally before she had felt it physically. He unthreaded his arm from hers and stated. She thought that he was pulling away, because she had made him uncomfortable with both her actions earlier and her heartfelt declaration of love that she had tried to cover up with the implication that she loved him, because he was her best friend.
"Let's get to Rossi's before he cancels the cooking lesson." Derek stated as he placed his arm safely around her shoulders, as a friend would do.
She swallowed and her heart crumbled as she felt the loss of the intimate contact, which was replaced with a friendly, almost brotherly contact. She inwardly shuddered. She had been continuously learning how to handle Derek loving her as only a friend for years, but she could not learn how to handle him loving her as he did Sarah or Desirae. Either way he loved her, she would lose, because he would not be in love with her. As she had an inner meltdown, she decided that she would go ahead with her original plan and disregard the one that she had only that morning convinced herself to use.
She had longed for someone to hold for so long that she would have a baby artificially inseminated with the father being chosen from a list of strangers than ask Derek to supply what she needed for the procedure. If it had been possible, her heart would have shattered, but as it was already nursing a broken heart, it hurt to breath. She had wanted to have his baby and give his mother the grandchildren, but as that no longer seemed to be an option she would do it by herself.
To Be Continued