Title: 20 Moments In Derek Morgan's Life
Rating: FRM
Length: 2839 words
Genre: Romance, Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Pairings: Morgan/Reid, Mentions of Morgan/Buford
Warnings: Mentions of non-con
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Spoilers: For 2x12 'Profiler Profiled', 3x16 'Elephant's Memory' and other random episodes which reveal facts of Derek's life
Summary: These aren't the defining moments of his life, but they matter to him.
A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY alexhider! *Pops balloons and dances* I hope you have a spendirific year, and a wonderful life, for being such a wonderful friend. A huge thank you to runriggers, who did an amazing job with this story.
1.
Derek is three when Desiree is born, Sarah stays at home with the baby sitter while Derek helps his Dad into the hospital, the man is trembling, and asks the receptionist just like his mother taught him, "Fran Morgan's room, please?" politely. The receptionist smiles kindly before looking down at her paper and giving directions and Derek has to tug at his Dad's shirt to get him moving.
He guesses that his Mom knows his Dad well, since she already gave him instructions on what to do when the baby is born. He sits his Dad down, ignoring the screams coming from inside the different rooms, before taking out a paper bag from his packet and handing it to his Dad.
His Dad smiles wearily and breathes into it. "Mom's fine, Dad," Derek repeats, "And so's the baby," because it has to be. Later, when he climbs onto the bed next to his mother, he stares down at Desiree Anne Morgan. She promptly throws up on his shirt, and he decides that he doesn't like babies.
2.
Three days later, they bring Desiree home, and Sarah starts babbling about children because she's been reading about them –showing off the fact that she can while the rest of them can't yet, Derek knows—and Derek is used to this, and turns to go to his room.
Desiree starts crying when Sarah continues to talk, though, and only stops when Derek laughs at the almost annoyed expression on Sarah's face. Then, Desiree makes a sound that Derek doesn't understand until his mother gasps softly, telling his father to get a video of her first laugh, and Derek thinks that maybe babies aren't that bad.
Desiree holds out a grubby hand in his direction, and Derek changes his mind. It's not babies, it's just Des who isn't that bad.
3.
Before Desiree starts going to school, Derek and Sarah meet up in Derek's room, because the girls share one room, to talk. The conversation starts with Sarah pulling out a piece of folded paper from her pocket, flattening it to reveal a timetable with colored lines and designs at the edges.
Sarah taps at a few of the boxes. "I'll look out for her on Monday, Tuesday and Friday cause we have breaks at the same time."
Derek nods and doesn't comment on the girliness of the paper because he knows that Sarah can throw a mean left hook. "I've asked Ty to look out on Thursday while I'm at the games, so I'll take Wednesday and the weekend, got it?"
Sarah nods, and Desiree never finds out why she's never picked on by the other kids.
4.
Derek's eight and complaining to his Mom that he shouldn't have to come home so early if Sarah gets to stay out later— "She's older, Derek-" "But she's a igirl/i-" "And she'd be able to take you any day, don't forget, boy-"—and the bell rings. His Mom waggles a finger to keep him still and Derek twists in his seat to look at the doorway.
There's a man at the doorway, and Derek sees a flash of bright red hair and knows that it's Detective Charlie, one of his Dad's friends. Charlie's not wearing his hat, which is strange, and Derek doesn't know what's happening but his Mom's leaning against the wall as though the air's too heavy on her shoulders.
After that first time his Dad is shot, his Mom makes sure that they tell his Dad how much they love him every morning before he goes to work. When Derek asks why, his Mom shakes her head and says, "Just in case."
5.
His Mom's right, of course, and Derek doesn't even know why he's surprised.
He cries for a few days straight, because his Dad says –said, Derek reminds himself—that he should never be ashamed of his tears. During the funeral, he doesn't cry, but Des clings on to his left hand, and he doesn't tug it away. Sarah's next to him, and his Mom's on the other side of her, a solitary line. The rest of the people he can't see, they're just blurs standing a little away from them.
Some of the people step forward after the priest guy talks, murmuring soft phrases along the lines of, "I'm sorry," that don't really help.
Sarah snaps then, "You didn't kill him, why the fuck are you sorry?"
His Mom doesn't scold her for her language, only crumples into herself as though the air's been sucked out of her, and Derek puts a hand on Sarah's shoulder and shakes his head. She takes a deep breath before straightening her back and walking away. None of them follow.
6.
Looking back, Derek can't even remember exactly what the boy said. Something along the lines of, "You sure your Dad's really your Dad?" Derek remembers other details though, the widening of the boy's eyes when he saw Derek's expression, the feel of something cracking under his knuckles when he swung it, the color of blood against the concrete, like mud on someone's shoe.
"-Derek, are you even listening to me?" his Mom snaps, and Derek shakes his head truthfully. His Mom looks tired, Derek notices. There are lines around her mouth and around her eyes, premature grey in her hair, a hunch to her back as though the air that was removed from her never completely returned.
Sarah walks in, takes in the spots of blood on his shirt and the bruises on his knuckles and only just manages to hide her smirk. She nods; she understands the necessity of what he's doing. "Derek," she says, "You shouldn't have hit the boy," she chides, but her eyes tell a different story.
Desiree looks between the two of them and wisely keeps silent.
7.
They bring Derek in to identify the robber. It is jarring, after he erased it from his mind, and he doesn't know why they do, but he remembers this man –fat, white shirt darkened by sweat, hair uncombed and looking oily—and knows that the man doesn't like him.
Derek doesn't remember the robber much. He doesn't remember much of the entire incident. He remembers covering the wound, remembers Des walking away from him when she first caught sight of the blood on him, remembers the stain of blood on his hands that couldn't be washed out no matter how much soap he used, remembers Sarah standing outside the shower as though afraid he'd try to drown himself.
But, when he steps into the small, claustrophobic box and looks at the row of people, it comes back to him.
He manages to gasp, "Second person from the right, it's him," and nodding when they ask for confirmation, before running out.
He comes home with a black eye and bloodied hands that day. Sarah doesn't comment as she passes him the first aid kit. Desiree climbs into his bed that night, pushing one of her books into his hands and waiting expectantly for him to begin reading. He does.
8.
He doesn't trust Buford. Derek doesn't know why. But his Dad told him once to trust his gut, so he doesn't trust Buford. He has to, though, because Des is doing well in her classes and they're going to need the money to get her things paid for. Sarah's already thinking about getting a job. His Mom tries to convince her to go to college, that the money can wait, but they know better.
Money can never wait.
"Derek, you've got to be quicker, man," Carl yells, and Derek shakes his head before trying the throw again. Carl nods before turning away, because he can't be attending to just Derek all the time.
Sometimes, though, Derek thinks that Carl doesn't care about anyone besides him.
9.
Derek starts wishing that he were wrong when Carl fingers the strings that hold up his sweats.
10.
Sarah knows, Derek thinks sometimes. Nothing that she explicitly says, but there's something in the way she holds herself every time she visits the Youth Center, the way she lies down on the bed next to him on the worst days, the way she has his favorite cookies baked for him whenever he returns from the cabin.
But, Sarah is smarter than that, Derek knows. When their Mom sighs and says, "Derek, come 'ere," after a long day training, and hugs him close, murmuring the fact that he'll get them out of there –all of them— Sarah turns away and walks out of the room.
Derek doesn't want to do it. Sarah doesn't want to let him do it. They both ignore the fact, though.
11.
When Rachel Althorn kisses him in high school –at the end of the day, when he's heading for the Judo classes that he's signed up for because getting beat up gets tiring after a while—he punches her.
He apologizes, but it makes no difference because by the next day Rachel Althorn has everyone believing that he's a fag and that he abused her and everyone laughs as he walks by, the whispers filling the corridors. Later, Althorn comes to him to tell them that if he breathes a word of what happened, the unedited version, she'll make his life a living hell.
Derek thinks about the feel of her hands on his shoulders and the tenseness in them because of it; of the feel of her soft lips against his and the memory of a cutting bite it evoked; of the smell of the perfume all around him and the fact that he could only smell sweat and muskiness. He shakes his head. She can't make his life a living hell.
It already is.
12.
When Justin Rathbone kisses him, it's different.
One because it's later at night and he's in college –he's bigger, people don't beat him up anymore, the Judo helped—and instead of reacting, his body freezes and he can't react. Because now, the hands on his shoulders have similar calluses to those from too long ago; Rathbone's teeth bite down into his drawing just enough pain from him; Rathbone must have just returned from football because the scent of pure imale/i surrounding him was nothing he could mistake for anything else.
But, the next second, Rathbone's hands edge too low, and Derek's hands are flying.
Rathbone isn't like Rachel, so when he appears the next day with a bruised cheek and a cut on his lip, he doesn't say anything, he just makes sure that he and Derek are never in the same room.
Derek thinks that Rathbone is worse than Rachel is. He makes Derek feel like Buford.
13.
Derek is given a single room. The only thing he needs to do to have it given to him is wink at the receptionist and flirt slightly with the woman handing out the keys. He had realized a few months ago that he didn't need to do anything actually, just act like he was supposed to around his Mom's friends, and that was enough.
"You lucky bastard," Tony yells, bounding into the room looking around.
Tony plays basketball. Derek isn't sure what in Tony draws Derek to him, but he has his suspicions, and he doesn't want to confirm them. He doesn't think that Tony wants to either. Tony whistles, low and long, at the sight of the poster of a half-nude woman and that of the car next to it.
Derek grins easily, but Tony leaves the room a second later, and Derek wonders if Tony feels the same sense of absolute nothingness that he does.
He locks the door behind him.
14.
Desiree is there when he returns, and she doesn't look him in the eye.
His teachers talked to him for a week about expanding his possibilities and how everything that happened may be more useful to him in the grand scheme of things. Derek wants to hit one of them. The coach who put him into the game, the player who tackled him, the ambulance that got there a little too late, the cars that slowed down and made the ambulance late, the child who got hit who caused the cars to slow down-
"Stop that, Derek," Desiree says, and Derek jerks his head up. Desiree shakes her head. "Don't do that."
Derek looks at her carefully, but he doesn't pretend to misunderstand. "How?" he asks, and he silently curses his voice for cracking within the syllable, breaking the word into an uneven two.
Desiree moves closer to him on the couch, laying her head on his shoulder, a hand on the knee that he would never be able to fix, and Derek grips her hand. "We'll get through this," she whispers, and Derek wants to believe her, but he doesn't think that he can.
15.
It should be more difficult, Derek thinks sometimes.
He sees the students around him playing games and whining about having to study, but it's easy for him. He wonders if Carl did this to him, sometimes. If his being able to focus like this –nothing else, just him and the work before him—is worth everything he went through. Then reality pulls him back and he knows that it isn't.
Derek sits at the desk, looking at the piece of paper that he wasted parts of his life away on.
Sarah is calling. He doesn't pick up, but he knows it's her. It's been her the past three times. She leaves a message, shorter than the others, less patient. "Derek, congratulations and all that, but pick up the damn phone already, would you? Just cause you're a lawyer doesn't mean you get to piss off your family. Especially not me. Don't make me come down there to get your lazy ass in gear."
The dull ringing tone fills the room, but Derek doesn't move.
16.
The explosions in the bomb squads, Derek finds, fills up the silence that presses down on him sometimes.
17.
He finds out that Reid is just as effective at filling up the silence the first time he hears the man speak.
There is a case on obsession and Reid is arguing something he said. Reid says something long and nothing he can understand, with too many numbers and facts and figures that blur into one another, and it's only after the case has finished –unsub is Gregory Mason, grocery store owner—that Derek realizes that the silence hasn't pressed him the whole day.
"Morgan?" Reid says, and Derek responds with a smile, honestly happy.
Reid seems reassured by it.
The question is innocuous when asked. "Do you want to have dinner?" Reid asks, and Derek doesn't question exactly what they're doing, or why, or whether they should be doing anything, because the noise that is the presence of Spencer Reid is worth everything.
18.
Sarah is worried for him, Derek thinks.
She smiles at Reid when he visits the family, offers him a drink, makes sure that he sits next to their Mom and not next to Derek and seems normal. But Derek knows Sarah too well. She has that same tenseness about her that she did years ago.
Derek shakes his head. iStop worrying./i
She gives a half-smile, then a shrug. iMy job, can't help it./i
Reid looks uncertainly between them, and Derek grins.
19.
When he wakes up in the middle of the night, sweat dripping off him and a scream on his lips that isn't heard and a name on his mind that he cannot say, Reid passes him a glass of milk and a soft towel and an even softer kiss without asking questions.
20.
Desiree meets Sarah when she's heading towards the door.
"Did you know?" Desiree asks, the voices of Derek and Reid and their Mom filling up the background noise. Sarah doesn't know what she's talking about. What happened to Derek when he was younger or what is happening now, with this thin, not-so-genius man that their brother's looking at like their Dad did their Mom when he was still alive.
Sarah nods, for both. "You didn't?"
Desiree hesitates, and that's answer already. Sarah thinks that Desiree asks because she wants to feel less guilty. Not so alone. Sarah wants to tell her that it won't help that someone else knows, but it's always been in her to protect her younger sister.
"You know how you and Derek used to look out for me when I went to school?" Desiree asks suddenly, and Sarah can't quite manage to hide her surprise. Desiree continues without pause. "How come we never did it for him?"
Derek laughs in the other room, loud and untroubled.
"We never needed to," Sarah says, before walking out of the house. Reid told her earlier that he'd need milk for the night, "Just in case," he said. Sarah didn't ask why.
Walking, Sarah wonders if she should have asked why. Should have asked it over twenty years ago.
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