Chapter 4

AN: Thanks so much for the reviews and for favoriting and alerting. Nice to know so many of my familiar friends are following along!

Dinner and Memories

Derek saw the smile on Penelope's face disappear as she watched her husband walk out the door. Her shoulders even sagged for a second—she'd always sucked at hiding her feelings—but then she was back to being her perky self.

She turned to look at him again with a smile that, try as she might, didn't quite mask the sadness in her eyes completely. "What would you like for dinner, Derek? You drove a really long distance to get here; you should get to choose what I make."

The urge—a bone deep longing—to pull her into his arms and hug away that look overcame him. He had to fight it, to resist the need to cuddle, kiss, and console her. She was a married woman now; that wasn't his job anymore.

Not that it ever really was.

Deep down in his heart, Derek knew that had been a huge problem in their seemingly perfect relationship over the past seven years. It was no surprise. He had been content having an emotionally intimate relationship without the sex, and doing that forever was not healthy.

Honestly, he hadn't really thought about having sex with her in over two years. He used to want to bang her every which way 'til Sunday in the early years of their friendship, but that urge had mellowed with time. Instead, they had been an opposite version of "friends with benefits," and he had been content with that. He'd found physical release with nameless, faceless women on a regular basis and shared his life and his heart with P.

That was why his heart shattered so terribly when she'd left. He could handle finding someone to fuck—that was incredibly easy—but finding someone who loved him—really, truly, wholeheartedly loved him—was so much harder.

And he was so in love with her.

He didn't want to ruin her marriage; he truly did not want to do that. He'd even stopped trying to break up her relationship after she'd celebrated her two year anniversary with Kevin. He'd known he had a place in her life and in her heart; he didn't need a place in her bed for his life to be complete. He'd dated other girls, and even talked about them with her. Hell, he'd even asked relationship advice from her!

He needed to keep things that way. So, instead of hugging her again, touching her, he told her in the plainest words the utmost truth to why he was there.

"Sweetness, I don't need fancy dinners, I don't need special attention, and I don't need thanks for coming," he said, feeling everything he had inside him well to the forefront. "All I need is you."

Penelope looked at him kind of oddly, and then she swallowed hard, like she was digesting a very bitter substance. It bothered him and made him wonder what he'd said that was wrong, but he didn't question it. He had a feeling it was a moment that was better without words.

"Well, then, I will make spaghetti," she answered, turning and hurrying into her little kitchen, leaving Derek to ponder the words that he'd said again.

"O.M.G! He didn't!" Penelope squealed at the dinner table over a huge plate of spaghetti. Even though he'd said he didn't need it, she'd offered the fatted calf for Derek. "Rossi got engaged again?"

This was a blast. It was just like old times, chatting about the BAU and the team, laughing at the relationships, and cringing over the cases. He felt transported, like he was back at her place in Quantico, instead of an old farmhouse. If not for the occasional baaing of sheep, he would've completely forgotten where he was.

"Hell, yes. Some island girl he met on vacation in Trinidad." (*snicker*) Derek beamed a grin at her look of shock, and then took a bite of one of the homemade bread sticks she'd made. Damn, his girl could bake! He reached for another one, and bumped his hand into Kevin's left hand.

"Sorry," Lynch mumbled, but not before Derek saw the glittering gold band on his fourth finger.

He nearly choked on the bite he was chewing. He was doing it again. Not his girl. She wasn't his girl. She'd never be his girl. Kevin sitting near her, Kevin holding her hand, and Kevin kissing her when he entered the room had reminded him of that, but his wedding band solidified it.

A nasty and deep envy, a jealousy like he hadn't felt in years, welled up inside Derek and rotted in his gut, burning and aching and churning.

It only lasted a second, before he was ashamed of himself. He wasn't a covetous man, and he wanted Penelope to be happy. He'd known something was off when he arrived, and he could tell she was homesick, but she'd never even come close to hinting she wanted to be done with Kevin.

Christ, he was sick, even thinking about stealing a married woman. He'd never sunk that low in his life. His momma didn't raise him to be that way.

He needed to include Lynch in the conversation and try to befriend the man. He'd tried in the past, but he'd had no commonalities with him. It was strange…P always said that Kevin was just like her.

"We are so similar, D!" she'd gushed on so many occasions. "He loves all the same things I do, and we can talk code and computer infrastructure on levels I've never been able to discuss before. He's so good!"

That had made Derek think he could be friends with Kevin. After all, he was best friends with P, and this was her male doppelganger.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

P was funny, giving, humble, and friendly. Kevin, on the other hand, truly lacked those qualities. His humor was funny only to other computer geeks. He'd get to telling a typical Lynch joke—"What do you call a bird that knows numbers and sings? A binary canary!"—and then he'd laugh like a hyena at his own damned joke, something that was a huge pet peeve to Derek.

And he was arrogant. A true "gatekeeper to the fount of knowledge." When he'd come to the BAU floor to visit Penelope, he'd looked down his nose at the other "less cerebral members of the FBI"…and then run like hell when Reid showed up.

Derek held back a chuckle—Now that was funny!

No, Lynch wasn't a thing like Penelope. He knew part of his thinking was skewed because he cared for Penelope, too, and Kevin was competition…

He frowned again. Not was. Had been.

Kevin had won, hands down.

"Baby Boy, are you all right?" Penelope asked, looking across the table at him, concern written in her midnight blue eyes.

He needed to remember his purpose. Just because he missed her, just because she was gone, didn't mean he could drop the wall he'd built for so many years. He was okay with it before, being second place in Penelope's life; he could be okay again.

He took his water glass and had a big sip of it before replying, "Yeah, I'm just a little dry after that long drive."