2017
Derek got through the holidays. That was the best description he could give. He got through and wondered when the best time to have a serious conversation with Savannah would be. He wasn't being a coward any longer; he just didn't want to unnecessarily stress her out given the fact she was pregnant with their child.
That sentiment seemed genuine to him, the real him. Whatever awful, torn-up paths had lead them here, they were there now. He was trying to be true to himself given that reality.
The first week in January, he had a meeting at FBI headquarters. When it was over, he wandered down to the BAU. He caught a glimpse of Reid and knew they weren't off on a case. He tried to circumvent awkward conversations. He wasn't sure how long JJ had been in London, nor the excuse she'd used to be there. He knew she hadn't likely aired all their dirty laundry, be he had the sense that any member of the BAU would at the very least ask him how things were going, and he didn't have an honest answer he could give them. He quietly snuck into JJ's office.
When he first entered, her eyebrows raised and then her face settled into a loving smile. "How are you?" she asked.
"Hanging in there. Kind of. Actually, I'm horrible," he said.
JJ stood up and closed her office door. She stood behind the chair he'd flopped into and wrapped her arms around him from behind. "Horrible is not what I want to hear."
"How's Emily?" he asked.
JJ let go of him and came to stand in front of him, leaning slightly against her desk. "She's okay, but Derek, when I said I was here to listen if you needed to talk, I didn't mean this. I don't want to be your go-between. That would be me helping you betray yourself and it would be me betraying Emily. I'm not going to do that. If you want to know how she is, get yourself to a place where you can ask her yourself."
He looked at JJ. She was right. She was tough and she was no bullshit, and she was right. "What if she won't talk to me?" he asked.
"That's between you and her. I think she'd be more likely to talk to you if you could do so out in the open, but I'm not sure. I listen to her and I'll listen to you, but I'm remaining impartial in this. I want you both to be happy, and that should be independent of each other. Have you talked to Savannah?"
Derek shook his head. "I will, though," he said quietly.
"Do I need to beat your ass until you actually get the balls to say anything?" asked JJ with a smile.
Derek managed a grin. "I already hurt one person so badly. I don't want to hurt someone else."
"You hurt one person badly because you weren't honest when you should have been. Ask yourself if you're doing the same thing now and what that's going to look like if you hold it in until it implodes."
Derek stared at her and nodded. "OK. I'll talk to her."
He stood to go and JJ said, "Like, yesterday, Derek. Talk to her. I don't know when you lost so much confidence in yourself, but it's painful to see. You really do have the ability to do this. It's not going to be pretty, but you'll be better than horrible soon after. That I can promise you."
"Do you really think so?" he asked, his heart hurting again.
"Yes."
Derek nodded and left her office, staying close to the wall, and quietly made his way out of the BAU. But when he was in the parking garage, he heard a familiar beat of heels behind him. He turned to look and saw Penelope standing there with a sad, anxious look on her face.
"So I was a complete jerk. JJ took off for London and I snooped. I saw Emily's medical records. I took a stab and put some guesses together. I questioned JJ when she got back, and she was very good about not saying anything much. But something about Emily's behavior at Thanksgiving made me think whatever was going on involved you. I tried to call you, but you haven't been answering my calls. And you're still my best friend and I love you no matter what and I'm worried."
Derek blinked back involuntary tears. He missed Penelope Garcia every day. He missed the whole BAU. In fact, he knew if he'd stayed there instead of moving to the DC field office, this mess would never have gotten so big because the people who knew him so well would have called him on his bullshit a long time ago.
Still, he just couldn't re-hash the whole thing in the moment. "Penelope, you know I love you. You're my best friend, too. But I just can't. Not right now. You can go to JJ. You can tell her that I told you it was okay for her to tell you. I'll text her if you want. But I just can't talk about it right now."
Penelope stepped forward. She nodded her head and touched his cheek before she hugged him, concern and love evident in her face and voice. "OK, Derek Morgan. I'll wait. I can wait until you're ready to talk about it."
Derek went back to the DC field office the rest of the afternoon and did his job. His performance in the past couple of months had been lackluster at best, but for the past two weeks he'd been trying to rebuild the trust and respect his agents had built in him. It had taken just under a year, like Emily had said. He'd lost a little footing in November and December, but he was determined to not lose anymore.
He went home that evening and found take-out on the counter and Savannah at the kitchen table with her laptop. She watched as Derek got himself a plate of food. As soon as he sat down, she said, "So I've been looking at these nanny websites, and the whole thing scares me. I was thinking that I make enough money that you could stay home with the baby, for at least a couple of years."
Derek quietly laughed around his forkful of chow mein. "I make enough so you could stay home, too, Savannah."
"That's not the same, and you know it."
"Why not?"
"I'd lose my seniority. I'm moving up at the hospital and I'd have to start from ground zero again. You could pick up where you left off without a problem."
"That's not entirely true, but it's not the point. I can't keep doing this. I should have told you that a year ago. More than a year ago. My career is as important to me as yours is to you. We can't fight about perceived semantics anymore. You have to take that as fact, because it is fact to me."
Savannah stared at him. And Derek called up every feeling of calm and every ounce of strength he had at the same time. He relied on the fact that under this web of lies he was a good person, and Savannah was as well. "I had an affair. I know you know that," he said softly while meeting her eyes.
Savannah cleared her throat. "With Emily?"
"Yes. I had an affair with Emily, and you had your IUD removed without telling me and that's how you got pregnant," he said just as calmly.
Derek watched her eyes fill with tears. She didn't say anything. When she was able to gather some words, they started as denial, but Derek shook his head at her. "I'm being honest right now; do me the courtesy and give me the same."
Savannah looked down and whispered, "I did."
"When?"
"Last May."
He wanted to beat his fists on the table and scream at her, but he got himself together. Anger wasn't going to get him where they needed to be. He took a deep breath. "That makes me angry. I don't like it and I think it was a low move to bring a child into this world as a means of manipulation and revenge, but I understand how your thinking I had an affair pushed you to that point. I regret not being honest with you a long time ago. So this is where we're at. I care about you. I want to be a father. But I don't want to be a parent with you."
Savannah's mouth opened in shock. "You can't do that."
"Actually, I can. And in the long run, I think we'll both be happier. You're going to hate me for awhile, probably, but you deserve happiness as much as I do, and we don't make each other happy. You think about that. Do I really make you happy or does the idea of me being exactly what you want make you happy, and you're sad and angry when I don't deliver?"
Derek looked away from her then, with the tears falling on her face and the shocked and angry expression. He pushed food around his plate and let his words settle in. He felt again like someone was pummeling him in the gut.
It took her several long minutes before she said anything. "What exactly does that look like, if you don't want to be a parent with me?" she finally asked.
"We come up with a co-parenting agreement. Split custody that works for our schedules. I'll stay in this house, in the guest room, until the baby is consistently sleeping mostly through the night. I'll be here through that. We'll find a nanny. We'll adjust our work schedules around whose night it is to take the baby. When he's no longer an infant and you no longer need my support during the night, I'll move out and we'll make a plan that works for us."
"You grew up without a father for almost half your childhood," said Savannah vindictively.
"And that's why this child won't. I'm going to be there when this baby is born. I'm going to make sure my name ends up on that birth certificate. If you try to take him from me, I'll take you to court. But, Savannah, I want you to think about this. You don't want that. I don't want that. Whatever brought us to this point, we both want our child to be happy. And we can do that, if we're amicable and have his best interests in mind."
She sniffled and tried to catch her breath. She narrowed his eyes at him. "We're not married. I could disappear right now."
"You wouldn't. Your job and your life is here. I was terrible first, but you followed right behind me. And now there's a baby and I know the lies have been eating you up inside just like they've been eating me up. We're not these people. You're a good person. We're not a good fit for each other, but you are a good person and I care about you. I think we can raise an amazing child even if we're not together."
Savannah shook her head at him. "Are you going to go running off to her as soon as I let you go?"
Derek shook his head back. "I'm not doing this for her. I'm doing it for me. I'm doing it for you and for this baby. I'm not thinking about dating. Will I see Emily and talk to her? Maybe. Will you and I both eventually date other people? I'm sure we will. But that's not where my head is at right now. I want complete honesty. I want us to figure out a way to tolerate each other and care about each other given the reality that I'm absolutely not going to be staying in this house for the long term and raising a baby with you like this."
"What about the house?" she asked.
"It's yours."
"Just like that, you're letting it go?"
"Savannah, when I first asked you to move in here it was because I thought it would help us stay connected because of my travelling with work. It didn't really help. I switched jobs, and that didn't really help. Tonight I came home and you told me I could easily just stop working and stay home with the baby. I feel disrespected, and as a result, I disrespected you in the worst way by having an affair, but that all stops now. I know you love this house. If you want it, it's yours. I want our son to have two homes with a yard. I want you to find a way to be on board with me and make his life good, despite the adult mess I started and you helped create because we just weren't honest with each other. I don't want that to be his burden."
"But I love you, Derek," she cried.
"No, you don't. You love an ideal of me that you can't have no matter how hard I try. You deserve better. I deserve better. We can find that if we let each other go."
Savannah stood up from the table and pushed back on her chair forcefully. She didn't say anything else. He heard her stomp up the stairs and the sound of the slamming bedroom door.
The whole conversation went a little better than he'd actually hoped.
He couldn't eat. The whole thing was still awful, but it was an improvement. It was a path to getting back to the man he once knew. It felt awful in the present, but it was honest. It was a life he could live with.
He cleaned up the kitchen and went upstairs. He didn't go into the bedroom. He didn't get clothes to sleep in, and he didn't get his toothbrush. Instead, he went to the guest room, stripped down to his undershirt and boxers and laid down on the bed. His natural instinct was to go into their bedroom, hug Savannah, tell her he was sorry and hadn't meant a word of it, but that type of thing was what had gotten them to this point.
He held back, and he fell asleep with the hope that the truth actually would set them both free with time.
When his legs couldn't take it anymore, he moved Emily away from the wall in his hotel room in Los Angeles and carried her to the bed. His muscles were aching and he loved every minute of it. He tried to lay her down gently, but failed. She fell back onto the bed and he pulled out of her and she hissed and then laughed.
"Smooth move," she said with a smirk.
He laughed too and crawled over her, but she pushed on him and he complied. He laid on his back and she crawled over him, straddling him and taking him in her hands, finding the right position before sinking down.
He groaned and she smiled and placed her hands on his chest, moving up and down on him. She sighed and moaned, but the smirk never left her face. "What's that look for?" he managed to moan out.
She laughed again and leaned forward to kiss him, only breaking her rhythm a little. She gasped out, "I made a bet in my mind, how many minutes you could keep me up against that wall. I'm smirking because you didn't make it as long as I thought you would."
"Now you've done it. You've challenged me," he told her, a laugh in his throat and a smile on his lips. He pushed on her shoulders and sat up with her. He used all of his strength, lifting her and never losing contact with her. He had her back up against the wall in seconds and she laughed again.
"I'll have to remember to challenge you more often," she sighed as he started moving his hips again, ignoring his weak muscles.
He could see her clearly, her legs wrapped around him, one arm around his neck and on arm flung up against the wall, her head moving side to side and uncontrollable moans falling from her lips.
I've never seen anything more beautiful in my life, he thought in that moment.
He startled awake when the alarm on his phone started going off. He was hard and his heart was racing and it took him a second to remember where he was. In the guest room, in his house that he'd renovated with care and handed to Savannah on a silver platter the night before as an offering so they could find a way to raise their child together. Separate, but in peace.
Everything about him deflated at that memory for a moment, but then hope found him again. It was a new morning, he'd said what he needed to say. For the first time since leaving Los Angeles the past October, he didn't feel completely horrible.
He got up and knocked softly on their bedroom door before opening it. Savannah was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Sorry," he said softly. "I just need to get some clothes."
He felt her eyes following him across the room. "I'm so mad at you. And I'm so mad at myself," she whispered.
He faced her and nodded. "I feel the same way, but anger doesn't last forever as long as we keep talking."
She shook her head at him. "I'm not so sure. But I thought about it for half the night. I don't want to let you go, but I do want our child to be happy. So I'm going to go with this for awhile and see where we end up."
Derek stepped forward then. He wanted to kiss her head. He wanted to hug her. His instinct was to make her feel better, but it wasn't appropriate given the circumstance. He settled for touching her shoulder. "I think we both care about each other enough that we want each other to be happy. It's going to take time to let that settle, though, the idea of being happy and not being together."
She nodded and wiped the fresh tears from her eyes. He wanted to say he never wanted to hurt her, but that was a shallow phrase. If he never wanted to hurt her, he would have ended things long before they got this far, he wouldn't have slept with Emily. He was delusional during all of that; he wasn't anymore.
"I'm sorry you're sad," was what he finally settled on.
She nodded and stood up, going to the bathroom. He saw the door close and heard the click of the lock.
It didn't bother him. He knew this was going to have ups and downs. For the second time in a month he was saying goodbye the right way, and delicately navigating through the fact that there was a baby in the equation.
That morning, before he left for work, he sent an email to Emily. It was short. I just want you to know I can be here for you if you need to talk.
She never answered.
Their bodies were slick with sweat and Derek loved it, how his body slid easily over hers, how she responded to him, how being with her made him feel. As demented as it would have sounded to anyone else, he loved that they could talk about the darker aspects of their work, and the next minute be all over each other. And that's exactly what had happened in that bed in the hotel room in Montreal.
He looked down at her face, how her hair was a mess under her, how she was moaning and begging, "Please," and he said it again. "I love you." The dam had been broken on their not saying that phrase the day before, and he'd said it several times since then, and every time it felt better coming out of his mouth.
She stopped moaning and looked into his eyes. She smiled. "I love you, too. But if you don't make me come soon I'm going to go certifiably insane."
He laughed and moved his arms to hitch her legs up higher on his torso and started moving again. She fell apart soon after that and it was always so hard for him, to keep moving and not stop and watch her.
He'd never felt anything like that before in his life, how he felt with her. And he wanted it all, but didn't know how to play his cards right to get her.
Derek startled awake from a dream again. It was the middle of February and the guest bed had started feeling like home. JJ had been right. He got totally honest, and things got better. They weren't great, but each day he felt like Savannah moved away from the "I hate Derek Morgan" platform and closer to the "We can be amicable and figure out a way to raise this child" side of the pendulum. There were little things that added up to that reality. They both stopped living like lovers and started living like roommates. There were no assumptions about take-out or making dinner. At first, he came home and she'd have dinner for one at the table. And he started taking care of himself in that manner as well.
Some nights she'd stay closed off in the bedroom, but some nights they'd watch TV together. That started happening more frequently as the weeks went by. He'd ask her how she was feeling. He'd take care of her within reason, by getting up to get her another glass of water, or making popcorn when she asked for it.
With firm boundaries, with care, they were slowly becoming friends.
Her parents flew out the first weekend in March, and she asked him to leave, preferring to explain the whole situation on her own. He wasn't sure what she told them, but he felt confident she hadn't totally thrown him under a bus. He stayed with Penelope that weekend, and told her the whole mess. Sometimes she smacked his arm and sometimes she cried, and she shook her head a lot, but in the end she hugged him and made him feel like he wasn't alone, and that her friendship and love was unconditional.
The next weekend, he flew out to visit his mom and he explained it all to her. The fact was not lost on him that on this very weekend the year before, he was with Emily in Montreal. The thought made his heart ache again. His mom was who he counted on her to be. She didn't like it, she was appalled at first by his behavior, but she accepted the reality. She hugged him and assured him he was a good person and that he'd be a good father. And that she loved him.
Between all of that, he kept a careful eye on the Department of Defense website, waiting for Jeb Hansen's job posting to appear. It never did, which led him to believe that Emily had taken the job. He didn't reach out again, but he wanted to. He wanted to be there for her so badly that sometimes he felt like he might be having a heart attack, the way his chest seized up with emotion. But he'd reached out and she wasn't answering, which meant she didn't want to talk to him and he had to accept that reality, too.
April came and the due date approached and Savannah started smiling around him again. For awhile he looked for ulterior motives, like all of this was a ploy to reel him back in, but that wasn't it. She'd accepted this and they were friends, he realized. With the pressure completely gone, with no one he felt like he needed to apologize to for a late night at work, with no more expectations that he was falling short of and with Savannah accepting the reality, they both started feeling happy again.
He wasn't in love with her. There was no thought of starting over, or trying again, or anything like that. But Derek was getting hopeful that maybe this kid was going to make it just fine with an untraditional family, but two parents who loved him, lived separately, and got along.
They attended birthing classes. They went out for coffee after. They talked.
One night, a week before the baby was due, she asked him why. Why he'd had an affair.
And he was honest. "It started because I wanted one night with someone who knew everything about me and accepted me as I was."
Savannah nodded. "I was awful about that."
And Derek reached over and touched her arm. "You weren't intentionally awful. I think my job is the type where it's difficult to understand unless you've been there. Emily had been there and it made it easier. But Savannah, I want you to know that there's someone out there for you. We're going to be all tied up in this baby soon, but don't let go of that. You are a good person. Don't ever think that the terrible thing I did was because you aren't a good person who deserves love."
Savannah blinked back tears and nodded. She touched her bulging stomach and said, "I did a terrible thing, too."
Derek shook his head. "The deceit of it was terrible. This baby isn't. I have confidence in us. We're going to be okay and he's going to be great. We have to let all of the past go now."
"But in six months or so you'll be moving out?" she asked.
"I will. But I'll only be a phone call away if he's sick or you need me. And I'll have him half of the nights. Just like the parenting plan we signed stated, Savannah. This is it. It's our reality. It doesn't matter who started it or what I did versus what you did. We're going to have a son that we both love in a way that's different than a lot of families, and that's okay."
"I want you to have the house," she said quietly.
"No," he responded instantly. In his mind what he was thinking of was a day far in the future when maybe Emily had forgiven him, when they started over in a different way where they were both true to themselves. He wasn't giving up on that hope and he needed a fresh start. "The house is yours, Savannah."
"Then I want to refinance and give you your half. Derek, I'm serious. I don't want a handout. I don't need it."
"Okay," he told her. "We can figure that out. Let's just let him get here and we can figure that out before I move."
"Are we even allowed up here?" asked Emily as Derek guided her to the roof of the hotel in Los Angeles.
"Emily, you run the Interpol office in London and I run the FBI field office in DC. I'm pretty sure we're not going to get busted by a security guard."
"I've never been much good at breaking the rules," she said as he pulled her through the door and onto the roof.
Derek started laughing at those words, and she joined in a second later. All they'd been doing that whole long weekend was breaking rules and it was crazy that the thing she was objecting to was climbing onto the roof of a hotel.
When they calmed down, Derek spread the hotel blanket out and laid down. He patted the space next to him and Emily laid down as well.
"What are we supposed to be looking at?" she asked.
"Smog, apparently," he said. And they both laughed again at the hazy dark night.
He rolled onto his side and looked at her. "I hate that this is our last night here."
She turned to look at him. "Me, too."
He thought it then, how he wanted endless nights with her forever, but he didn't say it. He kissed her instead. He kissed her and coaxed her out of her clothing and made love to her on that roof of the hotel in Los Angeles, with the hazy sky above them and sadness about the goodbyes they'd have to say the next day.
On April 14, 2017, Joseph Christopher Morgan was born. Joseph was for Savannah's grandfather. Derek didn't care about names. He looked into his son's eyes after he was born and vowed he was going to be the best father. He was kind towards Savannah and they smiled at each other. But there was no embrace, no loving exchange between two parents who were going to spend their lives raising a child together.
Derek was comfortable with that, and Savannah was at least resigned to it. She was happy and loved her son as well.
Derek was right there when the social worker came in and watched as both of their names were written down on that birth certificate form. There was no questioning that this was his son; he looked exactly like Derek even in infancy.
He took three weeks off work and fell more in love with his baby every day. They put the bassinet in the hallway between the bedroom and guest room and Derek stirred the second he heard the baby start to fuss. He helped. He was a loving friend to Savannah, and he was an excellent father to the baby he started adoringly calling Joey. And sometimes JoJo when Savannah wasn't around because she hated it.
They refinanced. Derek took the money and put a down payment on a house with an in-law unit just about five minutes away from Savannah's house. He moved his mom into that in-law unit, an eager grandmother who was happy to serve in the role of nanny and who respected the choices Derek and Savannah had made in order to raise their baby right, even if it was different; a woman who understood the occasional late night given Derek's career, and someone both he and Savannah knew would love Joey unconditionally.
Three months later, when he felt like his and Savannah's paths were no longer precarious, when he felt like he'd done everything he possibly could to make sure his son would have two loving parents who got along, when he felt like the man he once was so many years before, Derek got onto the Department of Defense website and found Emily's new email address. He asked her if they could talk. He felt comfortable reaching out again because he hadn't had a dream about her in a month, and he thought he could count on the current him not being blurred with the past him, the person neither he or Emily recognized.
He sent it in the morning, and he waited for several hours for a response. Around three o'clock in the afternoon, he got an email back. "Would you show this email to Savannah?"
"Yes, I'd show it to her," he replied back.
"I could do lunch on Thursday."
Derek smiled and felt tears in his eyes that he blinked back. He'd see her on Thursday. Even if they could only ever be friends, he wanted her friendship back as the Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss they were so many years ago.
He wanted her back in his life in whatever capacity she was willing to be there.
