My Faith (Sequel to My Hope)
Intro: After Season 3 Episode 10 (True Night), more Morcia love as he cares for her, and they continue into new territory.
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds or its characters. I just really enjoy them.
It was Penelope's first day back to work, and Morgan was becoming insufferable. He'd been doting on her at home in between cases for about two weeks now, bringing her anything she needed, making her meals, and cuddling with her on the couch watching movies together. He still slept on the couch most of those nights, being a gentleman and letting her recover. Now that she was cleared to return to work though, he was anxious and concerned about every potential hazard.
As she insisted on carrying her purse at least, he carried her go-bag and laptop case up to the lair. He pushed open the steel doors, ushering her in.
"I can open my own door," Garcia protested for the millionth time. It was getting her nowhere. He was just so hardheaded.
"Not on my watch," he replied. "Now will you zip it?"
She stopped a few feet inside her door, becoming uncharacteristically quiet. Her monitors hung unevenly and tilted in unnatural angles. Crushed cans and half-empty food containers littered her normally pristine desk-space. A few discarded articles of clothing (perhaps a shirt and a jacket?) lay across an extra chair. Her mouth moved, like a fish gasping for water, but no words came out at first. When she finally recovered, all she could manage was, "What the hell?"
Bent over setting down her bags, Morgan looked up at his baby girl, looked around her office, and looked back at her. "What?" he asked, clearly not following her concern.
"What happened in here?" she asked, disbelief mixed with horror in her tone.
Morgan smirked, gesturing with his hand to the litter. "Oh, what? The mess? I got it." He began picking up articles of trash to toss in her waste bin.
Garcia, looking back to her beloved monitors in their current disarray, answered, "Partially."
Morgan did not look up again from his task. "I guess the guy who was in here going through your system…"
"Kevin Lynch," Garcia interrupted automatically. She had been emailing her new cyber friend in her down time, learning more about him, and growing fond of him in a brotherly-type way.
Morgan continued, not the least bit upset. "He made a little bit of a mess. Don't worry about it." He personally preferred things clean and tidy, but he understood that not everyone operated that way. More to the point, he did not want to make anything a big deal at that moment and add to Penelope's stress. He wanted her to relax and take it easy on her first day back. She was still recovering.
Garcia managed to sound simultaneously like a whiny teenager and an exasperated teacher. "He changed… everything." He knew she had a flair for the theatrical, but she this was just dramatic.
Looking around, Morgan's brow furrowed. "Changed everything?" he asked. "What are you talking about?"
Garcia pointed at her monitors on the wall. "He adjusted the - the…" She twisted her hand side to side, trying to come up with the right words. "Oh, forget it. It'll be… Go." She tapped Morgan on the shoulder. "You need to get to L.A." The team needed him.
Morgan hesitated. "No, listen. I'm gonna stick around for a while. I think you might need me." He was dreading this part - the being away from her while they were both working. Somehow, he preferred imagining her safely tucked away in her colorful, cheery, hobbit-hole of an apartment - not this dreary room of computer screens, just waiting to fill up with gory crime-scene photos.
Garcia's eyebrow rose skeptically. She asked, "Stick around?"
Morgan nodded. "Yeah. The team can handle one case without me. They'll be fine." He shrugged, trying to be cool about it, but not sure if Hotch would even approve it.
Placing a hand to his chest, Garcia started, "Honey…" Morgan looked down at her hand and then up at her face as she continued, looking around her lair. "I know you love me," Morgan smiled there, "but the prospect of you whirling around here trying to fix this is actually more frightening than getting shot."
Chuckling Morgan asked, "Garcia, are you sure?"
Dropping her shoulders dramatically, she answered, "I am completely fine." She started lifting her arms and posing. "Look. Full range of motion."
Morgan held up his hands. "Stop. Stop, stop, stop."
Garcia continued posing, not listening. "No pain. Uh. Uh. Uh." Each "uh" accented a new pose.
Rolling his eyes at her antics, he said, "Will you stop it with the 'uh.' Stop."
She stopped. "Go."
His serious face crept up on her. "You know I'm just a phone call away." He needed to know that she knew he was here for her - that he would always be there for her.
Garcia nodded. "Thank you." She was trying to be cute now, to assuage his fears and convince him to get to work before he incurred the rather of their fearless leader.
Morgan paused at the door, lifting a hand as if he was going to add one last thing.
Garcia still faced away from him, but she could sense he was lingering. "Go," she commanded one final time.
With a smile and a sigh, Morgan left.
Settling into her lair at her own leisure, Garcia began to talk to herself - totally normal. "Kevin Lynch, you may be cute… But if you ever mess with my stuff again, I…" She trailed off, unable to think up a suitable act of justice at the moment as she cleaned and reclaimed her space.
Shortly thereafter, the jet took off, carrying her team clear across the country to California. Morgan called her as soon as he was able to do so in the air. She was complaining about having difficulty adjusting her chair.
"Just leave it alone until I get there," he said, listening to Garcia grunt and curse as she worked on the chair anyways. "Hey, hey, hardhead! Don't make me spank you when I get back."
Garcia flushed red at the threat. Before, their playful banter had been harmless flirting. Now it made her wonder. Did he really have some of these kinks about which he so easily joked? If so, was spanking one of them? She shook her head, refocusing.
Looking at a file, Reid called out so Garcia could hear him. "Don't listen to him, Garcia! He's all talk."
Derek hit him on the head to prove that he wasn't.
"Aah!" Reid exclaimed, startled. "JJ! He just hit me!" Apparently, when Hotch was busy talking to Rossi, JJ was the parent in charge.
From her seat across from Reid and Morgan, JJ sternly cautioned them, "Boys… behave or I will ground you both." She was such a mom.
Morgan kept Garcia on the line as the team briefed for the case. Bodies of gang members were turning up in increasingly bloodier and gorier scenes. The signature and choice of weapons did not watch any of the gang's or of any of their rivals.
The case turned tragic. A famous comic book artist was attacked by a gang and had to watch as they killed his pregnant fiancé in front of him. He suffered a psychotic break and was killing the members of that gang, seeking revenge, but his conscious self couldn't even remember he had been attacked. As a fan of the artist, Garcia was doubly sad for his predicament.
When Morgan returned and collected her to take her home, she asked, "Hey, do you know who Frank Miller is?"
Brow furrowed contemplatively, he said, "Frank Miller. Um… It sounds familiar. Unsub?" he asked.
Garcia laughed. "No. Graphic novelist. 300? Sin City?"
Eyes widening in reconition, he answered, "Oh. Right, right, right. Cool movies."
Garcia collected her purse and followed Morgan out to the elevator. "Anyway... he said something once and it makes me think of you. 'The noir hero is a knight in blood-caked armor. He's dirty, and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time.'" She looked up into his dark brown eyes, idolizing her hero.
The elevator doors shut, and Morgan physically had to plaster his back to the wall to stop himself from smothering Garcia with kisses. He couldn't do that at work, not with cameras everywhere. As soon as they were in his car, however, he asked, "Garcia?"
She turned towards him in her seat, having buckled up. Safety first. "Yeah?"
He brushed his knuckles along her jaw. "Do you know what transference is?"
Her cute little nose and eyes scrunched up behind her bedazzled red glasses. "Yes…" She got an icky feeling in her chest, and it wasn't the stitches or pain from being shot.
Derek sighed. "I just want to make sure that this…" He pointed from him to her and back to himself. "That this is real, and not just a reaction to what's happening."
Garcia felt her cheeks redden, suddenly embarrassed. Of course, the hottie best friend was now looking for a way out of this. Oh well, she thought, if it's going down, it'll go down in flames. "Angelfish, this is very real for me. I've liked you from the moment you interrogated me as the Black Queen. You were kind of a subtle bad ass. I started crushing on you around the time you started called me Baby Girl and not 'Miss.' That's when I got to see some of your soft and playful side. I fell in love with you over these last four-ish years as we became better and better friends. I could see our chemistry was off the charts, that we were totally compatible, and that you were the kind of person that would keep me sane through the horrors of this job. I knew I could also be your lighthouse, guiding you back home whenever you lost your way. I care about you as a friend, but I know I'm in love with my friend. I know this is not just me reacting to a case or to being shot or to you being a hero, saving me. You've always been my hero, but that's just one little piece to the much bigger picture." She sighed. She had probably just messed up everything, but it was all true.
"Thank God," she heard Derek almost whisper before gently grabbing around her head and neck and pulling her close. His mouth was on hers so quickly, she took a moment to realize her was kissing her, and not leaving her. When she caught up, she kissed him back. He tasted like cinnamon, like the mints he kept in his go-bag. She melted against him, lost in the moment. No thoughts threatened her mood; no memories darkened her joy. She just basked in the love of her man.
He was careful not to make quick movement or to pull on her; she was still healing. He was tender and gentle despite the desperate needs threatening to kill him. He would wait for her. If he had faith in anything, it was in his Baby Girl. She was his faith, his reason for caring so much and daring to risk it all.
When they finally pulled apart, Garcia's stomach growled. She groaned at her body for its inopportune operating. Morgan just grinned at her, both a little breathless. "Shall we get something to eat on the way home or would you like me to cook for you?"
Garcia was too busy noticing the ease with which he called her apartment home to think about food, but she quickly recovered. "Ummm… Chinese sounds good."
Nodding, he continued to smile at her. He didn't feel like that smile would ever go away. "Sounds good to me too, Baby Girl." He backed the car out of the parking spot and exited the garage.
"Hotstuff?" Penelope asked as they pulled out into traffic.
"Yes, sweetness?" He focused on the road, but stole a glance in her direction. She was watching him as he drove.
"When you asked me about transference earlier?" He nodded to encourage her to go on. "Well, I thought you were trying to find a way to back out of this." She gestured between the two of them as he had done earlier.
"Oh, Baby Girl." Her left hand rested against the seat's arm rest. Derek reached over and took her hand in his to emphasize his point. "I'm sorry I did anything to make you think that. That's the last thing I want. If anything, I want this… us… to become closer."
They stopped at a stop light. With the brief moment, Derek looked Penelope firmly and intentionally in the eye. She returned his stare. "Penelope, there are probably a million better ways to do this or say this, but I can't wait a moment longer. I want us to date. Officially," he added in clarification. "I want all of the silly gushy pet names. I want to introduce you as my girlfriend, and I want you to introduce me as your boyfriend. I want to be able to kiss you when we're not at work, no matter who is around, but most of all I want you to know that I love you."
Garcia's eye brimmed with tears. She pulled Derek into a hug, but a car behind them honked shortly after, effectively separating them, and bringing their attention back to the road and traffic. "So," she teased playfully as they pulled away from the stop light. "You kind of like me, huh?"
Derek chuckled. "Maybe just a little bit." He held up his thumb and forefinger with about an inch of space between them.
"And you want to date me and be my boyfriend?" she held onto that playful tone.
"I'll even give you my letterman jacket to wear," he teased back. "If I can find it in Mama's attic."
Garcia giggled. "I'm flattered, but I think I'll pass on the jacket for now. Although, I'd love to see it sometime."
"That can be arranged," he said seriously.
She took his hand back in hers. "Good. Now where is my boyfriend taking me?" she asked as he pulled into a strip mall parking lot and parked in front of a Chinese restaurant called "Chopsticks." "Because this does not look like Fortunate Gardens to me."
Derek turned towards her in his seat. "Your boyfriend, huh?" he asked. "Is that your way of saying yes?"
She nodded. "That's a really big yes, Hotstuff."
"Thank God," Derek sighed, as he placed a sweet little kiss on her lips, and sat back before they got too carried away again.
"You seem to be thanking Him a lot tonight," Garcia observed. "Were you really that worried that I'd turn you down? You, Derek 'Hotstuff' Morgan?"
Derek shook his head. "I was worried in that doubtful part of your brain that never really shuts up, the part that remembers all of the bad stuff from the job and the world and reminds you of it when you most want to ignore it. But no, Penelope. I had faith in you and in us. Those two things will keep me going no matter what."
Neither could repress their cheesy, love-sick smiles as they walked hand-in-hand into the restaurant that Derek assured her was every bit as good as Fortunate Gardens, if not better. She was skeptical, but she had faith in her chocolate thunder and in their budding romance.