Night Divides the Day
Oct. 26th, 2012 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glorious_spoonTitle: Night Divides the Day
Pairings: Gen
Rating: R, for thematic elements
Warnings: References to canonical child sexual abuse
Summary: Fifteen minutes in the life of Derek Morgan.
I
The sound of the shots snaps through his ears and Derek stumbles back as his father falls to his knees on the icy pavement. There’s a grocery bag in his hand and it slips through his numb fingers; he can’t--
“Dad,” he whispers, and the men are turning, running for the street, the sound of their footsteps curiously muffled, and Dad is falling, falling, and Derek can’t make his feet move at all.
Not until an hour later, at the hospital when his mother comes out of the ICU with her back straight and her face white and her hands shaking--not until she pulls him into a hug so tight it hurts and he can feel her chest hitch in a nearly silent sob--does he start crying.
II
He meets Carl Buford, ironically enough, through his social worker. She’s young and pretty and overworked, and he’s a sullen, stubborn smartass of a thirteen-year-old, more attitude than even he knows what to do with, mouthing off to his parole officers and skipping class as often as he can get away with it, amped-up and always half a turn of the knob away from meltdown.
Her name is Kelly Franks--Miss Franks to you, young man. She thinks that taking up some kind of sport would be a good way to burn off some of Derek’s excess steam. That’s how she puts it, anyway, when she introduces them, and Carl smiles, holds out his hand, says, “It’s good to meet you, Derek.”
Derek shakes his hand, and Miss Franks is wearing a smile that’s edged with weary relief. He knows even then that half of it is just for solving the headache he’s been presenting her since she was assigned his case, but there’s at least a little bit of genuine care, of hope that this will be what he needs to get back on the straight and narrow.
It’s because of that as much as anything that Derek never holds it against her. There’s no way she could have known.
III
His head is spinning as the water slips up around him, the huge Wisconson sky dotted with stars. He’s a good swimmer, but he feels sluggish now, limbs clumsy and numb. He can smell the rotting green scent of lake-water, the ghost of tequila on his own breath. Patrón, is what Carl told him, the good stuff, but it tasted like lighter fluid to Derek. Drank it anyway, three sips from the shot glass and a grimace he couldn’t hide, and Carl slapped the table with the flat of his hand and roared, “Now that’s what I’m talking about, boy!”
He’s pretty sure it’s not a good idea to swim when he feels like this, dizzy and off-balance and like he can’t quite tell where his own hands and feet are, and even under the water he feels weird and exposed without his swim trunks on.
Carl is somewhere to the left of him and Derek tilts toward the sound of his laughter, loses the rhythm of his strokes and slips beneath the surface of the lake with a yelp and a splash.
He recovers quickly, but there are big hands on his arms and the heat of another body pressed against him beneath the water, foreign and bare, way too close. “You feelin’ okay, there, Derek?”
“Yeah,” he says, all bravado, “‘course I am,” only there’s a stutter in his voice when he tries to pull away. Carl just laughs again, low and strange, and tugs him out into the deeper water.
IV
The first girl he kisses is named Tina Marie Danes. She’s small and pretty, all flirtatiously shy glances across the center console of his mother’s car on the way back from the movies. Some kind of nameless pop song playing on the radio and the lights are still on when he pulls up to the curb next to her house.
“Looks like they’re waiting up for you,” Derek says, half-grinning. He feels nervous and clumsy, but the words come out smooth, and she ducks her head, laughs.
“That’s my daddy.”
“Don’t trust you out with a hooligan like me?”
“You ain’t a hooligan, Derek Morgan,” she says. She unbuckles her seat-belt, then looks at him consideringly for a moment before leaning across to press her lips to his, brief and chaste. She tastes like strawberry lip gloss and the curve of her jaw is delicate beneath his fingertips and she smiles when she pulls away. “I had a really good time.”
He watches her walk up the steps, swinging her purse from her arm, and touches a finger to his lips. It’s the taste of her that he’ll remember later, in the sweat-and-rubber stink of Carl’s locked office, the taste of strawberry lip gloss and the feeling of something clean and sweet and safe.
V
The boy is young. Younger than him, mouth gaping and eyes staring at the empty sky, tossed out like he's no better than the pile of trash he's lying on. The pigskin feels slippery in Derek's fingers, and he drops the football without even noticing, stumbles back.
"Derek?" That's Tyrone, somewhere behind him on the other side of the fence. "Yo, Morgan, hurry it up, man."
There's dried spittle collected at the corner of the boy's mouth. Bruises. He's missing a shoe. There's blood on his jacket, and for a sick instant, Derek is nine years old again, watching his father stumble and fall.
"Morgan, what the fuck? What are you--oh, shit, oh, fuck, man, is he dead?"
Tyrone, behind him. His hand on Derek's jacketed sleeve feels like a jolt of electricity, jerking him back to himself. "We should." He licks his lips. He doesn't recognize his own voice. "Call the cops."
"Yeah. Yeah. My place is just around the corner, we can--fuck, this is messed up--"
Tyrone babbles the whole way back. Derek's the one who makes the call, and Derek's the one who meets the officers and leads them back to the alleyway. Gordinsky gives him narrow, suspicious looks all through taking his statement, and he only stops when Carl comes up behind them and drops a heavy hand on Derek's shoulder.
"Ease up, would you, Stan? Derek's had a rough day."
Derek wants to shove his hand off--he feels wired, oversensitive, and he can't deal with Carl right now, he just can't--but he wants the interrogation to be over more. Gordinsky gives him one last nasty look, then smiles over his head at Carl.
"You're the expert," he says. "Keep an eye out for him, will you?"
Watch and make sure he doesn't do anything illegal is what he means, which is kind of a fucking joke, all things considered, but Derek's long since resigned himself to the fact that Gordinsky couldn't detect his way out of a wet paper bag.
"Sure, sure," Carl says from over his head and then, to Derek as Gordinsky steps away, "Come on. Let's get you somewhere quiet. Get you calmed down."
I'm plenty calm, Derek thinks, and the funny thing is that it's even true. Carl's fingers curl on his shoulder, though, insistent. He has his own ideas about what Derek needs, what he wants and what's good for him, and there's really no point in arguing.
The flash of the camera takes him by surprise, almost blinds him. Gordinsky shouts at one of the rookies to clear the reporters off, but of course it's already too late.
Derek sees the photo in the Sunday paper, himself in grainy black and white, Carl's hand on his shoulder. He stares at it for a long time, like he's gonna read something from his own face that he doesn't already know.
VI
He only balks once.
He’s thought about saying something a million times, but who would he tell? Gordinsky? There’s a fucking joke. His mother, maybe, except that Derek can’t stand to imagine the way her face will look, the way her hands will tremble and her eyes will tear up, can’t stand for her to know.
It’s not like Carl hurts him. Not much, anyway, and never more than he can take.
What happens is this:
They’re in his office with the door shut but not latched, so that he can still hear the distant bounce of basketballs in the gym on the other side of the wall. There’s a Bears game on the fuzzy little ten-inch screen mounted on the wall and Derek’s smoking a cigarette because he likes the head-rush and the feel of the paper tube between his fingers and the grown-up way it feels when he taps ashes in the tray on Carl’s desk and blows a smoke-ring at the screen, and also because Carl’s the only one who’ll let him get away with it. He knows exactly why that is, but it’s just one of the many things he keeps locked up in a box inside his head that he doesn’t ever open to look at. The pieces of his life aren’t things that he can allow to touch. Not and keep from going crazy.
What happens is, he’s sore--not bad sore, just a little bit of a pulled muscle from where he took a tackle wrong earlier--and after the third time he twists in his seat, trying to get comfortable, Carl mutes the TV and comes around the desk and puts his hands on Derek’s shoulders. And Derek freezes.
“Hush now,” Carl murmurs, broad thumbs digging into Derek’s shoulders. “Settle down. There. Feels good, don’t it?”
It does, it feels good, and that’s abruptly more than Derek can stand. He shoves his chair back to crash into Carl’s knees and leaps to his feet; his hands are shaking and he’s breathing hard. He feels wild, like he’s hanging onto his self-control with everything he’s got, and the hell of it is that he doesn’t even know why. Why it’s this, now, that’s more than he can stand when the last time they were up at the cabin Carl brought a bottle of slick and a box of condoms. That should have been the last straw for Derek. Not this.
Carl is bent over, hands on his thighs; Derek did hit him pretty hard. Bruised him pretty bad, most likely. There’s panic there, oh, god he’s gonna get me for this and it’s gonna be bad, real bad, but at least for now it’s just a background hum, almost entirely drowned out by a strange fury.
It’s the first time he’s dared to feel angry about any of it.
There’s laughter. For a dizzy moment Derek thinks that it’s distant because it’s out in the gym on the other side of the door, and then he realizes that it’s just drowned out by the strange gasping sound of his own breath. Carl is laughing. Just standing there, chuckling a little. “Oh, Derek, Derek. We’ve had us some talks about that temper of yours, haven’t we?”
He straightens up and takes a step forward, and Derek backs up until he's pressed against the sweating concrete wall. “You stay the hell away from me.”
“Come on, now,” Carl says. He isn’t laughing anymore; his eyes are shrewd. “I was just gonna tell you about a little thing I been working on. I know your momma’s worried about paying for college, ain’t she?”
Worried isn’t exactly the right term. Ain’t gonna happen is a little more accurate. Derek’s grades are good, real good, but that doesn’t count for much when you’re a projects kid with a rap sheet.
“I was just thinking,” Carl says when he doesn’t answer, “I could write to the judge. He’s a real good friend of mine. Could maybe get that record of yours expunged, get you on the scholarship track. You’re a smart kid, Derek. Got a bright future ahead of you. Be a shame to waste that, don’t you think?”
College, Derek thinks. College, and a ticket out of here. It’s the perfect fucking bait, and Carl knows it. There’s a little bit of a smile still on his face, and he’s just watching Derek. Waiting.
He makes himself relax. Swallows down the shame easily; the anger goes a little harder, but he manages that too. It sits like a hard stone in the pit of his stomach as he steps away from the wall, toward Carl. “You could set that up?”
“Course I could,” Carl says, and smiles, and steps closer. “Come on back over here, now. Let me take a look at that shoulder of yours.”
Derek nods and closes his eyes. He doesn’t open them when Carl steps closer, into his space enough that he can smell sweat and Old Spice and the cinnamon tang of chewing gum; he doesn’t shudder at the touch of Carl’s hands.
He has plenty of practice, after all.
VII
College is everything he's looking for, and nothing at all. He shaves his head and grows a beard, takes to the gym in every spare minute. By the second semester of his freshman year, he’s gained fifteen pounds of muscle and he wonders when that terrified boy is gonna stop looking at him out of the mirror.
Football has always been his lifeline, his ticket out, the one thing he had to hold onto. His coach talks about scouts, about going pro, about NFL contracts and more money than Derek has ever seen in his life, and Derek is at a loss to understand why that feels like a noose tightening around his neck.
The cut block that takes him out in the first down of a sophomore game changes all that. He knows it's all over when he feels that sick pop in his knee, his whole leg just folding like someone unscrewed his hinges; he doesn't need the worried field-side medic or the ER doctor to tell him that his football career is over.
Coach comes to see him at his dorm room after they let him out with a set of ugly metal hospital crutches. He shakes Derek's hand, says sorry, son, and Derek nods and thanks him for coming.
He can tell from Coach's mournful look that the man thinks he's putting a brave face on it, and maybe that's part of it but it isn't everything.
Football was his lifeline. Now that's gone and he feels, for the first time in a long time, like he's free.
VIII
The first time he swings by the youth center, he's still on crutches. On the other side of the chain-link fence, Carl is running up and down the sidelines, waving his arms and shouting at the helmeted players. Derek can smell the smoke off the factory on the other side of the river, the muddy smell of the river itself. Familiar smells.
It's not until the scrimmage is over that Carl looks up and notices him standing there. He lifts a hand slightly, like he's going to beckon Derek over to him, then drops it. Turns, and walks back into the building.
The sting of rejection is sharp and sudden and entirely unexpected. Derek rubs his knuckles over his chest, where something has tightened painfully, then slams his fist into the fence. It rattles unsatisfyingly, and his knuckles ache.
It makes no fucking sense at all, especially since he came here with the not-fully-acknowledged plan of catching Carl outside his car and kicking the crap out of him. Just to prove--what? Just to prove he didn't give a shit. That he didn't matter.
He didn't matter.
The next time he comes back to the youth center, it's four years later. He hands out his business cards--the newly printed ones that read 'Detective Derek Morgan' in bold black letters--to every kid who will take them, and he doesn't so much as glance at Carl Buford. He tells himself that this means he's past it.
It has, at least, been a long time since he's let any bit of it surface in his conscious mind. Buford is his past, and it's better not to dwell on the past. He has an undercover assignment and then a chance at that opening at the Bureau, and he is damn well beyond letting one sick fuck hold up the rest of his life.
IX
He thinks that, for a long time. That he's past it, that it's not a part of his life anymore, that it doesn't matter. He deals with murderers and rapists, sadists and psychopaths and dumb animal viciousness at its absolute worst, and if he picks up a few scars and nightmares along the way, it's nothing he can't live with. He's doing good. Saving the people he can save, getting justice for the ones he can't. It's not a bad life, all things considered.
He goes back to the youth center every time he's in town. He hands out his business cards and doesn't speak to Carl. It's about proving something to himself, and on some level he's aware of that, but it's also about James Barfield and the other kids like him, good kids with a chance of getting out. Their lives are like roads with too many bad turns, and Derek isn't naive enough to think he's gonna save them all, but he'll save who he can.
He hands out the business cards and tells James to call him if he needs anything, anything at all, and James takes the card and smiles the kind of smile that wouldn't have looked out of place on Derek's face at fifteen, says that he will.
He tells himself that it's all he can do.
X
Mehtevas is a perfectly average man, average height and average build and a neat gray beard on his face; he looks like exactly the kind of person anyone would trust around kids. Like Buford.
He stands too close to Kevin, though, and Derek knows the expression on his face, knows it intimately. Could just be a legit teacher or something asking after a student, but Derek knows better.
The fury is exploding out of him when they get the go ahead, and the old man’s body feels frail when he shoves him into the wall. The woman--Katie--Agent Cole--is shouting his name, but it’s Gideon’s hand on his shoulder that brings him to heel.
“We just want to talk to him,” he says, but he doesn’t stop Derek from slapping the handcuffs home.
Mehtevas is named Hayden Rawlings, and he’s an elementary school principal. It’s pretty fucking perfect. He’s all nervous politeness and stammering excuses, ducking behind his good reputation, and Derek can manage to keep from punching him but he can’t keep the growl out of his voice or the threats behind his teeth.
Gideon stops him, again. “Go help Elle and Reid search the office,” he says quietly. “I’ll handle this.”
Derek’s face feels hot and his hands are curled into fists; blood rushes in his ears and Gideon is looking at him with piercing eyes, Gideon who never misses any damn thing at all.
“Go on, Derek,” he says, and Derek goes.
XI
Damien Walters is dead, and Derek is sitting on the wrong end of an interrogation table, the side he thought he was damn well done with twenty years ago, and it's not a single one of these things that's making his skin itch and his hands grip restlessly at the edges of the table, at his knees, at the points of his elbows like he's searching for some kind of mooring.
They’re close to it, he knows. They’re all smart people, and the pieces of his life are scattered in front of them like a puzzle: they know now about the youth center, about that damn letter, about the fact that he was Buford’s golden boy and about the fact that they haven’t spoken since the first time he left Chicago; they also know Derek well enough to know that if Buford had been legit, he never would have froze him out like that. Victimology. The dynamics of abuse. It’s not a hard connection to make, and he knows that it’s only the desire for it not to be true that’s kept them from making it much, much sooner.
He feels like a bug on a pin, magnifying glass to his head and he can’t get away.
The realization takes shape in Hotch’s eyes, and it’s not a sudden thing, no blinding shock in his expression, no horror. They all see things much, much worse than this on a daily basis. Child-raping youth center coach? That’s practically a goddamn cliche.
So there’s no shock. Pity, though, plenty of that, and Derek suddenly wants to hit Hotch like he’s never wanted to hit anyone in his life, just to erase that expression.
He drops to the floor instead, hands gripping the sides of his head like he can keep himself from flying to pieces, and he barely even notices when Hotch gets up to leave.
When he looks up, seconds or moments later, the door is open.
Hotch isn’t stupid enough to make a mistake like that, shock or no shock. Derek stares at the door for several long moments before climbing to his feet. A gesture of trust or a trap, it doesn’t matter. James is still out there, and if Carl feels them breathing down his neck...
He’s failed the kid so much already; he can’t let anything else happen, and that’s just that.
Five yards of hallway take him out the back door and into the chilly night.
XII
In the end, Buford goes quietly, which Derek wouldn't have predicted. The handcuffs are slapped home, the Miranda rights are read, Buford is frog-marched out through the gym and Derek is left standing in his empty office. It's been more than fifteen years since he's been in here, and not much has changed. The awards on the wall have been updated, and the little black-and-white TV has been replaced by a larger flatscreen model. The desk is the same, though, the ashtray at the corner, the little rickety folding chair that's probably still got a damaged leg from where Derek bent it.
He swipes at his face with one hand, distantly surprised to realize that his cheeks are wet. In the doorway, Gideon and Hotch are still standing, looking at him.
Sooner or later, he's going to feel embarrassed and angry that they were there to witness that, but right now he can't quite muster up anything other than tired.
"I want to go home," he says. Stops, clarifies. "Back to my mama's place, I mean. She's got to be worried."
Gideon clears his throat, but it's Hotch who finally speaks. "There's some paperwork that will need to be filled out, but we'll expedite it as much as possible."
Derek closes his eyes. Breathes out. He can hear Hotch and Gideon stepping away from the door, giving him the space he needs. They know what to do in these cases, of course. They've all had the training. "Thank you."
XIII
He’s sitting at a table in the squadroom, waiting for Hotch and Prentiss to deal with the mess of paperwork generated by his arrest and subsequent escape and doing his best to ignore the way every single goddamn person in the room is watching him out of the corner of their eye, when Gordinsky comes back in. It’s the movement at the door that catches his eye, and he looks up in time to see Gordinsky pause, run a hand through his hair, tug his tie straight, then lift his chin and start determinedly across the room toward them.
Derek wraps both hands around the Styrofoam cup of terrible coffee he’s holding and sighs. Gordinsky isn’t all that bright, but he’s a halfway decent human being. It would be a lot easier right now if he wasn’t.
Emily glances up at his sigh, eyes meeting his before skittering away self-consciously. Yeah, this is gonna be a lot of fun to deal with. Makes him wish he could just go home to Mama and pretend it’s not happening, except he already knows that ‘Local Youth Center Coach Arrested For Murder Amid Sex Abuse Scandal’ is the top headline in the city news cycle right now, and it would take a much stupider woman than his mother not to put two and two together from that.
“You want me to chase him off?” Emily asks quietly, and it takes him a second to realize she’s talking about Gordinsky.
“Nah. You go on and see if Hotch needs anything else, I’ll handle it.”
She doesn’t ask him if he’s sure; that’s something he really likes about Emily. She just stands, squeezes his shoulder, and disappears so quickly that he’d suspect magic if he didn’t know any better.
And then Stan Gordinsky is standing over him, tugging on his tie and looking ten kinds of self-conscious. “So. Derek. I guess I owe you an apology. A couple of apologies, actually.”
“I guess you do,” Derek says flatly. He’s working on his forty-third hour without sleep on top of everything; he does not have it in him to be polite right now.
Gordinsky rocks back on his heels. “We’re not going to file any kind of charges against you. Carl--Mr. Buford, I mean--the suspect has been uncooperative.”
Derek snorts. “Yeah, I bet.”
“The statute of limitations--”
“I’m not trying to press charges,” Derek says. “Little late for that now.”
“Yeah. Well. We may call you as a witness. If you’re--if you’re amenable, that is.”
“If I’m amenable?”
“Well--” Gordinsky trails off, and Derek decides on an impulse that’s as much impatience as it is kindness to take pity on him.
“I’ll take the stand. I’m sure there will be other kids coming forward--” and that’s something he can’t let himself think about right now, just can’t “--and I can corroborate their testimony.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I’m not doing it for you.”
It’s the simple truth, but Gordinsky flinches perceptibly. “Thank you, anyway. And Derek?” He shoves his hands in his pockets, clears his throat. “I am sorry. For what it’s worth.”
Not much, to be honest, but Derek has enough manners left not to say that. Gideon is making his way through the crowd with Reid and Emily trailing behind in his wake and Derek gives Gordinsky a nod as he stands to greet them.
“Ready to get out of here?” Gideon asks. He, at least, sounds the same as ever. Thank god.
“More than ready,” Derek says. “Let’s go.”
XIV
There were tapes of him at the cabin. Nothing incriminating, unless you knew the circumstances. Nothing that could get a person in trouble. Maybe half an hour in all, scattered across a handful of years: Derek swimming, Derek learning to fire a gun, to gut a fish, to throw darts straight and true at the battered old board on the back of the bedroom door. Buford’s voice behind the camera, patient and jovial. Fatherly.
Garcia’s the one who tells him about them, and the careful tone of her voice, the way she doesn’t open up the phone call with darling or honey pie, is enough for him to understand that she knows or guesses most of it.
“There were several other tapes in the collection,” she tells him in the brisk tone she normally only ever uses on Gideon, and it’s not her fault that it makes him want to scream.
Derek closes his eyes. He knew there were others, since he took the coward’s road and let Buford keep on doing what he did, but that doesn’t make it any easier to hear. “How many?”
“A dozen. Or so.” Garcia pauses. “Some of them were older.”
She’s giving him an out, somebody else to blame, and he wishes so damn hard that he could take it. “But not all of them.”
“No. Not all of them.” On the other end of the line, she takes a deep breath, and he knows he doesn’t want to hear whatever it is she’s about to say. “Derek--”
“Thanks, sweetness,” he interrupts.
“Anything for you, angel face,” she murmurs, and he manages to smile before he hangs up.
XV
“Please state your name and occupation for the record.”
Derek puts his hands on the edge of the box; the polished wood is faintly tacky against his fingertips and the room is crowded, full of light. He thought he’d be panicking by now; the thought of talking about this, of reliving it in front of all these people, had him nearly hyperventilating in the hallway outside, but now that he’s here he feels strangely calm. “My name is Derek Morgan. I’m a special agent with the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.”
A bible is held in front of him and he reaches out to touch its cool leather cover. Buford is sitting next to his lawyer, wearing a dark suit and a blank expression, and Derek doesn’t have any trouble at all meeting his eyes.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Derek turns away from the man who was his first and best tutor in the subject of telling everything but the truth; he looks into the calm face of the court officer and nods. “I do.”
Pairings: Gen
Rating: R, for thematic elements
Warnings: References to canonical child sexual abuse
Summary: Fifteen minutes in the life of Derek Morgan.
I
The sound of the shots snaps through his ears and Derek stumbles back as his father falls to his knees on the icy pavement. There’s a grocery bag in his hand and it slips through his numb fingers; he can’t--
“Dad,” he whispers, and the men are turning, running for the street, the sound of their footsteps curiously muffled, and Dad is falling, falling, and Derek can’t make his feet move at all.
Not until an hour later, at the hospital when his mother comes out of the ICU with her back straight and her face white and her hands shaking--not until she pulls him into a hug so tight it hurts and he can feel her chest hitch in a nearly silent sob--does he start crying.
II
He meets Carl Buford, ironically enough, through his social worker. She’s young and pretty and overworked, and he’s a sullen, stubborn smartass of a thirteen-year-old, more attitude than even he knows what to do with, mouthing off to his parole officers and skipping class as often as he can get away with it, amped-up and always half a turn of the knob away from meltdown.
Her name is Kelly Franks--Miss Franks to you, young man. She thinks that taking up some kind of sport would be a good way to burn off some of Derek’s excess steam. That’s how she puts it, anyway, when she introduces them, and Carl smiles, holds out his hand, says, “It’s good to meet you, Derek.”
Derek shakes his hand, and Miss Franks is wearing a smile that’s edged with weary relief. He knows even then that half of it is just for solving the headache he’s been presenting her since she was assigned his case, but there’s at least a little bit of genuine care, of hope that this will be what he needs to get back on the straight and narrow.
It’s because of that as much as anything that Derek never holds it against her. There’s no way she could have known.
III
His head is spinning as the water slips up around him, the huge Wisconson sky dotted with stars. He’s a good swimmer, but he feels sluggish now, limbs clumsy and numb. He can smell the rotting green scent of lake-water, the ghost of tequila on his own breath. Patrón, is what Carl told him, the good stuff, but it tasted like lighter fluid to Derek. Drank it anyway, three sips from the shot glass and a grimace he couldn’t hide, and Carl slapped the table with the flat of his hand and roared, “Now that’s what I’m talking about, boy!”
He’s pretty sure it’s not a good idea to swim when he feels like this, dizzy and off-balance and like he can’t quite tell where his own hands and feet are, and even under the water he feels weird and exposed without his swim trunks on.
Carl is somewhere to the left of him and Derek tilts toward the sound of his laughter, loses the rhythm of his strokes and slips beneath the surface of the lake with a yelp and a splash.
He recovers quickly, but there are big hands on his arms and the heat of another body pressed against him beneath the water, foreign and bare, way too close. “You feelin’ okay, there, Derek?”
“Yeah,” he says, all bravado, “‘course I am,” only there’s a stutter in his voice when he tries to pull away. Carl just laughs again, low and strange, and tugs him out into the deeper water.
IV
The first girl he kisses is named Tina Marie Danes. She’s small and pretty, all flirtatiously shy glances across the center console of his mother’s car on the way back from the movies. Some kind of nameless pop song playing on the radio and the lights are still on when he pulls up to the curb next to her house.
“Looks like they’re waiting up for you,” Derek says, half-grinning. He feels nervous and clumsy, but the words come out smooth, and she ducks her head, laughs.
“That’s my daddy.”
“Don’t trust you out with a hooligan like me?”
“You ain’t a hooligan, Derek Morgan,” she says. She unbuckles her seat-belt, then looks at him consideringly for a moment before leaning across to press her lips to his, brief and chaste. She tastes like strawberry lip gloss and the curve of her jaw is delicate beneath his fingertips and she smiles when she pulls away. “I had a really good time.”
He watches her walk up the steps, swinging her purse from her arm, and touches a finger to his lips. It’s the taste of her that he’ll remember later, in the sweat-and-rubber stink of Carl’s locked office, the taste of strawberry lip gloss and the feeling of something clean and sweet and safe.
V
The boy is young. Younger than him, mouth gaping and eyes staring at the empty sky, tossed out like he's no better than the pile of trash he's lying on. The pigskin feels slippery in Derek's fingers, and he drops the football without even noticing, stumbles back.
"Derek?" That's Tyrone, somewhere behind him on the other side of the fence. "Yo, Morgan, hurry it up, man."
There's dried spittle collected at the corner of the boy's mouth. Bruises. He's missing a shoe. There's blood on his jacket, and for a sick instant, Derek is nine years old again, watching his father stumble and fall.
"Morgan, what the fuck? What are you--oh, shit, oh, fuck, man, is he dead?"
Tyrone, behind him. His hand on Derek's jacketed sleeve feels like a jolt of electricity, jerking him back to himself. "We should." He licks his lips. He doesn't recognize his own voice. "Call the cops."
"Yeah. Yeah. My place is just around the corner, we can--fuck, this is messed up--"
Tyrone babbles the whole way back. Derek's the one who makes the call, and Derek's the one who meets the officers and leads them back to the alleyway. Gordinsky gives him narrow, suspicious looks all through taking his statement, and he only stops when Carl comes up behind them and drops a heavy hand on Derek's shoulder.
"Ease up, would you, Stan? Derek's had a rough day."
Derek wants to shove his hand off--he feels wired, oversensitive, and he can't deal with Carl right now, he just can't--but he wants the interrogation to be over more. Gordinsky gives him one last nasty look, then smiles over his head at Carl.
"You're the expert," he says. "Keep an eye out for him, will you?"
Watch and make sure he doesn't do anything illegal is what he means, which is kind of a fucking joke, all things considered, but Derek's long since resigned himself to the fact that Gordinsky couldn't detect his way out of a wet paper bag.
"Sure, sure," Carl says from over his head and then, to Derek as Gordinsky steps away, "Come on. Let's get you somewhere quiet. Get you calmed down."
I'm plenty calm, Derek thinks, and the funny thing is that it's even true. Carl's fingers curl on his shoulder, though, insistent. He has his own ideas about what Derek needs, what he wants and what's good for him, and there's really no point in arguing.
The flash of the camera takes him by surprise, almost blinds him. Gordinsky shouts at one of the rookies to clear the reporters off, but of course it's already too late.
Derek sees the photo in the Sunday paper, himself in grainy black and white, Carl's hand on his shoulder. He stares at it for a long time, like he's gonna read something from his own face that he doesn't already know.
VI
He only balks once.
He’s thought about saying something a million times, but who would he tell? Gordinsky? There’s a fucking joke. His mother, maybe, except that Derek can’t stand to imagine the way her face will look, the way her hands will tremble and her eyes will tear up, can’t stand for her to know.
It’s not like Carl hurts him. Not much, anyway, and never more than he can take.
What happens is this:
They’re in his office with the door shut but not latched, so that he can still hear the distant bounce of basketballs in the gym on the other side of the wall. There’s a Bears game on the fuzzy little ten-inch screen mounted on the wall and Derek’s smoking a cigarette because he likes the head-rush and the feel of the paper tube between his fingers and the grown-up way it feels when he taps ashes in the tray on Carl’s desk and blows a smoke-ring at the screen, and also because Carl’s the only one who’ll let him get away with it. He knows exactly why that is, but it’s just one of the many things he keeps locked up in a box inside his head that he doesn’t ever open to look at. The pieces of his life aren’t things that he can allow to touch. Not and keep from going crazy.
What happens is, he’s sore--not bad sore, just a little bit of a pulled muscle from where he took a tackle wrong earlier--and after the third time he twists in his seat, trying to get comfortable, Carl mutes the TV and comes around the desk and puts his hands on Derek’s shoulders. And Derek freezes.
“Hush now,” Carl murmurs, broad thumbs digging into Derek’s shoulders. “Settle down. There. Feels good, don’t it?”
It does, it feels good, and that’s abruptly more than Derek can stand. He shoves his chair back to crash into Carl’s knees and leaps to his feet; his hands are shaking and he’s breathing hard. He feels wild, like he’s hanging onto his self-control with everything he’s got, and the hell of it is that he doesn’t even know why. Why it’s this, now, that’s more than he can stand when the last time they were up at the cabin Carl brought a bottle of slick and a box of condoms. That should have been the last straw for Derek. Not this.
Carl is bent over, hands on his thighs; Derek did hit him pretty hard. Bruised him pretty bad, most likely. There’s panic there, oh, god he’s gonna get me for this and it’s gonna be bad, real bad, but at least for now it’s just a background hum, almost entirely drowned out by a strange fury.
It’s the first time he’s dared to feel angry about any of it.
There’s laughter. For a dizzy moment Derek thinks that it’s distant because it’s out in the gym on the other side of the door, and then he realizes that it’s just drowned out by the strange gasping sound of his own breath. Carl is laughing. Just standing there, chuckling a little. “Oh, Derek, Derek. We’ve had us some talks about that temper of yours, haven’t we?”
He straightens up and takes a step forward, and Derek backs up until he's pressed against the sweating concrete wall. “You stay the hell away from me.”
“Come on, now,” Carl says. He isn’t laughing anymore; his eyes are shrewd. “I was just gonna tell you about a little thing I been working on. I know your momma’s worried about paying for college, ain’t she?”
Worried isn’t exactly the right term. Ain’t gonna happen is a little more accurate. Derek’s grades are good, real good, but that doesn’t count for much when you’re a projects kid with a rap sheet.
“I was just thinking,” Carl says when he doesn’t answer, “I could write to the judge. He’s a real good friend of mine. Could maybe get that record of yours expunged, get you on the scholarship track. You’re a smart kid, Derek. Got a bright future ahead of you. Be a shame to waste that, don’t you think?”
College, Derek thinks. College, and a ticket out of here. It’s the perfect fucking bait, and Carl knows it. There’s a little bit of a smile still on his face, and he’s just watching Derek. Waiting.
He makes himself relax. Swallows down the shame easily; the anger goes a little harder, but he manages that too. It sits like a hard stone in the pit of his stomach as he steps away from the wall, toward Carl. “You could set that up?”
“Course I could,” Carl says, and smiles, and steps closer. “Come on back over here, now. Let me take a look at that shoulder of yours.”
Derek nods and closes his eyes. He doesn’t open them when Carl steps closer, into his space enough that he can smell sweat and Old Spice and the cinnamon tang of chewing gum; he doesn’t shudder at the touch of Carl’s hands.
He has plenty of practice, after all.
VII
College is everything he's looking for, and nothing at all. He shaves his head and grows a beard, takes to the gym in every spare minute. By the second semester of his freshman year, he’s gained fifteen pounds of muscle and he wonders when that terrified boy is gonna stop looking at him out of the mirror.
Football has always been his lifeline, his ticket out, the one thing he had to hold onto. His coach talks about scouts, about going pro, about NFL contracts and more money than Derek has ever seen in his life, and Derek is at a loss to understand why that feels like a noose tightening around his neck.
The cut block that takes him out in the first down of a sophomore game changes all that. He knows it's all over when he feels that sick pop in his knee, his whole leg just folding like someone unscrewed his hinges; he doesn't need the worried field-side medic or the ER doctor to tell him that his football career is over.
Coach comes to see him at his dorm room after they let him out with a set of ugly metal hospital crutches. He shakes Derek's hand, says sorry, son, and Derek nods and thanks him for coming.
He can tell from Coach's mournful look that the man thinks he's putting a brave face on it, and maybe that's part of it but it isn't everything.
Football was his lifeline. Now that's gone and he feels, for the first time in a long time, like he's free.
VIII
The first time he swings by the youth center, he's still on crutches. On the other side of the chain-link fence, Carl is running up and down the sidelines, waving his arms and shouting at the helmeted players. Derek can smell the smoke off the factory on the other side of the river, the muddy smell of the river itself. Familiar smells.
It's not until the scrimmage is over that Carl looks up and notices him standing there. He lifts a hand slightly, like he's going to beckon Derek over to him, then drops it. Turns, and walks back into the building.
The sting of rejection is sharp and sudden and entirely unexpected. Derek rubs his knuckles over his chest, where something has tightened painfully, then slams his fist into the fence. It rattles unsatisfyingly, and his knuckles ache.
It makes no fucking sense at all, especially since he came here with the not-fully-acknowledged plan of catching Carl outside his car and kicking the crap out of him. Just to prove--what? Just to prove he didn't give a shit. That he didn't matter.
He didn't matter.
The next time he comes back to the youth center, it's four years later. He hands out his business cards--the newly printed ones that read 'Detective Derek Morgan' in bold black letters--to every kid who will take them, and he doesn't so much as glance at Carl Buford. He tells himself that this means he's past it.
It has, at least, been a long time since he's let any bit of it surface in his conscious mind. Buford is his past, and it's better not to dwell on the past. He has an undercover assignment and then a chance at that opening at the Bureau, and he is damn well beyond letting one sick fuck hold up the rest of his life.
IX
He thinks that, for a long time. That he's past it, that it's not a part of his life anymore, that it doesn't matter. He deals with murderers and rapists, sadists and psychopaths and dumb animal viciousness at its absolute worst, and if he picks up a few scars and nightmares along the way, it's nothing he can't live with. He's doing good. Saving the people he can save, getting justice for the ones he can't. It's not a bad life, all things considered.
He goes back to the youth center every time he's in town. He hands out his business cards and doesn't speak to Carl. It's about proving something to himself, and on some level he's aware of that, but it's also about James Barfield and the other kids like him, good kids with a chance of getting out. Their lives are like roads with too many bad turns, and Derek isn't naive enough to think he's gonna save them all, but he'll save who he can.
He hands out the business cards and tells James to call him if he needs anything, anything at all, and James takes the card and smiles the kind of smile that wouldn't have looked out of place on Derek's face at fifteen, says that he will.
He tells himself that it's all he can do.
X
Mehtevas is a perfectly average man, average height and average build and a neat gray beard on his face; he looks like exactly the kind of person anyone would trust around kids. Like Buford.
He stands too close to Kevin, though, and Derek knows the expression on his face, knows it intimately. Could just be a legit teacher or something asking after a student, but Derek knows better.
The fury is exploding out of him when they get the go ahead, and the old man’s body feels frail when he shoves him into the wall. The woman--Katie--Agent Cole--is shouting his name, but it’s Gideon’s hand on his shoulder that brings him to heel.
“We just want to talk to him,” he says, but he doesn’t stop Derek from slapping the handcuffs home.
Mehtevas is named Hayden Rawlings, and he’s an elementary school principal. It’s pretty fucking perfect. He’s all nervous politeness and stammering excuses, ducking behind his good reputation, and Derek can manage to keep from punching him but he can’t keep the growl out of his voice or the threats behind his teeth.
Gideon stops him, again. “Go help Elle and Reid search the office,” he says quietly. “I’ll handle this.”
Derek’s face feels hot and his hands are curled into fists; blood rushes in his ears and Gideon is looking at him with piercing eyes, Gideon who never misses any damn thing at all.
“Go on, Derek,” he says, and Derek goes.
XI
Damien Walters is dead, and Derek is sitting on the wrong end of an interrogation table, the side he thought he was damn well done with twenty years ago, and it's not a single one of these things that's making his skin itch and his hands grip restlessly at the edges of the table, at his knees, at the points of his elbows like he's searching for some kind of mooring.
They’re close to it, he knows. They’re all smart people, and the pieces of his life are scattered in front of them like a puzzle: they know now about the youth center, about that damn letter, about the fact that he was Buford’s golden boy and about the fact that they haven’t spoken since the first time he left Chicago; they also know Derek well enough to know that if Buford had been legit, he never would have froze him out like that. Victimology. The dynamics of abuse. It’s not a hard connection to make, and he knows that it’s only the desire for it not to be true that’s kept them from making it much, much sooner.
He feels like a bug on a pin, magnifying glass to his head and he can’t get away.
The realization takes shape in Hotch’s eyes, and it’s not a sudden thing, no blinding shock in his expression, no horror. They all see things much, much worse than this on a daily basis. Child-raping youth center coach? That’s practically a goddamn cliche.
So there’s no shock. Pity, though, plenty of that, and Derek suddenly wants to hit Hotch like he’s never wanted to hit anyone in his life, just to erase that expression.
He drops to the floor instead, hands gripping the sides of his head like he can keep himself from flying to pieces, and he barely even notices when Hotch gets up to leave.
When he looks up, seconds or moments later, the door is open.
Hotch isn’t stupid enough to make a mistake like that, shock or no shock. Derek stares at the door for several long moments before climbing to his feet. A gesture of trust or a trap, it doesn’t matter. James is still out there, and if Carl feels them breathing down his neck...
He’s failed the kid so much already; he can’t let anything else happen, and that’s just that.
Five yards of hallway take him out the back door and into the chilly night.
XII
In the end, Buford goes quietly, which Derek wouldn't have predicted. The handcuffs are slapped home, the Miranda rights are read, Buford is frog-marched out through the gym and Derek is left standing in his empty office. It's been more than fifteen years since he's been in here, and not much has changed. The awards on the wall have been updated, and the little black-and-white TV has been replaced by a larger flatscreen model. The desk is the same, though, the ashtray at the corner, the little rickety folding chair that's probably still got a damaged leg from where Derek bent it.
He swipes at his face with one hand, distantly surprised to realize that his cheeks are wet. In the doorway, Gideon and Hotch are still standing, looking at him.
Sooner or later, he's going to feel embarrassed and angry that they were there to witness that, but right now he can't quite muster up anything other than tired.
"I want to go home," he says. Stops, clarifies. "Back to my mama's place, I mean. She's got to be worried."
Gideon clears his throat, but it's Hotch who finally speaks. "There's some paperwork that will need to be filled out, but we'll expedite it as much as possible."
Derek closes his eyes. Breathes out. He can hear Hotch and Gideon stepping away from the door, giving him the space he needs. They know what to do in these cases, of course. They've all had the training. "Thank you."
XIII
He’s sitting at a table in the squadroom, waiting for Hotch and Prentiss to deal with the mess of paperwork generated by his arrest and subsequent escape and doing his best to ignore the way every single goddamn person in the room is watching him out of the corner of their eye, when Gordinsky comes back in. It’s the movement at the door that catches his eye, and he looks up in time to see Gordinsky pause, run a hand through his hair, tug his tie straight, then lift his chin and start determinedly across the room toward them.
Derek wraps both hands around the Styrofoam cup of terrible coffee he’s holding and sighs. Gordinsky isn’t all that bright, but he’s a halfway decent human being. It would be a lot easier right now if he wasn’t.
Emily glances up at his sigh, eyes meeting his before skittering away self-consciously. Yeah, this is gonna be a lot of fun to deal with. Makes him wish he could just go home to Mama and pretend it’s not happening, except he already knows that ‘Local Youth Center Coach Arrested For Murder Amid Sex Abuse Scandal’ is the top headline in the city news cycle right now, and it would take a much stupider woman than his mother not to put two and two together from that.
“You want me to chase him off?” Emily asks quietly, and it takes him a second to realize she’s talking about Gordinsky.
“Nah. You go on and see if Hotch needs anything else, I’ll handle it.”
She doesn’t ask him if he’s sure; that’s something he really likes about Emily. She just stands, squeezes his shoulder, and disappears so quickly that he’d suspect magic if he didn’t know any better.
And then Stan Gordinsky is standing over him, tugging on his tie and looking ten kinds of self-conscious. “So. Derek. I guess I owe you an apology. A couple of apologies, actually.”
“I guess you do,” Derek says flatly. He’s working on his forty-third hour without sleep on top of everything; he does not have it in him to be polite right now.
Gordinsky rocks back on his heels. “We’re not going to file any kind of charges against you. Carl--Mr. Buford, I mean--the suspect has been uncooperative.”
Derek snorts. “Yeah, I bet.”
“The statute of limitations--”
“I’m not trying to press charges,” Derek says. “Little late for that now.”
“Yeah. Well. We may call you as a witness. If you’re--if you’re amenable, that is.”
“If I’m amenable?”
“Well--” Gordinsky trails off, and Derek decides on an impulse that’s as much impatience as it is kindness to take pity on him.
“I’ll take the stand. I’m sure there will be other kids coming forward--” and that’s something he can’t let himself think about right now, just can’t “--and I can corroborate their testimony.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I’m not doing it for you.”
It’s the simple truth, but Gordinsky flinches perceptibly. “Thank you, anyway. And Derek?” He shoves his hands in his pockets, clears his throat. “I am sorry. For what it’s worth.”
Not much, to be honest, but Derek has enough manners left not to say that. Gideon is making his way through the crowd with Reid and Emily trailing behind in his wake and Derek gives Gordinsky a nod as he stands to greet them.
“Ready to get out of here?” Gideon asks. He, at least, sounds the same as ever. Thank god.
“More than ready,” Derek says. “Let’s go.”
XIV
There were tapes of him at the cabin. Nothing incriminating, unless you knew the circumstances. Nothing that could get a person in trouble. Maybe half an hour in all, scattered across a handful of years: Derek swimming, Derek learning to fire a gun, to gut a fish, to throw darts straight and true at the battered old board on the back of the bedroom door. Buford’s voice behind the camera, patient and jovial. Fatherly.
Garcia’s the one who tells him about them, and the careful tone of her voice, the way she doesn’t open up the phone call with darling or honey pie, is enough for him to understand that she knows or guesses most of it.
“There were several other tapes in the collection,” she tells him in the brisk tone she normally only ever uses on Gideon, and it’s not her fault that it makes him want to scream.
Derek closes his eyes. He knew there were others, since he took the coward’s road and let Buford keep on doing what he did, but that doesn’t make it any easier to hear. “How many?”
“A dozen. Or so.” Garcia pauses. “Some of them were older.”
She’s giving him an out, somebody else to blame, and he wishes so damn hard that he could take it. “But not all of them.”
“No. Not all of them.” On the other end of the line, she takes a deep breath, and he knows he doesn’t want to hear whatever it is she’s about to say. “Derek--”
“Thanks, sweetness,” he interrupts.
“Anything for you, angel face,” she murmurs, and he manages to smile before he hangs up.
XV
“Please state your name and occupation for the record.”
Derek puts his hands on the edge of the box; the polished wood is faintly tacky against his fingertips and the room is crowded, full of light. He thought he’d be panicking by now; the thought of talking about this, of reliving it in front of all these people, had him nearly hyperventilating in the hallway outside, but now that he’s here he feels strangely calm. “My name is Derek Morgan. I’m a special agent with the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.”
A bible is held in front of him and he reaches out to touch its cool leather cover. Buford is sitting next to his lawyer, wearing a dark suit and a blank expression, and Derek doesn’t have any trouble at all meeting his eyes.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Derek turns away from the man who was his first and best tutor in the subject of telling everything but the truth; he looks into the calm face of the court officer and nods. “I do.”
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Date: 2012-10-26 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-13 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-26 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-13 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-26 05:36 pm (UTC)i really hope you write more for cm because you're so very talented, but i'm gonna go check out your leverage fic because ugh yes such a good show too. <3
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Date: 2012-11-13 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-26 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-13 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-26 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-13 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 10:06 pm (UTC)And this just about did me in: By the second semester of his freshman year, he’s gained fifteen pounds of muscle and he wonders when that terrified boy is gonna stop looking at him out of the mirror. -- DEREK. D:
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Date: 2012-11-13 03:12 am (UTC)