itinere | Open | Well, isn't this just fine and dandy.

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{criminal minds: derek morgan

Open | Well, isn't this just fine and dandy.

Suffice to say that this new locale that Venus is forced to call home has not been entirely kind to her. Firstly, she was taken from her lover and from Charming and unceremoniously dropped in this place. Then she met a most stunningly handsome man who turned out to be just a little nuts short of a full toolbox, very nearly overwhelming her with his ardor only to entirely vanish as if nothing had ever occurred.

It's enough to make a girl's head spin.

Then add insult to the injury of the whole drama that is her current position, she has the most hellacious headcold, making everything seem muzzy and fuddled.

Really, as she sneezes for the fiftieth time into her handkerchief, she falls to sit on a bench because a girl just needs a break. After all, it's hard to give oral pleasure when one can't breathe through one's nose.

So, there is a very striking brunette in a very short skirt sitting on a bench, sneezing and blowing her nose to beat the band. Oh, the trauma.

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Yes, the "she" was Venus's mother. A sneeze and a wiping of her nose, and she went on.

"I wasn't straight, of course. So ... " Venus's eyes close. It's history, of course, and buried, yet there is so much of her very being tied up in what she is. "When she couldn't straighten me out herself, why ... she used me. And other children. So ... that is my childhood, Derek. In that proverbial cracked nutshell."

Oh damn. It's exactly what Derek had feared. And something was twisting and turning inside of him, a sickness in his stomach, a shroud of darkness in his mind and am aching vice grip on his heart. He's quiet for a bit, just working to keep whatever bile might come up down. Deep breaths, slow and measured. His eyes full of too much emotion. Derek had a tendency to wear his emotions on his sleeve though.

It takes him a bit, but finally he moves up to sit on the tiny space on the edge of the couch and he pulls Venus up. "Come here..." He hugs her, glad for the act that would hide his face from her.

"I didn't tell you that for you to pity me," Venus protests just vaguely. But Derek's warm and strong and much like she had with SAMCRO, she lets herself feel safe in this moment. "In case you thought I was .... "

Because, really ... well, Venus isn't big on being thought of as anything less than remarkable, really. (Or so she tells herself in her tired and weak moments.)

Her words are like the ultimate slap in the face. Derek pulls back, eyes narrowed and shakes his head. "You think this is pity?" He would never. Because he never wanted pity either. But he's gotten it, nonetheless. And he knows how shitty it feels. What he has is understanding. What he has is...

He shakes his head and pulls away to stand up. He steps away, his arms crossing over his chest. Where the hell are his sunglasses. In the neck of his tee at his back. Not far. "I should let you rest." He forces a small grin. "Drink your tea. Eat your soup. Drugs'll kick in... you'll feel better."

"Derek ...?"

Color Venus confused and sick and somehow so very bothered that Derek might leave thusly.

She gets to her feet, swaying only a little bit, the lion in one arm. "I have been pitied a great deal in my life. For being a freak. For having a horrible mother who ended up with a well-earned bullet right here." She taps the center of her forehead. "I ... I would - " her face creases and then smooths out as she takes a deep breath. "I would like you to stay. Please."

When she gets to her feet, his hands itch to help her stay upright when she sways. But he keeps his arms crossed across his chest, tightly, as if he could close himself off and protect himself through sheer force of will. He was big. He was intimidating. He was strong. He was mighty. A wild animal that could not be tamed. Like a lion.

His gaze slipped down to the stuffed lion he had brought her, the one she held under one arm. Something in his features seems to shift from hard lines to lines that bend, lines that are softer.

She wanted him to stay.

Derek rolls his head from side to side, stretching out the corded muscles there. And slowly, his arms uncurl, hands moving to rest on his own hips. "I've learned that when people pity you, it's not about you. It's about them. Whether they don't know how to act or what to say. Whether it's about them wantin' to help but not knowin' how. It's about them. Not you." Not himself. But he would never pity her for what she had told him, and not for most things.

He hesitates just a moment. Then nods. "I'd like to stay." And in that moment, he had needed her to ask, as ready to run for the hills as he had been. Sometimes his own dark emotions overwhelmed him. And that too, had been about him and not her.

"It seems you have burrowed to the core of it," she says with a wobbly smile. "You and I have ... well, we have shared a good bit of ourselves in the most Biblical of senses, but that does not seem to have extended to our souls. I do not often bare my soul to others for fear that it will be found wanting."

She reaches out her free hand to him. "I hope you will forgive me my offense."

"Me either." Sharing your soul meant giving another person the ammunition to hurt you. It was why he usually had one night stands. It was why when someone did stick, they didn't stick for long because Derek was always scared to let anyone too close, to share so much of himself.

He had been getting better about it in later years. Sometimes he still needed someone to ask him to stay though.

He reaches out to place his hand in hers and steps closer to her. "It's easy to offend where emotions are raw." And Derek has a lot of raw emotions right now. In regard to both Venus and the subject matter for which they had had their misunderstanding.

"I will not claim to understand why you sought me out, Derek," she tells him, pulling his hand to urge him to come sit by her. "Is it that you think you truly feel something for me... after our increasingly intense prior meeting? Do you think you could?"

Strange thing is that Derek has no idea why he sought her out either. A part of him had thought that maybe if he gave her space and let it sit for awhile that he could forget it had ever happened. Derek was used to being a little freaky now and then. But this was a whole new level. And it should be noted that Derek didn't think 'freak' was a bad thing.

But he hadn't been able to quit thinking about her, the things they had done together. She was still always on his mind, not scarily obsessively so, but if he gave himself space and time, his thoughts always went to her. To the emotions he had felt with her that had seemed and still seemed so real.

"I think I still feel somethin'... no idea what that somethin' is and it confuses the hell outta me, but I feel it." He settles on the couch with her, an arm going around her shoulders. "There's a quote that says, 'If you want to know where your heart is, look where your mind goes when it wanders.'. My mind's been goin' to you non-stop."

"... really?" Venus asks, voice low and quiet even as she shifts to rest her cheek on Derek's shoulder - if she needed an excuse, she could blame the cough medicine. But she's not the type to do that.

"What kind of thoughts is that mind of yours having?" she also asks. "Thoughts of what we did in your bed - or your kitchen - or your living room - or your bathroom, come to think of it ... ? Or ... something other than our most thorough sexual relations?"

Something deep inside that had still been wound up tight seems to relax again when Venus leans her head against his shoulder and relaxes into his side. She was comfortable with him for now. And that was probably more than he deserved. It was definitely more than he had hoped.

"Thinkin' about all those things... you and me." He's quiet for just a bit before continuing, hoping that she doesn't pull away with what he says next. "I've never... been with anyone like you." Someone with the same plumbing as him. "Not since... I was a lot younger."

His fingers idly brush over her shoulder. "It's new." New, but not. There were a lot more layers to this than anyone but Derek could realize.

All that requires that Venus moves again, this time to be able to see his face when he says such things. "So, you have had some ... experience with the male anatomy of another?" she asks, quietly, without judgement. "Do you consider yourself bisexual, Derek? Or is it just for the occasional walk on the wild side?"

Derek looks into her eyes when she shifts, but casts his gaze away from her when she asks that question. There is definite shame there that he quickly covers up. "I don't know what I consider myself. Usually just go with the flow... whatever I feel." He'd thought he was straight. But would a straight guy have liked what he and Venus did so much? He didn't know.

"I..." He draws a deep breath. "I got messed up in the gangs, you know, after I lost my dad. But uhm... this guy who ran the local Youth Recreational Center.... he took me under his wing. Started me playin' football. Got me off the streets. Gained my trust so that he was like a father figure to me." Derek swallows hard. "And then... he started touchin' me."

Derek has told this story several times at this point. It never gets easier. "He would feed me wine and we would... do things. He'd threaten to stop all the way he was helpin' me if I told anyone. He said no one would believe me. And I never said anything. For years. He even wrote my scholarship recommendation letter to get me into college. Fine upstanding citizen, he was. I got a full ride to Northwestern State."

He shrugs, finally looking back to Venus. His gaze is hard and unreadable. "I never looked back. And yeah. I've had... some experience."

"Oh ... honey. Isn't the world such a shit place at times." Her face creased with empathy, Venus cups his face with her larger, warm hand. "You have made something of yourself, even I can tell that."

There's a moment's pause when she asks, her voice a low murmur, "you haven't seen him since you went away to college?" She wonders how he would have reacted to her mother. Would he have killed her?

It doesn't matter, of course. "You and I share more than a few potholes in the road of life, don't we?"

"I did make somethin' of myself." He was strong. He was brave. He was the hero. He was the thing that put guys like Carl Buford behind bars. And he was the guy who eventually got the ball rolling that eventually put Buford where he belonged.

"Lots of years later, dead kids started showin' up in Chicago. I worked with the FBI in my world." He glances at her at that bit of information. What would she think of his being federal law enforcement? "We got called in on the case. Buford worked it so it was pinned on me. But I turned it around. Finally told the truth about what happened. He said some thing that... that proved I was right. He didn't just do it to me. There were more kids... before and after. They started comin' forward. He went to jail."

He turns his head just enough to glide his cheek over that hand she has rested there. "Few years later. Upstanding men in the bad parts of Chicago, my old neighborhood, they started gettin' killed. Turned out it was one of the kids Buford had molested. I had to go see him in jail. The inmates there, they all thought he was in for multiple homicide... gave him street cred." He pauses. "I made it clear to them that he was a pedophile."

He draws a deep breath. Everyone knows what happens to pedophiles in prison. Everyone. Surely Venus could get the rest of that story. Derek hadn't killed Carl Buford himself, but he had sure as hell signed his death warrant. "He's dead."

But he was sometimes still very much alive in Derek's mind. Buford would be happy about that. "We're alike in that... I mean the circumstances are different. But I would never pity you. Just like you wouldn't do that to me."

But, he - that bad man, the Carl Buford - is dead and rotting, just like Venus's mother.

Isn't that something?

First things first, Venus is all for asshole pedophiles dying a good, grisly death. As for Derek being FBI? Well, they're in a different place here, aren't they? None of them are what they were. (Well, she is a little bit, but it's the world's oldest profession for a reason, after all).

"You did the right thing, sugar," she tells him quietly, thumb tracing a circle on his cheek, her voice coming out snuffly from the cold. "You did the damned right thing and got that son of a bitch just what he deserved."

A pause and she smiles, just a little. "So, you're a federale, hmm, darlin'? What's that like?"

Had he really done the right thing? He didn't know. He could remember going to see him in prison to try to get a list of names of the boys he had hurt, the way Buford had held his hand and told him he had been his favorite out of all of them, how sick that had made him. Had he done the right thing? He'd just wanted to hurt Carl as much as Carl had hurt him, had hurt that long list of names.

Revenge should never sit well with a person, he supposed. That death, no matter what, would always stick with him. But it meant a lot that Venus thought that he had done the right thing. No one had come out and blamed him openly, even though they all knew what he had done and why. But Derek could see that they knew, nonetheless.

He nods slowly. "Yeah. I was gonna be the big football star, you know? NFL all the way. But my Sophomore year at Northwestern, a bad tackle took me out of the game for good. Lots of surgeries later, I decided to go pre law with a minor in psychology. Joined the force. Worked my way up into the FBI, worked bomb squad for awhile, undercover for awhile, and then joined the BAU... which is where I am now."

But he realizes that needs some explanation. "It's the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Profilers. We specifically work with serial cases, murders, kidnappings, rapes, arson, a little bit of everything, unless we're specifically called in on a certain case." He shrugs and reaches up to take her hand in his, feeling much more at ease talking about this work than the prior topic. "I like it. I get to be the hero. Bustin' down doors, takin' names, savin' lives... when we can."

"I don't know if we would have crossed paths in the best of fashions in the real world," Venus notes, letting her hand drop to her lap with a small, wry smile. "Perhaps the door to the houses of my friends would be the ones you would have taken down. But." She raises her gaze to meet Derek's. "But good men come in all shapes and sizes, don't they, Derek. Just as bad men do."

Why should he not want to hurt this Carl Buford? That man clearly deserved to suffer. And the God that Venus found herself most close to was the one who preached as much fear and hate as love.

"You," she continues. "You are a good man. You are, and you know that. And if you don't, well, just ask me. I'll tell you."

"One thing I've learned is that nothin's so black and white as good or bad." That was what they did, as Profilers, after all. They got into the psyche of the unsubs, they figured out the why of the things people did, both good and bad. And in the why they found the heart of it, the humanity of even the most horrific things.

The group of them had often mused on how thin the line was sometimes between those they hunted and themselves. Because you had to be able to think like them to understand them and to find them. It was how Derek had knowingly sent Carl to his death, after all.

Derek lifts the arm that had been around her shoulder and presses a hand to the back of her neck and pull her close. He kisses her brow. "It means a lot that you would say that." He doesn't always feel like a good man, after all. He doesn't always do good thing, although he does try. "I think you're pretty amazing too. pretty girl."

At that little nickname, that "pretty girl," Venus smiles just a little, a shy little quirk which was much more the real Venus, not the call-girl-freak-goddess that was the role she played (Maybe even the real Vincent, who still lurked somewhere underneath it all).

She lets her forehead rest against his. Before she has to pull away quickly to sneeze into a hastily-pulled Kleenex.

Oh, the misery.

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Open | Well, isn't this just fine and dandy.

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