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

[venusvandam]

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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Re: TRIGGER WARNING - ABUSE

[venusvandam]

"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?"

Re: TRIGGER WARNING - ABUSE

[ex_bloodcakedarmor707]

"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."

TRIGGER WARNING - ABUSE

[venusvandam]

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?"

[ex_bloodcakedarmor707]

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."

[venusvandam]

"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."

[ex_bloodcakedarmor707]

"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."

[venusvandam]

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.