Fic: CM - Home is What You Make It (1/5)
Title: Home is What You Make It (1/5)
Pairing: Reid/Morgan
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Rating: FRM
Genre: Friendship, Romance; Introspection
Spoilers: Takes place nearly directly following 401 "Mayhem" so minor spoilers for that; Also spoilers for the events of 212 "Profiler, Profiled" and the aftermath of 214/215 "The Big Game" and "Revelations"
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Notes: Takes place prior to both 406/407, "Memoriam" and "The Instincts" so none of the events or revelations of those episodes have happened.
Summary: Both Reid and Morgan return home, but something slightly unexpected brings them together again.
This part is mostly Reid and Morgan doing their own thing, separately.
Word Count: 2390
*~*
Aaron Hotchner looked up from his desk when one of his agents entered his office and closed the door behind him. He raised an eyebrow when Derek Morgan handed him a manila file folder. He almost didn’t open it, fearing that Morgan had decided to take the transfer to New York, despite what Hotch had said to him.
“It’s not what you think.” Morgan said, smiling a little ruefully.
Hotch opened the folder and stared blankly at the form inside. It was a request for leave. Not what he was expecting then. He looked back up at Morgan. “Have you made a decision?” He asked, knowing that just because Morgan hadn’t taken the transfer didn’t mean he wasn’t still considering it.
“I’m staying.” Morgan answered without hesitation.
“But?” Hotch asked knowing that there must be more, especially if Morgan was requesting time off.
Morgan shrugged uncomfortably. As much as he respected Hotch, he didn’t really want to be discussing this with him. “I thought about what you said.” He said quietly. “You were right, about the trust thing.”
“And you think some time off will help?” Hotch asked skeptically.
“I need to go home. It’s just something I have to do.” Morgan refused to be any more specific than that. He looked at Hotch, trying to gauge what Hotch really felt about his request. Sometimes the man was really hard to read. “I know this isn’t a good time, with Reid leaving for Vegas tomorrow, but…” He hesitated, not wanting to explain that one of the reasons he had asked for *this* time was precisely because Reid was going to be gone.
Hotch looked down at the form in his hand and then grabbed a pen to sign the bottom.
“Thank you.” Morgan said sincerely.
Hotch nodded. “It’s actually a good time. Our caseload will be a little light. J.J.’s trying to streamline to get ready for her temporary replacement, I still haven’t been cleared for flight and as you mentioned Reid is starting his vacation.” He smiled slightly. “You couldn’t have picked a better time if you’d planned it.”
Morgan took the form from Hotch and left the room quietly, not sure if the older man was fishing for information or if that comment had been as innocuous at it sounded.
By the time he returned to his desk after his afternoon hand-to-hand class, he found Emily typing up a report. Reid’s desk was suspiciously empty. Neat and empty, which indicated maybe he’d missed the younger agent.
“Did Reid leave?” Morgan asked as he began tidying his own workstation.
Prentiss looked up from her computer. “What? Yeah, about a half-hour ago.” She watched Morgan for a minute. “Are you going to take that job in New York?”
He looked across at her in surprise. No one had really asked him about it, aside from Rossi that night in the Hotel bar. “What and leave you all to your own devices? I don’t think so.” He grinned.
Emily smiled. “I’m glad. We’d miss you.”
Morgan shrugged as he put on his jacket. “Of course you would.”
He had one more stop to make before he could leave.
*~*
Penelope Garcia was firmly entrenched in the cyber world trying to find some elusive information for one of the other profiling teams when she heard someone enter her domain. “What can I do for you, my lovely?” She asked not looking away from her screen.
“Baby Girl.” Morgan said, closing the door behind her.
Garcia stopped typing and turned around. Morgan looked tense, still gorgeous, but tense. “What’s wrong?” She asked rolling closer.
Morgan shook his head. “Nothing. I just need to get some stuff sorted out, in my head. I’m taking a couple of weeks off, going home to Chicago. I just didn’t want to leave without saying something.”
Penelope narrowed her eyes at Morgan. “Is this about that job in New York?”
Morgan laughed, though it wasn’t entirely funny. “No, Mama. Hotch said something to me, and it made me think that maybe it’s time I…” He trailed off, not sure what exactly he was trying to say. He and Garcia were close, and they flirted a lot, but mostly it was in fun. He’d never really had a really serious heart to heart with her, not about what happened in Chicago last year, not about any of the fucked up things that had happened since then. He was more comfortable talking to her about personal stuff than with Hotch, but he still didn’t feel comfortable about, not until he got everything sorted out in his own head at least.
Penelope let him trail off into silence, as she watched him. After a moment she pulled him into a hug. “I’m proud of you, studmuffin.” She whispered, squeezing him a little tighter than necessary.
Morgan pulled away to look at her, smiling. “You stay out of trouble while I’m gone. Tell Kevin I don’t want to have to hurt him when I return.” He backed away from her, eager to get out of the building and home to pack.
“Oh and Derek?” Penelope asked sweetly.
“Yes, Mama?” He paused, one hand on the door handle.
“If you need to talk, I’m always here.”
“I know, sweetness.” Morgan smiled at her, knowing that he wouldn’t call her to talk about his problems, but that she would listen, if he needed her to.
*~*
Doctor Spencer Reid arrived in Vegas as scheduled. He hadn’t told his mother he was coming, just in case something had come up at work. To be honest he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t totally chicken out. He hadn’t seen her since before Tobias Hankel and he didn’t know if she’d be able to see the differences in him.
She wasn’t always aware enough to notice when he visited, but when she was, his mother often had a way of seeing through the distance he cloaked himself in as if it wasn’t even there. She always seemed to know when something wasn’t quite right, and although there was anything wrong, specifically, some days he still had trouble coping with the day to day things.
He hadn’t come to visit her after Hankel, he was having too much trouble just existing to try and pretend that everything was fine. Even after he stopped using the Dilaudid, there was still the craving. He had told Gideon he was struggling, and that was true, more true than he felt comfortable admitting.
This trip was overdue and a chance for him to make up to his mother the absences she must have felt over the past couple of years. He didn’t think he could explain to her exactly what had happened, but he didn’t think he had to pretend that something hadn’t happened.
“Doctor Reid, how nice to see you.” The receptionist at Bennington smiled at him, bringing him out of his own head, if just for a moment.
“Marianne, hello.”
“Doctor Norman didn’t tell us you were coming to visit.”
“He didn’t know.” Spencer tried to smile, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was. “How is she?”
Marianne smiled. “You know she has good days and bad ones. Today’s a good day.” She nodded towards the room off to the right where Diana liked to sit and read.
Reid stood in the doorway and watched his mother read. She would pause every once in awhile and look out the window as if she was thinking about a particular passage in the book. Reid smiled slightly.
He felt slightly nervous about coming to visit after all this time, but it wasn’t the same type of fear he had felt just people the whole mess with Randall Gardner. He wasn’t fighting the urge to run away, not anymore.
He took a deep breath and stepped closer. Diana Reid turned her head slightly and smiled. “Spencer. What are you doing here?”
Reid sat across from his mother. “I came to see you.”
She smiled again. “Wonderful.”
*~*
Derek Morgan entered the youth center with determination. He’d told Carl Buford that someone else would run the center long after he was gone, and while he wasn’t serious about doing it himself, he was honest enough with himself to realize that avoiding the place for the rest of his life felt too much like cowardice to him.
Regardless of how Buford had perverted this place, it could still do a lot of good for the neighborhood kids. After he’d returned from Chicago after that whole sordid mess, he started sending in donations, hoping he could help in some small way after the community was torn apart. He didn’t feel bad about what happened; only that it had taken so many years for him to be a stop to it and that his dirty laundry got aired in front of the team that way.
The team had been circumspect about it though. They had all respected his privacy and not brought it up once they’d returned, except the one time Gideon had tried to talk about it. Morgan had shot him down cold and it was never mentioned again. At the time he had been relieved, but now, nearly two years later, Morgan was wondering if maybe he should have talked about it, with someone.
The problem with talking about it was that he would have to actually *talk* about it, which he wasn’t entirely certain he was ready for, even after all this time. While his team at the BAU were more than colleagues, he didn’t feel comfortable talking with them about his own personal demons. Discussing it with his mom, or even Desiree or Sarah might be an option except that they still felt guilty that they hadn’t known what was going on.
Ultimately he had decided that it would be best to deal with it on his own, which until recently had meant not dealing with it at all.
That was about to change.
“Derek Morgan?” A young woman stood up from a work desk in the corner, looking at him uncertlainly. “You are Agent Derek Morgan, right?”
Morgan blinked and stepped forward to shake her hand. She looked vaguely familiar, but he wasn’t sure where she would have known her from. She was tall and kind of gangly, the kind of woman who could have passed for a man back in high school.
“Do I know you?” He asked her with a smile.
“Bernadette Mallory. I went to school with Desiree.”
Morgan tried to remember her, but was coming up with nothing. Unlike Sarah’s sometimes argumentative personality, Desiree was always more quiet. She didn’t have a lot of friends, just a few people she studied with on occasion.
Bernadette grinned, showing off a lot of teeth and Morgan had a sudden flash of someone with braces and limbs too large for their body. “Everyone called me Bernie then, actually they still do. It’s possible you thought I was a boy.” She shrugged ruefully.
Morgan blinked, not sure what to say to that. The fact was he could almost remember her now. He shook his head slightly. “What are you doing here?”
“I run the center now.” She said as if Morgan should have known that. She looked Morgan over carefully. “I didn’t expect to see you again, especially not here.”
Morgan frowned, trying to remember if he had seen the woman at all during that whole mess a couple of years ago, or if Desiree had mentioned anything about her in any of their phone calls. “How long have you worked here?” He asked instead.
Bernadette frowned. “Since right after. My brother Tommy used to spend all his free time here when I was too busy with school. I had just graduated when everything happened. I didn’t want to see the place closed down, not when there were so many people it could still help.”
“That’s actually why I’m here.” Morgan said, not wanting to get into a discussion regarding what had happened, even if it wasn’t exactly a secret, not anymore.
Bernadette blinked. “Did you want to see what we’ve done with the money you’ve donated?” She started to move back towards the desk. You can take a look at the books if you want, or have someone else…”
“Wait, no.” Morgan interrupted. “I was hoping I could do something else to help. Maybe some manual labor? You have anything that needs fixing?”
Bernadette stopped and looked at the agent in mild surprise. “You want to fix something?” She asked hesitantly.
Morgan shrugged uncomfortably, realizing he might have to be more forthcoming than he had intended. “What happened here, when I was a kid, it sort of tainted all my good memories of the place. I want to…” He wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Make new ones?” Bernadette asked softly. “Okay.” She nodded. “He just added a new room around back, but it’s nothing more than foundation at the moment. It needs painting, and carpeting,” She said, as she moved to a door in the back wall that led to the room in question. “I don’t suppose you have experience with that sort of thing.”
Morgan looked inside the room and smiled, thinking of the work he’d done on his different properties in between rentals. “As a matter of fact, I do. What did you have planned?”
Bernadette smiled. “Des thought that maybe we could offer tutoring and maybe some help with applications, for jobs, college, that sort of thing. But we didn’t really have the space.” She winked at him “Until regular donations started coming in.” She looked away from him, remembering what Desiree had told her about how Morgan refused to talk about the center or the money he had donated. “We’re hoping to gets some desks and chairs, maybe some computers, a printer, that sort of thing.”
Morgan nodded. “I’ve done a little carpeting, and some painting before. I’m sure I can help.”
Bernadette smiled. “Well then, I’ll leave you to figure what kinds of supplies you might need. There are a few boys you’ll be in later this afternoon who can probably lend a hand.”
Morgan watched her leave and turned back to the unfinished room. He wasn’t sure how much this would help him sort is own issues, but it was a start.
*~*
Part 2
Pairing: Reid/Morgan
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Rating: FRM
Genre: Friendship, Romance; Introspection
Spoilers: Takes place nearly directly following 401 "Mayhem" so minor spoilers for that; Also spoilers for the events of 212 "Profiler, Profiled" and the aftermath of 214/215 "The Big Game" and "Revelations"
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Notes: Takes place prior to both 406/407, "Memoriam" and "The Instincts" so none of the events or revelations of those episodes have happened.
Summary: Both Reid and Morgan return home, but something slightly unexpected brings them together again.
This part is mostly Reid and Morgan doing their own thing, separately.
Word Count: 2390
*~*
Aaron Hotchner looked up from his desk when one of his agents entered his office and closed the door behind him. He raised an eyebrow when Derek Morgan handed him a manila file folder. He almost didn’t open it, fearing that Morgan had decided to take the transfer to New York, despite what Hotch had said to him.
“It’s not what you think.” Morgan said, smiling a little ruefully.
Hotch opened the folder and stared blankly at the form inside. It was a request for leave. Not what he was expecting then. He looked back up at Morgan. “Have you made a decision?” He asked, knowing that just because Morgan hadn’t taken the transfer didn’t mean he wasn’t still considering it.
“I’m staying.” Morgan answered without hesitation.
“But?” Hotch asked knowing that there must be more, especially if Morgan was requesting time off.
Morgan shrugged uncomfortably. As much as he respected Hotch, he didn’t really want to be discussing this with him. “I thought about what you said.” He said quietly. “You were right, about the trust thing.”
“And you think some time off will help?” Hotch asked skeptically.
“I need to go home. It’s just something I have to do.” Morgan refused to be any more specific than that. He looked at Hotch, trying to gauge what Hotch really felt about his request. Sometimes the man was really hard to read. “I know this isn’t a good time, with Reid leaving for Vegas tomorrow, but…” He hesitated, not wanting to explain that one of the reasons he had asked for *this* time was precisely because Reid was going to be gone.
Hotch looked down at the form in his hand and then grabbed a pen to sign the bottom.
“Thank you.” Morgan said sincerely.
Hotch nodded. “It’s actually a good time. Our caseload will be a little light. J.J.’s trying to streamline to get ready for her temporary replacement, I still haven’t been cleared for flight and as you mentioned Reid is starting his vacation.” He smiled slightly. “You couldn’t have picked a better time if you’d planned it.”
Morgan took the form from Hotch and left the room quietly, not sure if the older man was fishing for information or if that comment had been as innocuous at it sounded.
By the time he returned to his desk after his afternoon hand-to-hand class, he found Emily typing up a report. Reid’s desk was suspiciously empty. Neat and empty, which indicated maybe he’d missed the younger agent.
“Did Reid leave?” Morgan asked as he began tidying his own workstation.
Prentiss looked up from her computer. “What? Yeah, about a half-hour ago.” She watched Morgan for a minute. “Are you going to take that job in New York?”
He looked across at her in surprise. No one had really asked him about it, aside from Rossi that night in the Hotel bar. “What and leave you all to your own devices? I don’t think so.” He grinned.
Emily smiled. “I’m glad. We’d miss you.”
Morgan shrugged as he put on his jacket. “Of course you would.”
He had one more stop to make before he could leave.
*~*
Penelope Garcia was firmly entrenched in the cyber world trying to find some elusive information for one of the other profiling teams when she heard someone enter her domain. “What can I do for you, my lovely?” She asked not looking away from her screen.
“Baby Girl.” Morgan said, closing the door behind her.
Garcia stopped typing and turned around. Morgan looked tense, still gorgeous, but tense. “What’s wrong?” She asked rolling closer.
Morgan shook his head. “Nothing. I just need to get some stuff sorted out, in my head. I’m taking a couple of weeks off, going home to Chicago. I just didn’t want to leave without saying something.”
Penelope narrowed her eyes at Morgan. “Is this about that job in New York?”
Morgan laughed, though it wasn’t entirely funny. “No, Mama. Hotch said something to me, and it made me think that maybe it’s time I…” He trailed off, not sure what exactly he was trying to say. He and Garcia were close, and they flirted a lot, but mostly it was in fun. He’d never really had a really serious heart to heart with her, not about what happened in Chicago last year, not about any of the fucked up things that had happened since then. He was more comfortable talking to her about personal stuff than with Hotch, but he still didn’t feel comfortable about, not until he got everything sorted out in his own head at least.
Penelope let him trail off into silence, as she watched him. After a moment she pulled him into a hug. “I’m proud of you, studmuffin.” She whispered, squeezing him a little tighter than necessary.
Morgan pulled away to look at her, smiling. “You stay out of trouble while I’m gone. Tell Kevin I don’t want to have to hurt him when I return.” He backed away from her, eager to get out of the building and home to pack.
“Oh and Derek?” Penelope asked sweetly.
“Yes, Mama?” He paused, one hand on the door handle.
“If you need to talk, I’m always here.”
“I know, sweetness.” Morgan smiled at her, knowing that he wouldn’t call her to talk about his problems, but that she would listen, if he needed her to.
*~*
Doctor Spencer Reid arrived in Vegas as scheduled. He hadn’t told his mother he was coming, just in case something had come up at work. To be honest he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t totally chicken out. He hadn’t seen her since before Tobias Hankel and he didn’t know if she’d be able to see the differences in him.
She wasn’t always aware enough to notice when he visited, but when she was, his mother often had a way of seeing through the distance he cloaked himself in as if it wasn’t even there. She always seemed to know when something wasn’t quite right, and although there was anything wrong, specifically, some days he still had trouble coping with the day to day things.
He hadn’t come to visit her after Hankel, he was having too much trouble just existing to try and pretend that everything was fine. Even after he stopped using the Dilaudid, there was still the craving. He had told Gideon he was struggling, and that was true, more true than he felt comfortable admitting.
This trip was overdue and a chance for him to make up to his mother the absences she must have felt over the past couple of years. He didn’t think he could explain to her exactly what had happened, but he didn’t think he had to pretend that something hadn’t happened.
“Doctor Reid, how nice to see you.” The receptionist at Bennington smiled at him, bringing him out of his own head, if just for a moment.
“Marianne, hello.”
“Doctor Norman didn’t tell us you were coming to visit.”
“He didn’t know.” Spencer tried to smile, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was. “How is she?”
Marianne smiled. “You know she has good days and bad ones. Today’s a good day.” She nodded towards the room off to the right where Diana liked to sit and read.
Reid stood in the doorway and watched his mother read. She would pause every once in awhile and look out the window as if she was thinking about a particular passage in the book. Reid smiled slightly.
He felt slightly nervous about coming to visit after all this time, but it wasn’t the same type of fear he had felt just people the whole mess with Randall Gardner. He wasn’t fighting the urge to run away, not anymore.
He took a deep breath and stepped closer. Diana Reid turned her head slightly and smiled. “Spencer. What are you doing here?”
Reid sat across from his mother. “I came to see you.”
She smiled again. “Wonderful.”
*~*
Derek Morgan entered the youth center with determination. He’d told Carl Buford that someone else would run the center long after he was gone, and while he wasn’t serious about doing it himself, he was honest enough with himself to realize that avoiding the place for the rest of his life felt too much like cowardice to him.
Regardless of how Buford had perverted this place, it could still do a lot of good for the neighborhood kids. After he’d returned from Chicago after that whole sordid mess, he started sending in donations, hoping he could help in some small way after the community was torn apart. He didn’t feel bad about what happened; only that it had taken so many years for him to be a stop to it and that his dirty laundry got aired in front of the team that way.
The team had been circumspect about it though. They had all respected his privacy and not brought it up once they’d returned, except the one time Gideon had tried to talk about it. Morgan had shot him down cold and it was never mentioned again. At the time he had been relieved, but now, nearly two years later, Morgan was wondering if maybe he should have talked about it, with someone.
The problem with talking about it was that he would have to actually *talk* about it, which he wasn’t entirely certain he was ready for, even after all this time. While his team at the BAU were more than colleagues, he didn’t feel comfortable talking with them about his own personal demons. Discussing it with his mom, or even Desiree or Sarah might be an option except that they still felt guilty that they hadn’t known what was going on.
Ultimately he had decided that it would be best to deal with it on his own, which until recently had meant not dealing with it at all.
That was about to change.
“Derek Morgan?” A young woman stood up from a work desk in the corner, looking at him uncertlainly. “You are Agent Derek Morgan, right?”
Morgan blinked and stepped forward to shake her hand. She looked vaguely familiar, but he wasn’t sure where she would have known her from. She was tall and kind of gangly, the kind of woman who could have passed for a man back in high school.
“Do I know you?” He asked her with a smile.
“Bernadette Mallory. I went to school with Desiree.”
Morgan tried to remember her, but was coming up with nothing. Unlike Sarah’s sometimes argumentative personality, Desiree was always more quiet. She didn’t have a lot of friends, just a few people she studied with on occasion.
Bernadette grinned, showing off a lot of teeth and Morgan had a sudden flash of someone with braces and limbs too large for their body. “Everyone called me Bernie then, actually they still do. It’s possible you thought I was a boy.” She shrugged ruefully.
Morgan blinked, not sure what to say to that. The fact was he could almost remember her now. He shook his head slightly. “What are you doing here?”
“I run the center now.” She said as if Morgan should have known that. She looked Morgan over carefully. “I didn’t expect to see you again, especially not here.”
Morgan frowned, trying to remember if he had seen the woman at all during that whole mess a couple of years ago, or if Desiree had mentioned anything about her in any of their phone calls. “How long have you worked here?” He asked instead.
Bernadette frowned. “Since right after. My brother Tommy used to spend all his free time here when I was too busy with school. I had just graduated when everything happened. I didn’t want to see the place closed down, not when there were so many people it could still help.”
“That’s actually why I’m here.” Morgan said, not wanting to get into a discussion regarding what had happened, even if it wasn’t exactly a secret, not anymore.
Bernadette blinked. “Did you want to see what we’ve done with the money you’ve donated?” She started to move back towards the desk. You can take a look at the books if you want, or have someone else…”
“Wait, no.” Morgan interrupted. “I was hoping I could do something else to help. Maybe some manual labor? You have anything that needs fixing?”
Bernadette stopped and looked at the agent in mild surprise. “You want to fix something?” She asked hesitantly.
Morgan shrugged uncomfortably, realizing he might have to be more forthcoming than he had intended. “What happened here, when I was a kid, it sort of tainted all my good memories of the place. I want to…” He wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Make new ones?” Bernadette asked softly. “Okay.” She nodded. “He just added a new room around back, but it’s nothing more than foundation at the moment. It needs painting, and carpeting,” She said, as she moved to a door in the back wall that led to the room in question. “I don’t suppose you have experience with that sort of thing.”
Morgan looked inside the room and smiled, thinking of the work he’d done on his different properties in between rentals. “As a matter of fact, I do. What did you have planned?”
Bernadette smiled. “Des thought that maybe we could offer tutoring and maybe some help with applications, for jobs, college, that sort of thing. But we didn’t really have the space.” She winked at him “Until regular donations started coming in.” She looked away from him, remembering what Desiree had told her about how Morgan refused to talk about the center or the money he had donated. “We’re hoping to gets some desks and chairs, maybe some computers, a printer, that sort of thing.”
Morgan nodded. “I’ve done a little carpeting, and some painting before. I’m sure I can help.”
Bernadette smiled. “Well then, I’ll leave you to figure what kinds of supplies you might need. There are a few boys you’ll be in later this afternoon who can probably lend a hand.”
Morgan watched her leave and turned back to the unfinished room. He wasn’t sure how much this would help him sort is own issues, but it was a start.
*~*
Part 2