innerslytherin

 
Title:  5 Things Derek Morgan Blames on Carl Buford
Rating: PG-13/FRT
Warning: Heavy mention of sexual abuse
Spoilers: Particularly for "Profiler, Profiled"
Summary: Carl Buford never stopped affecting Morgan's life.
Character/Pairing:Derek Morgan, mentions of Morgan/Reid
WC: 1,281

 
1. 1987 - 1991
 
Freshman year didn't count.  It was one of the worst years of his life, not only because Carl was still touching him, but also because he was a scrawny, 5'3" weakling in a South Chicago public school.  Rodney and his friends were still harassing him on the way to school every day, and Derek finally started getting up at five in the morning and go to the Upward Youth Center just to avoid them, because the route from the center to school was different enough that Rodney didn't think to look for him there.
 
But the summer before his sophomore year, Derek hit his growth spurt.  He stood 5'9" by the time school started, and he'd spent extra time at the youth center running plays and drilling.  Halfway through his sophomore season, he was playing every game as the relief quarterback.  His junior year he started every game.
 
He was popular with the girls, but awkward around them.  Shy.  Scared.  He didn't know what to do with a girl, and he had no one to ask.  He couldn't ask Carl things like that.  Carl made Derek's body react to touches and caresses, even as he made Derek feel dirty for reacting.  Every time Derek thought about saying no, he thought about how much he owed Carl, and he swallowed his protests.
 
Derek went to his senior prom with the captain of the cheerleading team, and she took him to a hotel room afterward and he lost his virginity--his girl-virginity, anyway--in a fumbling attempt that left them both unhappy and unable to look each other in the eye.  Derek spent the whole summer questioning whether he would ever be normal.

 
 
2. 1991 - 1994
 
He got himself a full-ride scholarship to Northwestern.  His mother told him a hundred times if she told him once that his father would have been proud of him.  Derek knew Carl was proud of him, and probably relieved that Derek was gone.  A couple of weeks after his senior prom, Derek had pushed Carl away for the first time.  Carl came up behind him and put his arms around him, and Derek jerked away, jabbing his elbow against Carl's chest.  Carl hadn't approached him again, and Derek could see the speculation and worry in Carl's eyes every time he looked at Derek from that moment on.
 
He never did time as a second-stringer at Northwestern.  From his first game, he was the starting quarterback, and his freshman year was spent in a haze of popularity.  He started gaining some confidence with the ladies, but he could never bring himself to get past second base.  He still regretted his prom night, and he wondered if it was always like that, disappointing for everyone involved.  Sex had varied from painful to awkward to guilt-ridden since he was twelve years old, and if that was what sex was about, Derek wanted nothing more to do with it.
 
Then he blew out his knee and found out who his real friends were.  He had a close group of buddies in his fraternity, and three or four women friends in his psych classes, and he found himself growing more comfortable around them.  But he never talked about his past.  He'd learned to keep himself closed off.  It was safer that way.
 
 

3. 1994 - 1999
 
His mother wanted him to become a lawyer.  He got his Juris Doctor from Northwestern, and he thought about going on to take the bar and try to become a prosecutor.  He still spent a lot of time at the youth center, though he and Carl were avoiding each other by then.  Derek kept an eye on the best football players at the center, wondering which of them was Carl's favorite, but too afraid to say anything.  So he did what he could to be there for them, offered advice about football, girls, and school, when it was asked, and kept his mouth shut.  He let Carl go on being a hero.  Too many people loved him.  They might not believe Derek.
 
So he left Northwestern with a JD, but he found himself following in his father's footsteps and going to work for the Chicago Police Department.  He stood out among his class and ended up being selected for a joint undercover job between CPD and the Drug Enforcement Agency.  It wasn't the area he really wanted to work in--obsessional criminals, pedophiles and rapists and sexual murders, those were who he really wanted to catch--but it would look good on his resume, and anything that would make him more attractive to the FBI was a good thing, in his book.
 
 

4. April 1999 - October 2000
 
For eighteen months, Derek Morgan was someone he hated, hanging out with drug dealers and prostitutes, carrying a 'piece' and inking his skin with things to make him look tougher, pretending to be a criminal.  He treated women like shit and carried himself like a thug.  He couldn't look himself in the mirror any more.
 
And he did it because he wanted the FBI so bad he could taste it.  So he could take down people like Carl Buford.  So he could get some kind of vicarious revenge.
 
So he could try to find some kind of peace.



5. 2002 - 2008
 
It only took him two years in the FBI to come to Jason Gideon's attention.  Once Gideon noticed him, Derek saw SSA Hotchner around more often, too.  By the time his third anniversary with the Bureau rolled around, Derek was Supervisory Special Agent Morgan, Obsessional Crimes Expert and profiler with the elite Behavioral Analysis Unit.  He was rubbing shoulders every day with some of the finest minds in the world.
 
In 2003 he met Spencer Reid.  Doctor Spencer Reid.  And he spent the next five years trying to convince himself that Reid was a scrawny, know-it-all kid, annoying as hell and not in the least attractive.  Not to Derek.  Derek wasn't like Carl.  Derek didn't like younger men, didn't like men at all. 

He fell back on the obnoxious jock routine that he'd seen in his teammates at Northwestern.  He started going to clubs, sleeping with women.  He learned that sex could be fun, but every weekend left him feeling a little lonelier, a little emptier.
 
It wasn't enough to watch Reid die on the screen when Hankle had him.  In the cemetery at Marshall Parrish Morgan had tried to go to him, tried to say something, but Hotch and JJ got to him first, and then Morgan couldn't force any words out.  In the weeks following he'd made honest attempts to bridge the gaps between them.  But by then Reid was in his own self-destructive spiral, and no matter how Derek tried, Reid was always going the opposite direction.
 
It took Spencer nearly dying a second time to make Derek admit what he'd known for years.  That what he really wanted was someone he didn't have to pretend around, someone who knew him and wanted him anyway, someone who understood...Spencer.
 
When Spencer woke in the burn unit in New York City, swathed in bandages, Morgan was there, in the same chair he'd been sleeping in for two days.  The smile that bloomed across Reid's face made him look even younger and more fragile than the bandages and machines and IV lines already did, but it gave Morgan his first deep breath in days--a hint of hope that maybe, just maybe, he hadn't screwed things up between him and Reid.
 
Sitting in that hospital chair, his fingers curled gently around Reid's good hand, Derek Morgan took the first step towards finally forgetting Carl Buford.