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It's ironic that it's a beach bunny who sends Derek to Penelope.
Derek knows his triggers and his own temper, handles his weaknesses, so he was well aware already when they uncovered the child abuse case that he was going to be going off the handle by the end. He figured at the time that it was just good he had a long weekend coming up, and he stayed behind in Miami when the rest of the crew jetted back to Quantico, figuring getting lost in the glittering lights and then getting laid, maybe reading a thriller on the beach, was just what the doctor ordered.
It was just taking him a while to gear up to the losing himself part, and the glittering lights, sulking in a corner of the club between dances with an untouched drink, unable to hold the smile pinned to his face. He was jolted out of reverie by a spectacular pair of tanned breasts, and straighetened up only to meet a pair of big brown eyes ringed in glittery makeup. The beach bunny was dressed in pastel hotpants and a shirt more like a bikini top, highlighted hair out to there, but she wasn't licking her lips and looking him over: her eyes were lit up with concern and sympathy.
"You okay?" she said.
Derek tried to laugh it off, "Sure, beautiful, how are you," but she wasn't having any. One hand landed on his arm and she leaned closer, so Derek could see that she was older than she looked, maybe not a college student at all.
"Honey," she said, "I'd love to dance with you if you want, but you don't look like you want to be here."
Derek laughed at himself, then. "Let's have that dance and then I'll work it out," he said.
She pouted doubtfully, and in between shaking her ass and shimmying around him on the floor (uncoordinated, but sexy), she said "You sure?" and then "Listen, if you just need somebody to talk to..." lifting the hair off her neck while Derek's eyes absently tracked a drop of sweat trickling between her breasts.
But -
"You know what," said Derek, "thank you. I think I do." He didn't get her name, just went straight to the airport after a stop for his bag, and from the airport straight to Penelope's apartment.
It doesn't occur to him until he's walking up the stairs that it's almost midnight on Saturday, and Penelope might not be there - she could have a date. But he pushes the bell, anyway.
"Yeah?"
"Hi, baby girl," says Derek, "hope I didn't wake you."
"Sugar lips, are you kidding me? I'm still on my first microwave pizza, not that I wouldn't love to be awakened by your sexy voice. Come on up and I'll have you for dessert."
Derek comes on up, and he pushes through the door when Pen calls out, "It's unlocked." Her back is to him, wrapped in a pink and green satin kimono robe that's about as loud as the music in the club he just left, draping around the ample curve of her ass. "Derek Morgan, you scrumptious delight, what brings you to my humble abode when you're supposed to be on vacation?" She turns around from the microwave a moment later, a plate of faintly steaming pizza gripped in a wad of paper-towels and a crocheted pot holder.
She's wearing the red-framed glasses and her hair is piled up with a pencil stuck through the mess, white-blonde wisps all over her face and neck, and she's beautiful, even if he's sorry to see a t-shirt in the V of her robe, with not nearly as much cleavage on display as the beach bunny offered (and Pen's would be nothing like that anyway - creamy white, just a hint of peach, and her skin is perfect and smooth, not sun-baked and leathery).
Derek summons up a little smile and the answer he's been rehearsing in his head through the whole plane flight: "You know I missed you, mama! You got a minute?"
But his underlying anxiety must be showing through; he knows that his smile didn't come off right, exactly, he can feel the energy in the room changing as she looks right into him, and puts the pizza down barely on the edge of the table so it almost falls off, comes right up into his space so he can smell the fruity, girly smells of her perfume and shampoo and lipgloss. "Of course," she says gently, "What is it?"
Derek realizes suddenly that he's about to change everything. He's never talked about this before when he didn't have to, and his responses in mandatory psych evaluations have been minimal; he likes to handle his problems himself, not to show weakness and not to break down in front of other people, not to expose himself to their sympathy and curiosity and even their genuine love and concern when there's nothing they can do for him, at all.
He's had a few crazy moments of wishing he could tell someone, the way you might wish you could fly, not as if he could actually do it because he always knew that he couldn't. They always passed without any real anxiety on his part, until now. But right now he wants to.
When it comes right down to it, though, nerves are eating him up. Derek looks at her couch, looks back at Penelope. "Should we - are you sure you're not busy?"
"I'm never too busy for you, sugar," she says playfully, but her face is sweet and sincere when she smiles up at him. She doesn't drop her hand on his arm coyly, but takes his hand in a strong grip and pulls him after her to the couch. "Just sit down."
After Derek sits, she fusses around with the cushions, arranging herself next to him, her bare feet curled up next to her, peeping out from the bottom of her silky pajamas.
"I thought maybe we could talk about something," says Derek. She looks at him steadily with those big beautiful blue eyes, solemn, waiting.
"Anything."
"I've just got to figure out how to start," he says.
"Darling, whenever you want to, whatever you want to say," says Penelope.
Her toes are curling next to his thigh. The big one is robin's egg blue, and the next one is red. Derek wants to touch her - or rather to touch more than her foot - so he looks up at her face, gauging, and slides his arm along the back of the couch.
She smiles slightly at that and immediately leans into the couch and scoots closer, until she can wrap an arm around his shoulder and he's got her softness through the slippery silk of that crazy kimono pressed all along his side. She smells not completely flowery up close - after a day at the office he can catch a hint of womanly sweat and musk, and it's comforting and real.
"I was in a club full of people in Miami and I couldn't get this case out of my head," he explains. "I wanted to get away from it, but I couldn't get away from it in my own mind. A girl asked me if I needed someone to talk to, and..."
"You jumped on a plane and ran straight into my arms," Penelope finishes for him, playful.
Derek can't cope with her joking, though, for once. He lifts his head and looks right into her beatiful eyes and takes his life in his hands. "I needed you," he says quietly, so seriously and yet so forcefully that it's like every other sound in the room - in the world - goes away.
Penelope is silent, a little stunned, her soft mouth hanging open, a pink blush creeping up her face. "You - you have me," she says, stuttering.
Derek holds her gaze, and while he watches she gets pinker - her face, her neck, down into the t-shirt, probably all the way down to the V of the kimono and maybe deeper. "Penelope," he says. He meant to explain how he trusts her and what she means to him without pressuring her, but all that comes out is her name, hoarse.
She swallows and lifts her chin a little, takes a deep breath that presses her breasts against his chest. "Derek." It's soft, but determined. "You can always -"
He touches her face, incredibly, like his hand is moving without him and he's watching himself on tv; Derek has never - quite - given himself permission to do that, for all the times he's touched her, even brushed her cheek. The intent is different, now, he knows it and she knows it, when his hand lifts from behind her and cups her cheek, thumb grazing over her lips and she stops speaking, eyes wide, pupils blown. Her mouth moves against his thumb, maybe shaping his name, but no sound emerges.
"I needed you," Derek says again, and moves his hand enough to touch the silky ends of her hair.
She shakes her head slightly and a curl bounces against his knuckles. Then she reaches up and touches his wrist and hand where he's touching her face, cupping it, threading her fingers with his and tilting her face to smile a little at him.
"Derek," she says, with a fond note of exasperation, and turns her face into his hand, holding it there trapped in a grip that he knows is strong despite the delicacy of her hands and fingers, and then he's feeling eyelash on his fingertips and the gust of warm breath when she sighs and her mouth brushing his wrist, up into his hand, lips open, gently kissing his palm and he can't move, can't think, because that touch of her mouth on him goes through his entire body like an electric current and thank God he's still grounded to the floor or it might fry every synapse.
"Pen-" he chokes.
She releases his hand and looks at him, still pink, and warm and so soft and solid and familiar when he pulls her the rest of the way into his arms.