Criminal Minds Fanfic

by spinner

Butter Brickle

Witness interviews could go awry.  This one was going completely down the tubes.  The husband and wife would hardly stand next to each other, and their two year old son was bouncing around the sidewalk between them.  Their body language screamed how much they hated each other, regretted their life together, regretted ever laying eyes on each other.

“So was there anything about Patty that stood out to you?” Morgan asked the father. 

“No.  She was just another one of those stupid, weird teens with no direction in her life.”

“Patty was a smart girl.   She was bored, that’s all,” the mother interjected. 

“Because you’re an expert on children, aren’t you?” the father snapped at her.  She lowered her head and looked the other way.   He continued to smirk at her.   

“Did Patty give you any indication that she wanted out of her life?” Reid asked the mother.  The toddler jumped around at her feet, and she put a hand down to still him.  It did no good.   He only bounced more wildly. 

“She babysat for us twice.  I talked to her about college,” the mother relayed. 

“We didn’t ask her back again because she couldn’t control our son,” the father interrupted.  Reid intentionally ignored him.   It annoyed the father to no end.  Reid had to admit he enjoyed the frustration on the other man’s face.

“Patty wanted to enroll in college starting in the fall, but she couldn’t decide where to go,” the mother continued.   The toddler started grabbing at her hands, her purse, her jacket, any part of her to get her attention. 

“Mommy.  Mommy?  Mommy!  Mommy!!  MOMMY!”

“Will you take him to the car?” the father yelled at the mother, stepping between her and Reid.  Reid backed away, but not because of the invasion into his personal body space.  The look on the mother’s face made Reid recoil in alarm.  Her expression could best be described as feral.  She went from kind to dangerous in the blink of an eye.  Morgan would later describe the incident to Hotch and say ‘a hand came down, touched her on the head, the world stopped spinning, and she saw the light’.  Reid would later say the look on her face—it was certain proof that every human being on the planet was capable of murder when pushed past their breaking point.

“We were talking.  Step aside.  Now,” the mother said to the father.   “Did you hear me?  Step aside.” 

Her hand went to her hip, and Morgan put a hand on Reid’s arm, pulling him another step back. 

“Take your son to the car so he’s not making a scene,” the man barked at his wife.   The woman started poking her husband in the chest with the index finger of her free hand. 

“I have an idea! Why don’t YOU take YOUR son to the car and YOU TRY TO MAKE HIM BE QUIET FOR A CHANGE?!   Don’t you DARE talk to me like I’m your child!   I am your WIFE.  I am an ADULT.”

“You don’t have to shout.”   The father chose a wise time to withdraw out of finger range.

“When I feel like shouting, I will shout!  Do you understand me?  When you put this ring on my finger, it made you my PARTNER.  It did not make you my FATHER.  It did not make you my MASTER.  It made you my EQUAL.  Don’t you dare, ever, EVER talk down to me again, or the only thing I am going to take is myself, my life, and my dignity, as I walk away from YOU and YOUR son, permanently.  Do you understand me!??!”

Morgan tugged Reid another step away.  The young doctor’s eyes were wide with concern.  His mouth was folding in on itself.  He was cringing back.  He had pulled his bag in front of his tummy and clung to it like a shield.  Spencer took out a name card, reached carefully around the father, and handed the card to the mother.  She snatched it from his fingers and jammed it in her pocket. 

“Thank you,” Reid blurted, dodging back from her snatching hand. 

“You’re welcome,” the mother snarled.  The father glared at both Morgan and Reid as they departed. 

Once back to the safety of the SUV, Derek climbed into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and smiled, shaking his head back and forth.

“And that, young Jedi, is why Derek Morgan is not a married man.”

“Did you see her face?  He started it.  She should have smacked him.  No reason to talk to another adult that way.  My dad talked to my mom like that once.  Only once,” Reid babbled.

“How did she react?”

“She threw a potted cactus at him.  Hit him square in the nose.”

“What were they fighting about?”

Reid shrugged but didn’t answer.  He was suddenly very interested in the flap of his bag.  He petted it, fretted with the edge, smoothed it down.  Morgan watched the movement and waited. 

“He was picking needles out of his face for days,” Spencer whispered, buckling into his seatbelt, eyes far away.  “It was his fault.  He started it.”

“What did your dad say to make your mom go off like that?” Derek wanted to know as he started the engine and headed out of the parking lot. 

“Did you know that one of the best ways to remove cactus spines from your skin is to use glue?  You spread a thin layer of school glue over the area.  You let the glue dry.  You peel it away very quickly.  That should remove most of the spines.  You may have to do it more than once though.  But you don’t want to leave the needles in.  They can easily become infected.  You might even have an allergic reaction to them.”

“If you don’t want to say, it’s okay,” Derek whispered.

“Okay,” Reid nodded.  “I’d rather not say.”

“Did your mom ever get violent with you when you were little?” Derek wondered. 

“She had good days and bad days.  The good days were wonderful.”

“And the bad days, not so much?”

“My mom isn’t one for physical violence.  You’ve seen her—she’s just like me.  She has bones like a bird.  She’s much more likely to hurt you verbally than physically.”

It wasn’t the entire truth, and Derek knew it. 

“I love my dad.  You know I do.  But I remember my dad turning me over his knee a few times for back-talking him,” Morgan offered.   “Dad would paddle you.  Mom would pop you in the face if you said something she didn’t like.  My sisters, now they would get the bulk of that, because they didn’t learn to stay out of range when they were mouthy to Moms.   Me?  I learned real quick that when you sass a woman, you need to do it from a safe distance.  Out of range, you know?”

“I'm not a sasser.   I’m a pleaser,” Reid replied.  “Do what they ask you to do, say what they want to hear, be what they want you to be, and everyone stays happy.  It’s the secret to domestic peace.  My mom isn’t a violent person.  Really.  She's not.”

Morgan didn’t ask again.  The more he heard Reid defending his mom, the more he realized Reid was never going to say a bad word about her ever.   He had spent too many years taking care of her, looking after her, defending her, and he wasn’t about to say bad things about her now.  There was something small and scared about the way Spencer was sitting in the other seat, eyes staring down at his hands as he kept picking at the flap on his leather bag, fingers rubbing small blemishes, his shoulders rounded even now as if he expected to be struck.  All Derek wanted to do was make it better.   He stopped prying, and barely restrained the need to pet Reid’s shoulder. 

“Mm.  Oh.  Hey.  That’s what we need.  Detour,” Derek smiled.  Reid’s eyes went up to the windshield.  He watched the neon sign go by as Morgan made the most illegal of wide right turns across two lanes and quickly sped across another parking lot. 

“Morgan, is this the point where I’m supposed to remind you you said you wanted to stick firmly to 2,500 calories as your daily intake, and that I should absolutely not allow you any unnecessary drive-thru transactions while we are out on the road?”

“Probably,” Derek grinned.   He pulled through the drive-thru anyway, parking in front of the bright, shiny sign filled with ice cream varieties.

“Oh, they have butter brickle,” Spencer whispered reverently in a small happy voice.    Morgan watched Reid’s entire face light up.  He couldn’t help but smile too.     

more to come

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