Chapter Text
“Three things cannot long stay hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.”
– Buddha
one - hotch
“Did you know?” Morgan asks Hotch when it’s all over. “Before?”
“I suspected at the end. Before that?” Hotch shakes his head. “No.”
A car drives by, slowing down to take in the mass of police cars and government-issued SUVs parked haphazardly in front of the community center. Gideon looks up from his separate conversation with James to wave them on. The car speeds up again. Morgan watches the headlights fade.
“I should have told you,” he says to Hotch when the car disappears. He doesn’t bother apologizing for the fact that he didn’t.
“No,” Hotch says a second time. In his peripheral vision, Morgan sees him shake his head. “It was your information to share when you were ready. I didn’t need to know until you wanted me to.”
Morgan would appreciate the comment, except he never wanted Hotch to know. Yet, here they are, sitting on the cold front steps of the community center, the dried tear tracks on Morgan’s face indisputable evidence of Carl Buford’s sins.
Sins. His mother raised him in the church, and even if he stopped believing in his mother’s God a long time ago, some of the ideology is still there. He shifts from the steps to the ground, slumps to his knees as if in repentance, the center his confessional, and Buford his sin.
(Is it he who needs to repent, or Buford? He doesn’t know. Maybe they both need to.)
“I didn’t know there were others,” he admits. It’s his confession, repentance, and absolution all rolled into one. There—now maybe he can be justified, wiped clean. His mother always said God’s love made a person ‘white as snow,’ the phrase borrowed from some old hymn. He wonders if there’s an expiration date on that cleansing. Does it have a statute of limitations like the law does? Or maybe he’s just too far gone, the stain too deep and too dark for God to wash out.
“I thought I was the only one,” he continues, heating up as his eyes zero in on James who’s leaning against one of the cop cars, engrossed in a conversation with Gideon. They’re too far away for Morgan to hear what they’re saying or pick out facial expressions, but he can imagine James looks a lot like he does—rigid and broken at the same time. And with shaky hands. Try as he might, he can’t stop the tremors. “I swear, I didn’t know he was doing it to James too. I didn’t know until tonight. I swear to God, that son of a bitch would be dead by now if I’d known—god!”
The sound of his palm slapping open-handed on the pavement is louder than he thought it would be. It echoes, the reverberation of his wrath.
(He hates Buford. He hates himself too, though not in the same way.)
“Morgan.”
He pivots sharply, rising from the ground back to the steps in one solid motion, face sharp and cruel and fractured.
“Don’t tell me to calm down, Hotch!” If his words were a color, they’d be red—dark, vibrant, and searing.
Hotch’s eyes burn into his, completely unfazed. “I wasn’t going to,” he says softly.
Morgan blinks, confused. He is boiling water, a ticking bomb, and he is used to Hotch being a restraint, a staunch wall against his anger. Now there is nothing but tenderness, a balm against a wound left to fester.
“I was going to say I believe you.”
I believe you.
(Morgan knows he’s not just talking about James.)
From next to him, a hand slides across his back to rest on his shoulder like a memory reaching from the past. It’s Hotch, not Buford, but he still considers shifting his shoulders, throwing the hand off. Nausea ripples through his stomach, but he lets the hand stay. Hotch will not hurt him; he never has.
“Morgan.”
Inhale. Exhale. Breathe.
“He molested me, Hotch. For years.” The words tumble out through gritted teeth. “Buford molested me.”
Chicago nights are not quiet, but at that moment, the first time he’s allowed himself to directly acknowledge what Buford did to him, the city sits listening in silence.
“I know,” Hotch says into the stillness, and it is enough.
Relief comes like ripping off a bandaid, exposing a healing wound to the sting of open air. He hangs his head, eyes fluttering shut against the renewed threat of tears. His hands clench into fists at his sides, more out of a want to stop their shaking than anything else. He shudders more than breathes.
On his shoulder, the hand tightens. He leans into it, grounds himself, steadies.
He straightens when he isn’t shaking anymore, feels Hotch lightly pat him on the back before releasing his shoulder, and then they’re back to the start, sitting on the front steps of the community center, bathed in the soft red and blue of the moon’s light mingled with that of the police cars’. Only this time, he feels as though he can breathe.
Next to him, a phone buzzes. He turns to Hotch, sees the man’s eyes flicker downward, right hand deftly flipping open his phone.
“It's JJ,” Hotch says by way of explanation, nodding in Morgan’s direction as he slips his phone back into his pocket. “Gordinski is back at the precinct. Buford’s under lock and key.”
Morgan imagines Buford sitting in the same cold interrogation room that he’d been shoved in the past twenty-four hours. It’s a good image. One that’s long overdue.
“Will you drop me at my mom’s apartment?” he asks quietly. “I want my family to hear it from me first.”
(That, and the thought of being in the same building as Buford—even a police station—makes the nausea come back.)
“Of course,” Hotch says. Morgan watches him stand up and brush out the wrinkles in his pants. Gideon must signal something because Hotch flashes a thumbs up in the man’s direction. Then he turns back to Morgan and extends his hand. “Whenever you're ready.”
For twenty years, he’s waited for salvation. He’s ready.
He takes Hotch’s hand, and he rises.