Disclaimer: Don't own. Never had never will. Just... keep rubbing it in - it hurts so goooood!

Author's Note: Wow... You guys really liked the last chappie, huh? I have to say this again, but Rayne McKenna was the lovely author of the epic-awesome smut and you should all totally go and review the hell out of her stories.

Right after you've read this, the very last chapter of Boy, Protected! I have to admit, I did shed a lone tear while writing this... *sigh* I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I and look just as much forward to the upcoming season premiere (yay!). Smell ya l8r!

JJ smiled to him and poured the last of the wine into his glass before leaving the table with the now empty bottle to get a new one. Derek had the distinct feeling that she was trying to get him drunk, probably so he would finally break down and tell her honestly how he was feeling.

He wasn't exactly fit to drive anymore but he swore to himself that he wouldn't break.

It was too late for him to break, too early for him to tell anyone just how he felt.

And the secret he really wanted to talk about wasn't his to tell.

"Actually, Aaron and I have something we wanted to tell you guys," Haley said from the other side of the table when JJ returned with two new bottles of red wine. Derek quickly took Emily's hand under the table and she squeezed it so hard her knuckles turned white. Hotch shot her an apologetic look over the table filled with empty plates and full wine glasses but she avoided his eyes.

"So do we," said Penelope and smiled to Kevin who was practically beaming.

"Oh," Haley said and Derek saw her smiled stiffen. "Do you want to go first?"

"No, no, you just do that." Penelope's smile grew bigger, more insistent. Derek's fingertips were slowly turning purple from lack of blood flow. Emily was very pale.

"You go first, it's kind of a big thing we're telling," Haley insisted and Hotch took her hand who was holding on to the edge of the table. Her knuckles were just as white as Emily's Derek noted.

"Well, so is our thing," Penelope retorted.

"Haley's pregnant again," Hotch said before any of the two women could say more and suddenly everybody was standing, hugging and shaking hands, congratulating Hotch and Haley and telling them just how nice it would be for Jack to finally get a younger brother or sister.

Their son was upstairs in Henry's room, probably bossing the smaller boy around. Henry looked up to Jack almost more than to his own father and Jack adored him for it.

Emily and Haley's hug was stiff but everybody politely ignored the unfriendly atmosphere. Derek handed Emily his full wine glass and she emptied it quickly in large gulps before giving it back. He started rubbing soothing circles on her back when everybody turned to Penelope and Kevin who was smiling before Penelope finally broke and squealed, "We're getting married!" causing a new string of congratulations, hugs, and handshakes.

"I'm just getting a new bottle of wine," Derek heard Emily say while he was in the middle of scolding Penny for not telling him before anybody else. He ended his scolding with a big kiss on her cheek and left for the kitchen.

Emily was leaning over the sink, sniffling suspiciously.

"Are you okay?" he asked and walked up to place a soothing hand on her shoulder.

"Not really," she replied in a thick voice and raised her hand to her face. "I guess this explains why he told me we should call it off. God, I'm so glad he got the promotion so we aren't partnered up anymore."

"I'm convenient like that," Derek said and was awarded with a dark chuckle.

"I don't know why I even agreed to this. After David finally left I was just so relieved, you know? And Aaron was the one with the all feelings, but I guess that changed."

"It didn't look like you're the only one feeling bad, judging by the look on his face," he offered and Emily angrily wiped her cheeks.

"But that's not exactly helping me now, is it?" She turned around and smiled bitterly to Derek before her face fell and she resumed crying. "Why didn't I listen to Jasper?" she sobbed.

Derek felt like he had been punched in the stomach. "What?" he croaked, suddenly completely dry in the mouth.

"I sometimes find myself wishing that he didn't disappear. He was the first one I told about the problems Dave and I was having and he really tried to help me figure everything out. When he left I suddenly didn't have anyone to talk to anymore, all you guys were just as much his friends as mine and no matter what you're going to say I didn't want to burden you with my struggles. And Jasper just offered out of nowhere, without me having to ask or anything. I feel a bit stupid for it, but I still miss him, in spite of only knowing him for a few months and him being gone for so long. He just grew on me really fast."

"Emily, he left almost two years ago," Derek objected when Emily fell silent with deep thought. Her eyes snapped to his face, anger suddenly replacing her grief.

"You're being a complete hypocrite now, it's not even funny."

"Emily-"

"Shut up, I'm more than a bit tipsy and I'd rather be angry than sad, so now I'm going to tell you something and you're just going to stay quiet and listen to what everybody wants to tell you but nobody had the guts to: You have got to get over him! You said so yourself, he left almost two years ago but you're acting as if it all happened yesterday. You don't care about your surroundings and honestly I'm surprised you noticed enough to follow me out here. It's like you're sleepwalking through your life, doing stuff because you know you have to but don't actually care about. All you ever do is work, work, work, and then go out and pick up some boy toy to take home. Why do you think I stopped going out with you? You'd abandon me within the first half hour to go chat up some twink with the same height or haircut or build as Jasper and leave me to care for myself. In gay bars, where I wouldn't have a chance of scoring in the first place!"

"Emily-"

"I told you to shut up! Because leaving me again and again like that really fucking hurt when I just needed a friend and you were too busy trying to forget some guy you went on a couple of dates with way back and left you just when things were going to get a little serious-"

"EMILY!"

"Shut u-"

"No, you shut up! Don't you dare talk about Sp-Jasper like that! It wasn't like that at all, and I'm not trying to forget I'm..." Emily watched with gaping mouth as Derek's eyes welled up in tears and he grimaced, trying to keep them back.

"You're what?" she asked, her voice surprisingly soft.

"I'm trying to remember," he admitted and cursed inwardly as a tear escaped his control and trailed down his cheek. "I'm trying to remember him. He didn't just leave, he was forced to and I can't tell you why. All I really know is that he was going to be The One and before we got a chance to really soar he had to leave and now... Now I can't even remember his face."

"Oh, God. Derek," Emily said with a sigh and wrapped her arms around her friend. "I'm so sorry." He hugged her back tightly, pressing almost all the air out of her lungs. "If you weren't so very gay I would ask if you wanted to go to my apartment and have sex to forget our sorrows if only for a night," she said and Derek chuckled watery against her hair.

They ended up sitting on the floor, drinking red wine out of the bottle and crying, the only person to interrupt them being JJ who came to check on Emily and bring out a box of chocolate she had gotten for her birthday. She left the chocolate with the two depressed police officers and didn't voice her surprise at seeing them both crying before walking back to the others and declaring that she must have eaten all the chocolates already.

xXx

Derek missed Clooney on days like these when he came home late, tired and drunk to find his apartment dark, cold, and unwelcoming. There wasn't a trace of life in it anymore, not since he managed to have his last potted plant die on him after forgetting to water it for four months straight.

He had considered getting a cactus for a while but suspected that he just might end up killing that too.

Fortunately he hadn't killed Clooney but only giving the dog to his mother after a series of burglaries in her building had made her feel unsafe living alone.

He opened the door and felt for a moment the usual pang of hope, only to find it replaced with a just as familiar stab of pain when he took in the dark scene in front of him.

He threw his wallet and jacket into a corner and undressed on his way to the bedroom, so sleepy he was almost dreaming already. He was so tired that when he finally got to his bed and crawled under the covers he could pretend he wasn't alone in it and that if he reached out he wouldn't find cold emptiness but a warm body.

He let out a broken sob and buried his head in the pillow, trying to fall asleep before the pain overwhelmed him completely.

xXx

"You know what I realized last night in bed?" Emily asked the following Monday while they were sitting in their patrol car eating donuts and drinking coffee in an attempt to cheer each other up with sugar and grease.

"I don't know," Derek mumbled around a bite of donut. "And if you realized in bed I'm not sure I want to." He wiped the crumbs he had sprayed on the dash board off while ignoring Emily's glare.

"Well, I realized that we aren't going to get over them if we keep acting all sad and brokenhearted."

"Yeah?" Derek gulped down some coffee to wash away the taste of donut in his mouth and ended up burning his tongue.

"Yeah. I read somewhere that if you keep smiling, eventually you'll feel happy too. Something about Endorphines I think."

Derek thought for about it for a moment. "So your suggestion is for us to pretend to be happy until eventually it'll be true."

"Basically."

"That's a lousy suggestion."

"But then at least we'll be trying."

"You are aware that this isn't going to be that easy, right?"

"I ate three pints of Ben&Jerry's this weekend. I can't afford to keep being this unhappy."

"And I guess that means I can't either."

"My goal is to not eat ice cream daily and yours is to not have casual sex. At all."

"I don't like you right now."

xXx

"I have a date tonight." Derek looked up from the incredibly boring task that was report-writing to find his partner looking down at him with an excited smile lighting up her face.

"Good for you."

"I think I'm beginning to feel good again, I haven't even had any Ben&Jerry for three weeks."

"It shows."

"Shut up. How are you feeling?" Derek wished Emily would leave him alone with all her happiness, but she stubbornly settled on the edge of his desk nursing a cup of the horrible tar they called coffee.

"I'm good. I feel good. I haven't had sex for over a month so I guess I'm on the lead."

"That's great! I thought about it a bit, and the odds that Jasper will come back to D.C. to look for you are probably so low that only Jasper could calculate them. He probably even has a new boyfriend wherever he is now." Derek stiffened and his breath hitched as pain shot though his body, making all his muscles tense and his eyes sting with tears. "God, you're so predictable," Emily breathed and ran a hand over his smooth scalp.

"You're so mean," he said hoarsely.

"I guess. But you remind me of one of those women during WWII who would wait patiently for their boyfriends to come back home to them. I don't know if I should admire you for your persistence."

"I think you should leave me alone and have a nice date tonight."

"I'll think of you."

"Don't," Derek whispered too quiet for her to hear.

xXx

It felt different Derek realized with his hand on the door handle. A nagging feeling in the back of his head keep telling him that this day, this time was different. Completely, earth shatteringly, life-changingly different. He let go of the door handle and stared at it intently. He raised his hand and noticed it was shaking. Slowly, as if in slow motion, he put his hand back on the door handle, turned it, pushed the door open.

Open to a dark, empty apartment. Unwelcoming and freezing cold.

Fighting tears and with a clenched jaw he put his things down on the stand next to the door and started walking around, turning up the heat as he should have done before leaving.

He didn't like October.

He hated it, now he thought about it.

He was fuming when a timid knock on his door and he walked angrily up to the door, threw it open and felt all air leave his lungs in a big huff.

"Hi," the man in front of him said, an uncertain smile gracing his lips.

"Hi," Derek breathed. "You... Spencer?"

"Actually no. I'm Michael Jordan now, I just moved in down the hall. Number twenty two?"

"Michael Jordan?"

"At least it's cooler than Jasper." Spencer's smile grew a bit bigger and Derek's insides felt so light, so bright and hopeful.

"Why didn't you just- I gave you a key?"

"I wanted to ask you something first." Derek nodded. "Absence... Did it make the heart grow fonder?"

"I couldn't remember your face," Derek admitted, his eyes flashing from Spencer's eyes to his nose, his cheek bones, his lips, his jaw, and back to his eyes before starting all over. He looked suddenly hurt.

"I'm sorry, I'll just..." He turned to leave and had taken several steps away before Derek realized what was happening and he jumped forward, grabbing Spencer's arm to stop him.

"Don't you ever let me forget it again," he whispered and buried his face in Spencer's shoulder.

"I won't give you the chance to," he swore quietly in Derek's ear and he raised his face to claim the lips he had yearned for for over two years.

He was never going to let them get away.

He loved October.