Fanfic: The Winter Is Warmer 2/? [Criminal Minds]
Title: The Winter Is Warmer [2/?]
Author: wanderingjasper
Rating: FRAO/NC-17
Characters: Morgan/OC, Reid
Word Count: 3452
Themes: Drama, angst
Warnings: Sex, non-con, rape, abuse, violence, angst, slurs, suicidal ideation. Triggering, graphic content.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, but I do take liberties with them for no financial gain.
Notes: Title is from Trading Voices - Work With What's Left. [ one]
Summary: Morgan reaches out, but it might be too late.
“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.” - Jim Rohn
Three weeks after Morgan had told him he was involved with a man, Reid hadn’t been able to ignore the situation any longer and had spent almost the entirety of his weekend reading. That wasn’t unusual, but the subject focus was; everything he read was about intimate partner violence. Every book, every paper, and every article he could get his hands on he absorbed, trying to focus on things that specifically dealt with male victims and male abusers, but there was a frustrating lack of such as compared to information on male abusers and female victims. He knew it was because women were more often victims of domestic abuse, but that didn’t make him feel any less disheartened.
He focused in on the personal accounts and publications targeted at people at risk of male-on-male domestic violence, because he was still having trouble reconciling the Morgan who was still barging onto scenes, kicking down doors and tackling armed suspects with a Morgan who was staying with someone who was hurting him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand the psychological process of someone who stayed with an abuser, it was profiling and he’d been doing that for years. But most of the models he had to work with were a structure of male and female, there was a lack of discussion and experience of a male-male dynamic. He couldn’t apply what he knew to Morgan, so it didn’t fit.
Recalling all the things he’d read over the weekend about reasons for abuse victims to stay in relationships, he went through them. The most common was ‘financial dependence’, which couldn’t be Morgan because Reid knew he had disposable income from buying and renovating properties. “Inexperience” was a commonly listed reason, and Spencer couldn’t imagine Morgan being inexperienced. Then again, he’d had no idea Morgan liked men. He knew about Morgan’s past, and wondered if exploring his non-heterosexuality was a relatively new development. ‘Fear’ was another commonly cited reason; fear of retaliation, fear of being outed. It could be that, Reid figured; Morgan had never implied any interest in men, had even had his rare moments when he seemed uncomfortable when it was implied he might not be straight.
Reid shut down the laptop and closed the book he was simultaneously reading, deciding it was time for bed. He did not expect a knock at the door, didn’t expect to see Morgan through the peep hole, and certainly didn’t expect Morgan to have Clooney in tow.
“Hi,” Morgan said. His lip was split and bleeding.
“Hey,” Reid said stupidly, blinking himself out of his shock and ushering his friend inside. Clooney pulled on the short length of available leash and sniffed at everything he could reach, including Reid’s legs.
Morgan was smiling in a relaxed way but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, as if he was teetering on the edge of pretending things were okay.
“Morgan,” Reid said carefully, “what happened?”They were close, but Morgan was guarded. Anything that brought him to Reid’s apartment at gone midnight with his dog was not going to be good.
“I left him.” He shrugged helplessly.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.” Reid nodded. He gestured at the couch, and Morgan got the idea, sitting down and placating Clooney with fuss so he would settle beside his leg. Reid, who had gone to fetch a damp cloth, returned and joined Morgan on the sofa. He hesitant reached out towards his friend’s injured face, but before contact could be made Morgan plucked the cloth from Reid’s hand and pressed it to his face himself, gently wiping away the blood that had seeped out of the wound and started to dry down his chin.
“What happened, Morgan?” he asked, worrying his fingers against each other.
“He asked me to move in with him,” Morgan said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back into the sofa.
“So you left?”
“I should have said yes.”
“What?” Reid frowned, before he could temper his reaction.
“He’s good for me.”
“Really?” he scoffed. “Morgan, this isn’t good for you.”
“No offence Reid, but you have no idea what I am,” Morgan said quietly. “He controls what I am, and that’s what I need.”
“What you are?” Reid pressed. “What? Gay? That’s not a disorder, not something that needs controlling.”
“You don’t get it,” Morgan huffed.
“Then explain it.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Morgan murmured. “You’re a good man.”
“And you’re not?”
“Not in that way.”
“What way?” Reid was trying not to sound impatient, even though he sure felt like that.
“He controls what I am,” Morgan said. “He controls what I can’t.”
“I don’t understand.” Reid shook his head. “Why do you need to be controlled, Morgan?”
“I’m not right, Reid.” He shook his head. Spencer couldn’t fathom what Morgan meant, what defect Morgan could possibly be talking about. He changed tactics accordingly.
“Whatever you think isn’t right with you, you don’t deserve what he’s done. You do not deserve to be hurt. You don’t deserve this.” He nodded pointedly at Morgan’s face. “Nothing you could do or say would result in you deserving physical or psychological abuse. Nothing you could think or feel, either, Morgan.”
“It’s not abuse-” Morgan tried to laugh, but it was a desperate sound, one that died as soon as it left his mouth.
“Abuse is any behaviour that intentionally causes harm to another person,” Reid said. “He’s harming you, Morgan, hurting you, and I-” he caught himself before he could continue, pressing his lips together.
“You what?” Morgan considered him miserably.
“Nothing, this is about you.”
“What were you going to say?” Morgan pressed.
“It’s not important-”
“Reid,” he said, and there was a desperate tone to his voice the other man had never heard.
“I don’t want him to hurt you,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to hurt you.”
“Why?” Morgan sounded genuinely perturbed, and that made Reid’s chest ache.
“Because I care about you, man. And you don’t deserve it. And I’m scared for you. I’m scared I can’t do anything.”
Clooney whined, shifting his head on Morgan’s knee. Morgan smiled sadly down at him.
“The first time it got rough at my place,” he said almost off-hand, and Reid felt a jolt of something sickly in his gut, “Clooney tried to defend me. Put himself right between us. James kicked him, and I...” suddenly it seemed like Morgan’s voice might break, and Reid wanted to grab his shoulders and shout that it was absurd that the upset was saved for his dog rather than for him. Morgan took a long, shuddering breath in and manager to keep his cool. “I just started locking Clooney out when James came over.”
“You can’t go back to him,” Reid said. “You don’t need to be hurt. And he might hurt Clooney.”
Morgan looked at him in shock, and Reid couldn’t believe how vulnerable he looked. It was difficult not to shout in frustration that the man seemed to react with more worry to the idea of his dog being hurt than him.
“I think I have to.” Morgan shook his head.
“No you don’t,” Reid pressed. “Do you want to?”
Morgan shook his head, closing his eyes and the muscles in his face stiffening as he clearly fought back his emotions.
“Then don’t, man.”
“He...” Morgan’s gaze fell away from Reid’s, down to where his arms were crossed on his chest. “He’s got photos...”
“Private photos?” Reid guessed.
“Yeah. When I tried to leave before...”
“Your team isn’t going to judge you because of photos.”
Morgan gave a single silent laugh that shook his shoulders.
“You wouldn’t even talk to me if you saw them.”
“I’m your friend, Morgan,” Reid said earnestly, “no photos can change that.” The desire he had to tell Morgan he loved him was strong and entirely inappropriate. It would only make thing worse, and it was selfish. It wasn’t about him. “Please, man,” he said gently, “you can stay here tonight. Don’t do anything now, don’t go back. Just... please just stay here. You can have the bed if you want, I don’t mind the couch and-”
“The couch will be fine for me,” Morgan mumbled.
---
A week after ending it, a week of not seeing James, a week of screening his calls, and Morgan couldn’t believe how good it felt. He felt free, like a prisoner pardoned from their sentence. A fog had lifted in his mind, and he knew that Reid had been right; he didn’t deserve abuse. He wasn’t sure where his life was going, what he required to be happy, but it wasn’t James, and for now it just felt good to be free of him. He was still covered in bruises beneath his clothes that made every movement uncomfortable, but he knew they would be the last ones. The discomfort was almost cleansing, like exorcising demons. Reid was a constant presence at work now, keeping an eye on him, asking him how he was more often than was necessary. Morgan didn’t mind answering, because for the first time in a long time he could truthfully answer yes.
It was over lunch at their desks in a largely empty bullpen that Morgan scooted his chair around to Reid’s while he took a bite of chicken sub, and pushed the chair up alongside him. Reid smiled over his own ham on rye lunch, and Morgan didn’t miss the genius’ eyes raking over him, looking for injuries.
“Do you date, Reid?” he asked. “I mean, I know you like guys and girls.” He shrugged a little with the question, indicating a lack of hostility or pressure to answer. Reid’s bisexuality wasn’t a secret, but because he could be so painfully socially inept sometimes it felt like a moot point; he was just as awkward with men as with women.
“Are you asking?” Reid said with a small laugh.
“Oh, no,” Morgan said quickly. He regretted it when Reid blinked a few times and pulled a face, and knew his quick reaction must have seemed rather insulting. But even with his changing perspective of the last week, one thought had not changed, had only strengthened as long as he’d known Reid, the years he’d harboured feelings for him that were not platonic; Reid deserved so much better than he was, that he could ever be. “I was just asking.”
“I’ve gone on dates,” Reid said. “Things just don’t seem to progress in the way considered conventional.”
“Meaning...?”
“I don’t go on many second dates.” He smiled sheepishly. “I talk too much, I think. And it’s not like I go to many places where I meet people.”
“Right. I don’t know where I’m meant to go to meet people. Bars are just... and everywhere else I like to hang out, it’s not exactly places where you can tell for sure if someone’s gay.”
“You want to date people?” Reid asked.
“I dunno.” Morgan shrugged. “Just want to meet more gay people I guess. I’m tired of being alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Reid said earnestly. Morgan smiled warmly, despite the disappointment of knowing he could never ask Reid to be the one to relieve his loneliness.
“Thanks, kid.”
---
“Morgan?” Reid said into his phone, woken from sleep. He ran a hand over his face, flicking on his bedside lamp and picking up his watch to check the time; 1:14AM. There was heavy breathing on the other end of the line, and when the other man spoke it was a hurried whisper.
“Reid? Are you at your place?”
“Yeah, man...” he said groggily, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.
“Can I come over?”
“Sure-”
There was a loud bang on the line, and Morgan swore under his breath. Reid blinked quickly, realising he needed to be awake immediately.
“Morgan, where are you?”
“I’m at my- shit!” there was another loud bang and what Reid was sure was the sound of splintering wood. Morgan’s breathing was swallow and fast, and he was swearing repeatedly.
“Morgan, what’s happening?” he asked, even as he hurried out of his bedroom in his pyjamas to find his shoes.
There was no answer, just a voice that wasn’t Morgan’s at a distance.
“YOU FUCKING SLUT!”
“James, just-” Morgan’s voice was closer, but as if he was holding the phone away from his face. Morgan’s strong voice had never sounded so terrified.
As Reid clasped the phone to his ear with his shoulder, pulled on his coat and attempted to lock his apartment door, he heard a loud clatter on the line followed by a grunt of Morgan in pain. As he hurried down the stairwell the pained sounds from Morgan continued.
“James!” he gasped. “Stop! C’mon!”
The answer seemed to be more blows, because Morgan cried out in pain and the other voice shouted obscenities.
“You’re a fuckin’ whore! You some faggot who thinks he’s too fuckin’ good! You’re a fuckin’ bitch!”
“James, don’t!” Morgan shouted as Reid managed to put his phone on speaker and throw it onto the passenger seat of his old car with his gun, listening to increased struggling blast out into the space as he drove off.
There was a cry of pain that wasn’t Morgan’s, and grunting and movement from two people, and then a choking noise that almost made Reid swerve into the wrong lane.
“Fucking fag!” the assailant hissed, and there was a series of bangs each immediately followed by a cry of pain from Morgan.
“James!” Morgan gasped, coughing for breath. “Don’t!”
As Reid listened to the scrambling sounds he swore at the red light, but knew if he got pulled over he’d be too late. He should call the police, but he couldn’t cut off the call; he had to hear, and to know what was happening, had to know it wasn’t too late.
“No! No! Don’t!” Morgan screeched, terror ripping through his voice.
“Shut your bitch mouth! You fucking like it, slut!”
Reid’s heart skipped too fast and he caught a gasp of his own fear from coming up, pressing on the accelerator pedal. That couldn’t happen, couldn’t happen to Morgan.
Morgan gave a fractured scream that quickly dissolved into sobs, sounding so close to the phone. Reid could hear rhythmic breathing and grunting, the thump of one body into another, Morgan’s gasps of agony. He knew what was happening and he wished there was any way he could be wrong.
It stretched on forever, and Reid didn’t realise until his vision blurred that he was he was crying. He blinked the tears away from his eyelids, forcing them out.
The sounds of struggle and a protesting noise of pain from Morgan’s attacker, and Reid distinctly heard the sound of Morgan’s Glock 17 being cocked. He waited to hear the shot ring out, but it didn’t; instead there were more sounds of struggle and the heavy thud of the gun hitting the floor.
“You fucking fag cunt!”
Morgan cried out in pain, and Reid was sick to recognise the sound of the next blows; they were the sound of the barrel of a firearm against bone and flesh. Reid counted eleven blows before they stopped, and Morgan’s laboured, pained breathing was cut with a whimper. The other voice was closer than before, nearer to wherever the phone had fallen.
“Beg. Beg me not to.”>/i>
“No,” Morgan breathed, then a gasped sob of pain.
“Fine, slut.”
“James, no!” he gasped. “Please don’t! Please please James! Please!”
Whatever was happening, Morgan would rather beg that face it, and that made Reid’s head swim.
“Too late, bitch.”
The shriek of pain forced from Morgan’s throat filled Spencer’s car and filled his mind, and he slammed his hands on the steering wheel. He was less than three miles from Morgan’s home.
The sobs Morgan was sounding out were the single most nauseating, terrifying noises Reid had ever heard in his life. The words from his attacker and all they could mean were close behind.
“Should have opened your pussy up like that the first time.”
There was the heavy rattle of the gun being dropped, and any relief that gave Reid was immediately stolen when Morgan gasped and the sound of motion started again.
Reid was only a mile away when he hit a red light, and even though every bone in his body told him to ignore it he couldn’t risk anything that would stop him getting to Morgan. As the light turned green on the line there was a long grunt and a heaving, broken sob from Morgan, and Reid’s resolve broke; he snatched up the phone and ended the call, frantically pushing in 911 and holding the phone to his ear as he steered with one hand. He practically screamed at the operator for police and an ambulance at Morgan’s address, and as he pulled up outside of Morgan’s house he didn’t even switch off the ignition as he dialled for Hotch and took his gun from the passenger seat, almost falling out of his car in his hurry.
“Hotch!” he shouted as he paced up the path towards the porch, gun raised and scanning the dark for any signs of life. “It’s Morgan he’s hurt I’m at his house you need to get here NOW,” he said in one breath, and didn’t even wait for an answer before he ended the call and shoved the phone into his coat pocket.
Morgan’s front door was open, splintered where it had been kicked, and the doorframe damaged. Reid scanned the hall, resisted shouting for Morgan in case James was still present and listened. There was no sound, no struggle, so steeling himself, Reid turned the corner into the lounge, and his knees promptly buckled, almost giving out beneath him. With no sign of the attacker Reid rushed to Morgan’s side, where he lay face down on the hard wood in front of the couch. There was blood; pooling and splattered, smudged fingerprints and smears. So much blood on the wooden floor, too much for it to be okay. The seat of Morgan’s jeans was ripped wide open, revealing his bruised backside and the blood and semen seeping from between those two large muscles. Reid dropped heavily to his knees, not even registering that it hurt.
He didn’t want to move him in case he had spinal injury, but as he carefully manoeuvred his face, Morgan, half-conscious, pushed up with an arm. Reid grabbed at him, supporting him as he rolled, cradling his face and unable to stop a strangled cry escaping him. Morgan was barely recognisable below the blood and swelling; an eye completely swollen shut, blood pouring from a clearly broken nose, leaking from a split lip and his white teeth completely red, and several large lacerations above his eye and on his head that coated Reid’s hand quickly. Distinct in the coating of blood were trails of clear skin where Morgan had been crying.
“Morgan, help’s coming.” His voice broke, and Morgan peeped open his less effected eye. His breathing was shallow and laboured, wheezing in and out of his chest.
Reid cast his eyes over the rest of Morgan’s large form, looking for more injury. He spied his Glock on the floor nearby, and before he could even considered whether it was a bad idea he picked it up. There were no casings around and no apparent bullet wounds on Morgan, but the barrel of the gun was streaked in blood. That could have come from the evident pistol-whipping that had happened, but Reid could also see blood inside the barrel. He almost wretched as he put that with what he had heard on the phone together in his mind.
He stared when Morgan’s hand wrapped around his own on the handle of the gun, slowly pulling it towards him. Reid blinked in shock as Morgan angled the muzzle under his chin, and instinctively Spencer curled his fingers around the trigger so Morgan couldn’t link his finger through.
“Kill me,” Morgan breathed. Reid opened his mouth, but no noise came out. “Kill me,” Morgan repeated, twitching with a sob.
Reid pried his hand out of Morgan’s and tossed the gun several feet away.
“Morgan!” he hushed, watching a tear from his own face drop onto Morgan’s neck, disturbing the blood there.
Sirens. Finally, Reid heard sirens.
“The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.” - Lillian Smith