{fic} Pictures Of A Dream
Title: Pictures Of A Dream
Pairing: Morgan/Reid
Rating: PG
Genre: slash/romance/angst
Warnings/spoilers: none
Summary: "He must have imagined it all, starting from their first gentle kiss to this very moment one year afterwards because there was no way someone as amazing as Derek Morgan could ever love him."
A/N: I was given a sentence, "What if it's only in my head?". I took a moment to absorb it and this is what I came up with. Comments are much appreciated! Also, a huge thank you goes to my lovely beta midwinter_taion (who also gave me the sentence that inspired this fic!) You're my light, love.
There was something comforting about the sunlight. It peeked shyly through the curtains, barely banishing the remaining shadows of the night, but its light was enough to make the room entirely different. There were colours he’d never seen before, soft shades of rainbow that shone with an almost magical glow - and Morgan, sleeping peacefully beside him, had never looked as perfect as he did now in the soft, alluring light of the morning.
Reid reached across the small space between them to touch the side of Morgan’s face, tracing the man’s skin gingerly with his fingertips. He knew he had done something right because there he was, sharing a bed with the gentlest, smartest, funniest, best man he had ever known. Morgan was there and perfect and his, and the thought, illogically enough, wrenched at his heart rather than made it leap with joy. The fragility of life was painfully present in the dim light of the morning, and the headache he had battled for the past four days only made matters worse. It felt too good to be true. They were too good to be true. He must have imagined it all, starting from their first gentle kiss to this very moment one year afterwards because there was no way someone as amazing as Derek Morgan could ever love him, the pathetic and socially awkward Spencer Reid who hid behind facts and statistics to mask his insecurities behind knowledge.
Spencer Reid, the son of a schizophrenic.
He ran his fingers down to Morgan’s bare chest, tracing the outlines of his muscles to concentrate on something other than the headache that tortured him in throbbing waves of pain. He was exasperated to notice the pain was much worse than the day before, and he wished, wished so dearly, that he would finally find something to help him rid of it. It wasn’t psychosomatic, no matter what the doctors said. There was something physically wrong with him and he refused any other explanation because he wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t like his mother and he never would be.
Deep down, he knew he couldn’t be certain of that. He had no control over his genes or what happened in his mind, and it scared him. His mind scared him. He was completely terrified of his own mind.
What bothered him was that it didn’t scare Morgan. It should have but instead, Morgan seemed to brush it off as something not worth thinking about, investing his precious time and energy in a relationship with a person who could develop schizophrenia before their life together had even properly begun. Reid knew what it was like to live with a schizophrenic. He loved his mother deeply, but he had spent his entire life looking for a cure that didn’t exist to make her life, their life, normal. He’d spent a great amount of time and energy trying to make her mother happy and healthy and able to lead a life free of medicine and around the clock observation, but he’d failed because there was no miracle cure, no way for him to fix the situation.
After all their years of friendship, Reid knew Morgan well enough to know that he wasn’t one to abandon his friends and family, no matter how much he’d have to suffer as a result. Morgan would stay by his side through it all, through the hallucinations and delusions and disorganized thinking, and he’d suffer each and every day. Every morning, he’d wake up and wish that things were different. He’d miss the old days. He’d miss his freedom. He’d be exactly like Reid, desperately looking for a cure that didn’t exist, not only for his own sake, but for the sake of the person he loved with all his heart.
And Reid would be the sole reason behind his misery.
Choking back his tears, he drew his hand away and squeezed his eyes shut. The time had come, he knew that now, even though he wasn’t entirely aware of what made that morning any different than the others. Maybe it was the headache, or the sunlight that seemed supernatural, or the fact that he considered the sunlight to seem supernatural at all because that was clearly a further indication that he was losing his mind.
He opened his eyes when he felt Morgan press against him, holding him close while dropping a soft kiss on his forehead. He was holding Reid too close, squeezing him so tightly against his body that it was almost suffocating. It made Reid want to struggle away. He was so full of terror right now he didn’t know what to do, how to breathe, how to be. He didn’t want to hurt Morgan but that was the one thing he needed to do in order to protect him.
“What’s going on, pretty boy?”
The words were but a soft whisper against the crook of his neck, Morgan’s hot breath tickling his skin, sending shivers down his spine. Reid didn’t know what to say - or rather, he didn’t know how to say it. How could he ever say it?
He squirmed away from Morgan and hoisted himself off the bed, standing beside it without being entirely sure what he had gotten up for. To leave? He couldn’t just leave. He needed to say something. Explain.
“Reid?”
His heart jolted at the sound of Morgan’s voice but he still said nothing, having momentarily lost the ability to speak. To occupy himself with something, he grabbed his clothes from the floor where they had been discarded last night in a moment of passion, and began to dress in a hasty, almost panicked, manner.
He heard the sheets rustling as Morgan got up, and the footsteps that followed as he quickly walked up to Reid to grab a hold of his wrist. Only then did Reid look up and meet the pair of dark eyes staring at him with profound confusion.
“Spencer...” Morgan called his name and then paused, as if without a clue of how to continue. It seemed that the both of them were at loss of words, even though for different reasons. Morgan’s eyes were full of fear and concern and love, love so overwhelming it reached out through the silence to wrap around Reid as a painful reminder of what he was about to lose, what he was about to break. He looked down at where Morgan was clinging to his wrist, willing himself to calm down, concentrating on how beautiful Morgan’s dark skin looked against the paleness of his own.
“I hate it when you call me Spencer,” he finally spoke quietly, still staring at their hands. He knew the words were stupid and completely unrelated and nothing but a pathetic attempt to evade the actual problem but he didn’t care. He needed time. He needed to... something. He didn’t even know what anymore.
“What?”
Reid refused to look up. He couldn’t.
“I hate it.”
“My hearing’s fine, kiddo,” Morgan said softly. Understandably, there was an edge of confusion to his voice. “What I’m asking is why you hate it. It hasn’t seemed to bother you before.”
Morgan withdrew his hand and placed it on Reid’s waist instead, tentatively pulling him closer. Reid stood in the embrace stiff as a statue, not resisting but not relaxing either, every muscle in his body tense. Even his mouth was set in a tight line.
Reid frowned. “That’s because we’ve been together for a year now and you only call me Spencer when we’re together. When we’re alone, just the two of us, you ‘Spencer’ me all day long but when we’re around people - which is majority of the time - I’m just Reid to you. You seem awfully reluctant to acknowledge my existence as something else as than a co-worker in your life.”
He could feel Morgan tense, too, and he mentally slapped himself because he had no idea what he was saying. The words came out on their own, leaving him wishing he could take them back only to know he couldn’t. He was trying to pin this on Morgan and it wasn’t fair, it was so childish of him, trying to blame Morgan for a choice that he had made.
“So, what, you want me to shout out my love from the rooftops?” Morgan asked. The annoyance rang in his voice with every word. “Serenade under your window? Bring you a bouquet of roses to work?”
“I didn’t mean that you should result to something so clichéd. I’m just saying that...” Reid let his voice drift away, taking a moment to ponder on how to continue while being painfully aware that he couldn’t because the argument he was making wasn’t something he actually thought.
He noticed he was drawing circles on Morgan’s chest with a shaky finger, as he always did when he was nervous and at loss of words. It soothed him. Physically feeling Morgan almost convinced him that he, they, were real.
Almost.
This time it was Morgan who pulled away. “What, Spencer?”
The way he pronounced ‘Spencer’ was venom, almost like a curse, spit through gritted teeth to purposely hurt him. It made Reid wince. He made eye-contact with Morgan again, gazing deep into his eyes, his heart aching at what he was about to say. What he was about to do.
What he was about to destroy.
“I can’t do this.”
The words came out easily in the end, not requiring much effort, other than that to actually form a sound. Maybe it was because he’d been thinking about the words for so long, let them tickle his throat and tasted them on his tongue, trying to muster up the courage to speak them out.
And now he had.
Morgan’s face drained of emotion, colour, life. Reid stood before him devastated yet confused, unable to shake off the feeling of having imagined every detail of their relationship. He knew the line between fantasy and reality and he knew he wasn’t actually going crazy because crazy people don’t know they’re crazy, but their relationship seemed but a prolonged dream that was bound to shatter at the slightest touch of reality.
Well, there it was. Reality had come. It was time to end the dream.
“You can’t do what, Reid?” Morgan asked. His voice was firm, a clear attempt to sound angry, but his face was a mask of hurt so deep it drowned everything else underneath. “Us? You’re breaking up with me, is that it?”
Reid bit the inside of his lower lip. “Yes.” His voice was embarrassingly faint and insecure, not at all like he’d wanted it to be, and he cleared his throat, speaking louder as he said: “Yes, Derek. I’m breaking up with you.”
The blunt words hurt his ears, but he knew Morgan well enough to know that bluntness was the only way to get through to him - and besides, he didn’t want to be any more of a coward than he already was and hide the painful words behind poetic rhymes. Seeing the look of hurt on Morgan’s face was something he absolutely didn’t want to see, but at the same time, he knew he deserved to see that look, to have it burned into his memory for the rest of his life.
So, he never looked away, and Morgan looked back at him without flinching. He was like a statue, a mighty statue of integrity, refusing to give Reid the satisfaction of breaking down. His expression had turned to that of deep, soul-piercing coldness, but his eyes betrayed him, awash with pain.
“Why?”
The question lingered in the air between them like something poisonous, suffocating. Reid took a step back, shaking his head, looking down at his feet and then back at Morgan. All the while his hand drummed a nervous rhythm against his thigh, the sound of it echoing in his head at a volume so high he could barely endure it.
“I don’t have what it takes,” he said, his voice high-pitched and fast, the words stumbling out over one another as they poured out of his mouth. “Settling down and growing old with someone isn’t something that I even want, let alone know how to do, and this-” he waved his hands through the air, “-is not who I am. I let the sex - you know, my hormonal responses - fool me into thinking that there’s something more to our relationship. It was refreshing to indulge in the fantasy of pursuing a life that people generally seem to want but I’m not like that, Derek. I’m just not that person, okay?”
Morgan groaned in frustration and kicked the bed with force that scared Reid even further away, almost causing him to stumble against the door. He wasn’t scared of Morgan - he knew Morgan would never hurt him - but he was scared of what kind of fury he’d awakened in the man. He’d never intended that. He’d never expected that, to be honest.
“Derek, I’m s-”
“Don’t you dare,” Morgan cut in, pointing a finger at Reid to shut him up. “Don’t you dare apologize and don’t you dare tell me what I do or don’t deserve. You’re doing this because you’re scared, Reid, and that’s pathetic.”
Reid gave a sigh of exasperation. “I’m not scared, Derek, why would I-”
“Because loving someone means that you have to lose them some day,” Morgan interrupts again, his voice so loud that everyone within five-mile radius was bound to hear it. “And you can’t handle that.”
“Stop profiling me,” Reid snapped more angrily than he’d intended; the words had hit a spot. “I’m not an UnSub that you need to catch to prove your worth.”
He hadn’t meant to provoke Morgan, he really hadn’t, but the headache was making it hard to focus. His thoughts were scattered all over the place, swirling around his head without a moment of pause, worsening his headache to a point near unbearable. He closed his eyes, pressing his fingers so hard against the closed eyelids that the touch itself hurt, but he barely registered it because the pain couldn’t even begin to compare to the burning ache in his head. The headache was killing him. Everything about the situation was killing him.
“I don’t need to profile you,” Morgan snapped back. He was quick to defend himself as always. “There’s absolutely nothing left to figure out because you’re an open book, and have been from the very moment I met you.”
“That’s not-”
“You know what else you are, Reid?”
Reid snapped his eyes open, squinting as the bright light tortured his sensitive eyes. “Other than a pathetic coward who can’t handle loss? Go ahead, enlighten me, Derek. Amaze me with your bright observations.”
The raised voices and the sunlight, dominant in its mission to banish the small touches of darkness that still remained, made the headache pound against his skull in crushing waves that threatened to bring him to his knees, but he refused to crumble down.
“You’re weak,” Morgan said, but this time in a lowered voice of raw rage that pierced through Reid like a razor. “You’re so weak that you can’t even handle it when someone cares about you so you’d rather run away. So please do so, Spencer. Run the fuck away so that I never have to see you again.”
Reid stood there, dumbfounded, blood coursing through his veins and hissing in his ears in a way that made him even dizzier than he already was. Morgan used that tone of voice rarely, so very rarely that Reid had learned to associate it with extreme anger, the kind that Morgan could hardly handle. Now, every ounce of that anger was directed at Reid and even though he knew he deserved every bit of it and more, it still took him by surprise. It still hurt him.
He had the means to strike back with an equally devastating comment but he didn’t want to, didn’t allow himself to because Morgan’s anger was justified while his was not. He was the one who’d made the choice, and he’d have to suffer the consequences. He’d have to face Morgan’s pain with his head held up high, and take everything the man threw his way without flinching.
The problem was he couldn’t. His hands began to tremble as the wheels in his head turned, grinding against one another in a hopeless attempt to come up with something to say. Everything he was feeling from the overwhelming pain to the guilt he was drowning in had begun to clutter up inside his chest, taking so much space he wasn’t even sure how to fill up his lungs with air anymore.
“I’m sorry,” Reid finally said in a choked whisper. All he wanted was to look away from Morgan but he couldn’t find the strength to, not when he knew it’d be the very last time he’d ever lay his eyes on the man. He wanted to absorb every single detail of the man’s face.
“I’m so sorry, Derek.”
Morgan closed his eyes, shaking his head, and there was the barest hint of a smile on his lips - a cruel smile of devastation, the kind one smiled when there’s nothing else left to do. The sight of it tore at Reid’s being more, much more, than Morgan’s previous cruel words.
Reid took a hesitant step closer in an instinctive need to comfort the man, to wrap his arms around Morgan and hold him so close their bodies would blend together, but as soon as he’d taken the step he realized with a violent pierce through his heart that it was no longer his place to comfort Morgan. It was no longer his right. He hovered, knowing the time had come to leave but suddenly without the ability to move his legs.
“Spencer,” Morgan rasped. “Just go. Please go.”
Reid bit down on his lip so hard that blood trickled out, the irony taste staining his mouth. He nodded faintly, more to himself than anyone else, and finally turned around to leave.
The short walk from Morgan’s bedroom to the front door felt like an eternity, like a lifetime stretched between two destinies that would never entwine again. They were the hardest steps he’d ever taken in his entire life.
Once he was out on the street, he kept on walking until he found an empty alley to stumble into. The sunrise had painted the horizon in dazzling colours of red and yellow and pure gold, and staring at the scenery in all its glorious beauty, Reid was attacked by the memory of their first kiss. He remembered how Morgan had insisted on walking him home after a night of drinking, and how they had laughed and stumbled through the streets to Reid’s doorstep, completely absorbed in each other’s presence.
And then, completely out of the blue, Morgan had taken a hesitant but determined step towards him and placed a hand on the side of his face, caressing the skin underneath his fingertips with an expression of love and admiration on his face. Reid still remembered how the touch had made his heart race, and how embarrassed he’d been to notice the flush that spread to his cheeks - and how all that had disappeared the moment Morgan had kissed him, their lips pressing against one another in what he still considered to be one of the best kisses of his entire life.
Reid swallowed. It was painful, remembering the way their bodies had melted together in the soft morning light, and how he’d struggled just to keep his balance because he couldn’t believe it was happening, couldn’t believe he was kissing Derek Morgan, and that Derek Morgan was kissing him back. It had felt like a sweet, intoxicating and completely unrealistic dream.
Memories began flooding in, invading his mind and torturing him with images he would have rather erased but couldn’t, thanks to his eidetic memory that in that devastating moment felt more like a curse than a blessing. Collapsing into a small heap against the wall, he burst into tears that ran free and uncontrolled until he could hardly breathe.
The sweetest dream he’d ever had was over.