Work Text:
He is unattainable.
There’s nothing to him that’s even remotely safe. He’s a bowl full of bad ideas. He’s untrusted words,and soft whispers of promises that will never seen to come true. His entire aura reeks of things every girl wants and every boy desires.
He does unfathomable things.
He’s a soft laugh that emits at a funeral, not because they are uncomfortable, or sad, even, but because he can find joy in even things like death. His eyes light up at the mention of a painful memory, because he hides behind his humor. It’s what’s best at, Reid notes. Everyday he notes this, he notes how Morgan’s eyes seem to get duller and duller. It’s painful, he can admit, to watch, but he does it anyways. He can’t help it, his eyes are still so mesmerizing, even after all of the pain and suffering that he has endured. Each case, each plane ride, they seem to take a tole on him. Nobody else notices, not even Garcia, who he thinks Morgan has a thing with. And that hurts. It does, it rips at his soul and keeps him awake because.
The one thing he wants-
The one thing he would give anything for. The one person that Reid has truly felt anything for in years-
He is out of his reach. He is a dream that will only be what it’s titled. A dream.
A fresh poison each week
"We were born sick"
And Reid feels like that’s so true. Why wouldn’t it be? If only things could work out for him how he so desperately hoped they would. There was nothing to dull his pain, either. No person, because he didn’t like people. He liked Morgan. He liked Derek Morgan. There were no drugs either. He was too cookie-cutter clean for that.
Not that he minded. The ache reminded him that he was real.
Throughout the years, he would watch Morgan from afar. He would watch him fall in and out of love, lust, any sort of ‘romantic’ attraction that a person could have. And, again, not that he minded. It was simply what was best for the two. Reid, on the sidelines, giving him a look, saying nothing as he was ditched on countless occasions for women and men alike.
It could be worse.
He could be dead.
Take me to church
I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life.
-
Meeting him was almost something he could say he regretted. Taking his job, he thought sometimes, on those endless nights when he couldn’t sleep, be it on the plane or in the comfort of his own bed. He thought about how simple everything could be if he had just kept his mouth shut, and he had taken a different job, almost anywhere than where he did work. It was ironic, wasn’t it? That in his field, the thing that made him sometimes want to quit his job, was not his work, but a man.
A man with blinding eyes and a smoulder so intense that it could even make the worst criminal sweat.
A man who smiled like the sun and made his scrawny, shy, co-worker worship him like a God.
If I'm a pagan of the good times
My lover's the sunlight
Accepting the fact that he was entirely idiotic, for that thought, he resigned to sit quietly sometimes on a case, only chiming in when he thought he had information that pertained to the case.
Of course, Morgan noticed. Of course he did, because why wouldn’t he? The man who he so longingly pined after, pulling him aside, eyebrows furrowing in confusion, hand played on his upper bicep, close tooclosebutnotcloseenough.
He would smile, a crooked, tiny grin, and tell him he was okay.
The other man could see through the lie, of course he could. Simply putting it, he knew Reid more than he knew himself.
-
To keep the goddess on my side
She demands a sacrifice
Drain the whole sea
Get something shiny
Something meaty for the main course
And then. Something happens. It’s fast, faster than what he thought would ever happen, but it does and he can’t help but believe that he is sick. Sick of everything.
But when Morgan shows up to his apartment, drunk and giggly at three in the morning? Reid takes it back. He would be okay with taking care of him forever. Until Morgan opens his mouth, and suddenly one thing leads to another and they are kissing and shedding clothes with whispers of soft promises (Never kept. Just as he said.), untrustworthy words (On both of their parts, he can admit.), and a night's worth of bad ideas. He wakes up aching, aching in a good way, still blessed, caught up in his afterglow until he notices the bedside has been cold for hours and he was alone.
He should have known better than to trust a boy full of bad ideas and a knack for breaking hearts. A boy that is what every girl wants and what every boy desires.
He gave him everything. Of course he did. He had to keep him happy. If he was happy, Reid was happy.
But lately he began to realize that wasn’t quite true.
This is hungry work.
-
Even in the darkness of his room, not having left for days, he can’t hide. His phone is blowing up. It has been for days. Hours, minutes, seconds.
Reid hasn’t gotten up to see who it was.
He had a feeling he already knew.
Offer me that deathless death
Sometimes, he would think. What if he had died? There were so many chances where he could have. It wasn’t like he could evade death forever. Maybe it would be better than the mind numbingness that his life consisted of.
Every day, it felt the same.
He would go to work, watch the man he loved love other people, and he would go home, quiet and somber, to his little apartment which only knew sadness. Yes, it wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t quite the best either.
Elle was the first to stop by. She practically broke in, storming into his room with enough rage to rival an angry God. As soon as she saw him, it evaporated some, but completely vanished when she pried the information from his mouth. Instead, it directed to Morgan, and nothing he could do could change her anger. She made promises of threats, and he stopped her, wanting nothing more than to disappear into the very bed that they sat on.
The bed that held remnants of promises, words, and the very smell, lingering, of a man who seemed to change his life upside down.
-
Finally, he goes back to work. He’s able to speak, grow out of the shell that was once gone, and then back up, and gone again.
And there is Morgan.
Who he doesn’t speak to much, anymore. He stays away, too aware and too conscious of what had happened. He doesn’t purposely try to ruin work or their profiles, and for the most part, it works. Until he’s cornered by him one day, when everybody has left and it’s only them, save for Elle, who’s waiting in the car to go for dinner with Reid.
No masters or kings when the ritual begins
There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin
In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene
Only then I am human
Only then I am clean
He expected this. Not that he wanted it, but he knew it was coming. There was no way it couldn’t, what with how close they once were and how closely they still had to work together.
As soon as Morgan tries to speak, he cuts him off. He tells him that he understands. It was only because he was drunk. Reid says he’s sorry for using him, sorry for everything, and that he hopes they can still be friends.
Morgan says he wasn’t using him. And that it’s okay, they can still be friends.
If Reid wants that.
He says yes (He’s lying. He doesn’t know what he wants. He wants to be loved. He wants to love Derek. He wants Derek to love him.).
They both smile, and begin to back up.
By the time he says goodnight, Spencer Reid does not see the hurt in Derek Morgan’s eyes, or the guilt, or the love that he felt for him. Love kept locked up, because he, never in a million years believed he deserved someone as quirky, as smart, as kind as Spencer.
He was a man full of kept promises, trusted words, and maybe he wasn’t what every girl wants and every boy desires, but he’s what Morgan had, and lost. And would do anything to have again.
Spencer Reid was unattainable.
Derek Morgan was unattainable.
-
Take me to church
I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life.