fic: between the lines
Title: between the lines
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Morgan/Reid
Words: ~860
Summary: Reid firmly believes that no amount of words will ever suffice. Morgan would like to tell him otherwise but can't because it's true.
Disclaimer: not mine
Notes: Inspired by the part in The Fisher King II where Reid talks about writing letters to his mother.
x
Reid once told him how often he wrote to his mother. Rather, he told everyone after the case with the unsub who called himself the Fisher King and kidnapped his own daughter but the part Morgan can't forget is the guilt in his eyes as he said it. Even by confiding his secrets to just one person, Reid had felt himself responsible for putting everyone in danger.
The guilt, however, of reducing his mother's son to writings on paper had only ever been expressed to Garcia.
Morgan, after briefly arguing with himself about the ethics of profiling a co-worker and during the course of pursuing a relationship with said co-worker, managed to connect the dots on his own.
Reid would talk to him about these things on his own terms, at his own pace, and Morgan would try to be more than okay with that.
x
Old habits die hard and so it goes like this: Reid still writes to his mother, swears that he will try to visit more often, fails tragically in this respect but not by any fault of his own. He silently blames himself for days and days, and Morgan can't help but feel it in the shared air they breathe.
Today, he watches Reid across the spread of leftover breakfast on the table as he drafts another letter to his mother, features shifting in thought until they finally settle in a soft frown.
"Writer's block?" Morgan asks, conversational, because he still has an inability to stay silent in the moments where the swirl of troubled thoughts in Reid's little head are clear on his face. More than once, Reid has called it annoying but it is also apparent that he never really means it.
"I feel like a fraud," is the mumble he earns from the bowed head of disheveled hair.
Ah, thinks Morgan, and even though it feels like a gamble, he says it anyway. "You write because you love. Nothing fake about that." He gets nothing in return for at least the next minute.
It's not as if he minds. He is quite content to sit here and watch the pen dance on paper over the rim of his mug and absently wonder what it would be like if Reid could write as fast as he reads. As a matter of fact, he is so fixated on the deft movement of those fingers that he almost misses it when Reid mumbles something along the lines of, "Love and guilt are next door neighbors."
There's a sad smile welling up inside him but Morgan fights it back. "Who said that one?" It's a little remarkable that four years later, his curiousity can still be piqued by something Reid handpicks and cites from memory.
The written lines on the page are struck-through twice diagonally in the sudden, forceful motions of a thin wrist. The sound of pen against paper against wooden table makes Morgan raise his head sharply, in time to catch something between frustration and resignation in the face before him. Reid crumples the page and leans back in his chair. Shrugging a shoulder and looking away, he says, "Someone should have."
x
Though you could probably never tell by just looking at him, rumour has it that Derek Morgan is a bigger sap than everyone in the BAU put together. Penelope Garcia was probably the source of that but with time, as always, the original source of information gradually progressed in the direction of becoming muddled and irrelevant.
He writes Reid letters, has been doing so for some time.
They resemble notes scrawled in haste more often than not. A few of them sprawl and take up pages and pages, get far too long for his liking, but he rolls with it, jotting it as it comes to him because that's the only way he can. Besides, over time, over the courses of hundreds of near-death experiences and grotesque crime scenes, it has somehow become strangely therapeutic.
Morgan doesn't ever share them, doesn't ever send them, thinks that he probably never will (except for the odd moments after particularly awful cases where he half-considers sneaking one under Reid's pillow before heading to work). He always keeps them though, every single one, some place safe and secret with a ridiculous amount of care.
Between him and Reid, there haven't really been any lingering regrets or compensations he feels the need to make and this is how he knows that he never writes out of guilt. Instead, he writes for shared memory, for posterity, to keep something physical of what went on in his head even if it never mattered because maybe it will matter some other time, to someone else. Although he'd be hard-pressed to ever admit it, Morgan writes to be sure that if he goes first, Reid will have something to busy that gifted--cursed--memory of his with.
If ever looked at objectively, his excuses for letters can probably be best described as a chaotic mix of memos, journal-entries, love-notes, and messy doodles, all clumped into something barely coherent to the average reader.
Thankfully, Reid is anything but. This is probably why Morgan's so confident that if the time ever comes, boy-genius here will figure out somehow that Morgan only ever tried to say one thing.
x
end
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Morgan/Reid
Words: ~860
Summary: Reid firmly believes that no amount of words will ever suffice. Morgan would like to tell him otherwise but can't because it's true.
Disclaimer: not mine
Notes: Inspired by the part in The Fisher King II where Reid talks about writing letters to his mother.
x
Reid once told him how often he wrote to his mother. Rather, he told everyone after the case with the unsub who called himself the Fisher King and kidnapped his own daughter but the part Morgan can't forget is the guilt in his eyes as he said it. Even by confiding his secrets to just one person, Reid had felt himself responsible for putting everyone in danger.
The guilt, however, of reducing his mother's son to writings on paper had only ever been expressed to Garcia.
Morgan, after briefly arguing with himself about the ethics of profiling a co-worker and during the course of pursuing a relationship with said co-worker, managed to connect the dots on his own.
Reid would talk to him about these things on his own terms, at his own pace, and Morgan would try to be more than okay with that.
x
Old habits die hard and so it goes like this: Reid still writes to his mother, swears that he will try to visit more often, fails tragically in this respect but not by any fault of his own. He silently blames himself for days and days, and Morgan can't help but feel it in the shared air they breathe.
Today, he watches Reid across the spread of leftover breakfast on the table as he drafts another letter to his mother, features shifting in thought until they finally settle in a soft frown.
"Writer's block?" Morgan asks, conversational, because he still has an inability to stay silent in the moments where the swirl of troubled thoughts in Reid's little head are clear on his face. More than once, Reid has called it annoying but it is also apparent that he never really means it.
"I feel like a fraud," is the mumble he earns from the bowed head of disheveled hair.
Ah, thinks Morgan, and even though it feels like a gamble, he says it anyway. "You write because you love. Nothing fake about that." He gets nothing in return for at least the next minute.
It's not as if he minds. He is quite content to sit here and watch the pen dance on paper over the rim of his mug and absently wonder what it would be like if Reid could write as fast as he reads. As a matter of fact, he is so fixated on the deft movement of those fingers that he almost misses it when Reid mumbles something along the lines of, "Love and guilt are next door neighbors."
There's a sad smile welling up inside him but Morgan fights it back. "Who said that one?" It's a little remarkable that four years later, his curiousity can still be piqued by something Reid handpicks and cites from memory.
The written lines on the page are struck-through twice diagonally in the sudden, forceful motions of a thin wrist. The sound of pen against paper against wooden table makes Morgan raise his head sharply, in time to catch something between frustration and resignation in the face before him. Reid crumples the page and leans back in his chair. Shrugging a shoulder and looking away, he says, "Someone should have."
x
Though you could probably never tell by just looking at him, rumour has it that Derek Morgan is a bigger sap than everyone in the BAU put together. Penelope Garcia was probably the source of that but with time, as always, the original source of information gradually progressed in the direction of becoming muddled and irrelevant.
He writes Reid letters, has been doing so for some time.
They resemble notes scrawled in haste more often than not. A few of them sprawl and take up pages and pages, get far too long for his liking, but he rolls with it, jotting it as it comes to him because that's the only way he can. Besides, over time, over the courses of hundreds of near-death experiences and grotesque crime scenes, it has somehow become strangely therapeutic.
Morgan doesn't ever share them, doesn't ever send them, thinks that he probably never will (except for the odd moments after particularly awful cases where he half-considers sneaking one under Reid's pillow before heading to work). He always keeps them though, every single one, some place safe and secret with a ridiculous amount of care.
Between him and Reid, there haven't really been any lingering regrets or compensations he feels the need to make and this is how he knows that he never writes out of guilt. Instead, he writes for shared memory, for posterity, to keep something physical of what went on in his head even if it never mattered because maybe it will matter some other time, to someone else. Although he'd be hard-pressed to ever admit it, Morgan writes to be sure that if he goes first, Reid will have something to busy that gifted--cursed--memory of his with.
If ever looked at objectively, his excuses for letters can probably be best described as a chaotic mix of memos, journal-entries, love-notes, and messy doodles, all clumped into something barely coherent to the average reader.
Thankfully, Reid is anything but. This is probably why Morgan's so confident that if the time ever comes, boy-genius here will figure out somehow that Morgan only ever tried to say one thing.
x
end