(t) moreid // who outlives the other, and how do they cope?
moreid // who outlives the other, and how do they cope?
it’s morgan. no one expected it, least of all him, considering how much older he is than reid. but it is godforsakenly unexpected. he goes to sleep with morgan one night and when morgan wakes up, reid is in his arms, on his chest, head nuzzled under his chin, and he isn’t breathing.
morgan is a trained federal agent. he feels for a pulse (there’s none), he performs cpr (reid doesn’t move), he calls for an ambulance, and when they come, there’s nothing they can do. he must’ve passed sometime in the middle of the night in his sleep, they say, and morgan can’t hear anything because his ears are ringing and reid isn’t moving, isn’t saying anything, but any moment he should sit up and tell the paramedic they’re wrong, this is the actual statistic of what happened based on present symptoms, maybe dc medics should get better training, and morgan will laugh and kiss him and he will kiss him back except he doesn’t.
garcia and luke arrives at the hospital first. morgan is still in shock, garcia is in tears, but morgan was always there for her and she needs to be there for him, and they sit in the hospital quietly as they wait for the report. luke knows reid but not morgan, and he sits a little further, gives them their space and also grieving. then it’s jj and emily (he doesn’t notice they aren’t holding hands for him), then hotch comes rushing in, rossi right behind him, then tara and matt.
something about a sudden ruptured brain aneurysm. morgan still can’t hear anything. they say he didn’t suffer, that it didn’t hurt.
(reid died and morgan didn’t.)
god, the next few months are the worst. he’s worked with his pretty boy for seventeen years, married to his love for thirty-six years, he’s lived with him for more than half his life, and now he’s gone. gone. gone.
(gone.)
he still goes to work, still goes on his runs, still makes dinner, but he can’t feel anything. garcia comes over and cooks dinner, jj invites him on runs, emily shows up at his door and insists they watch shitty movies while incredibly drunk, tara takes him out to new businesses in town, but he can’t feel anything. the only times morgan can process any emotion is when he’s asleep and he’s dreaming and reid is in his arms and still breathing.
morgan’s sorting through reid’s stuff (he can’t throw anything out, he needs it here) when he finds the scrapbook he gave reid for their first birthday.
god, they were that young?
it gets better. he makes it his duty that every morning when he wakes up, he will flip through the scrapbook and remember reid’s laughter and smile and tousled hair and fidgeting fingers and keep going. it still hurts (god, he has some awful nights, fucking survivor’s guilt or some shit), but he keeps waking up and he keeps looking through the scrapbook and he keeps going out with his friends and he keeps waking up and he keeps looking through the scrapbook and--
it’s one night he has with hotch-- they don’t usually hang out but jack’s kid (god, hotch has a grandkid?) wants to play football and hotch swears morgan is the best football player he knows-- and they’re alone that hotch reaches out and tells him, “something a good friend told me. you’ll think about him every day. but one day you’ll think about him, and it won’t hurt.”
and morgan believes him.
(he still looks through the scrapbook, and it doesn’t hurt as much.)